http://mrgibson.com/ Mike Gibson's Personal site en-us (c) 2008 Michael Gibson Fri, 09 May 2008 06:23:45 CST Sun, 04 May 2008 01:00:00 CDT Mike 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 treestaken 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 moreAmericans believe in prayer than in God. I find that weird.Talking about wierd, we went to Walmart after church to get some baby formula. Theformula 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 upand it is true. Thu, 01 May 2008 01:00:00 CDT Mike Happy May day. Maddie is now 3 weeks old. Before I know it, June will be here! :) Aaron, Paige, andAugust 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 andit was the Consumer Reports 2007 'Best Buy'. mower.jpg" width="200" style="float: right;" />Better yet, because I purchased a 2007 model in2008, 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 withthe 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 havecreated to MPEG4/DIVX? Why? So you can burn the file directly to DVD or use more advanced video editingtools.mencoder input.avi -o output.mp4 / -of lavf -ovc lavc / -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 / -lavfopts i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_framesI 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 DVDdvdauthor -o DVD movie.mp4 dvdauthor -T DVDmkisofs -dvd-video -o DVD.iso DVDThen 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. :) Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:00:00 CDT Mike 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 andstuff - 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;doneEach JPG will become a 1 second frame in a movie with this command:mencoder "mf://small*.JPG" -mf fps=1 -ovc lavc -o ./dest.aviYou 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 :) Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:00:00 CDT Mike 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. Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:00:00 CDT Mike Back in Nov 2007, it was discovered that a particular plastic could be harmfulto humans. These plastics contain PBA aka 'bisphenol A'. Anne and I did notdiscover this until last night watchin the news. Many companies are recallingbaby 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 safeplastic.gifYes, we were using baby bottles and sippy cups with #7 plastic. Why do companiesmake 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. Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:00:00 CDT Mike 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 teamfor quite some time. This last week, it is like someone replaced him with someone that can hit. Isimply can not believe how well he is doing. God must have blessed him. Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:00:00 CDT Mike Today Maddie is a week old. This photo taken yesterday by Anne is of Maddie having her afternoon nap.maddie_6days_sm.jpg Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:00:00 CDT Mike 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 newnesshas 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_sleep_time1.jpgMaddie sleepingmaddie_sleep_time2.jpgAaron sleeping on chair, Paige sleeping on floormaddie_sleep_time3.jpgAugust and Mike sleeping on bed