Ready for (a, the) weekend.

Friday, April 25th, 1997

Hi, it’s less dark than usual here in the room where it all gets done, the room that consumes more electricity than anywhere else in the house, the room that is the fount of my creativity, such as it is. I’ve got the blinds up, and yes, there is the back yard, not too overgrown and unruly. There is the neighbor’s cat, who prefers our yard to theirs for her daytime hunting activities. There is the sun. Maybe I should go out there.

(Long pause as I look blankly at the screen.)

Well, actually I’m writing this when I should finish cleaning the house. The downstairs bathroom, for example.

(Another pause as I go do that.)

Boy, is this disjointed! That’s just what kind of day it is. A few minutes of this, a moment of that. Here are the tidbits that are racing through my head, in search of coherence:

Sammy’s meanwhile making about 387 types of bean dip for our friends coming for the weekend. She believes in being thorough, indeed.

Most of the comments I’ve received from youall about the changes on these pages have been positive. Maybe the simple, cleaner look was indeed a good idea. Don’t get me wrong: there are some sites that take every inch of the needed bandwidth (and then some) and uses it well. I’m just not sure anything I have to say is worth that much of the web’s valuable pipespace. It is rather self-indulgent, after all, to have a place where one’s random thoughts can be easily scanned by others. On the other hand, maybe I deserve a dollop of self-indulgence every now and again.

One thing I’d like to work on is a bit of information about my family, all of whom I’ve very proud of. Somehow, now, I find my self more cautious in these efforts. I’ve been advised to be forthcoming in a circumspect manner on the web. "You never know who might read your page," they say. Well, yes, in principal part that is the idea. I’ve gone as far as getting some pictures together.

I’ve been doing some experiments with the DV, DVCPro, and DVCam formats recently. Last night I took our small DV camera on a tripod out at 10:45 last night to shoot some frames in and around our neighborhood. With the AGC turned off, it’s remarkably clean, with noise-free blacks and rich, saturated colors. I’ll upload an image or two from this on Monday.

See what I mean? Chunks of words in search of a common thread. Ah, well, I put them out there for you as an act of clearing off my desk, ready for the weekend. I’ve cleaned up files and folders in my machine, backed up both Sam’s and mine to Exabyte, charged the video batteries, and, oh yeah, the downstairs bathroom is pretty clean.

Enjoy your weekend.