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At The Sand Trap, we're looking to start a new column. Someone will send us their video, we'll critique their swing, and post our thoughts to the site. It'll be similar to the help given on this site (which I set up for my high school golf team).

Like the second link above, I'd like to post the video along with the still frames so that readers could check the swing out in full. The question I have is this: what compressor works best? I didn't have to worry about bandwidth or storage space for the videos at the second link, but we could some day have a hundred of these articles at The Sand Trap. I'm going to make all of the videos 320 x 240 without audio, but from there, I'm not sure what compressor will work best. I must maintain some clarity (to see the shaft, the hands, and some of the other finer details) but want to minimize file size as much as possible.

P.S. The first video we're going to use, should you need an example, is mildly compressed (and 640 x 480) here: http://thesandtrap.com/Jeff.mov. It will be deleted later this week. The full video is a DV stream right from my camera, of course.

Ever since moving to MovableType 3.2 on both this blog and The Sand Trap, ecto has failed to work properly when setting the Publish/Draft setting.

Ecto seems to preserve what's set on the server most of the time, and when a new entry is created in ecto, it's marked as published. Even if the mode is set to "Draft," it's published. What's funny is that the entry may not be immediately published, but it is marked as published in MT's Web interface and the next time someone posts a comment, a TrackBack, a new post to the home page, or anything that requires the post to be re-built, it will be built and published.

There are a few permutations, but basically, things are behaving normally and ecto hasn't been updated beyond version 2.3.9 since September 6.

P.S. I've long since given up on scheduling entries via ecto. IIRC, SixApart didn't open the third-party API to allow users to set a "Scheduled" status.

I've written about this before… a Web site configured such that "www" (or its absence) causes the site to fail to work. Today I found another: http://edinboro.edu/ times out while http://www.edinboro.edu/ works quickly.

Silly!

FWIW, I hate "www." I think it's redundant and useless. "url.com" should go to the same place as "www.url.com" and, particularly with non-.com TLDs (like .net, .org, etc.) I'd rather keep my typing to a minimum: "edinboro.edu" saves four keystrokes. For .coms, of course, I just type nslog/blah and let Safari take care of the rest; that it adds "www." doesn't bother me too much.

Question: "Chilly" is a relative term, but generally speaking, what temperature is "cold" for you?

My Answer: In September, 50°F (10°C) is cold for me, but in the spring that's almost shorts weather. In general, anything beginning with the number "5" or is chilly. Anything beginning with a "3" is "cold."

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Which keyboard do you use and prefer?

My Answer: Fortunately for me, they're on and the same: the keyboard Apple ships with its desktops. I used the black ones for a long time and held on to them even though I had a white one, but I finally gave in when I moved here to PA. The black ones are just a little stiffer… though I'm using one now because two days ago, when cleaning my white one, the "o" key stopped working. I guess they don't make them like they used to. 😉

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Aaron pointed me towards the podsafe music network, but I figure there are other options, too. One is all that royalty-free music Apple had posted a long time ago to .Mac (I should still have those files somewhere, but I've gotta look for them, as they no longer seem to be on .Mac). The final option is to create some music on my own with GarageBand. I'll give that a go this week too…

Today I published that Podcast I've been talking about. I've also submitted it to iTunes - I wonder how long it will take until it appears? If anyone at Apple wants to push it through quickly, by all means, go ahead… 😉

Before next week's Podcast, I'm going to round up a bunch of sound effects. This first episode was more a trial run than anything, and it went along fairly smoothly. If anyone is interested in writing a short theme song, I'm sure we can work out a deal. I've also got a microphone coming - the Samson C01-U.

Question: What would you change about the current iPod? There are a lot of suggestions here if you're interested.

My Answer: I think that the ability to store and play back higher-quality (NTSC at least) movies would be nice, because I could carry around a little cord and play funny things on a TV for more people to see. That'd be nice, and could probably be done in software.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: What third-party software you still miss from Mac OS 7, 8, or 9?

My Answer: You know what I really wish I had? Gravité! Dang that was an awesome control panel. If someone were to write it for Mac OS X, why, I'd give them a hundred bucks (so long as they gave me a license, that is).

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Today, Jeff (from The Sand Trap) and I attempted to record our first podcast. Armed with a copy of Audio Hijack Pro and Skype, I connected and we could hear each other. I was routing the conversation (both sides) through headphones plugged into the front of my G5 and using an iSight as my microphone. Jeff was using either his iMac's built-in mic or the microphone built into his Logitech Premium Stereo Headset. Jeff was not recording, just talking and listening.

At various points throughout the show, Jeff said that my voice would simply cut out or severely stutter. Once it happened, we both had to quit and relaunch everything (Skype, AHP on my end) to get things working again. Oftentimes, that meant I had to re-plug in the iSight. I never lost audio - even when Jeff couldn't hear me, I could hear him and my own voice (through the headphones) just fine.

Jeff was using a 1.8 GHz G5 iMac with 768 MB RAM with only Skype, Safari, and a text editor running. I was using a 2 x 2 GHz G5 with 2.5 GB RAM and the same applications + AHP running. Neither of us had other users logged in. DSL Reports tells us that my connection is running at 3142/825 kpbs down/up and while Jeff is seeing 4104/353, which should be plenty to carry on an audio conversation.

What could have caused this problem? Simple Skype flakiness? How do people record a podcast "over the Internet" if Skype is that damn flaky? What can I do to resolve this issue so that it doesn't take 20 attempts to record a 30-minute show each week?

It's true:

So's the part about Verizon crippling their Bluetooth phones.

Oh, how I love the older woman. Just the one, actually, my wife.

Sometimes, I still cannot quite believe that I married HER. That girl. I have to pinch myself (or at least turn on the heated seat in my car) to make sure I'm not dreaming. I really am married to Carey.

Carey's not perfect, but she's perfect for me and in her imperfections I find her humanity and several of the countless reasons I love her. I don't love Carey as I did in high school, and I may even love her in spite of high school ;-). They say love is blind, but I say Carey is not perfect because, despite and in many ways because of her faults, I love her, eyes wide open. This isn't a love that will fade or falter.

Carey is the most brilliant mother to our daughter that I could ask for, and the person with whom I've shared the deepest connection. Our personalities are so alike at times that it's scary, but different enough to keep things interesting.

Baby, I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time, but I'm not afraid of the way I love you. Happy birthday, sweetie.

John Gruber talks about reasons why his blog's subscribers (just over 1000) may not have re-subscribed (only 551 so far), but he leaves one out.

Last year, when John was soliciting subscribers ("members"), he talked about how revenue from his blog would help to guarantee that he would regularly publish full, detailed articles. Last year, possible "members" were somewhat threatened by the fact that if they didn't subscribe, it increased the likelihood that John would only post the occasional short snippet:

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 467); »

Question: If Steve Jobs had died of pancreatic cancer six months ago, where would Apple be now? In a year?

My Answer: I think we'd they'd be at about the same place now, though with far less optimism. The products and plans Apple had six months ago probably dictated that we'd still be at about the same place now so short into the future. However, in a year, I foresee a lot of problems. I foresee Apple returning, even just slightly, to the days of having non-simplistic product lines. I foresee a decline in the quality of software and the "feel" of every Apple product. Like it or not, Apple is a reflection of Steve Jobs' taste. With those taste buds lying six feet under, well, who would make the decisions? Tim Cook?

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Yesterday I posted quite a few things about iPods, video, and the iTunes Music Store. I spent most of the afternoon attempting to find some way to automate the process of downloading movie trailers, encoding them in the iPod video format, and copying them into iTunes (so that they would be synchronized to the iPod).

Unfortunately, I found several problems with this process:

• There exists an Automator action for downloading images, but not for downloading .mov files. I have an AppleScript that will provide a URL as a string, but my (quick) attempts to turn this AppleScript into an Automator action have failed.
• The Export to iPod Automator Action does not appear in Automator. I've even tried building the project myself. Same thing: it just doesn't show up in Automator.
• Neither the script nor the workflow from this Mac OS X Hint work. The workflow complains about not having QuickTime 7.0.3 (I have it) and the script times out.

I'd like to work towards getting this going, but right now I'm stuck. I've bashed my head on the things above and not come out with anything but a bloody forehead.

Has anyone out there attempted such a thing with more success?