Category: family fun

look ma, no film

From Saturday’s videotaping extravaganza (oh, how much I have to learn about videography) to this afternoon, I have been able to create a CD with a video on it, suitable for sharing.

I did end up with a couple of coasters as I experimented with mkisofs(8) and it’s options. It was easy to create a disk image that could be loaded on a Mac as a disk, but counter-intuitively, that’s not what you want to burn to a CD.

I took what I learned and put it in a shell script for safekeeping. Variable $1 is the image file to be created and $2 is the directory tree that will be on the CD.
mkhybrid -R -J -hfs -l -o $1 $2

If I was to do one of these again, I’d do a few things differently:


  • go to the dress rehearsal and tape it, end to end, to see how long everything will be and get some cues
  • set up so you can see everything without being a distraction. I used a tripod but because I didn’t keep my face in the eyepiece, folks assumed I wasn’t shooting and walked across the frame. A step ladder (how geeky is that?) would have been a good idea, with a good clamp. The camera had a rotating LCD panel and a remote: I could have shot from across the room.
  • the camera has a still frame function: that would have been useful for head shots

If you believe that no experience is valuable unless you learn from it, I had a fine weekend.

I can certainly see the appeal for this kind of work.

kids say the darndest things

While reminding my 5 year old to get all the shampoo out of his hair, I told him if he didn’t it would look like mine (I was suffering from a case of bedhead, and it was sticking out everywhere). To which he replied, “You mean it will look brown and white?”

protocol violated

What do you give the woman who has everything for her 40th birthday? Tradition dictates that no woman ever wants a gift that plugs in.

I laugh at tradition. She got a portable table saw, suitable for all kinds of small woodworking projects, and she was delighted.

new bike

I traded in my old (bought in September) used bike for a newer and much better one. I should have gone to RecycledCycles first.

The new one is a Schwinn Mirada, essentially a mountain bike. It feels much safer to ride, less twitchy. I have so far taken three short rides on it and each time, I’ve been tempted to just keep on going. It just feels like fun.