Nutritious Blue Spray

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:

( Watch Thurm... )

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").

( Watch Thurm... )

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

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

( Watch video... )

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

( Watch videos... )

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.

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.

( See videos from 20 years ago... )
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 :)

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


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

Enrico's Tazza d'Oro held a flag football game on Sunday between its staff and customers.  I was there to capture the action for posterity on video...


The video is kinda long at 10 minutes but it's action-packed.  Of course you'd enjoy it most if you had been there :)

Also YouTube does not seem to recognize that the video was shot in 16:9 mode. Grrr...  This will probably be the second support request I make to them that results in their just sending the same FAQs to me over and over again and not actually dealing with the problem.  I guess I can't get too upset since it's only a free service...