A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

There are times when it's okay that I squeeze my digital pictures so they'll fit on this page.

Unfortunately after image re-sizing, you get just a fleeting representation of the original photos. Today, I decided to provide a larger image. Although it's still been squashed a lot to fit onto an average-sized monitor, the following link should provide slightly better resolution:

John Lennon's Rolls Royce

(What'd ya expect for an entry today, little pink hearts?)

I'll return to teach another intensive COMM 0003 course from Monday. It's called Writing, Speaking, Listening and Reading Skills for Technical Communication. Now, isn't that a mouthful? It will run through March 19th.

Labels: BCIT (Page 1)

It was a fantastic day to return back to the Mainland. We caught
the 11:00 am sailing. The journey takes 1 hour and 35 minutes. It was
about 12C (55F) degrees today! The sun was brightly shining and
everybody seemed happy to have such a great winter's day!

The west coast of Vancouver Island is basically unspoilt wilderness. In fact
there are only a few ways over to the other coast by road. We had been to
Tofino and Gold River on other occasions. We'd never been to Port Renfrew, so
the 70-mile drive was imperative. The twisiting, rough road had some pretty
scenery but there will be no need to go there again unless we decide to camp,
hike, or kayak around the provincial or national coastal park lands.

(For the reference of those reading from New Hampshire, the island is one
third again larger than the Granite State. Interestingly, Vancouver Island
also boasts a Mt. Washington. Yet, the highest point on the island is 7212 ft
and, therefore, is about 924 feet taller than the peak in the White Mountains.)

Labels: British Columbia

Yesterday's trip here was fine. The hotel, linked in yesterday's entry, is
okay. Staying here 'on board' means that we get breakfasts and three-
course dinners. It is nice to be waited on and linger for more than
an hour over a meal! Guess, if we go out then it's usually a buffet!

Today, we decided to be 'tourists' and did the Wax Museum, a tour of the
Parliament Building, as well as the provincial museum and an IMAX movie.
Lastly, we ended off the evening with In America which is playing
in the threatre just across the street.

I will not include an image today. Too many of 'em on one page must make it difficult to load for the poor, unfortunate 'bandwidth impaired'.

Off on a vacation this morning although we should return by Thursday evening. It's time to jump on a ferry, slide over to the south of the Island, and spend a bit of time in the area near downtown Victoria.

I might add a bit of text this week, but promise to come back and fill in any blank entry with a few pictures from the provincial capital.

Labels: BC Ferries, British Columbia, Vancouver Island

Today's prior emphasis on images prompted
me to think of a related song. The topic of this
Paul Simon song already seems a bit of an
anachronism. Slide right into Kodachrome
by clicking the graphic above.

We are finally getting a dedicated digital camera (so far have been content with Still function on Digital camcorder)., but which one? We were all excited about the new Sony T1 and about to hand over the dosh when we checked on the file size of the mpegs. It records 3 sizes of mpeg - thumbnail, 640x480 and a huge VX fine quality. The 640x480 needed 2.8MB for 7 seconds on play - not great for email attachments, which is what we want to do. We will probably have to go for the 3.2 megapixel cybershot instead as it does 320x240 which is a reasonable size. We already haev a JVC camcorder that does its own JLip files - 220K for about 15 secs of film for email attachments, but the viewing size is small (like a thumbnail). We were hoping to have something about the size of the standard email joke mpeg..... How do we do this? Is there anyway to further compress mpegs from 640 to 320 size when needed??

Why is nothing simple? What camera do you use - I like the quality of the pics on your blog!

Please help. oh techno guru....
Sally

---

Yo Sally,
How great to hear from you! This response will be on the house as international consulting rates are astronomical! Actually, I don't have any revelations for you but go with the highest quality camera as possible. You can easy downgrade video and images with the use of software. (It's much easier to fall than it is to climb.) I'll just give you some free, Microsoft links that will probably take a fortnight to download from the Emirates.

Are you running XP? Are you the even slightly interested in arranging clips and creating titles? Soon I must buy a video capture card to grab the analog from old camcorder tapes. Those sounds and images deserve to sit on DVD media. One advantage of going with the following easy program is that it provides a variety of output options. You could output as tiny, squeezed files for emailing or eventual output to a DVD burner.

Windows Movie Maker 2 Download

If you're simply interested in converting your files, then you might find the encoder useful. It can be used for audio only, or video. I will use this program to create streaming versions of music files. (What song title will match THIS topic, Dennis wonders out loud.)

Windows Media Encoder 9 Series Download

My Olympus is 4 megapixel. I honestly think that is the minimum you should buy if you will ever wish to have your files sent to a photo-finisher for enlargements. I always shoot in hi-res and save to the hard disk. Another must have for digital camera owners is an XP PowerTool called the Image Resizer. This program lets you turn any photo resolution into these formats: 1) small (640 X 480) 2) medium (800 X 600) and 3) large (1024 X 768). You will be able to find it on the following page:

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP

This tool does a good job 'downverting' to a 640 X 480 image, but unfortunately, my blog requires 512 X 384, so I need to resize further. That's why I feel the photos here look quite fuzzy.

Do let's hear from you more often. The kids must be nearly ready to drive, aren't they? : -)

For now,
Dennis

Labels: camcorder, Dubai, software