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Today: 2008 / 05 / 09
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Comments (0
) | Sun-04-may-2008
| by Mike
| weekend
Two years in the making and a lot of hard work, my back yard is 99%
cleaned out and usable. All the thorn bushes finally gone. Many, many trees
taken out. Poison Oak and poison ivy almost completely gone.
Took Maddison to church today. Now that she is out of the womb, the sounds don't
bother her anymore. The most interesting fact I learned in church today was more
Americans believe in prayer than in God. I find that weird.
Talking about wierd, we went to Walmart after church to get some baby formula. The
formula was locked up in front of the store with the smokes. We asked why. The reason is
that powdered baby formula is used for drug processing. Yep. I went home at looked it up
and it is true.
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Comments (5
) | Thu-01-may-2008
| by Mike
| Happy May day
Happy May day. Maddie is now 3 weeks old. Before I know it, June will be here!  Aaron, Paige, and
August will be taking swimming lessons this summer. I will get this yard into shape. Anne and Maddie...
not sure about their goals
I just purchased a new mower. A Craftsman 26 HP 54" deck mower. I did some research and
it was the Consumer Reports 2007 'Best Buy'.
Better yet, because I purchased a 2007 model in
2008, I got the mower under $2000 (18 something).
So for my collection, I Now have a Craftsman Gas
powered weed eater, a Craftsman 6 HP 22" push mower (best I have ever had), and now a Craftsman riding
mower. But what is a mower without attachments? I additionally purchased a pull-along yard sweeper
for all those leaves that my 100 + trees drop. But with
the money I saved, I could not stop there, I purchased a snow plow for my really long driveway.
Note: This is my Anniversary, Fathers day, and Birthday gift all rolled into one. 
I'm still playing with Linux video. I can't tell you enough how great a video tool 'mencoder' is.
Do you want to covert an AVI file that you have
created to MPEG4/DIVX? Why? So you can burn the file directly to DVD or use more advanced video editing
tools.
mencoder input.avi -o output.mp4 /
-of lavf -ovc lavc /
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 /
-lavfopts i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames
I have to laugh at the option "I certify that my video stream does not use b frames" LOL
What is great about using the mpeg4? You can create web friendly resolutions, DVD resolutions,
or HD resolutions with it. So how about creating the really simple DVD from that?
mkdir DVD
dvdauthor -o DVD movie.mp4
dvdauthor -T DVD
mkisofs -dvd-video -o DVD.iso DVD
Then burn the ISO. pretty darn simple. Yes, making DVDs professionally on Mac OSX is much better.
But I call this the quick and dirty "get-r-done" method.
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Comments (0
) | Tue-29-apr-2008
| by Mike
| Make slide movies with Linux
You can make great Slide movies for your DVDs using command line Linux.
The commands you need are 'convert','cp', and 'mencoder'. For more advanced image tricks and
stuff - also use Gimp.
To setup your Hi-Res photos run this command:
for name in `ls -1 *.JPG` ; do convert -resize 720 -quality 100% $name small$name;done
Each JPG will become a 1 second frame in a movie with this command:
mencoder "mf://small*.JPG" -mf fps=1 -ovc lavc -o ./dest.avi
You you use Gimp to merge photos and other tricks, you many want to increase your frames per second (fps),
but this of course will increase the number of JPGs you will be working with.
So you will need to copy some frames, edit other frames with text, and so on.
Just thought I would share
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Comments (0
) | Fri-25-apr-2008
| by Mike
| More Maddie
I just put up 12 photos of Maddie on Anne's flickr.com site for those in the family group.
I will have twice that many more up soon.
They all have been tagged with Maddie and 2008.
I will put the dates in the info.
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Comments (0
) | Wed-23-apr-2008
| by Mike
| what is good, bad
Back in Nov 2007, it was discovered that a particular plastic could be harmful
to humans. These plastics contain PBA aka 'bisphenol A'. Anne and I did not
discover this until last night watchin the news. Many companies are recalling
baby bottles and sippy cups. Anne asked me if we were safe. I had no clue
how to tell. But after *alot* of research, I now know.
No 7 aka PC plastic is not safe
Yes, we were using baby bottles and sippy cups with #7 plastic. Why do companies
make bottles and sippy cups out of this plastic? They are harder to break.
Why is #7 bad? Bisphenol-a is a known endocrine disruptor. Meaning it has estrogenic
properties which has shown to cause a bevy of health problems such as:
* precancerous tumors in breasts and prostate gland
* a decline in semen quality in males,
* early onset of puberty in females,
Research is showing that when plastic containers, mostly those used to hold liquids
and foods, are leeching Bisphenol into the foods and liquids they are holding. Heating
food and liquids with these plastics is shown to increase the leeching of this contaminate.
Bottom line: It's icky and if you don't want to chance it on your children.
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Comments (0
) | Tue-22-apr-2008
| by Mike
| home movies and the Cubs
I am still working with new pictures and movies. I'm done with the first DVD and starting a second.
On the second DVD, I have added a out-take section of some fairly humorous stuff I continue to
get better and better with video editing.
Today I heard something that I thought I would never hear in my life. "Ronny Cedeno has a career-high
five RBIs, including his first grand slam!". I have pleaded that Ronny be traded to another team
for quite some time. This last week, it is like someone replaced him with someone that can hit. I
simply can not believe how well he is doing. God must have blessed him.
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Comments (2
) | Thu-17-apr-2008
| by Mike
| Maddie 6 days
Today Maddie is a week old. This photo taken yesterday by Anne is of Maddie having her afternoon nap.
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Comments (2
) | Mon-14-apr-2008
| by Mike
| Family stuff
Maddison had her first 'well check' today with Dr Zimmerman. Still healthy and grew a 1/2 inch
Paige and August are doing really well with Maddison and love her. I was worried that they
might get jealous and act out, but I have not seen this yet. But we are not silly, the newness
has not worn off yet.
I have compiled more movies.
I received 3 requests to put them on YouTube, but I have opt'ed for the time being not to do this.
If you want to see a few movies of Maddison (and the other 3 kids) I can burn you DVDs.
Here are a few photos of how Maddie has affected our lives:
(Mike's note: Mom is still up and taking the photos)
(Anne's note: amatuers!)
(Mike's 2nd note: Maddie is actually a quiet baby even when crying.)
Maddie sleeping
Aaron sleeping on chair, Paige sleeping on floor
August and Mike sleeping on bed
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But every time it rains,
You're here in my head,
Like the sun coming out--
Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen.
And I don't know when,
But just saying it could even make it happen.
~ Cloudbusting by Kate Bush
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