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

Labels: camcorder, New Westminster, parade

Excuse me, but Cranford was on PBS, after all.

Perhaps, it has to happen eventually. Maybe as one gets closer to being a half century old, PBS fare becomes ultimately more watchable. I do feel smarter knowing how people in England may have lived 170 years ago.



Actually, I've always thought of as Judi Dench as rather butch. It was nice to see her playing a role that showed such vulnerability. In fact, I have a new infatuation. I did finish up with the third episode as it was saved on the PVR. After six hours of involvement, one has to feel something.

You have to bear in mind that, after that, I watched The Big Bang Theory. Damn, there are so few other television shows that actually mention the Internet!

Labels: stars, television

I made the DVD right off the bat. It's taken me a bit longer to upload some photos of last week's trip to Flickr. You are welcome to take a look at the slide show which contains 77 images. They are arranged in the order in which they happened. So it starts off boarding a plane in Bellingham WA and finishes in Scottsdale, AZ the morning before our flight back. Depending on the time of day, the photos may be a little slow to load. Just click below in order to start the show.

Desert Southwest Slide Show

Labels: Desert Southwest, Flickr

I needed new printer ink again. It more likely dried up than was used up. I don't do a great deal of printing. I am not sure how long I had my old HP Deskjet 932C. I recall comparing it to a model we had at work. That may have been in our original office, so it well could have been the late 1990's. Although the inkjet had been around for years, I seldom used it. I had printed lots of DVD labels; however, most of my printing used to be for work. Rather than burning through my own ink cartridges, I used to wait to print at the office.

When I recently noticed I needed more ink, I was considering how stupid it is to pay over $50 the colour and black ink. I would occasionally refill the cartridges as that's better for both the pocket and the environment. Although I didn't print much, it still seemed like I would run-out several times per year.

Today, I saw the little Brother laser in the weekly sale newsletter from my computer store. The Brother HL-2140 seemed perfect. First, being a laser printer meant lower costs per page. Colour was more annoying than useful. The only time I noticed having the ability to print colour was when printing out an info. page from the Internet. Also, this Brother was the exact shape I wanted. It holds 250 sheets inside but would fit on the bottow shelf of my computer desk. Finally, it was selling only $66.

While researching the product and reading reviews, I noted that it was only $3 more at the New Westminster Best Buy. I went right at the 10:00 opening time, and brought one back. Who knows, now that printing is cheap and convenient perhaps I'll do more!

Labels: computers, Hardware

We were gone last week and the TV programs sort of piled up. We did catch the end of Survivor while in the US. They were promoting the new season will be shot in high definition. It's about time! Now all we need to do is see the local Vancouver news anchors in all their wide-screen glory.

There are a number of programs still on the PRV right now. I went through the Ugly Betty episodes last night. The production value of that show keeps getting better and better. The plot line can twist and turn immensely in a single show. I must admit that I like how things ended up last week.



There's still more to watch. It's okay as I have more time than I imagined I might. In Palm Springs I got notification that the course I usually teach will not be run this month. I've decided to relax a little. I worked too much last year and although that meant more money, the taxman took a bigger chunk too. The United States might be a nice place to be rich, but Canada is quite nice when one's poorer.

Labels: television

I'm still a reluctant masher-upper. I fear when I post something here that links to another site. What happens if their site goes down? What happens if the whole shebang goes the way of the dinosaurs?

I was happy with Flickr the way it was. I didn't want it to turn into a You Tube. However, they seem to be using a different paradigm. A user can add clips of up to 90 seconds only. Rather than being a production, it might simply be thought of as a photograph that moves.



I added a few regular photos from last week's trip to the Grand Canyon. I had to see how easy it is to use and whether this video option holds any promise. Maybe it'll positively affect the materials I can offer at my eJournal and images in the future. The quality is adequate but even this 12-second clip took a long time to upload.

Labels: camcorder, Desert Southwest, Flickr, YouTube

It was so nice yesterday that I continued to wear shorts as I had done the whole week in Arizona.

Today, right on cue, it started raining. I think it always rains over our thee-day Victoria Day weekends. I always feel sorry for families who choose to go camping. Well, at least the weather was excellent on Saturday and Sunday. If those outdoors folks waited for today, they packed up in the rain though.

I don't often blog about the weather; however, it is an integral part of one's existence. This was especially made obvious on our recent trip. So many people live in the Soutwest Desert. Large mountain ranges rob the land east of them of needed rain. People, however, enjoy living in places where the sun aways shines. Farmers also look for the same locations. So, cities have developed where neither man nor beast has any right to live. Rivers can be harnessed for the production of electricity to cool enormous volumnes of inside air, and they can be diverted to quench the thirst of both crops and cities.

Labels: Desert Southwest, weather

I've been playing with the Panasonic HDC-SD9 a bit. The new camcorder is better than the old Sony. I should say the last old Sony. I am trying to remember if this device is my fourth.

I got the first when when I working in Bahrain in about 1991. It was enormous compared to the newest one. It was analog and recorded to 8-mm tape. The Panasonic, on the other hand, writes 1920x1080 high-definition video and 5.1 audio onto an SD card.

We bought it right before getting on the airplane on last week's trip, so we had packed video no. 3 as well. Without so much as a glance at the guide Jay took the whole vacation video on the new one. There are still some things to get used to. Yet, the outside clips' colour and resolution looks great on our 42-inch LCD.

The thing that's nice is how I can pop the SD memory into the computer and write the contents to a standard DVD. The disc will work in any player that is AVCHD compatible. I can even insert the memory directly into the SD slot on my PlayStation 3 and watch instantly.

It doesn't matter how simple a camcorder is to use, if one doesn't actually use it. I am promising myself to get more clips onto You Tube. For example, although it's been sitting there for a long time, I was surprised to see that over 1,100 people had seen the following clip from 1993. This was recorded in Nepal. It is 2:24 minutes at the Pashupatinath Hindu Temple. I did add a still picture of that time in the blog back on January 17, 2004.

Labels: camcorder, flash memory, Nepal, PS3, technology, YouTube