With any luck, the DVD project is finally complete. I put the replacement batch of Jeff and Shandra's DVDs (necessitated by an unfortunate typo in the credits page - I wouldn't have cared so much if it had been an uncle or a cousin, but it's pretty bad when you misspell the bride's name . . .) in the mail today, so hopefully everyone is happy.

This project gave me the opportunity to learn iMovie and iDVD (neither of which is particularly difficult, but the quirks have a small learning curve). They worked great for capturing the video from my camcorder, editing and splicing. The special effects are limited and iDVD has a host of annoyances (like the inability to add a "Play All" button and the tendency to pick a random video on the DVD when you click "next" on the remote instead of going to the next video in the menu), but all in all they turned out well.

The DVDs themselves were my first experiments with mass DVD burning (using a disk image and OS X's Disk Utility; yes, I know Toast and its like are more efficient, but Disk Utility is free) and DVD printing (using printable DVDs and a special DVD tray in my Epson printer). I designed the DVD surfaces in Photoshop and then printed them directly onto the DVDs themselves; the results look much more professional than handwritten black Sharpie.

All told, including the time I spent fixing one typo, rerendering and reburning 5 discs, I'm estimating somewhere around 30 hours of work, of which probably 18 or so was actual hands-on work (the rest being time my computer needed to process video or burn the DVDs while I did laundry or went grocery shopping or helped indict Alberto Gonzalez on human rights abuses). Some of that was the learning curve, so future projects should be more efficient. Another factor is the final DVD sizes; I went over the DVD file size on each DVD and had to snip 3 minutes here and 5 minutes there to get below the limit (a DVD will hold about 4.2 gigabytes of data; Jeff and Shandra's DVD is 4.16 gigabytes).

My mother said everyone enjoyed them, so I'm hoping this project is done. My siblings have been mysteriously silent, however (even to some specific questions I asked them in the e-mail that accompanied the discs), so my enthusiasm for pro bono media work for them is somewhat low at the moment. I'm not sure they're understanding that hiring a third party to do this project would have cost them between $1,800 and $2,600 (depending on the market, and not counting the photography I also did at each wedding), which would put this right up there with the most expensive wedding gifts they received. I suppose that will be a point of contention the next time a desire for free media work is advanced.

Labels: computers, family, photography

Like most people, I'm occasionally compared to one fictional character or another in terms of appearance or personality traits. About a year ago Linde compared me to a character on "The Big Bang Theory," a show I had not seen until this week. This would probably be endearing if the character in question wasn't the annoying and belittling comic relief character (thanks, Linde). Even worse, when I mentioned it at work, one of my coworkers laughed and said "I can see that." I'm going to assume they're referring to his polymath status and social difficulties and not his plaid pants and arrogance.

So in the last year, various friends and family have compared me to the following characters:

Dexter (emotionally void serial killer)
Zach Addy (socially challenged genius with Asperger's Syndrome . . . who is also a serial killer)
Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" (genius with inflated ego and OCD)

The one thing these characters have in common is an inability to understand normal social interaction and a tendency to rely on deductive reasoning to predict social behavior instead of experiencing it intuitively, which is right in line with my INTJ personality and my own experience. So I suppose in that respect my friends and family are right.

Let's just hope they're wrong about the serial killer part . . .

Labels: introspection, linde, science, television

Someone should buy this for me so I can start building my Earthship.

Labels: amusement, earthship

Random updates, like the proverbial box of chocolates:

- I finally started the wedding DVD projects for my appropriate siblings (sorry, Haley, yours will be a long way off). Jeff and Shandra's is 90% done and I've even burned a test DVD to make sure it actually plays. Linde and Justin's is 75% done. I need to buy printable DVDs for the final product and then do the trial-and-error of learning how to burn a disc image and then make multiple DVDs from that (as opposed to waiting 5 hours for a DVD to render and burn, as the test DVD did) and then I should be done. All told, learning iMovie and iDVD, uploading about 5 hours of video, whittling it down to about 3 hours of video, making it into clips with transitions, composing the DVD menus and figuring out how to convert the PowerPoint slide shows into videos took around 17 hours. I'll be glad when they're done, mostly because they're way overdue, but partially so I can get my 65GB of hard drive space back (and I thought high-res pictures took up a lot of space). This should cover Christmas presents to my siblings for the next, oh, five years or so . . .

- I cooked fish for the first time last week. Although I'm not a huge fan of fish, I'm going to make an effort to incorporate it into my diet. I dug my George Foreman grill out of the oubliette into which it was tossed long ago (I don't think I've even plugged it in since I bought my house, given my non-meat-eating habits), dusted the fillets with olive oil and seasoned bread crumbs, grilled them for about 5 minutes and then flavored them with a honey glaze I made from honey, teriyaki sauce and seasoned pepper. When added to the steamed edamame and jicama and steamed brown rice I made on the side, it was probably the healthiest meal I've ever made.

- My route to work has been fraught with peril lately. Earlier in the week I spotted several soda cans rolling across the lanes in front of me. My initial impression was that one of the recycling trucks had lost a bag, a guess disproved when I caught up with the Mountain Dew truck one block ahead that had jettisoned several cases of soda from an unfortunately unsecured door while attempting to turn into a gas station. Today I was nearly in an auto accident when the person just ahead and to the left of my lane suddenly decided to have lunch at the Burger King on my right and entered my lane to make the turn without looking or signaling. A hard brake (and some swearing) on my part left a gap of less than a foot. Yay for adrenaline to prime you for work.

- My beloved iMac has been giving me fits. It has for awhile been randomly deciding not to wake up from sleep, a condition Lane has dubbed a "Mac coma." I've reset the system controller and PRAM, disabled Awaken and Weatherbug and pored over the console logs, with no luck. At the same time my Soundsticks have been failing (cutting out when anything else suddenly draws power, necessitating unplugging and plugging them back in, crackling when they kick in after not being used for awhile and humming very loudly when they're not plugged into the computer), which according to the oracle that is the Internet heralds a failed capacitor and the end of their lifespan. With any luck, the two are connected, and the replacement speakers that should be showing up any day now will solve both problems.

- Speaking of computers, I spent most of an hour on the phone with my mother last night walking her through the diagnostic and remediation steps of an A360 virus infection on her PC. I think we got a handle on it (although not being able to actually see the screen means I can't be sure). As much as my iMac is annoying me at the moment, I'm still trying to move my family to the Mac so as to avoid these sorts of inconveniences.

Labels: annoyance, computers, family, imac, miscellany

This is just the dumbest thing I've heard all day. I can't even pronounce that phonetically without wincing.

It's probably no coincidence that the amount of time I've spent watching the SciFi Channel over the last 5 years has been inversely proportional to the amount of non-scifi nonsense they've incorporated in their effort to "broaden the target audience" (as this rebranding is supposed to do). I stopped watching the channel almost completely when they started showing, of all things, *professional wrestling,* and I've been completely done with it since the season finale of "Atlantis" (which the brain trust at SciFi decided not to renew, two years after also not renewing "SG-1," despite being the highest-rated shows on their channel).

Labels: annoyance, television

Pope Benedict XVI has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids, as he makes his first visit to Africa as pontiff.

Speaking en route to Cameroon, he said distribution of condoms "increases the problem". The Vatican urges abstinence.

Of course it does. Despite the fact that abstinence-only education is condemned as ineffective and, in some studies, even counter-productive by multiple peer-reviewed scientific institutions, the Vatican doesn't have another answer. Better to tell people the wrong thing than to admit you don't know the answer, right?

Labels: religion and atheism, science

I've been looking forward to trading in my Saturn (even if I can coax close to 50 mpg out of it) for a Prius for a couple of years, although finances have prohibited (and will continue to prohibit) such a transaction for quite some time (damn mortgage). My most recent issue of Discover, though, presented an interesting new option. Provided GM is even still in business in 2010 (or 2011, depending on when they work out the kinks), the Chevy Volt should come onto the market and present the first real challenger to the Prius. It's a hybrid, but a different class of hybrid than the Prius; rather than switching back and forth between combustion engine and batteries as the main power source, the Volt uses the battery-driven electric motor as the exclusive direct power source (the combustion engine is only used to charge the batteries, not run the car) and, even more noticeably, allows its internal batteries to be charged from a home power source (something the Prius doesn't do). Theoretically, if your commute is less than 40 miles (like mine), a 6-hour nightly charge in the garage is enough to make your gas consumption exactly zero (well, not *exactly* zero, since the engine will still kick on now and then to lubricate the parts, but pretty close to zero), and the electricity vs. gasoline price ratio is something like 2 cents/12 cents per mile. And it's still supposed to be capable of 100 mph.

Now for the downsides. Chevy has been pushing the release date back on a semi-regular basis because the battery technology has had some snags, and the projected price has been going up (it's now at $35,000, which is probably out of my price range and makes buying it for the fuel efficiency something of a very long-term investment). And since 2011 is still a good stone's throw away, it's entirely possible Toyota will have released a new Prius that bests the Volt by then anyway. But I'm going to keep an eye on it anyway.

Labels: car, technology

I've been meaning to clean these up since Christmas, when Haley and I took a trip to an abandoned farmhouse on some land my uncles farm. I hope you like them, Haley.

This is pretty good. Your life in a calendar month.

Labels: amusement, internet

I would gladly stand in line for a runway show if the models were sporting a formal Tommy Hilfiger Sword and a puce Kenneth Cole Fusion Reaction Jetpack.

That's my favorite quote of the day today. I wonder why. :)

Labels: amusement, internet

Ha! Cici's scored a B+ on Yahoo! Health's healthiest fast food restaurants. I find that incredibly amusing, given that pizza in general is unhealthy and Cici's isn't exactly known for its high-quality ingredients. Still, any excuse for me to justify camping out there with my Discover magazine for an hour . . .

Labels: amusement, food

Happy International Women's Day. :) Here's to total equality in the near future.

Labels: holiday

To Lisa, best friend extraordinaire. Hope it's filled with sleep and cookies. :)

My circuitous, rat-maze-like route to the kitchen at work takes me past a number of a cubicles, each festooned in its fashion to its occupant's taste. The path is so routine that I almost sleepwalk the journey, unless something out of the ordinary catches my eye. Like the scene below (which led to a second inconspicuous trip to the kitchen with cell phone in hand).


It's not often one sees a topless photo sitting in the inbox of one of your colleagues. As it turns out, while indeed a topless photo, the image in question can use the "I have a Y chromosome so it's okay for me to show my pectoral muscles" excuse.

Labels: amusement, breasts

Long live the proofreader!

Labels: amusement, proofreading

I set up a Flickr account for my mother so I can blog her photos without needing to load her photos to my account. All kudos should go to her. :)

Also in this set are the photos of the razing of the barn on my parents' property (because apparently my father and brother couldn't build a shop on the *rest* of the acre, so they decided to tear down one of my childhood memories).

" . . . a Windows 7 Starter edition, which will run only three applications simultaneously, will also be available . . ."

Three applications. Really, Microsoft? Come on.

Labels: computers, what the hell