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I go to Von’s in San Diego once a week, sometimes twice if my weekly ‘meal plan’ gets compromised by greed or desire for something different. And every time I have to squeeze my way by somebody in the doorway selling something or wanting a donation or wanting a signature on the way in and/or out.

“It’s for charity” – yeah, last time I bought something for charity I spent $15 and found out that only 75c was being donated.

“Don’t you want every kid to be fingerprinted?” – against that on so many levels

Can’t I just buy some friggin’ groceries? Ugh!

This time down at the airport I, ahem, fly out of, Montgomery Field, San Diego. I thought I’d take some film of planes taking off and landing but the place was almost dead. The video was shot in 720p at the 60fps rate and then export in iMovie ’09.

I’m quite pleased with the quality though I’m disappointed that when the helicopter flew over the camera kept focus on the wire fence rather than the bird. I suppose the auto focus had to make a choice.

I must say that I like the new iMovie. I skipped ’08 so the interface is quite different from what I am used to. What I really like, compared to the Flip, is that the native file format goes right into iMovie with no transcoding, I make edits and then writing out the final file to be exported is real quick. Uploading to Viddler et al is still a bitch thanks to my cheap internet connection but that’s what work is for, right?

Astute viewers of my MINI blog may have noticed that it now has a favicon:

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Yeah, I am so web.

Today saw the somewhat-highly anticipated game, Flowers, for the PS3 appear on the Playstation Network. The aim of the game is to control the wind which causes flowers to lose their petals and fly through the air and around the landscape. It’s not killing, it’s not racing, but it is relaxing and something different. Maybe it’s a game that becomes art? Anyway, it’s available to buy today if the following trailer piques your interest.

The week ahead for February 8th, 2009.

At work, this is the last week of development in the current Scrum before we spend next week testing; we will release our latest application version on the 20th. Our versions are subnamed after cheeses and I don’t think I am giving away Company confidential information by saying that the next version is named Oaxaca. No, I didn’t choose it. The big big boss from England is coming over for reasons unspecified but it’s highly unlikely I will have any contact with him, and in these economic times I probably don’t want to.

Flying-wise I have two early morning bookings on the schedule this week in the hope that one of them will work out. Weather needs to be decent although shaking off some instrument flying cobwebs in the clouds also works. It is hard to get out of bed for flying at 7am though. If I make it I’ll hopefully have my first video from the cockpit on the new camera, so that should be exciting.

Of course I’ll be driving the MINI on it’s regular weekly 400 mile commute. This week I need to order some front brake pads and get someone to install them for me (yes I know it’s easy but I have no tools for it). Also this week we’ll be booking our trip to AMVIV. We want to do the Mount Charleston run but that’s going to require an extra night’s stay or an early start. I suppose we’ll decide that nearer the time.

Other than that I am planning to mess around with Drupal for content management on my websites but am also interested in Code Igniter. Maybe I’ll have something to show by the end of the week with that. Or maybe I’ll just sit watching CSI reruns instead.

Whatever your week has in store for you, I hope it’s a good one.

Time was I blogged quite often but recently I am sure you have noticed not so much these days. And whilst I would never claim I wrote very much that was worth your time, I did feel like I had something to write. But not these days. I’m sure micro blogging a lot over at Twitter but I think I’ve pretty much reached a level of banality there that should probably get me un-followed.

So what’s up? Well, in order to have something to say one must have something going on and, well, there isn’t a single thing going on in my life. During the week I get up, go do my job, come back, go to sleep, rinse and repeat. I interact with no one outside work. There is probably an argument to say this statement is bogus but I stand by the fact that I have not a single friend in the USA, no one to go grab a beer with, no one to just hang out with (and yes there might 2 or 3 people who would be upset that I don’t count them as ‘friends’). Yeah, boo hoo, cry me a river – feel free to come get my mandolin if you don’t have a violin handy.

Weekends are a little different. I get to spend time with my sweet and lovely wife and loving dogs. But thanks to things I do not blog about, home is not somewhere I feel particularly comfortable in. And I have no friends there – we shop, we enjoy food and wine, we spend time at my in-laws. And if we do go to a social event I feel ill at ease as there’s no one who I feel comfortable with, or who even feels comfortable with me. Everyone wants to include me but I’m different, I’m difficult, I don’t fit in.

So yeah I could blog about how fed up I am, how futile it is to wake up every day and find myself still breathing but you don’t want to read that. You can turn to any news network and read how bad it is in the world today, what’s one more sad sap on a sorry blog? Heck, I know I don’t want to read that. So this blog will stay mostly dark for some time longer. I don’t see anything improving this side of the ‘other side’ but who knows? Flight 1549 survived a double engine failure: miracles do happen.

Friends don’t let friends blog drunk, but since I have none I went ahead anyway. I might delete this in the morning so enjoy my reflection while you can.

Driving to Work from Paul Sanders on Vimeo.

Another test of the new camera. I dig the image quality.

Short video taken with the Flip.

I think TWC didn’t like me uploading so many files all weekend to the various places so I was not able to get these uploaded at home. No such problems at work…. here are the raw files from the camera.

720p (60fps).mov (23MB)
1080p (30fps).mov (26MB)
WVGA (DVD) (60fps).mov (14MB)

My latest hosting plan from Site5 includes unlimited bandwidth and storage space so I may host future videos myself if I can find a nice way to present them. Probably still put them on Viddler or Vimeo too.

I’m not money like db, but I did buy a new video camera last week – the Aiptek Action HD GVS 1080P High Definition Camcorder.

I love my Flip but ever since they brought out their HD version I’ve felt, well, a little resolution envy. At CES Sony brought out the Webbie that looks great and takes really good HD footage (for the price) but just as I was about to pull the trigger on it, I read about this camera and it has something that none of the others have: an external mic input.

I’ve posted a Flip video from the cockpit before and you may recall that it suffered from (at least) two problems: you can clearly see the prop spinning in the video, and all you can hear is engine drone (and me if I shout). This new camera should give me high definition pictures AND allow me to plug the radios into the camera thereby letting you hear all the air traffic control goodness. Look for a test of that in the next couple of weeks.
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