First Video!

Lately I've been getting to know our new video camera, a JVC Everio GZ-MG330, a zippy royal blue midrange hard disk model, mainly experimenting with different lighting and settings. It's produced a clear sharp picture even in low indoor lighting and the controls are pretty smart and intuitive, which is what I was hoping for. And of course there's no shortage of video ops with Miss Isabella, who's all too eager to perform. Here she and her mirror get acquainted.

Electronics Catastrophe of 2008

In 1999, my first laptop was rendered out of commission for a year or so after a glass of milk tumbled out of my hand and onto its keyboard, seeping into the crevices and corroding everything it came in contact with. Same with my first digital camera in 2002 after a vodka and fruit juice fiasco. Both were colossal oops's that'll go down in history as some of my dumbest moves ever. Both were sent off to the manufacturer and fixed at barely worth fixing vs. replacing costs but were salvagable in the end. Amazingly enough, they're both still around and functioning today.

Can't say that brand of fortune will extend to my latest electronics disaster. Both Firedog and the Geek Squad agree (PC diagnostic services at Circuit City and Best Buy), my latest two and a half year old HP laptop is now a paperweight. This time it wasn't beverage-related, thankfully, but I was still responsible. After shuffling around in my bunny slippers doing this and that, I simply touched the keyboard and *ZAP* the static electricity I discharged went on to fry both the motherboard and the hard drive. They couldn't even get the hard drive to respond long enough to do a data transfer to my new machine. Luckily I backed up everything important (good Angela), but only as far back as the end of June '07 (bad Angela). Among the losses, all my photos of my August trip to Vegas and of Kristy's wedding. But fortunately, I happen to have stored the best of those online. All in all, nothing devastating was lost (that I can remember thus far). The hardest loss to swallow has really been all the music I'd accumulated in 10 years' time. *tear*

You can bet I'll be enstating two new practices this year:

1. Actively discharging static on an object other than my laptop, and
2. Investing in an external hard drive back-up.

Free & Fabulous

Thanks to Jackie for alerting me to the handy Google Reader. If you read a lot of blogs, this is a BIG time saver.

Photoshoppe

Not that I didn't already know about the wonders of Photoshop, but these before and afters (click on Portfolio at the top of the main page) are something to see. If I was Brittany Murphy, I would not be happy!

I used to have a bootleg copy of Photoshop on my old desktop but for some reason it wouldn't install to my laptop. But I loved it while I had it. My training method was all trial and error but I got pretty good at navigating the features in the end and I had tons of fun doctoring up photos. Now I have to fumble around with free IrfanView (which is great, don't get me wrong) and MS Paint. But they can't compare with an $800 program. I sure would love to have it again. Which got me thinking...

Over the years, I've had my share of interactions with professional photographers for portraits, events, etc. And all of them charge an arm and a leg. Problem is, you pay before you see the end result, which you may or may not be happy with. Sometimes thousands of dollars. Kinda like medicine I suppose. Anyways, what if you nixed the multithousand-dollar photo operation, recruited family and friends and maybe a local newbie photographer that won't charge much, handed them a book of examples of shots you like, signed a release that all the files and photos were yours, then shelled out the money for Photoshop to clean up the imperfections? You could even get it on ebay cheap cheap. It's an experiment well worth trying.

If You Just Can't Work It Into Your Busy Schedule...

From Yahoo's The Week In Photos

Visitors test PlayStation consoles in a toilet ambiance at the Games Conventions, the fair for interactive entertainment, in Leipzig, Germany, on Wednesday, Aug. 22.

Who knew the book Everyone Poops could apply to marketing strategy? Wrong on so many levels! Besides being just plain silly, this is an ergonomics nightmare. Who in their right mind... We'll hope this was purely for a bit of fun. Regardless, I can't see this making its way into the water closets of suburban America.

YouTube of the Week

Another expansion?! New dances?? Changeable hairstyles?? I wanna be a death knight.

I misses my Warcraft.

Pics of the Day

My little red wireless mouse reminds me of a baby sports car there sitting next to my computer. Well I lay her to rest. I've now officially worn out the left clicker. They should measure mouse durability in expected number of clicks. Then I'd know which mouse would stand up to daily beatings by my index finger. I wouldn't be suprised if I was well into the millions of clicks in 2 years' time...

I know what I want
and I want it now
I want you cause

it's my @#$%& birthday!!!
^_^

R.I.P Bearshare

Pay for Bearshare 6.1? Premium content? Encoded song files? Ack. What's this greedy world coming to.

Free and Fabulous

Since the days of chunky answering machine cassette tapes, there have been so so many messages and voicemails I would've loved to have saved. Hilarious ones, sentimental ones. And even if I tell my voicemail to save my favorites, it purges old ones after a while and I lose them anyway. *grr* So I found exactly what I was looking for today in GotVoice, a service that dials into your voicemail and records messages as mp3s! And you bet, it's FREE. I wasn't used to using a PIN to get my voicemail from out of area, so it took a trip to my provider (T-Mobile) website to figure out how to set one up. But that was the only snag I ran into and I still had it up and running in about 15 min. If you have a major national provider, chances are it'll work for you.

Free and Fabulous

Got another little program worthy of passing along. The very handy Replay Media Catcher records streaming audio and video straight from the internet. It's proven especially handy for recording songs and such from myspace or remixes that just can't be found anywhere else but in streaming audio. With a couple clicks, the Catcher converts streaming audio to an mp3 or flash video into a file playable using the flash player that comes bundled with the program. The one drawback is that the free demo version only captures 75% of the file. But I've found that to be good enough for my purposes (the full version is a rather pricey $39.95). If you're not interested in the video component, there's a music-only Replay Music that lets you record 25 full-length songs for free before making you buy (also $39.95).

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Free and Fabulous

Anything free that promises to simplify my life is a must-try. I’ve spent the last few weeks letting this little add-on to iTunes whip up playlists and automatically download some surprisingly great free tracks for me while I study and do my thing. It has its quirks (the worst of which being the program’s tendency to get confused when it doesn’t recognize a track and just stop playing) but its benefits outweigh them at this price.

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