theroades.com

keeping up with life, kids, and technology

Archive for October, 2007

Happy Birthday Rebecca!

Oct 12

Posted by Adam in family | No Comments

A huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my extraordinary wife who will likely, despite it being her birthday, accomplish the following today:

  • Finish two nighttime feedings
  • Make breakfast for her and the kids
  • Feed M
  • Find a fun activity for the kids this morning
  • Feed M
  • Make lunch for her and the kids
  • Feed M
  • Wrangle the kids down for their naps
  • Get some ridiculous chores done like vacuuming or cleaning the bathrooms to get ready for company this weekend
  • Feed M
  • Wrangle the kids up from their naps

Hopefully by then dad will be home and can make the last few hours of her birthday special! And before our weekend company arrives!

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Our incredible community!

Oct 10

Posted by Adam in family, friends | No Comments

I want to take a moment and thank everyone who has supported us during M’s first two weeks…can you believe she’s two weeks old already?! Besides the obvious gift of friendship, prayer, and encouragement, we are very thankful to (in chronological order):

  • Becky and Tim Moore took the girls (twice) when Rebecca went into labor. Dinner at Burger King and a sleepover – what fun! A tasty casserole recently was a big hit, too!
  • Mom Danna spent a week with us, spending time with the girls, making meals, and generally helping keep our house running.
  • Ryan and Laura Hammond gave us amazing chicken fajitas (that lasted for three meals!); Laura has also graciously taken the kids to the park!
  • Nichole and Josh Toms provided us with a delicious lasagna dinner (and a case of Sam Adams Octoberfest!)
  • Janice and Alden Lum gave us a tasty chicken, broccoli, and noodle casserole
  • Betty and Rob Hopkins sent R and Z care packages (see the Star Whirls video)
  • Sherri and Brandon Wilson brought over an awesome package of steak, wine, bread, salad, and ice cream for dessert!
  • Kathy and Dennis Stotts delivered her world-famous mac-and-cheese (with tomatoes and mushrooms) and pork roast; these critics give it five stars!

Thanks to Great-Grandma Day, Suni’s father-in-law, Mom Roades and Barry, and others for your kind thoughts and generous gifts for M. We love and appreciate all of you!

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Video how-to

Oct 9

Posted by Adam in technology, video, website | No Comments

Some of you have asked for more detailed information on the video production process I use. Here are the answers:

Q: “Are you taking video off of your digital camcorder directly into Windows Movie Maker?”

A: I actually abandoned the camcorder a while back. Getting video off of it was just too much of a hassle. When we got the SD600, I found it was easier to just flip it to video mode. This has forced me to take shorter clips which are easier to edit and getting the clips off of the SD card is a snap.

Q: “How long did it take you to produce this?”

A: Keeping in mind that I find a lot of fun in doing this and that I do most of the editing while watching TV, don’t laugh when I tell you it takes me about 30 minutes to an hour for each finished minute of video.

Q: “What’s the video format?”

Windows Movie Maker only exports wmv files. Ugh. So I use Adobe’s Flash Video Encoder to convert the files to flv format. This allows the files to stream, which means you can start to watch the first part of the movie while the rest of it loads (versus having to wait until the whole huge file loads before starting to play). Zamzar and other free online converters do admirably, but the quality isn’t quite as good.

Q: “Where did you find the funny music that made it like an America’s Funniest Home Video?”

A: Choosing the “story” (theme) and music is truly the hardest part of the videos. The music I basically just wrack my mental playlists for a tune that fits the theme I’ve chosen. For the “Star Whirls” video, the opening crawl and Star Wars theme song were an obvious fit. The Cantina song (also from Episode 4; when Luke and Obi enter the bar) was my second choice. It seemed to fit perfectly with the light nature of the clips.

Q: “What plug-in did you use to embed the movie?”

After the flv file is uploaded to the site, I embed it within a post using the Viper’s Video Quicktags WordPress plugin.

Leave additional questions or ideas in the comments section!

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M @ 3 weeks

Oct 8

Posted by Adam in family, video | No Comments

IMG_1667.JPGM is an angel baby so we’ve been able to really enjoy her for the last three weeks! The majority of our adjustment has actually been helping R and Z through the transition of having a new sibling. In geek terms, they’ve been stuck in perpetual re-boot the past few weeks (after they got past the initial “blue screen”/hourglass phase). Most of my two weeks of parental leave (thank you Booz Allen!) were spent refereeing the two older ones. Thankfully, they love all over their new sister every chance they get!

Now for the stats: At M’s 2-week doctor visit, she weighed 8 lbs, 8 oz and was 20.5″ long. She’s growing like a weed! This puts her in the 50% for height and weight. She’s been getting a lot of tummy time during which she’s been picking up her head and looking around. And she’s started turning towards whomever is speaking to her, to the delight of her sisters.

A picture says a thousand words, so a video must say even more, so here ya go:

http://www.theroades.com/videos/myra_3_wks.flv
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