Chomer Speaks

POST UPDATED: Finally, I got my order. Val included some candies in the package as sort of a consolation prize for my order being so late. Hopefully my wife doesn’t get the wrong idea!

Box of chocolates (Decimated)	The goodie bag spilled out	The DVD and it’s box

Thanks Val!

Val’s Art Diary is a video blog where she creates a painting every week and explains it to her viewers.

She’s also on YouTube.

For some people like me its hard to complete things. The mind can be this heaving ocean that floods the corners of my skull with all sorts of ideas. Some seem very cool! The frustration starts when I try to decide which ones I’m going to pursue and put some energy into. My mind wants to move around. So its hard to work very long on one idea.

I’m getting better at following through on an idea, but it is still quite a struggle. Who knows? Maybe it will be a struggle the rest of my life. Health improvements can help I’m sure: eating properly, exercise, taking vitamin supplements…

That’s a struggle too since I tend to eat bad food, drink pop as a comfort to my frustration (I hear processed sugar can work like an opiate in the brain).

The Kinoki pad testing is slightly stalled at the moment. I’ve fallen behind on my Six Sigma class I’ve been taking, and I’ve not done any work on the project with my sister for awhile.

Part of the blame could be placed on panic attack symptoms I’ve been having of late. These have dissipated as I’ve gotten back to being more disciplined in my eating habits and excercise. I’ve had to really struggle to get back to some half-way decent baseline.

Last Friday night I talked myself and my wife into buying FinalCut Express for my Mac. I was excited about some of the post-production problems I hoped it would solve. Naturally, after installing it the program would not work. The splash screen would come up and then the program would silently end… without any messages or anything. That was very discouraging!

I tried everything I could think of… I Googled for information, tried a few things, no dice! Finally I called Apple. Guess what Steve, it doesn’t always “just work!” I waited about a half and hour on hold. Yuck! Finally, I got through and, working with the guy, I was able to get FinalCut Express working. Whew!

Let’s see, I’ve done no work on Chomer.com, or any of my other forward looking projects. But I won’t quit! I want to write a post soon on what’s important in life.

Until Later… God bless!

Embedded below are videos that that I posted on YouTube regarding some experiments I ran using Kinoki Pads:

Part 1 of 6

Part 2 of 6

Part 3 of 6

Part 4 of 6

Part 5 of 6

Part 6 of 6

Check out these videos! It covers the first two days of using the Kinoki pads. Please go into YouTube and rate these videos. Even a low rating can help. Thanks!

Robert Scoble did a post today addressing what to do if you lost your job in the 2008 recession.  I think allot of these tips are very good. When going over them I thought how many of these could apply even if you still have your job! I mean, it couldn’t hurt to position oneself better career-wise.

The advice about working on one’s blog posting items in their area of expertise. Posting a video a day to You-Tube, again, covering something in their area of expertise. This has set me to thinking about this blog, what I can post here that would be useful, as well has posting one short video a day on You-Tube, again, on some short subject that I really have a handle on.

Just zeroing in on this is a great idea for those of us who still have jobs. I tend to have grand ideas for my web site/blog. I don’t want to throw away those ideas… but I need to think about giving my readers/viewers useful stuff in the near-term that will ultimately better position myself and my career.

So what do you think? Do you have any other ideas?

The way things were going, I emotionally wondered if I’d ever get this thing done! But it’s here! A tutorial on how to get the video out of your Canon HG10 video camera into Windows Movie Maker. Please check it out, especially if you own this cool camera!

Well, I spent several hours working on that tutorial I keep talking about. Time flew fast. I said I was 90% done didn’t I… I think I was wrong!

I did alot of work on the tutorial last night… we’re up to 14 steps. Don’t worry! I am doing one step per page and I’m breaking the process down into very small steps that are easy to digest. So, there are alot of pages. There are alot of screen shots. There are two completed videos that are embedded into the tutorial.

There is one video that has been mostly edited but needs some music I think added to it and some titles. This mostly finished video is pretty short and shows taking the AVI file created via the whole process shown and importing it into Windows Moviemaker.

As far as the actual pages of the tutorial (there are 15 so far … if you include the introduction) go, I am at the point of describing the settings that need to be made when the user is ready to save that AVI file.

Let me see… how many pages left… maybe?

• One to show the overall save video dialog box and picking Microsoft AVI from the dropdown list. …And telling the user to click the options button…
• One to show the user how to change the width and height settings to something Moviemaker can handle.
• One showing how the tool being used converts the HD video clip into an AVI file.
• One showing the closing up of the tools that were used for the conversion.
• A page showing opening of Windows MovieMaker and adding the AVI file to a video “collection.”
• A wrapup page that talks about:
  • The problem with the size of AVI files.
  • The problem with how Moviemaker plays files from the disk.
  • How converting the whole thing into a Windows Media File and editing from that does not work.
  • Why most of the tutorial video footage was editing in iMovie not MovieMaker.
  • Outtakes. —- chances are I will release the tutorial before this part is complete. This is for a little bit of fun.

 That is six new pages that I still have to make yet… whew! In addition I want to create the navigation link thing to add to each of these pages to make it easy to navigate around in this tutorial, so,….. I have some work to do still!

I’m revising the completion amount to 75%.  Hopefully this is more realistic. I plan on working on it tonight again.

Cheers!

Well I got home last night and tried using Kyte.tv. I had the same problems as before. But fortunately I let other people know and I got a solution to my problem:

• In Safari, clear the cache.
• Close Safari.
• Shut down the computer.
• Start up the computer.

Stuff started working again. Thanks again for all the help!

I’ve been working on and off on a tutorial for getting video out of a nifty Canon HG10 high-def video camera into Windows Moviemaker. It is about 90% done. It has taken me longer than I expected.

Take last night for example: I was going to work on it, but Apple came out with this update for the iPhone. I spent most of the evening first updating my MacBook, then my iPhone. Then it was time to go to bed… no time to work on the tutorial. Us old folks can’t stay up too late on weeknights!  …Where’s my Geritol?

The night before I was showing a Lean Software Development video to my wife that I found on Google. Alot of good information on process improvement, some which can be used in any area not just programming. We both watched some addition video from some Six Sigma course material I have for a class I’m taking in February. Another night shot!

Tonight I am planning on working on the tutorial though. I am so close to getting this done!