Moving Pictures

Aaron has done it again. He has now created a moving pictures from individual pictures. We are using Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus to create this video. We are also trying it in High Def. You really can’t tell because we downside to the flv format so not really HD, but it was fun to try. Also the music comes from FreePlayMusic. Excellant site for music that you just want to use that you do plan on selling or anything. Watch and enjoy.

My January Trip to Chicago

While in Chicago in the hospital I spent a lot of time on Skype talking to my son and wife. This is a short video that I took while there, Aaron did all the editing.

Aaron’s Movie from the Indian Village

Aaron created this Social Studies Project about the Wolf Creek Indian Village near Bastian, Virginia. He did very well on the project.

Our First Digital Video

This is the first video that Aaron and I did. It was several years ago now. But he has been a big help ever since.

One Ten Oh Eight

This post describes the events that took place on January 10, 2008. The number in parentheses indicates what my headache number is on a scale of one to ten, except where it indicates the time change from Eastern Standard Time to Central Standard Time.

3:45 am. (4) Woke up and got ready to go to Chicago, made the coffee, showered and finished packing.

4:30 am Left Tazewell, VA for the Roanoke Airport. Stopped at McDonald’s in Fort Chiswell for a Bacon, Egg and Cheese Biscuit and ended up getting 2 for $2. Just what my gut needed…

6:30 am arrived at Roanoke Airport and met the shuttle bus driver who directed me to a parking spot in the front row of the long term parking. I have never before parked in the front row of an airport parking lot. I tried to enter the secure area of the airport to board the plane. I forgot and had my shaving cream and tooth paste with me. I could not carry on my carryon luggage. What was I thinking, so I had to go back and pack my carryon luggage. This was actually a blessing because that thing was a brut to carry and lug around. Checked my school email from my IPOD Touch. The Roanoke Airport has free WiFi access. Nothing new on the email, yet.

7:15 am (5) Boarded the plane to Chicago.

8:30 am CST Arrived at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Had to go to the bathroom. Then I started to make my way to baggage claim which is in Terminal 1, we arrived at Terminal 2. While waiting on my luggage, I spied the sign for a Train into the city. My luggage came out and I proceeded to walk to the L station. Thank heavens for the moving sidewalks. Got to the automated ticket machine for the Chicago Transit Authority, $2 for a train ticket. Got on the train, there were may be 8 or 9 people in the car I was on. Each car has seats for like 30 people maybe. Finally off to the city. I had already scoped out my route. I would take the train to the Clark Street station and then get on the Brown Line and ride it to Fullerton Station and then walk back to Clark Street Station. On the way into the city more and more people got on the train, some got off of the train, but much more got on. By the time we got to the Clark Street station there was nearly 50 people on the train. So I got my briefcase and that big rolling duffle to get off the train. I thought I would never make it through all those people. Some how I did, now where too? I finally ask someone how to get to the Brown Line. I had to carry all my stuff up three stories and outside to the Brown Line Train.

10:00 am (6) Got on the Brown Line Train to Fullerton Station. They are doing construction work on the CTA L, and it took 30 minutes and several delays to finally make it to Fullerton Station.

10:30 am Arrived at Fullerton Station. So I finally made it to Fullerton Station and tried to get through the construction and out that little turnstile with my rolling duffle and briefcase. Some how I made it. Then just out side the station some black guy ask me for a smoke. “Sorry buddy, I don’t smoke.”

11:00 am (12:00 pm EST) I had walked from Fullerton Station to Ranallia’s to have some lunch. What do I get to eat a Calzone or Chicago style pizza. I am in Chicago, why not have the pizza. Oh man, was it good. Those layers of cheese, that sauce, oh my, that was delicious.

12:00 pm (7) I finally made it to the Diamond Headache Clinic. Once there I had to fill out more paper work. After I got the paperwork done I walked down to Best Buy and did some shopping.

1:00 pm I went back to the Diamond Headache Clinic after getting a Web Cam at Best Buy. I hope to be able to video chat with my son using Skype. I check back in at the front desk and wait till I am called.

1:30 pm Called back to the exam room. Had to check my weight on a fancy scale that read out my weight, I am over weight, surprise, surprise. Christine, PA came in and talked to me. Said she wanted to put me in the hospital on the same medication I had the last time I was hospital.

2:00 pm I waited for the nurse to come and tell me that the insurance was going to review the pre-admission approval. Which meant that I could not be admitted to the hospital, I would have to wait till they called back. So I decided to walk around for a minute or two. I went up the block to a Borders Bookstore and went to the computer book section. I thought I might see an interesting book on computers or something that I might like to read while here. I did not find anything.

3:00 pm (8) I got the call from the nurse saying that the insurance had approved the hospital stay. So I headed back to the Clinic and picked up my hospital orders. Then I go a outside and wait for the van that takes me to Saint Joseph’s Hospital.

3:30 pm The van driver drops me off at the front door. I go to admitting where I pick up a number to be admitted. While there some guy, who did not pick up a number gets mad because they were not waiting on him. It was funny, but sad in a way.

4:00 pm Finally, I get an elevator ride up to the ninth floor. My room number is 941. I get a nice view of Lake Michigan.

5:00 pm Now that I am in my hospital room every day and thing is almost a blur. It is all running together. I knew it would. But at least the pain should start easing up soon….

Lego Digital Designer

I got up this morning and caught my son on the Lego Digital Designer program. He was making the house shown above. This is really cool software program for kids to use. They can build their own Lego pieces and upload them to the Lego site and get the piece priced and built for them. Way cool!

Open Source CMS

I have been looking for an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) to replace WordPress. WordPress is great for blogging and it can be used as a CMS, but I really wanted something a little more robust. Here are a few of the ones I have found:

Drupal An advanced portal with collaborative book, search engines friendly URLs, online help, roles, full content search, site watching, threaded comments, version control, blogging, news aggregator.

Geeklog A portal system with a wide range of modules.

Joomla Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

Mambo Open Source A professional level yet easy to use Content Management System featuring inline WYSIWYG content editors, newsfeeds, syndicated news, banners, mailing users, links manager, statistics, content archiving, date based content, 20 languages, modules and components.

PHP-Nuke One of the most popular community-based portals with a big choice of modules and languages.

phpWCMS phpWCMS is perfect for professional, public and private users. It is very easy to learn and gives you the flexibility to separate layout and content. Lots of powerful but simple implemented features assists publishers and web developers too.

phpWebSite Very powerful Content Management System with document manager, announcements, menu manager, photo album, block maker, FAQ, web pages maker, polls, information categorizer, calendar, link manager, form generator.

Post-Nuke A Content Management System with focus on flexibility and security. A big variety of modules and blocks makes this CMS an allround tool.

Siteframe A straightforward content-management system designed for rapid deployment of community-based websites. Nice-looking templates, oriented toward document-sharing, clean interface.

TYPO3 TYPO3 is a free Open Source content management system for enterprise purposes on the web and in intranets. It offers full flexibility and extendability while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules.

Xoops A very popular advanced portal system.

Also EasyCMS
MySource Matrix
WebGUI
Plone

Also found a good reference for all Open Source Content Management Systems.

Model Train

Aaron got a new model train as a Christmas gift. Here are a couple of pictures he took of it. He has just done an excellent job in building his train table.

Google Earth

For quite awhile I have wondered how Television, like NBC, etc. put a Google Earth Video on there news reports. I do not claim to have the answer by any means, but I have used a screen capture/recorder to attempt to show a Google Earth shot. Bear with me on this one. Actually this does not turn out to bad.

I used CamStudio 2.5, an Open Source, free streaming video software. It is easy to use and is not very complex. That is good and bad. Won’t do a lot of different things, but what it does it does very good.

Hot Wheels

Aaron has done it again. This time it is a movie called Hot Wheels. No audio, so don’t worry about turning it up. But just watch and enjoy.

Wonder how he did it? He used a camera, but it was not a video camera.

Hide and Seek

This is Aaron and his dog Lou playing hide and go seek. Lou is the seeker. This movie is by Aaron Ingram.

Lebanon High School Christmas Concert

The Lebanon High School Christmas Concert as performed for the second session Friday morning can be seen here. As ususal the Choir did an outstanding job and really got everyone in the Christmas spirit.

A special thanks to the choir for presenting it to the student body and thanks to Shawn Rasnake and Will Jessee for recording this presentation for us. Congratulations Choir on a job well done.

George Willcox in the Wood Shop

Our good friend and long time supporter of TSA, George Willcox is working in the Wood Shop at Deep Run High School in Glen Allen, Virginia.

Aaron’s Artwork

Aaron is just a tremendous artist. At the age of 11, I think he is just great. Of course every father would, but he is just talented. I really want to post more of his work, but here are just three of his latest works. He has drawn all of these. Granted he was looking at an picture or the object itself to do it, but again it shows how talented he is.

Five Common Problems that Slow a Computer Down

1. A Cluttered Registry - The longer you use Windows, the more cluttered your registry can grow, especially if you regularly install and uninstall software. Some applications, known as “orphan” registry entries, don’t remove all traces of themselves when uninstalled, causing problems such as sluggish performance, system lockups, or a bloated registry that takes longer to load. The easiest way to clean your registry is to use a registry cleaner. But be careful, your registry is a complex program and very important to the workings of your system.
2. Full Hard Drive – It’s possible that your hard drive could be too full of data to function efficiently. You should have at least 2 – 3MB of free space for programs to run smoothly. If you don’t have this much free space, you can delete unused programs on the C: drive. Check your C: drive to see how much space you have on your computer. You can do this by going to Start > My Computer > C: drive. Click on the C: drive and it will tell you how much free space you have under ‘Details’ on the left bar. Read the rest of this entry »

TSA Electronic Research and Experimentation

A couple of ideas that I have had on Electronic Experimentation.

1. LED Flashlight
2. Wind Generator – Small Scale – power a home
3. Home Alarm System
4. Computer Modification – build a new box
5. Boost your Wireless Signal

Organizing and Decluttering

I have a problem with clutter. I have so much of it. I really need to get and be better organized. So I am making the commitment to be better organized. There are so many resources on the web where do you look? I found one resource today that really inspired me. Top 10 Resources and Inspirations for Decluttering Your Home. These are the best of the best. I plan on using them to help me declutter and organize my life better.

Anti-Virus

Many people ask me “What Anti-Virus  should I be using?”

My opinion is that you can get a good free anti-virus, and I am not alone. First most of the anti-virus programs that you pay for or get free with a computer will cost you every year. In addition, they are very large and tend to slow down your computer’s operation.

I would suggest you consider the following:

1. Uninstall your current anti-virus program through the add/remove programs in the Control Panel
2. Download and install AVG (free) or avast!.
3. I would not recommend you install both. Both are good solid programs.

I have used both programs, but have used AVG the most and prefer it over avast!.

Veteran’s Day Program at LHS

The following is the Veteran’s Day program at LHS.

TSA Website

I am starting a new website, www.lhstsa.com, for our high school TSA program. I have decided to use WordPress as the Content Management System. I also hope to add video’s, photographs and other media there also. It will be a real challenge, but hopefully one that is beneficial to TSA.

Swings at Navy Pier

We rode the swings at Navy Pier this summer. WOW was that fun.

Sunrise on our Street

The view on our street in the morning is fantastic. Here are just a couple of photographs taken by Aaron.

Lou, our Beagle

We have a beagle named Lou. I guess it is short for Louis, but we have always just called him Lou. He is well fed and likes to eat. He has a lovely double chin. But he has been a pretty good dog.

Lifehack.org 10 Reason why

I really enjoy Lifehack.org and Lifehacker.com, they both are what the web is all about. Those sites are also what kinda inspired me to give blogging software a real try. And I must say I like it. That is a little off the point, here is the really good article at lifehack.org about 10 Reasons You Aren’t Achieving Success.

It is certainly worth the read.

Welcome to Digital Media and Design

Welcome to the “new” Digital Media and Design website. I have redesigned the site to make it easier to get around and for me to edit and update the site. I plan on adding several features to the site to show case the work that we do at DMD. Also I wanted a place to provide interesting links and help people learn about the Internet. I also plan on using this in my classes to help supplement what we are doing. Thanks for stopping by and we look forward to seeing you again in the future.