Harrison Farm

I’m a gift bag saver and re-user.  Today Sudoku was packaging a few gifts and came across this tag from last year.  It’s a keeper.  Into Rosebud’s file it goes.

I was recently cleaning out (again!) some of our bookshelves and weeded out books we didn’t want.  When I realized how little I could get for them from half.com or amazon, I looked into some of the book-swapping sites.  I decided to put my unwanted inventory at swaptree.

When you open a swaptree account, you list your inventory, and you make a list of items (books, cds, dvds, and games) that you want.  Swaptree works its magic by coordinating swaps between its members.  The more items you list and request, the greater your chances of entering into a swap.

It had been more than a month since I opened my account (I had listed about a dozen “haves” and “wants”), and I was about ready to give up on it, when I got a request for a multiple way swap.  (more…)

I always find good things at my neighbor’s yard sales. Saturday was no different.

4 unopened packs of loose leaf paper - $.10 each

3 pair of like new pants for Sudoku - $2 each

1 like new, short sleeve shirt for Doodle - $.50

1 colorful, like new organizer that hangs on the back of a car seat - $1

At some point today (I think it was after the mower trouble) I remember thinking, “Can anything else possibly go wrong?” I didn’t say it out loud, probably because I knew the answer was yes. After all, none of the children were hurt - yet. Things getting worse was possible. And they did get worse. (more…)

From Booker T. Washington’s chapter “The Reconstruction Period”:

“The ambition [of the freed slaves] to secure an education was most praiseworthy and encouraging. The idea, however, was too prevalent that, as soon as one secured a little education, in some unexplainable way he would be free from most of the hardships of the world, and, at any rate, could live without manual labour.”

I know that I suffered from the same sentiment in my youth.  I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but it was there.  Now, as a college educated woman, who has never used my degree, and who has seen many friends fall into jobs and careers that didn’t require their expensively earned degrees, I ask myself about the real value of a formal college or university education.  (more…)

Finally!

Here’s my work around. The new Wordpress (version 6.2.1) gives the option (thankfully!) of uploading pictures by URL. So, until I figure out what the real problem is here, I’ll have to put photos into, say a flickr account and upload the pictures from there, rather than directly from my computer files. (Here’s where you can insert a sympathetic sigh.) (more…)

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Here’s another attempt.

I hope to do a little more sleuthing today.  I almost can’t bear the thought of continuing a blog with no photos…Wish me luck.

I’ve reached a major frustration point with Wordpress. After reading on the wordpress forums, I learned that I’m not the only one having problems uploading images. Here’s another attempt at a work around.

Someone gave this definition of a dysfunctional family in a Sunday school class a couple of Sundays ago. I found it interesting as a sort of litmus test for how we’re doing. “A dysfunctional family is one that doesn’t talk, doesn’t feel, doesn’t trust.”

A few years ago, I heard from a distant cousin that meat tenderizer made into a paste with water would soothe the pain from a wasp sting.  I tried it out this summer on Carman and myself after getting stung.  It really works!  Carman went from breathing deep & squinting his eyes to breathing easy in less than a minute. (more…)

There is a beautiful, old, wooded cemetery near our church where Marathon and I will sometimes stroll during the Sunday School hour. It’s a large place, and though we’ve been a few times, we still haven’t explored all of its nooks and crannies.

The last time we were there, we went to the far end of the cemetery. As we rounded a corner and headed toward the back, Marathon said, “This section must be for the poor” because it was absent of any large markers or headstones. The only markers were small and flat to the ground.

After getting closer and seeing how small the graves were, we realized this section was full of infants, mostly under the age of 2. There were graves with little matchbox cars and other toys on them. (more…)

We’ve had our HP 932c printer for 7 years now. During that time we’ve keep it running smoothly on primarily refurbished cartridges from Carrot Ink. (more…)

Marathon purchased a AT&T cell phone a few months ago with the understanding (he had been expressly told and it was written in his carefully made notes) that he would receive a $100 rebate after the purchase. The salesman was helpful enough to fill out the rebate form on Marathon’s behalf, seal, and address the envelope. He told Marathon all he had to do was slap a stamp on it and put it in the mail.

Which is what we did.

You know how those rebates are - they seem to take forever to arrive.

When it finally did arrive, it was for half the amount we were told we would be receiving. (more…)

I’m using a computer that we purchased new in 2001. We’ve taken good care to protect it from viruses and such, but over the last couple of years it has gotten quite slow. For some time we entertained the idea of reinstalling - or reformatting- the operating system.

We decided to go ahead and take the plunge. The computer was getting so painfully slow that we were ready to repair it or - if that didn’t work - let it go. (more…)

As noted in an earlier post, we recently purchased a used van. There are used vehicles, and then there are used vehicles. You know, obviously used vehicles. Our is in the obviously used class, and, especially for a family with children, the obviously used kind comes with some hidden blessings: (more…)

We purchased a used minivan about a month ago. We had purchased Marathon’s truck through ebay a few years before and had gotten a great deal on it. Wanting to repeat that experience, I searched ebay reguarly.

The problem was finding something near us. Since we were not looking for anything unusual - unlike Marathon’s truck with utility camper - we didn’t want the burden of having to travel to see and pick up the vehicle. Also, at this point, (more…)

A couple of days after we returned from the North Carolina trip, our hot water heater kicked the bucket. We had hot water for showers and dishes in the morning. Then in the afternoon, when I turned on the hot water, nothing happened. No water came out at all. After flushing out the water heater in case sediment was the issue (but finding almost none there) and realizing the heater was over 10 years old, we replaced the thing.

Not a very exciting way to spend money. But, boy, that hot water sure feels good.

The Spanish words “por” and “para” are both usually translated “for.”  Knowing when to use which word can be tricky for the newbie Spanish speaker.  When I was in college, I remember learning a couple of songs to help distinguish the two words.  Right now I can only remember the song about para.  It is sung to the tune “London Bridges Falling Down.”  The lyrics are as follows.   Go, ahead; give it a try. (more…)

It’s crazy difficult to find any bulk (large quantity) supplies of bike tire patches and glue.

Wal-mart carries some cheap, consumer-grade glues, but no rubber cement. (Also, I’m a bit unclear on the difference between rubber cement and the “self-vulcanizing glue” sold with small patch kits.) (more…)

Doodle was invited to an Easter Egg Hunt with the other 3 & 4 year-olds from the church. Sudoku went with him in my place since Marathon & I were scheduled to be helping with some landscaping at the church. Doodle had a wonderful time; he found lots of eggs and had too many sweet things to eat. (more…)

A kind neighbor had been doing some work for a local hosiery and somehow ended up with a bunch of children’s socks. He came over and asked if we’d relieve him of his burden since he doesn’t have any children. I was happy to oblige.

After bringing the packages into the house I decided to wash them all. Not until they were unloaded in the washing machine did I realize how many there were! There are over 200 pairs of socks in the photo!

As luck would have it, the three sizes fit Carman, Sudoku, and Doodle. And there should be plenty left for Rosebud’s growing feet and plenty to give away too.

Sometime over the Christmas holidays, when the cookie jar was emptied and cleaned, it got closed, sealed, and put away when it wasn’t completely dry inside.  I didn’t notice until I was ready to fill the jar again a month or more later.

The mildewy smell was evident as soon as I opened the jar.  (more…)

Seems like I’ve done a lot of music posts lately. Well, this is one worth it, I think.

We discovered the very talented Andy McKee a few months ago, and we keep going back to play his version of Toto’s Africa. For those not familiar with the guitar, notice how many of the sounds are produced by non-strumming actions.

I’m afraid so.

I would be heart-broken if we weren’t intending to replace the countertops relatively soon.  I still feel terrible about it though, because I should have known better.

I was making croutons for our salad the other evening.  (more…)

Well, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today. I saw mine today too. It was a wonderfully sunny day here. Marathon had work to do today, so the kids and I ran errands in the morning and then did something different: we ate lunch at our local Waffle House. (Groan….) (more…)

Follow these instructions for uploading photos from an email (or file) to the camera.  Hopefully I’ve written these instructions so that my 8-year old will be able to follow them.

Open the picture (from the file or email.)  In the picture viewer, select copy.  Save a copy in a new folder on the desktop.  (If doing this for daddy’s work, label the folder the name of the job mentioned in the email.)  Then label the photo DSC#####.JPG –  It is important that all letters be caps and the DSC is followed by 5 digits.

Now you’re ready to hook up the camera.  You can use the camera folder shortcut on daddy’s desktop to access the camera’s files.  (Or you can go to My Computer and open the camera files from there.)

Open the folder on the desktop that you created.  Drag the photos to the camera’s file.  After they have uploaded, find the camera’s icon in the tray and click to safely detach your USB connection.

Check to see that your photos uploaded successfully.

http://www.caricaturist4hire.com/

http://animatedbuzz.com/tutorials/

http://www.cartoonstudio.co.uk/Pages/americanad.html

http://www.learn-to-draw.com/caricature/05-line-draw-caricatures.htm

http://www.bobobriancaricatures.com/samples.htm

Ideas on Steps to Start With:

• Learn to draw simple people in 3d action
• Use Google Earth to create and tilt the paramaters of the area where you’ll be mapping

Today Carman & Sudoku spent a chunk of the day with their Uncle D. When that happens, they never know where they might end up. Today, it was on a 50 minute excursion on a steam train that went through a 1000 foot long tunnel that had been constructed shortly after the War Between the States. Here you’ll find some pictures of their time away from the house. (more…)

Here we are on the shortest day of the year.  It’s gray and cool, though not really cold.  Carman (in his bare feet!) has enjoyed wrestling on the trampoline with his buddy down the street.  Sudoku shot this picture of him.  You can see our makeshift soccer goal to the right. (more…)

I don’t think we’ve ever had a nicer Christmas card. This past summer I found 60 of these photo cards (complete with double sided tape) at 90% off the regular price, so I snatched them up. Hooray for bargains! (more…)

Monday - grocery shopping & other errands

Tuesday - Sudoku has a birthday party to attend

Wednesday - a woodwind concert in the beautiful Episcopal church

Thursday - the annual homeschool Christmas pageant

Friday - get Christmas cards ready to send!

Carman & Sudoku attended an educational program at our local nature center yesterday. The program was about the endangered red wolf and the local revitalization effort. When I asked about what they learned at the program, they were excited to tell me about woodpeckers - not red wolves.

The woodpecker, as you might already know, has a very long tongue that it sticks deep into the holes it has pecked to find those tasty grubs and bugs. Do you know what the tongue is doing while the woodpecker is pecking? (more…)

This is footage from the Fall Recital, November 17, 2007 (more…)

I’ve recently been learning about the health (primarily dental) benefits of xylitol gum. Xylitol, a natural sugar, helps decrease bacteria counts in the mouth. Trident gum contains some xylitol, but this gum is sweetened with 100% xylitol. So, we’re giving it a try. I’ve shopped around, and so far, this is the best deal I’ve found since all purchase prices include shipping!

FREE Shipping on ElimiTaste ZAPP and SmokeScreen Chewing Gum. Not Available in stores. Sugar Free and Aspartame Free. Long Lasting Cool Flavor, sweetened with 100% Xylitol.

What follows is my plan for backing up the important files from our computers. These files represent ideas, hard work, and precious memories. They warrant a logical backup plan.

This plan assumes you have a network between your computers, and one computer with a biggish drive (the “backup drive”) and a DVD burner. You’ll also need a program like Karen’s Replicator (free) to make backups for you automatically. You’ll want to find a location for keeping these DVDs that would survive a fire in your house/business. We won’t be depending heavily on these backup DVDs: they’re mainly for giving ourselves “a chance to get lucky”.

I’m going to break our files down into four categories:

1. Really important and active business files. These will be saved on the local drive, the backup drive, and (once every ??) will be saved onto DVD-R and placed offsite. This includes:
   1. all active business folders
   2. all the idea and knowledge-base photos
   3. a well-maintained “biz audio” mp3 library (not music)
   4. (separate out archival video files that won’t be used within the quarter and don’t include them here.)
2. “Lightweight files” of high and medium importance. By lightweight I mean file types that don’t use much memory. This would not include video, audio, or photos, but rather spreadsheets, letters, emails, etc… These files will be backed up to an offsite, online repository like Mozy. You can usually get 2GB for free, which should suffice for these lightweight files.
3. Non-active but Keepers. This could include:
   1. family photos/video
   2. all the digital music
   3. (archived video for FR)
   4. non-active biz stuff
4. “Unlikely to ever need again” These will be written to DVD and then deleted from the original and backup drive:
   1. Heavyweight, archival video footage that is unlikely to need to be reworked or re-edited.
   2. “snapshot” style backups — once a quarter, write the backup folders to a DVD and then delete them completely. Karen’s replicator will re-create the folders, but only with what is still in the replicator source.
   3. “pure archive” stuff (like AA or old cabs biz projects) that is unlikely to be needed again.

Now that the weather has been cooling off, we’ve turned the AC off and opened the windows. Unfortunately, we haven’t enjoyed the “fresh” air coming in the house. Some cats have been making use of the mulch around the house and are not doing a good job of covering it up.

My research says I should try the following: (more…)

We don’t often eat out, but we decided to for Carman’s birthday. We ran into this situation.

The kids ordered from the kid’s menu which states that each entree comes with 1 side and a drink. There is a list of entrees, a list of side items, and a list of drink options. The kids made their decision, placed their order, enjoyed their meal.

Then the check came. It was about 15% more than we had expected. I scrutinized the bill and realized we had been charged extra for the kids’ drinks when they should have been included in the kid meal price. (more…)

There is argument about how Sacagawea should be spelled. But the consensus among scholars is that, even though less popular, it should be spelled with a ‘g.’ Captain William Clark was an especially bad speller, so he affectionately referred to her as Janey in his journal.

Captured as a young girl by a rival tribe, she became a slave, and later married the abrasive Charbonneau, only to find herself pregnant at age 16 (she had a difficult labor, and Meriwether Lewis helped with the delivery), then trekking over the Rockies with a team of white explorers with baby in tow. (more…)

Using the FLV format, my instructional videos use about 1mb per minute. This is a very high-resolution format (waaaay better than youtube) at a size of 480×360 pixels. This beats using SWF by a lot. I’ll be interested to see how the new silverlight format does on this.

The discourse in these instructional videos uses approximately 130 words per minute, which for me comes to just under 10 sentences per minute.

At an average size of 4.1 characters per word, this makes one quarter of a standard 8 1/2 x 11″ page of text each minute.

My videos average 14 words per sentence. The transcript contains 11% passive sentences, with a Flesch Reading Ease score of 80 and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 5.5.

After learning about flash frozen seafood, I may never buy fresh seafood again unless I’m at the coast.

Unless you purchase fresh seafood from a coastal market, the “fresh” fish you’re getting may actually be several days old. Fishing boats generally stay out for a few days at a time. So if the particular fish you purchase was one of the first caught, it will be a couple of days old by the time it gets to the processor, then even older by the time it is shipped to your town and put in your local grocer’s freezer.

Flash frozen fish, however, are frozen within 2 hours of the catch. It is a process that takes about 3 seconds and is done on the fishing vessel at sea. So, the fish are caught, gutted ∨ filleted, & frozen all on board. The idea is to instantly freeze all the water in the flesh of the fish so that the “fresh” texture, flavor, and aroma are preserved.

A flash frozen fish should have a somewhat shiny appearance, be rock hard, and have no white freezer burn marks on it.

The following species consistently contain low levels of mercury. So eat up. Even several servings a week is ok when selecting from this list.

salmon
shrimp
clam
tilapia
oyster
hake
sardine
crawfish
pollock
herring
flatfish (flounder, sole)
mullet
mackerel, Atlantic
scallop
crab
croaker, Atlantic

• Prepare notes and pictures
• name the pictures that you intend to use out of the video folder
• Just record a quick clip to check everything
• Notify family of imminent recording
• Record an intro “freestyle” and standing, if possible
  • Record it with Camtasia to reduce steps.
  • Notes for field recording
    • avoid shuffling feet
    • If field recording with the sony still camera, see SPECIAL PROCESS FOR DEALING WITH SONY MPEGs
• Recording of screen capture with audio
  • Before you start, mentally review the quick commands for sketching
  • Pause between complete thoughts or when you need to look at notes or plan screen sketching
  • If you lose train of thoughts, just be sure to leave the section free of vital words so that it can be clipped out
  • Try to lose the “ums”, etc.
• While recording the screen capture, you may opt to also get PIP video. If so…
  • Don’t swivel
  • Look at camera whenever possible, this will be cut in as PIP
  • don’t do the closed-eyes-Cal look
• Editing if there’s PIP mat’l
  • Split PIP track once it needs to go out or to thumbnail
  • Cut PIP out wherever I’m not looking at camera
• SPECIAL PROCESS FOR DEALING WITH SONY MPEGs
  • pull to a camproj
  • edit, audio enhance
  • write to an avi at 480px
  • pull into my actual project camproj
• Editing
  • Cut out the fat
  • audio enhancements??
  • Add Title and Closer screens
  • Add a callout or two to fight piracy
  • Save as video version
  • Now save as flash version and do:
    • add a quiz
    • add a pop-up or redirect so I can track it.

• Uploading
  • Change flv uri in config.xml file
  • Upload the folder to homepages location. Here is the page I use for that and the kimili code.
  • Start a new page. Do KW research before naming.
  • Update the Kimili code and copy it to your new page.
  • Make sure you consider the “fpvid” decision and postdating.
  • Parent page?
  • Post-dated blog post as a pointer/intro?

For some reason, talking heads don’t run in sync with their audio in Camtasia output. Some videos get a worse case than others. It ranges from “noticeable” to “annoying”.

Solution: write the audio to an mp3, then pull it back in as track 2. Use the pip audio to get your new audio roughly lined up, then kill the pip audio. Now, by trial and error, adjust the sound back on the track so that it is even or slightly behind the video.

Think about it: because light travels faster than sound, we humans are accustomed to seeing someone talk before we hear their voice. The further away they are, the greater the differences. So if the video is slightly ahead of the audio, I’m guessing that most people wouldn’t even pick up on it.

But having the sound arrive first is something we never experience in real life, so use this trick to avoid it in your videos.

Bonus:

Are there advantages to using FLV video over swf - apart from image quality ?

FLV is much more tolerant of high-motion and length, yet it takes a lot longer to encode.

First talk about the problems with customer reviews at present:

• People with a life won’t take the time. What’s the incentive?
• It can be gamed — classic example for us is the totally gamed reviews on “Virgin Suicides” at Amazon.
• Usually people with a life won’t leave a review until they’ve had a bad experience. This tilts things toward the negative.

So, is there a better model for reviews? Here are a few that show promise:

• Reviews by people you know. There is accountability in knowing that your own friends and family will be relying on the veracity of your review.
• Reviews that are totally unsolicited and given by high-velocity reviewers. High-velocity, semi-pro reviewers will be hard to convince to participate in “gaming” and they will give reviews that are both good and bad.

Link to Review site.  Info on them:

• Syndicate to Buy.com, AOL, Yahoo, and  Smarter.com
• Pay $10 for reviews in high-demand categories, $2 for others
• Very few reviews are rejected
• Your reviews must be for a specific product/model on their list

I’ve just dowloaded the trial of Ignite Pro and have watched the tutorial. Honestly, I was out trying to find a Camtasia alternative because — after a month of use, i’ve run into many bugs and some snotty and inept helpdesk assistance at Camtasia.

Here’s what I found:

• It can’t do video screen capture and is really more like Adobe Captivate than Camtasia Studio. It does the whole “smoothly gliding arrow” deal like Captivate.
• You have to do a compile in order to preview (unlike Camtasia). Big Pain.
• It can do quizzes and email the results to you.
• It does publish in all the formats that Camtasia does AND ALSO in MPEG, which Camtasia doesn’t. Score one for Ignite.
• It’s player is a funky, pop-out deal. Not very user-friendly.
• It only has two (very large) output sizes, so it really isn’t designed for producing web video. This is a very problematic factor of this software.
• No sign of audio or video editing as is available in Camtasia (albeit to a limited degree)

So, unfortunately, I’m back to “bug-dodging and workarounds” with old Camtasia Studio … for now.

If you know of a viable Camtasia alternative, PLEASE let me know by commenting below.

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I just learned that I should write motherlode and not motherload. Marathon informed me. Here is the definition of motherlode: the main vein of ore in a region, an abundant rich source. Motherload, on the other hand, is considered slang. Now I know.

Tuesday I got a mass e-mail from a friend who is moving. She didn’t want to cart all of her homeschooling material with her since her kids will be in “regular” school this year. All of her material needed to go, so she was ready to let them go cheaply. I quickly jumped on it all. (more…)

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Articles to Write:

• Some people are just more prone to tooth decay (saliva pH?, strep bacteria?)
• Sensitivitity when there is no cavity
• xylitol gum and decay prevention
• Gum erosion
• The importance of regular professional cleanings (or else some regular method of plaque removal)
• Daily habits that can destroy your teeth
• Habits that can help save your teeth
• Problems I associate with my mercury fillings
  • jaw clenching
  • mouth ulcers
  • fatigue/headaches
• Having amalgam fillings removed — composite fillings are not as structurally
• My experience with a “burr” on my tooth — hygienists left it for years, so I assumed it was natural somehow. Then one worked on it a bit but didn’t remove it. I began to aggressively floss that area and the burr/bump is gone.

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Summary:

Humans can survive without seafood, but they benefit greatly from the oils, fats, and concentrated nutrients in seafood. Fish contain omega-3 fatty acids, high concentrations of vitamin A and D, etc… Plus it’s just a nice break from the norm without being a dietary compromise. But here’s the problem: areas (?) of the oceans have high mercury levels and certain types of seafood are more susceptible to concentrating heavy metals. Finally, recommendations about sources for low-risk, high-quality seafood.

Articles to Write:

• Alaskan vs Japanese vs ?? seafood
  • Other sources
• Fresh vs Saltwater Fish
• farmed vs wild
• Fish Oils and your health — Weston A. Price research
• Shellfish Species and Issues
• Pregnancy and Seafood
• Seafood and Mercury — Dr. Jump’s advice
• Fish Oil and Brain Dev –Bradley (?) classes, Brewer’s diet

Why You Should Care about getting Quality Seafood:

• Dangers of Heavy Metal Toxicity from Tainted Seafood
• Symptoms and Health Risks of not getting enough seafood
  • high cholesterol
  • winter blues/S.A.D.
  • high blood pressure
• If you’re interested in organic/permaculture/biodynamic/grass-based farming, you should also be interested in getting quality seafood

Other topics of interest:

fish oil
baked fish
fish
buy seafood
cooking lobster
frozen seafood
seafood online
mercury tuna
saltwater fish
crab legs
mercury in fish
seafood mercury
alaska seafood
cook lobster
mercury in seafood
crab dip
fresh fish
shrimp
lobster
salmon mercury
deep sea fish
freshwater fish
seafood
fish and seafood
ocean fish
fresh seafood
omega 3 fish oil

The idea here is that you put a consistent color in the background of your video and then replace it later with a still or moving image, thus creating more interest and eliminating the need for studio sets.

A “real” green screen is expensive, as is “real” greenscreen paint, but the good news is you can do it yourself more cheaply.

Simply obtain a hard, smooth surface and paint it a color which will never appear in the foreground. This is why hot blues and greens are favored — they tend not to appear on the clothing or body.

Recommended board types would be hardboard, then MDF, then sheetrock or plywood. Simply prime them and paint on your hot, non-matching color.

Lighting of the screen needs to be very even and so you want the person/object as far away as possible from the screen. You will need lights for both the subject and the screen. 1000 watt lights with diffusion material such as “ToughSpun” are recommended.

Another tip: lighting the subject’s head from above helps with the “dark halo” problem.

1. Make notes and collect pictures
2. (If you intend/need to use zooms/pans) Put the pictures into some format where they will stay put — perhaps just go ahead and get the zooms “saved as” to a different image.
   1. how much resolution will we lose by just filming at something very big, zooming to 100% resolution, then saving the entire thing back down to something smaller for the web?
3. Get the video camera set up for PIP filming
4. Begin screen-capture recording in Camtasia, using the desk microphone. Simultaneously record with video camera.
   1. Compare audio from video camera to the audio from microphone
   2. If the audio from video camera is lame, then kill it in an initial editing pass, then bring it into the new video as ??
   3. Also clip off the excess in beginning and end
5. Now bring the PIP into the main video clip and synchronize them.
6. Now edit out dead sections so that both videos get edited together.
7. Check that synchronicity is maintained.
8. Add bullet lists, title screens, etc.

See “Aug07 optimal video creation method” under “Camtasia Flash and Wordpress”

This is a problem because the Canon ZR series camera (I have a ZR80) does not detect any activity when it is being used as a web cam: EVEN WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY RECORDING! Obviously a design flaw. The camera beeps and powers down at 5 minutes of “inactivity”.

Yes, right in the middle of … whatever.

I called Canon Support about this. Tyrone told me there was nothing I could do.

One website suggested removing the battery but keeping the transformer power on. It didn’t work.

But Aha! I found the solution. Just record with the camera. Not because you need to, but because that means the camera will stay on. When you get to the end of the tape, rewind it and record again. Problem solved.

Articles i need to write on this topic (leave comments if you have a particular interest in these or others):

• Recognizing vicious dogs
• Dangers of multiple dogs (packs)
• Encountering dogs in the woods/wilderness
• Farming and hunting dogs
• Running and dogs
• Dog-owner myopia
• Review of historical cases of unexpected dog behaviour
• Risk-management for those required to regularly enter others’ homes (service businesses, for example) and deal with their dogs.

Here is what we’ve learned over the years about managing back pain:

• Imbalances can be created that are very hard to rectify. (the “hump”)
• In men, the back of the body generally needs stretching and the front needs strengthening.
• Pilates is a very efficient way to maintain back health
• Stress and the back
• Back injuries I’ve suffered: bathtub, pallets, night before Smith kitch
• Chiropractic and back pain — I’m skeptical
• What I’ve learned about posture at a computer
• Special Pilates add-ons we’ve developed to focus on back strengthening
• proper lifting in one lesson

Let me give you some simple anecdotal evidence for the powerful role of vitamins and minerals in human health:

• A veterinarian can tell you that nearly any widespread non-contagious health issue among animals can be solved via vitamin/mineral supplementation.
• In the oceans, life springs up abundantly anywhere there is enough mineral content “upwelling” from the ocean floor
• Stress is known to exhaust the mineral supply of the body.

If you’ve tried the other things recommended in my articles at right, I recommend you look into a serious vitamin/mineral/antioxidant regimen. I added this to my life at a point where my drowsies were mostly beaten, and things have continued to get better. I don’t know how much to attribute to this one cause, but it’s just good sense to take this step.

One source of drowsy-at-work could be toxins.

I don’t have a lot of cause-and-effect here, but dealing with toxins was one of the things I did in my successful fight with drowsiness.

There are two separate issues here:

Keeping Toxins out of your System

Just think about it. All of those additives, preservatives, and medicines are going to have some residual effect. Enough said.

Dealing with the toxins already in your system

I had personally accumulated substantial anecdotal evidence that my own body was suffering under a load of mercury. This was partly due to an incident involving a broken mercury thermometer and partly due to amalgam dental fillings which seemed to set off a series of symptoms in me.

Anyway, I decided to have my mercury fillings replaced. (Most dentists are not set up to safely remove amalgam fillings. Do some research about mercury vapor toxicity and mercury-free dentistry if you’re serious about this undertaking.) This was done during the same time period during which I was taking the other actions recommended at right, so I can’t say for sure how pivotal this step was.

I did also research and use one heavy-metal-removal product.

Drowsiness occurs because something is imposing a load on your body’s energy supply.

In my opinion, the #1 most-likely suspect is your digestive system.

When I was studying nutrition during my twenties, it came as quite a surprise to me how much energy the body uses in digestion. I can’t remember the estimate, but it’s huge.

In fact, the way you eat determines the size of your digestive organs vs the size of other vital organs like the heart and brain.

I specifically recall reading Enzyme Nutrition by Edward Howell. He offers data on rodents that show that, for example, eating “dead” food caused the rodents to grow their pancreas 5x bigger to handle the extra load, and it caused their brains to be 25% smaller.

After all, the body only has so much energy to parcel out.

So what is this “dead” food?

Well, all food was once living right? In that living state, it contained the enzymes required for its’ own digestion. In other words, it is going to help you digest it, decreasing the workload on your digestive system.

Therein lies the case for eating things raw or with minimal cooking. There are, of course, lots of fine points and exceptions here. Don’t just go out and start eating raw eggs from Wal-Mart.

Nuts and seeds are an exception to this, since they are designed to hibernate indefinitely until planted. This is why we (as a family) soak our nuts and our grains before eating/processing them.

If you struggle with drowsiness, I recommend that you make time to educate yourself on this as soon as possible. Start here.

Imagine lying down on the floor where you are right now. Imagine it is a hard wood or tile floor.

Now imagine that you could close your eyes, let your mind wander, and relax.

After about 2-4 minutes, you begin to notice that your thoughts have lost coherence.

Suddenly, you awaken, feeling as though you’ve had a good, 2+ hour nap.

Then you look at your watch and realize that you laid down only 12 minutes ago!!!

Seem impossible?

It’s not. I’ve done it hundreds of times. In college, I reduced the total time to 7 minutes, but since then I’ve found that the optimal time is about 10-15 minutes.

Once you’ve trained your body to do it (using an alarm), your body will find its own optimum time.

The micronap is amazing, but it is not in itself a solution to drowsiness. After college, I struggled with drowsiness even though I knew of the micronap. Rather, the micronap is a small part of the whole picture.

I look at it as a solution for tiredness rather than drowsiness.

Milkmaid and I became convinced of the health benefits of veganism in our mid-20s. Like everything else, veganism was pursued with unrelenting zeal by our family of (at the time) three.

We read books, grew a garden, and spent a bunch of money at the local Golden Temple (yes, that’s actually what our local health food store was called — it is/was in Southside Birmingham).

Now, I’ve found that changing your diet is a lot like changing shampoos. They always seem to help. At first.

But, over time, we noticed the following trends in our veganism:

• we were always hungry
• we were getting thin (Milkmaid’s very straight-shooting grandfather who fought in WWII told her “you look like you just got out of a concentration camp!”)
• I was drowsy… a lot!

Every evening around 8pm, I would literally begin to nod off, no matter what I was doing. I would fight it until about 9 and then finally give in. I was usually up at 6 am. That’s a nine hour sleeep. (extra “e” intentional)

Our veganism lasted about 2 years and ended partly for practical reasons (it wasn’t working!) and partly for research reasons (we learned more about nutrition).

Let me contrast that with my life today. I still wake up at 6am. But now I head to bed at around 11:30 or midnight. And when I go to bed, it’s mostly out of principle rather than being forced to bed by drowsiness.

Some days I do take a 10-15 minute micronap. See articles at right.

Quick-fix solutions to drowsiness tend to have the following effects:

• Be addictive
• Increase the scope of the original problem, ultimately making you more of a drowsy basket-case
• Increase the toxic load on your body leading to ?? (cancer, etc.)

Here’s a brief list of drowsy-at-work solutions I recommend against:

• Caffeine and other quick-energy drinks and pills
• Shocker Glasses — dumb
• Energy Supplements - ginseng, cordyceps and ashwaganda. These don’t get to the core problem.

Again, the real problem is something is imposing a load on your system. You can’t fix that by adding something else onto the top. (Unless there is some basic nutritional element that your body isn’t getting: see the articles on veganism and vitamins.)

Being drowsy at work is the absolute, absolute worst experience. I hate it.

You try so hard, but it’s like having a giant weight attached to your body. You’re afraid that in a moment of drowsiness, you’ll make a decision that will haunt you for a lifetime. Or else you’ll miss some critical piece of information in a discussion.

And if you are like I used to be, getting more sleep at night doesn’t help.

I know that world well, and thank God, I no longer live in that world. I spend my days feeling alert and attentive.

I can’t say exactly which one/ones of the things I tried (detailed in the links at the right) was/were the ones that gave me the breakthrough. Most likely it was the combined effect of all of them.

But the bottom line is that, over the course of a few years, the drowsies have left me and have been gone for about five years now.

It is clear to me now that sleepiness during the day is an effect of something burdening your system. It’s like a tax. Part of your energy is being diverted into something and you’ve got to figure out what that something is and deal with it. You can do it.

I recommend that you start with the nutritional issues, then look at toxins, then vitamins, then finally sexual moderation. This was the order I tackled it in, and by the time I got to vitamins and sexual moderation, things were back to normal and — to my amazement — moved past normal to the point of my sleep requirement going down to 6.5 hours per night average, compared to 8.5 hours during my twenties. See articles at right.

Update in September07: the page with the most direct info is the “Essential Steps…” I’m keeping that page very current and actually use it each time I perform an embed.

The links at right detail my quest to get the camtasia flash player embedded into a Wordpress post or page.

I had previously embedded video players such as Youtube with very little problem (usually the trick here is to publish directly from the “code” side of the editor without letting the “visual” side tamper with it), but the Camtasia Flash player turned out to be quite a bit harder.

The solution ended up being a special modification to the Kimili plugin code as well as a modification to the Camtasia output.

If it doesn’t all add up, please put your questions below.

The central problem is that Camtasia’s zoom-n-pan editor can’t handle multiple image proportions. I’m pretty sure the central issue is size, not proportions (but I’ll be testing this right now, so stay tuned…). It wants to make every image the same proportions even if they’re not.

So, my solution is to get all the images to the proportions of my final video. For me, this will be 4:3.

So, obviously, this only presents a problem for portrait-orientation and odd-sized pictures. So, before dragging anything into Camtasia, I’m going to go through all the images and perform this simple triage:

1. Is it something other than a 4:3?
2. Can I simply crop it down to a 4:3 and keep all the important stuff? (pretty unlikely — why would you have taken it as a portrait?)
3. …if not, then drag it into a photoeditor and “outcrop” or place onto a black background layer that is the proportions needed and that is larger than the limits of the image.

So, for example, if I have a 1536 x 2048 image, then I need a background layer that will expand the entire image to a width of 1.33333 (because 4 is 1.3333… times larger than 3) times 2048, which is 2730.6666… pixels.

Obviously I can’t use partial pixels, so let’s go up to the size where both numbers are divisible by four: 2736 x 2052.

The way to do this in Photoshop would be as follows: in the Editor mode go to Image: Resize: Canvas. Then just enter the dimensions you need. I’m entering 2736 x 2052 and I’m going to make the canvas black just in case I ever want to include it in a screen shot.

I’m actually using Photoshop Elements for this and was unable to find a batch method for multiple photos. So this is pretty time-consuming for more than a couple of photos.

Now I just pull my new, bigger pictures into Camtasia and I’m ready to use the drag & drop functionality!

After testing: yes, it worked, but the drag & drop method is slow and tedious, like real video editing. I’m going to try to avoid needing to use it.

Here is my attempt to execute Camtasia’s workaround.

First, some details that you need to know:

• My system: Windows XP w/ SP2, a Pentium M processor at 1.6Ghz, and 1GB of RAM
• The picture sizes are 2048 x 1536 for landscape and 1536 x 2048 for portrait. These are very reasonable image sizes given the need to zoom in on portions of the picture and still maintain good resolution for a final movie that will be around 480 x 360.
• My video is about four minutes long.

So, as recommended, I took my .camrec file and had it write an AVI using the “recommended” production settings on the wizard.

My system took 6 minutes to create the AVI and it was 143 megabytes. That’s 36mb per min, compared to about 1mb per min for the FLV on my 480×360 final video. In other words, this workaround is a massive memory hog.

The AVI played fine on my system, so I created a new .camrec in Camtasia in order to add the zooms/pans/callouts. I was able to pull the AVI into the Clip Bin and it appeared that I was able to drag it onto the timeline successfully.

That was where my success ended. When I tried to play sections of the video in the preview player, I got nothing. After a minute of searching around with the progress bar, I was able to get the audio to play.

But I never got any video or even a still image in the preview player. When I tried to zoom the first frame of the AVI, I couldn’t get an image to appear in the zoom-n-pan window. I even tried capturing an image of the video using Ctrl + F. This was also fruitless. It appeared to execute the procedure but no image would ever appear in the destination folder.

Strengths of Screen Capture:

• quicker
• better call-outs (?)

Strengths of Drag/Drop: (maybe I should do a video showing what I mean by this?)

• organize pics = organize thoughts
• better flow and concentration to the narration

Update on 7sept07:

I’ve decided the “zoom problem” (described in detail in the links at right) is insoluble and have instead changed my video-generation process to work around this glitch by just using the “capture” method rather than the “drag and drop”, which I prefer.

If you are aware of a fix or of a bona fide competitor for Camtasia Studio, please leave a note at the bottom of this page. Thanks.

Articles I still need to write:

• Document the problem with pics and video
• Include my dialogue with Camtasia support
• Report on my experience attempting to do the workaround suggested by Camtasia support
• Compare the two ways of creating a video using Camtasia: screen capture and drag & drop
• Best practice for making a screen capture video, start to finish
  • perpare pics, ordered and sized for best capture in ??
  • narrate/zoom/annotate with lots of pauses
  • pull to camproj and touch up
• Best practice for making a drag/drop video, start to finish
  • pre-edit pics to deal with camtasia zoom problem?
  • dump pics into camtasia, drag onto timeline in order
  • narrate audio
  • adjust frame timing
  • if you’re doing the camtasia-recommended fix:
    • write to avi
    • pull avi into a new file
    • add title/close/zooms
    • if you want to cut in pictures later, repeat these steps

    
    

Screencast’s Embed fuction is definitely still in beta even though they sent out a big announcement this week making it sound like they were all ready to go. Their embed function consists of an image with links back to their site. The image…

My note to them:

I just tried the “embed” function. It was a bit disappointing.

First, it doesn’t actually show a screenshot of any of the videos (a la youtube).

Second, it just links them to your site rather than having the player embedded locally.

Hopefully I’ll be notified when they make these upgrades.

So, of what use is Screencast at this point?

1. possibly they could save money for “power users” (compared to self-hosting), especially those who can use their Premium, add-on and rollover plan.
2. maybe under some circumstances (like on the homepage) it would be cool to have a playlist of recent vids people could go through, but it needs to be a true embed.
3. It appears that they are going to host flash video as true, interactive flash, so that could be a major difference with all the other players.

Excellent summary:

They’re actually quite different. If you ignore all the extras both programs add and focus only on the core feature (screen recording) they’re strikingly different. Captivate only records the logical screen changes and smoothes your mouse movements. This almost always results in a smaller file. However, because Camtasia is lossless it can record everything that appears on screen—for example a video or animation. (Captivate has options to manually or automatically switch into fullmotion recording—but Camtasia is still better.)

In general, Captivate excels when you want to create a simulation including lots of interactivity. If you need full motion and accurate timing (especially if you don’t want do a post recording edit) then Camtasia is a better choice.

http://www.devgroupnw.org/docs/captivate_your_audience.pdf

In favor of…

Camtasia - price

Captivate - it’s very clear how you control the pixel capture size of a video right from the very beginning, because it’s part of the dialog/wizard when you set up a project. I never figured out how to do this on Camtasia.

Camtasia? - (assuming it can import video) What’s the deal with Captivate? First they tell me (all of this is from the forums, where