Month: June 2008

8mm Film Conversion

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Being in technology I have tried to digitize as much stuff as possible. I have been scanning documents since 2000. I have been using a Tivo vs VCR’s since 2001. Over the years (since 1995 actually) I have made it a project to scan as many photos that I could. In the past 8 years all new photos have been in digitial format making archiving them easy. I still have a long way to go scanning all my families old photos, but I have allot of the really good ones scanned already.

The one area of digital archiving that I have had an issue with was old videos. I have done crude conversions of VCR tapes to AVI a few years ago of my Bar Mitzvah video and my sisters sweet sixteen video. The source material wasn’t so great so the quality of the video wasn’t so hot. I never was able to clean it up using final cut since I would have had to do a bunch of converting to different file formats. The biggest amount of video that my parents have of me and my sister growing up is on 8mm however. Converting that to some sort of digital media is not something you can do a good job of doing yourself. I have looked for places locally that would do the job, but wasn’t too happy with the selection (aka I thought most of them seemed kind of shady). Last year I found two different places online that looked like they were very reputable and did this sort of digital archiving all the time. I proceeded to loose the links to the sites and tossed out hours of research. I promised my mom that I would convert all the 8mm video to DVD. I thought she would be really happy but didn’t seem to into it. I think she just didn’t want that as her birthday gift:( Well last week I decided to find the sites I researched last year. I found them and selected one of them to send in my videos to.

I ended up choosing The Home Movie Depot. At first I was going to send in one reel of 25′ to see how the quality was. I was also concerned about the fact that I was shipping irreplaceable family history, and I didn’t have any backups. After reading the reviews of the site, and weighing all my options I just decided to send in everything. I figured there aren’t many places that look like they can do this type of work very well, and if I didn’t convert them they wouldn’t be looked at anyway. I also want to get them onto another format before the film goes bad. I don’t even know if the film is still good now, but the two canisters I opened looked ok.

I am waiting for the Home Movie Depot to send me the packing materials to ship in my 20 25′ reels and two 350′ reels. For something like this I paid extra for the packing materials as well as overnight shipping. I heard from a logistics guy I know that overnight is always better for sensitive stuff since it has less of a chance to get lost. Once I send in the film it will be about 2 weeks until I get them back on DVD. I also paid to have the original AVI’s they create put onto a hard drive. That way I should be able to create my own DVD’s and add sound tracks and stuff to the video’s.

I am excited to see these films once I get them back. I remember being little and watching them with the family. It was always a production to get out the projector and look at them. I don’t think I have seen then in at least 25 years. If this comes out well, I will send in any remaining slides my dad hasn’t scanned to just get those done also. The process for the film conversion isn’t cheap but if it does what I want it to, the cost is worth it. I will probably write more about this once I get the film back.

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Dinner With The Family

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My sister was in Queens today for a birthday party. That meant I got to see the family for dinner. Everyone made it out to my place since my sister was driving back to Jersey after we ate it was centrally located for everyone. I like being centrally located since I am the only one in the family that doesn’t have a car. I was able to get a few shots of the kids when we were eating. Zachary enjoyed making a big mess of his ice cream! As usual all he wanted was to be hanging with his Poppy!

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It was an early dinner since Carrie had a long drive home with the kids.

My Blog Entry For Sunday 6-29-2008

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Yesterday and today were both uneventful. I wanted to relax this weekend since next weekend is the holiday and I don’t know if I will get a chance to rest then! I cleaned up my apartment. That took some time. I got some storage crates that I ordered online so I cleaned up a closet that was in dire need of a sorting. I need to get some more of the storage devices. I am thinking of some to use under my bed. I will see how much crap I have left to deal with before I buy more.

I am also getting rid of an old piece of luggage. This Samsonite luggage was very useful when I traveled. I lived out of it for months. Unfortunately with the extra fees for oversized luggage on airlines now a days I can’t see ever using this again. I haven’t used it in a while so off it goes anywhere but my apartment!

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My Blog Entry for Friday 6-27-2008

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This entry is for events yesterday but was written on the 28th. Work was what you could call a typical Friday. We almost had a big scare with a file server, but it turned out to not be as bad as we thought. Any maintenance that can be held off until after hours is not such an emergency! I was able to get through a bunch of writing documentation that I needed to work on, but that sucked up allot of my day.

I met up with Jayson for lunch. It is only the second time since I started the new job that I have been out to lunch with friends. It is hard to get time like that at a new job.

After work I meet up with Luke, Vanessa, Jeannette, and others for some drinks after work. We were semi celebrating someone’s departure from my old company. The real going away party is next Wednesday. That will be the 2nd person to go after I left.

I left that group around 8:30 with the hopes of meeting up with Jayson and Gretchen for a drink. Gretchen had traveled into the city to meet Jay for dinner. I didn’t realize they had already headed back to the burbs until after I left my other friends. I was tired so I didn’t want to head back to what would eventually end up being a late night of Karaoke so I headed home to drink lots of water.

Bluetooth Mice & USB Hubs

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Today I did get my package I was waiting for so I now have a 7 port USB hub for my Macbook at home. No more swapping out one device to make room for another. The old 4 port hub now can goto the office since I need one there. I also got a bluetooth mouse for the Vaio laptop I got at work. There are only two USB ports on that little thing. One of them is hidden so it is difficult to get to. I want to plug in my Skype phone to the USB port, so it makes life easier if I have a bluetooth mouse that I don’t have to worry about plugging in a dongle to get the wireless to work. My current travel mouse is like that. It works, but it is a pain to deal with the dongle. This new Microsoft travel mouse worked in about a minute with the bluetooth on the Vaio. I can also use it on my Macbook if I need to when traveling.

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My Blog Entry For Thursday 6-26-2008

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Today was actually a very hectic day at work. There was lots to do, but the big issue was the stuff I was scheduled to do just took up so much time. I had my company orientation today. It took up about 3 hours of my day. I know i have been at the place for well over a month but they don’t do orientation that often so this was mine. After the orientation I had about an hour to get stuff out of the way before I went out of the office for the rest of the afternoon to visit our architects. We are working to look at renovating the office so we were visiting them to get some presentation. It was productive but time consuming. While all that was going on I had at least two other research project dropped on my lap that I don’t know when I will find time to look at them before other schedule activities come up next week.

On top of all that I gave myself a due date of tomorrow for two proposals I have to write up. One of them is basically done, and the other is not even started. I guess when it rains it does pour!

Since the world is really small, the architect we use happens to be in the building of an old company I worked for. I emailed one of my friends still there and he was around so on the way out I dropped by to say hi. I got to see about a half a dozen people I know. It was good to catch up.

When I was done visiting I still had to go back to my office to finish up some things before I went home. I ended up not leaving the office until after 6:30.

I didn’t do anything spectacular for dinner. I also called my sister to try and help her fix her computer network at her place. It turns out her network was fine but my brother in law needed help setting up some Apple Airport Express points. I never have done that before so I couldn’t really help them over the phone. We ended up talking for a while, but she had to go because my nephew isn’t sleeping through the night so she had to get to bed early to get some sleep before he woke up later. They think he is having an issue with an ear infection so he is having trouble sleeping. I feel so bad for the little guy!

Changes Afoot

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Since I started blogging back in March of 2003 I have had several names for my blog. I have had even more URL’s for it. From the first site I had on blogger.com, to hosting with Gus, to the several iterations of the site on Typepad. When I switched the name of the blog to Powerpedia back in April 2005, I also changed the URL to it. I did this mainly because I needed to distance my blogging from my day to day internet usage such as email, and my personal website. This was because of pressure from my employer at the time who had bad opinions about blogging. Well I should clarify that it was the CEO only who had a problem. HR, and my boss the CTO didn’t really have an issue with it, but you do what the boss wanted. This was the time I started moving posts related to work to a private blog. New posts about work that were a bit detailed went onto the private site. Even after doing that I was still a bit paranoid about “the wrong people” finding my site I went to great lengths to get rid of any direct references that would identify me. I know that is not really possible but I tried my best.

More recently I have wanted to reverse the steps I had taken to be anonymous. It was recommended to me that by saying who I am may not be such a bad thing. For one more and more people are looking into peoples web presence when recruiting. That and over the past year I have been becoming more involved in online social sites. From Linkedin for work to Facebook for friends. And yes Match.com for dating. Having a presence on the web that says who I am and displays my opinions and ideas might be a good thing. Now it can still be a bad thing, but I have always considered myself an upfront and direct person anyway so why should I care if someone researches me and finds this blog anyway? The biggest concern is what an employer or prospective employer might think. I have been sanitizing what I talk about with regard to work for ages, and the stuff I do talk about I think shows off the cool and interesting projects and the honest trials and tribulations of my job.

That being said I have moved the URL for this site to a domain name that I use for most other uses on the web. The new site URL is blog.powerz.org/. This change also breaks all old links on www.powerpedia.net/ This was inevitable. The old site layout always forced any URL for the entire site to be www.powerpedia.net/blog/ I didn’t like the added sub directory blog, but I never realized what I did to force that. After looking into the domain mapping settings in the Typepad FAQ I figured out I had setup Powerpedia.net to be the domain for all of blogs and picture blogs on the service. I didn’t really care about that so I adjusted it so the new URL just pointed to this blog. Any other sites I have on Typepad (I can have 3) will get another URL. This means that the switch from www.powerpedia.net to blog.powerz.org also caused the directory structure of the site to change. That means no old links will work. I have setup a redirector so if you type in the old main URL of powerpedia.net it will redirect you, but I doubt that RSS feeds or other links will work. That is what I get for progress!

The name of the site will still remain Powerpedia, because I like the name and it is still catchy.

The next step for this site is for me to actually say who I am. I know it is no big mystery, but it is a big mental step for me to simply say my name in writing on this site and click post! That should happen soon, I hope.

My Blog Entry For Wednesday 6-25-2008

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Getting to work was interesting today. The 7 train had some issue so even though it takes me less than 15 minutes to get to work, it took me over 40 minutes today. I love waiting for 10+ minutes for a train and then the announcement comes over the PA that says the next train is 4 stations away. Then it shows up and you cannot get on it because it is packed. Then another 5+ minutes go by before another train comes by. This one is almost as packed and people don’t seem to want to move to the middle of the car. That was my commute this morning. Thankfully on the second train a few of us were able to squeeze into the train. I had my drama for the day before 9:30!

Today seemed like a normal day at work. It was one of those days where you don’t think you did any work, but the next thing you know the day is over and you have been busy the entire day. For me I was busy with meetings in the morning with one of the guys on my team. Then I meet with my boss about some planning. Then I grabbed lunch since I forgot to bring breakfast in, so I was hungry for the kindergarden lunch (inside joke that Jayson came up with). I then got through some emails and other misc work, and had another meeting that took more than twice as long as I thought so the next thing I knew the day was over.

Thankfully it wasn’t as hot in my office as it was on Tuesday. I got home at a reasonable hour. I ordered dinner in, and did some work on the computer. A package I that was supposed to show up today doesn’t look like it will make it, so I have to wait another day.

The Nokia N95 Experiment

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OK, so the idea of me getting a Nokia N95 turned into a bad idea. As much as I think it, in this day and age I need a phone with easy text imput. That means a keyboard, or maybe a touch keyboard (aka iPhone). The concept of a blackberry pearl or even just T9 text input from a Nokia N95 just doesn't cut it. As much as the N95 was a great phone in every other way I need the ability to input data quickly.

And you guessed it, that means I returned my N95 last Friday. I am stuck with the limitations of my Nokia E61i until the iPhone 3g comes out. Hopefully that will be an improvement over the original. If that is a failure I can either try my luck with the Nokia E71, the 61i replacement, or wait a really long time for Palm to get their act together and come out with their new OS.

Until July 11, I will try and figure out how to keep managing my tasks on the E61i.

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My New Webcam

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Yesterday I got a brand new USB webcam I ordered. I know, I have an iMac with a camera, and my Macbook has one too, so why is this a big deal. It is because I use my Macbook as my main computer and when it is on my desk at work or at home it is plugged into a monitor and the lid is closed. That means using the built in iSight camera is not an option. I have wanted to buy a camera for a while but most recent USB camera's don't always support the Mac. I didn't want to deal with open source drivers. Thankfully Macally came out with a nice cheap USB webcam, the IceCam2.. It didn't need any drivers, and I was up and running with the camera in about 5 minutes. I placed a test call to my dad via Skype and it worked great. There is something wrong with his speakers because we always get static when doing a call, but the next time I am over there I will take a look at it.

I also got a laptop stand I can keep at work. One of the things I don't like about the Macbook is that when it gets hot the fan run's really loud and it is annoying. The stand should hopefully allow better airflow on the Macbook.

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