This Pilgrim's Progress

Testing done on Mobblogging

Well as you can see from the previous posts, I've been testing the mob-blogging with my new camera cell phone.

I've found that it works well with Pix Messaging (with Verizon Wireless), but the regular text messaging doesn't work at all. This is because they have set up the Pix messaging to be able to send to a phone number OR an email address. The text messaging is apparently only set up for phone numbers, so the message isn't formatted correctly when it gets to TypePad's server, and so it doesn't get posted.

I also added web access through my cell phone and tried sending an email message using hotmail through VZW/MSN Hotmail. That worked, but it's hard to get a message typed out on a small phone keyboard!! Eventually I would like to get something like the new Treo smartphone, but I need to wait until the price comes down to expensive from exorbitant!!

So, it would probably be the cheapest (because of airtime) and easiest (because of the user-friendly GUI interface on the phone) to use Pix messaging and just use a standard picture/graphic or come up with a one to use when I'm just reporting in from trip or special event.

I'd be interested to hear how others are using their mobblogging abilities and what tricks they've discovered on the the technical end.

testing moblog

Hi_im trying this w email & web

Testing again

Testing again

looks like pix messaging from Verizon works, but not the normal text messaging...kind of curious!!! oh well.

Moblogging

Well the cryptic posting below is my first attempt at moblogging (mobile blogging) using my new camera phone.  I sent it by mistake while I was trying to type in a message. It's going to take awhile to get good at typing in messages one-handed!!  The camera doesn't have great resolution, but then I was trying for a self-portrait...always a mistake...I never think I look as old as I do!!! Oh well, I guess our mind's-eye view of ourselves is always in focus and touched up!!! Anyways, it was something fun and geeky to do as a break from coding a new data warehouse.

Cell Phones

We've been having fun with our new camera-cell phones around here.  They are pretty cool, but there is definitely a learning curve for all the bells and whistles. I downloaded the Canon in D by Pachelbel for my ring-tone.

"Day By Day" has a great strip today on cell phones and their features...talk about timing!!  Anyways that's keeping me and my kids pretty entertained mastering the "features". For my poor wife though she feels pretty much like Muir, she just wants to make phone calls...the features just confuse the heck out of her!!

The phones are Motorola V265 Trimode cdma phones with the gps chip in them.  Our provider is Verizon, and they have a pretty broad range of services to go with the phone. For my daughter, she just loves the text messaging, voice mail, and other features that make it easy to network with her friends. I kind of the like the communication features a lot too, the other stuff like games and web browsing are less interesting, but I might have an interest later when I have the time to check some of them out.

The Art of Creating DVD

I spent quite a few hours this weekend transferring the videotape of my daughter's orchestra's last performance to DVD.  I finally found the optimum process that yields pretty good results.  The main secret is to capture the video to your hard-drive as AVI format files. This provides the best quality for creating mpeg's that are burned to DVD. They take quite a bit of space, an hour long recording required about 12 gigabytes of hard drive space. Then the burning to DVD takes about 3-4 hours. That's because the AVI file has to be encoded to MPEG and then written to the DVD disk. If the software you use for burning DVD's has the option to save the disk image to your hard drive, I highly recommend that you select that option. Having the image on the hard drive makes it easier to burn multiple copies if you need to.

The sound came out great!! The Roxio stuff I have uses a Dolby compression for the audio that's pretty darn good. The video stuff is grainy, but it really doesn't make much difference when you are watching on a regular TV set, since the resolution is much less than digital video on your PC.

The one improvement I could make is to get a wide angle lens for my videocam. The Sony DV I use has a great lens, but to video a large group like an orchestra, it would really be nice to have more wide angle range.

I saved my AVI files to a couple of double-sided DVD disks (they each hold 8 gigabytes) in case I want to do something different with them in the future.

Now if I can only finish editing my vacation photos and get them ready for an album!!  It's only been 5 months since the vacation!!

DVD Burning

Well I got a good start transferring some tapes to DVD this weekend. I'm starting to get a good handle on the Roxio 7 software too. I found out that you can't use the 8.5 GB double layer disks to create a DVD-video with Roxio, but then I couldn't do it with Nero either. Maybe that capability will come later. Right now though, you can use the 8.5 GB disks as data disks with no problem in Roxio 7. I discovered this weekend that how you encode the sound can affect the size of the file when burning to disk. It also seems that the raw mpeg files have better sound quality than the DVD-videos I create with them? That seems a little wierd since the capture mpeg files are actually smaller in size than the DVD-video disk image. So, I still have some more stuff to learn.

Still Groggy

Well, our church voted to leave the OPC, our 16 yr. old daughter is experiencing her first full day on the trail today, and the learning curve on the DVD front is starting to flatten out a little. I'm still groggy because I was up late for the 4th night in a row, but this time the efforts were very fruitful.

I got the Roxio 7 upgrade in the mail, and installed it last night. They've made a lot of improvements in the UI and the range of capabilities of this CD/DVD burning suite of software. They give you the option of selecting to capture in mpeg or avi (Roxio 6 just does it in avi), and the interface is a bit more intuitive. This version gives you a bunch of .pdf manuals and tutorial videos to help you come up to speed. I was capturing a video that was slightly larger than the DVD size (4.7 GB), so I need to do some editing and cleaning up to get it on a DVD. Tonight I should be able to finish up on the same DV tape I started on almost a week ago!!! At this rate I'll have my backlog of tapes copied by the time I'm ready to retire (15 years from now)!!

Sony DRX-700UL

Sony’s External DVD+R Double Layer/ DVD+RW Drive

I purchased Sony's new external double-layer DVD+R/RW drive last week from the online SonyStyle site. So, far I'm relatively pleased with this drive. It has both USB and Firewire connections (I use the Firewire), and it was pretty easy to install and get going. I did experience a steep learning curve for the different types of DVD formats and which ones were compatible with the DVD drives and players I own.

Tech Toys - continued

Well, we got the "Pogo" 256 MP3 player/recorder a few days ago, and it has lived up to it's product description!! My daughter loves the thing, and it does a pretty decent job of recording voice and music. The software is pretty easy to use and has a lot of flexibility. It is very compact and the user interface is well designed and easy to use. This product is a real winner. The proof of the pudding will be when Daughter goes to fiddling camp and uses it to record the seminars.