Nutritious Blue Spray

New podcast; more Thurm!

2008-03-11T23:06:46Z

Colin & Mingo have a new podcast. It's our second ever video podcast.

It includes the live performance of "Wearing Plaid (It's a Fad)", a short Thurm clip and Magakrampi & Blanda's new video, "Festival of Light".

You can download the podcast: Maxwell Montes Video Download or subscribe to our podcast in iTunes (etc.): Audio output from Magakrampi & Blanda (this is an RSS feed).

We have also uploaded the Thurm Glupston show from 1988 (in 7 parts) to YouTube. Watch it from the convenience of your own home in glorious Tube-o-vision:

Thurm 1988 (3 of 7 parts)

2008-03-10T01:03:18Z

Way back in 1988 we did our second live "Thurm Glupston Show"--a show with a fake host, fake guests, and fake commercials. To add to the excitement we had real audience members (i.e., not "plants") call in as though it were all real. They played along quite well.

In this show Thurm (the host) interviews "We'll Save You Man" (in a surprise appearance), Woody B. Green (a man/plant who can change into a plant/man), Kitty Cologne (a astrologist/cosmetologist), and Russ Fink (an "impostor").

I've uploaded 3 of 7 parts to YouTube (which limits each video to 10 minutes and it's an hour-long show...). Parts 4 through 7 will come along as I have time--probably next weekend.

Thurm 1988 1/7
08:56

Thurm 1988 2/7
08:51

Thurm 1988 3/7
08:47

If this is popular I'll go back and do the first Thurm show as well.

Festival of Light

2008-02-26T17:39:05Z

Magakrampi and Blanda have a new video for a track they recorded about a year ago. It's called Festival of Light.

Heather's 1st Birthday

2008-02-15T00:59:38Z

Heather recently celebrated her first birthday. We're sharing some videos showing the fun she had at the party.

Heather's 1st Birthday - Walking
02:04

Heather's 1st Birthday - Singing
00:50

Heather's 1st Birthday - Eating Cake
02:46

Click of Death

2008-01-20T23:47:56Z

I keep active archives of video files--both raw footage and also the completed clips. Well, I should have written that sentence in past tense, because the Western Digital MyBook (500-Gbyte drive in an external USB enclosure) I kept the archive on has failed and will not spin up. The tell-tale sign of its absolute failure is the Click of Death.

I don't recall exactly how long I've had it but it seems like only a year or so. I'm not very happy right now because I hadn't made long-term archives of the material on the drives, so at the very least it would be a huge pain to recreate by grabbing the original video again. Sigh.

I removed the cover and found nothing interesting (obviously) inside. I put the drive in the freezer (in a plastic bag) for several days (!)--I'm not sure what I was hoping for, but when it came back to room temperature the click was still there. Banging on the drive also didn't help. (Of course it should only have hurt!) I was just trying to get it to spin up once more but it seems that will not occur.

I guess it's finally time to use RAID at home.

No Transistors Here

2007-10-07T22:56:15Z

Today I cleaned up and photographed my Webster-Chicago Model 80-1 Wire Recorder. My
what? :)

The Sound of Drums

2007-09-30T21:45:32Z

My daughter is getting to be more fun as she gets older. She's nearly 8 months old now. Let's see... she's doing pretty much everything at this point: sitting up, wanting to stand, cruising, eating "solid" food, babbling, and waving "hi" :) She still loves our long walks/hikes. Oh, and swimming. We're going to try to continue doing that over the fall, winter, & spring until outdoor pools are open again.

The fall has brought us some new television shows. "Doctor Who" series 3 and "Torchwood" are stand-outs. The subject I used for this post as well as the music I'm listening to are from Doctor Who. In the episode "The Sound of Drums", the Master gleefully unleashes the Troclafane on Earth with "Voodoo Child" by the Rough Traders playing. Very nicely done. Too bad we can't get either of these shows in high-def yet; both the Sci Fi Channel and BBC America are only in standard definition.

The series premier of the "Bionic Woman" remake was marred by some kind of glitch in the way our cable system was retransmitting local HD channels. They were all experiencing enough drop-outs to make viewing difficult.

Too Many Googles

2007-09-10T01:04:49Z

Somehow I ended up with two Google accounts and I have some of their services using one and others using the other. I think this happened when I signed up for Gmail. They don't allow account recombination according to what I've read. Sigh.

Last Week / This Week

2007-09-06T23:50:09Z

Last week Heather got more pool time in--both at her paternal grandparents' place (twice!) and once more at the Highland Park pool. She really wants to be a little fish.

My 20th high school reunion was over the weekend--and it was better than I expected. We did not go to the informal Friday event, but there were some people who attended that whom I would have liked to see. We went a little late to the formal event on Sunday because we needed that pool time with Heather :) It was nice seeing folks I had kept in touch with but who live far away. And there were some folks I hadn't seen since high school that it was nice to see as well.

The reunion has put some of my classmates in touch electronically now, through an ad-hoc address list that was used to coordinate the reunion. I was asked to make part of our Senior Assembly online so I did:

(Google Video:)

I had previously made Colin & Mingo's performance of "We Have Mutated" online:

(YouTube:)

There are more and more requests for this; I might make the whole thing into a DVD (when I have time) and send it to someone...

Anyway, Heather & I have been on our own for a couple of days again this week and things have gone well. She's had her first taste of (cow's milk) formula and we went through the drive-through car wash. Both fairly uneventful :)

Daddy Time

2007-08-29T23:43:09Z

This week more than any other I'm getting a lot of time in with Heather while mommy's not around. Mommy had to travel for work and will be at work tomorrow & Friday while Heather and I are playing hookey.

Sunday we all three went to the pool where Heather had an awesome time! She was pretty much doing the back stroke on her own. Pretty good for a 6.5-month-old! :) I'd love to go to the pool with her on one of our upcoming days off but arranging that trip without mommy is a bit daunting. We'll see. Other possibilities include the Zoo which might end up being hot and tiring, but somewhat more logistically possible than a trip to the pool

Lots of catching up to do..

2007-08-01T01:04:43Z

This post is going to just be a list of things we've done recently. I should be fixing the toilets but...

I last posted on our 4th housiversary. We did nothing this year to remark the event, or the house's 101st birthday. Well, it was Father's day so we had Rita's (I think) just like we did for Mother's Day.

We took Heather on a long car trip to meet more of her extended family. She got lots of presents but endured the car ride slightly less well than she had the first time we made this trip. She's beginning to not like the car seat very much. She's at least generally very eager to get out of it at the end of any trip in the car.

At the end of June my parents visited us. We spent the day on the front porch (mostly) giving Heather attention. We took many fine photos. I've been working on my focus techniques to get more-professional photos. Oh, and this time I took over 600 photos in one day so that I could capture all of the best shots. It worked--but that was a lot of photos.

The beginning of July marked the return of Indian Pipe in the park. There are a number of healthy stalks of it now.

I painted the garage trim and some of the house trim with new paint that matches the old blue trim. Yay.

Heather helped us pick out a new tent for our camping trip. Actually, a very nice salesperson at REI helped us put up one of their larger tents right in the store--only it wasn't big enough. We ended up getting a large 6-person tent. Then I put it up in the back yard one evening and Heather absolutely loved it! We had never heard her giggle so much...

We had a short but very strong storm one evening that knocked out our power for 3 hours. I found out that my small UPS can power the TV for about 10 minutes :) and my larger UPS can power my Linux firewall, wireless access point, and switch for 1.5 hours. Anyway, at around 2 hours I went to the store to get batteries and ice. We loaded up 2 coolers with stuff from the refrigerator since it seemed like it was going to be a long outage. And I had my battery-powered TV running so we could see the news to find out what had been happening. Then just when we were prepared to deal with the outage, the power came back on.

We finally packed up that tent and ourselves and headed camping. On the way there and on the way back we stopped at my parents' place. Heather enjoyed camping a lot. We went on several long hikes--she ended up asleep at the end as usual. It got a little cold overnight so she ended up in a sleeping bag with one of us by morning. We all got in the pool at my parents' place on the way back. Heather was uncertain at first how she would like it when her feet first entered the water, but she adjusted well and had fun splashing.

We've gone on several (sometimes) long hikes in the park now. Heather really loves it.

I updated several community web sites to Drupal 5.1. Then to 5.2. That included taking a large hit on converting sites from an old version of CivicSpace to straight Drupal.

OK, now I have to fix those toilets :)

Oh yeah.. The userpic for this post is what I look like according to simpsonizeme.com. :) (Hmm... I think perhaps my theme doesn't show individual userpics for each post. I hadn't noticed that before...)

iTunes Plus Follow-Up

2007-06-17T18:54:27Z

I wrote recently that I upgraded some of my iTunes library to "Plus" format. Well, here's some follow-up...

First I thought I would be able to use the DRM-free AAC files on my Razr V3xx. Nope. It claims they are corrupt. It probably can only handle files with a lower (than 256 Kbps) bit rate. Oh well.

More interestingly I found that some tracks that should have been eligible for the upgrade were not upgraded. These were individual Pink Floyd tracks from "The Wall" and "Wish You Were Here". After a few go-arounds with Apple support about why the upgrade didn't work for these files, they basically shrugged and offered to buy me the entire Plus-format albums. I'm not complaining :)

Rudy

iTunes Plus

2007-06-13T00:02:27Z

So today I took the plunge and updated some of my iTunes library to their new higher-quality (256 Kbps) DRM-free "Plus" versions. I spent $30 to upgrade 104 songs. (Whoops, my credit card spending has been outed to my wife when she reads this :)

Sounds pretty good so far. Now maybe I'll get my own micro-SD card for my Razr V3xx (giving Amy back hers) and keep some music on my phone. Would I ever listen to it though? Maybe. It claims to support AAC format so we'll see...

And I like the fact that iTunes left the metadata alone. I spent a lot of time making sure the "Year" attributes were set correctly :)

Heather still enjoys a walk in the park

2007-06-12T02:37:27Z

I know I neglect Heather's many admirers here so we'll try to be better about posting. I've re-connected my mobile phone with Live Journal mobile posting so maybe that will help increase the flow of new material here :)

Anyway, today Heather's mom is out of town so it's just Heather and me. After work/day care Heather ate then I had dinner at the coffee shop while Auntie Petunia held Heather. Heather was good the whole time; we ate outside so there was plenty to look at.

Since she was still being good we went for another one of those long walks in the park. She didn't fall asleep as she has in the past but she came close. Along the way she greeted everyone with a smile.

	Heather on a hike Heather on a hike with daddy. This was quite a long hike--I think by this time she was wishing we were closer to home! Camera photo taken 2007-06-11
	A trail A trail in the park where we hiked. Camera photo taken 2007-06-11
	Ducks Ducks on a small lake in the park. We stopped to see the ducks but they weren't as interesting as they were the last time we were here when someone was feeding them. Camera photo taken 2007-06-11

When we got home she ate then almost immediately zonked out--and that's a bit early given her recent schedule. Now we'll see if she stays asleep the whole night...

Today with Heather

2007-05-07T19:37:32Z

Today I stayed home from work to be with Heather. We went for several walks and spent some time in the back yard.

(Posted from camera phone.)

Clean Pens (and Further Pen Stories)

2007-04-29T21:15:21Z

For the first time ever, I cleaned my fountain pen collection today.

One of them (the clear plastic one in the image blow) had gone through the laundry a year or more ago and was still filled with ink. Fortunately, the ink did not escape the cap--that load of laundry remained ink-free! I soaked the cap in hot water but it still has ink trapped inside.

Today I flushed all the nibs with water. Same for the pen caps, which generally accumulate a lot of ink over time. I was hesitant to do this at first, but I've read a lot of sites recommending exactly this procedure. I hope it wasn't a mistake!

I can't remember exactly when I started using Lamy fountain pens, but I've only ever had to throw away one of them. That was my first Lamy Al-Star. The plastic part that holds the nib and screws into the base of the pen broke. That was a medium nib anyway, and since then I have preferred to use only fine nibs.

The two pens on the right are the most recent acquisitions. One of them is a second blue aluminum Safari pen (they seem to have abandoned the "Al-Star" name) and the last is one of the black plastic Safaris. I generally use the plastic Safaris as "travel" pens. Interestingly they still show less wear-and-tear than the aluminum ones do.

Heather's First Hike

2007-04-24T23:59:45Z

Yesterday after work I took Heather out for her inaugural hike in the woods (well, the park). Yes, it involved the BABYBJÖRN® Baby Carrier. No, my masculinity is not in question for using this device :)

I originally tried to post this last night but my post was eaten somehow. It was then that I was listening to Björk's new song "Earth Intruders" (now I'm on the porch listening to someone trying to jumpstart a car... with the sound of chirping birds in the background). It's kinda odd that my post was (and is) full of umlauts. :)

Hmm... LJ is being flaky again. I won't let me post--seems to only preview??? Let me see whether I can fight my way through this...

	Heather's hat blowing away At the beginning of our hike I stopped where the sun was still shining through the trees so I could take a photo. There was a strong wind, which is why her hat is skewed. No, well, it's just impossible to see her when using the Baby Björn :)
	Middle of the hike This was in the middle of the hike before I had to give her the pacifier. She made it about 1/3 through with; 1/3 without; and slept the rest of the way back to the car.

Two Photos from Today

2007-04-21T01:56:46Z

I know I hardly post.

Sorry about that. Anyway, Amy, Heather & I are having a lot of fun getting to know one another and we have been taking a lot of photos. We're really trying to get photos of Heather when she smiles, but she seems to want to change her smile to a pout when the camera is around :(

	Photo of me holding Heather at Enrico's Tonight Amy & I took Heather for a stroll in the park then ended up at Enrico's Tazza d'Oro for dinner.
	Happy Heather This was a half-crazed (but happy) Heather still wearing her oversized bonnet.

Land line down for 5 days

2007-03-13T23:19:34Z

I'm pretty sure I've seen Verizon ads attempting to prevent customers from fleeing to VOIP by reminding them that land-line service is more reliable.

Well... Sometime during the day on Friday our land line stopped working. No dial tone. No battery even. Checked at the NID. Verizon's automated repair system told me they couldn't send anyone out until Tuesday--and was quick to remind me that if the problem was on my end there would be a hefty charge. I talked with a human afterward who confirmed this timeline. Oh well. We have ultra call forwarding and two mobile phones so no worries. Oh, and DSL is on its own line and still works :)

We're past the latest time they were supposed to have looked at the problem so I called them. The automated system smartly sent my call directly to a human upon noticing that the repair order was overdue. The apologetic human could only tell me that they have busy technicians out for another hour yet--maybe they would get to us tonight still. If not--defintely tomorrow at the latest!

Sigh.

Hell's Lullaby

2007-03-09T22:26:22Z

Heather is one month (4 weeks) old today. Her cuteness more than makes up for the lack of sleep she is causing us :)

On Tuesday afternoon I worked from home and took care of Heather while Amy went to an appointment. It worked out pretty well, but at first she was not willing to play second fiddle to a notebook computer, so my attention was more on her at first than on work tasks :)

I ended up getting to be involved with one of several "firsts" for Heather: this was her first time being fed with a bottle. She didn't like it much at first, but I think once she got a taste of the milk it wasn't too bad and she was happy after that. However she continued to have an incredulous look about having her nourishment delivered in that manner :)

The other firsts were: first non-hospital person to hold her, and first non-hospital staff to change her diaper. :)

So one other interesting thing from Tuesday: I had found previously that listening to "classic rock" seemed to help when trying to get her to sleep. So I had the classic rock music channel (cable) on and when AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" came on, she went to sleep. It's not the customary lullaby, but it seemed to workin this case!

Our daughter vs. the puppet

2007-02-17T23:48:20Z

It's the story of our daughter vs. the puppet, being played out on the web.

For the longest time, the picture on our web gallery with the highest number of hits ("Most viewed") was this one:

Now after a targetted advertising campaign of mass email by Amy & me, several photos of Heather have nudged the puppet out of the spotlight. (Finally!) Here are the current top photos:

Our daughter has been born

2007-02-14T23:02:09Z

Our daughter Heather was born Friday morning. Mother and daughter are home now and are well.

Sorry it's taken us so long to post about it. We've been home enjoying our time with her and her maternal grandparents. She is very cute. And she's graciously allowed us to have at least a couple of hours of sleep each night :)

Wearing Plaid (It's a Fad)

2007-02-09T03:08:09Z



"Wearing Plaid (It's a Fad)" on Google Video
Colin & Mingo perform "Wearing Plaid (It's a Fad)" live on "Innerview with Colin & Mingo" in 1987.

Video Bonanza

2007-01-29T02:03:10Z

Are you ready for a bonanza of video? I hope so...

Back in 2004 Magakrampi & Blanda decided to get back in the video business. We came up with a dark atmospheric track: 03. It is also available on You Tube (as an experiment, since my YouTube milage has varied quite a lot: 03).

Now let's go way back. In 1987 we stunned everyone we knew at the time with our live performance of We Have Mutated. It's now available for download on the Colin & Mingo web site: We Have Mutated (Live). There was also a video for the studio performance of this song, but it will likely NOT be available for download because we used clips from TV on it and didn't ask anyone for permission...

Before that we did a video for a track called "Harold Wilson". The music appeared on Colin & Mingo's "Utopian Rush Hour" release, as well as on the "Swamp King of the World" greatest-hits compilation. Anyway, a prototype video is available for download on the Colin & Mingo web site: Harold Wilson. The reason this is a prototype is that it uses a bad video capture from a couple of years ago. The video will be somewhat better when I recapture it.

And finally (for now), this is all wrapped up in our very first video podcast. It's very large. It includes the We Have Mutated video and an alternate take of "03". You can download the podcast: Maxwell Montes Video Download or subscribe to our podcast in iTunes (etc.): Audio output from Magakrampi & Blanda (this is an RSS feed).

Let me know what you think! Maybe the files are too big, or the background music is too loud. Any feedback is good feedback!

Video Test

2007-01-15T02:52:02Z

As an escape from nearly a month of silence I offer the following video test I did today in preparation for making video podcasts.

I've been experimenting with Adobe Premiere Elements in place of Pinnacle AV/DV Studio. Both are buggy, but Premiere Elements seems a little more professional and doesn't come with lots of features that require additional funds to unlock (as Pinnacle does).

I decided to paint a wall green so we could do chroma-key operations on a routine basis. While doing that I made this test:

The quality is much lower than I would like, but hey it's only a test.

If things go right we should have a real video podcast out tomorrow night.