Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Christmas

Merry Christmas - here are some pictures.


Sitting in his Christmas (Eve) Church clothes.


Opening a gift with Mama and Grandma.


After opening a gift from Grandma and Grandpa, he enjoyed playing on the box with Grandpa.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Pre-Christmas Pictures

Well it's almost Christmas and its been a while since I posted so here you go.




Yea, Christmas is almost here!


I was just about to send out some Christmas emails...



Why does daddy make me help with the vacuuming?



All these preparations really wear me out.

Also - please, someone vote in the sidebar and tell me which video you prefer if any. No one voted and it makes me feel unliked. I updated it today so the poll will last another week and it allows you to pick the video you like and the one you hate.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Clapping and Wow x3




I present for you a comparison of 3 different video uploading services: blogger's own service, Google Video, and YouTube. Ok its more for me than for you. But you can watch the videos. Samuel has started clapping and saying the word "wow," which is currently our favorite word that he says.



First up, Blogger. Convenient in that the uploader is contained within the blog posting form. Also automatically turns it into a podcast so that you can put our RSS feed(see sidebar) into iTunes and see our videos there.







Next up, Google Video. It's what I used to use.







Finally, YouTube. Perhaps the standard. I didn't like it until Google bought them, so I would now consider using them.



Any comments on the winner? As I compare to the original file, all of the uploads are darker. If you would like the original to compare, it is here (3.7mb).

UPDATE: Vote for your favorite on the sidebar!
UPDATEx2: Thanks to Karissa for pointing out that the YouTube video wasn't working. This site needs a better editor....

Friday, December 07, 2007

Christmas Proofs

I've added an album to my Picasa account with pictures taken by Matt Elasivich (who very kindly gave me access to the files). Matt does terrific work and if you need pictures for a wedding/senior picture/whatever, he's your man. Let me know and I can hook you up with him.

Samuel did well at the photo shoot. These are twelve of the best shots (of about 80 total).

The album can be found here.

Christmas Proofs

Video brightness verdict: Dark.

Dark apparently. Its interesting, as the videos are perfectly viewable before they are uploaded, and once I'm viewing them from the website, the brightness is noticeably less, even on our same computer. Kind of annoying really.

Don't know how I'll fix the problem. I'll start by offering up some more pictures of Samuel. In the next post.

And I'll stop making movies after 6pm.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Video brightness

So I've been posting videos for sometime, and using mainly our digital camera (not a video camera per say) because of how easy it is to go straight from camera to blog. The video is not perfect quality, but it mostly works. When I show other residents our blog and play a video for them, I generally do it from a computer at the hospital, and oftentimes the same computer, which I've known has a pretty poor quality monitor, resulting in most images looking very dark. Recently however I watched a movie I posted on someone's laptop and it also appeared dark?

I expect the videos not to be the best of brightness - they're usually indoors and in the evening when there is no more natural light to light the shot. But the videos look fine on my computer before they are uploaded.

So my question is: are the videos really dark? Please comment.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Weebles progression - 3


Having mastered the weebles, he returns to his first love: our camera. But only briefly.