my sometimes-skeptical social commentary

Archive for the ‘video’ Category

We’ve been helping one of the departments on campus connect with a member of their dept. who is doing an out of town assignment. Our initial plan was to set up both groups with MacBooks and have them use iChat to video conference, but we ran into technical difficulties connecting.

Our network server administrator worked and worked to solve the connection problem, but eventually she determined it had nothing to do with the network–it’s a problem with the way the iChat program sends its packets, and so the packets get lost and the connection fails. We tried a program called iVisit, but that didn’t work (we never did determine why it doesn’t….) So the netadmin suggested we try out Sight Speed instead, and so far we’ve been able to connect.

There is a free version, but if you want full features you can upgrade to the paid version. We’re going with the free version, because it does everything we want.

The program runs on either Windows or Apple computers, so if you have a camera attached to your computer, give it a try and let’s try out the video chat. You can add me as a contact by typing in my email address: thomas@buffalo2wheeler.info, and my “community profile” name is buffalotwowheeler. In case you choose a username that doesn’t tell me who you are, I might not immediately accept your call–so send me an email to tell me what your username is. Also I might not have the program on all the time, so send me an email, and if I’m online at the time, I’ll turn the program on.

(I can use iChat at home with no problem, so if you’re an iChat user, my AIM username is buffalo2wheeler.)

Chat ya later?

I have a goal for 2008 to convert all my old VHS tapes to digital format. I’m not sure if I’ll bother burning them to DVD or not, but the VCR is going to die someday, and before that happens I want to make sure my collection of Godzilla movies is archived.

Ideally, I’ll have time to convert all my DVD’s to computer-type files too, so that I can load everything into a Mac and use Apple TV to do all my entertaining goodness. And that goes for my audio CD and tape collection too.

To what level have you made the digital leap, and are you willing to put your analog recordings in storage?

I would miss my books, so I am keeping them. Everything else can go digital. I don’t have any vinyl recordings, so for me the digital leap will be relatively transparent.

Hey, next time you see an advertisement for an event at the Central Terminal, go. It’s a really cool place.

We decorated our Christmas tree (J9 was outvoted on getting a natural tree, so we assembled our ancient artificial tree) and hung the stockings with care. (Click the thumbnail for a medium-sized version of this picture, then click the medium-sized version to see a full-size version.) UPDATE: People with radio faces shouldn’t make video blogs. But click on my picture if you’re brave.

The cat is very curious–this is his first Christmas–and we are concerned that he might climb the Christmas tree and knock it over. I am trying to think of something heavy that I can place on the base of the stand to keep it from tipping.

We have a tradition of buying or making new ornaments every year, which is something my mom did for my family when we were kids. There are old ornaments on the tree dated 1972, and there may be one or two that are older that don’t have dates. My favorite is a red bicycle (no kidding) that my mom gave me when I was in high school or possibly middle school.

For a few years, members of our family and J9 and I were getting “Our First Christmas Together” and “Our 2nd…” etc., but somewhere along the way, we kind of let that tradition go… maybe about the time we started focussing our Christmas traditions on the kids.

A couple years ago, my older sister made us some snow-filled ornaments. They are clear plastic, hollow, and she filled them with some kind of fake snow, then labeled each of the four for each member of our family. The kids love them–and today J9′s nephews are here, marveling at how the snow got inside the ornaments.

What, if any, Christmas ornament stories do you have?