After some searching on the Apple website, I found that iMovie cannot work directly with mpeg files. Apparently these files have the audio interlaced with the video rather than as a separate track. I needed another piece of software ($40) to convert the files into a format that iMovie can use. So, the files have been converted, mashed together with iMovie, made into a Quicktime format, and uploaded to YouTube. The link below should have both video and audio…. Also, embedding doesn’t work (yet). So, you’ll have to make do with the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj1XoTyO-Hs

I’ve also been doing some other work the past couple of days. The picture album software needed a small update to warn about picture file names that are too long. The picture filename itself can be any length, but the database was set to 35 characters. If the filename was longer than that, it got truncated and then the picture wouldn’t show. I first thought I could check in Javascript after the files were selected and before they were uploaded, however, because of security reasons (a malicious person could intervene and cause a buffer overflow), that capability has been removed from Javascript. So, I can only check after the file has actually been uploaded. But, that’s better than no check at all.

I’ve also wanted approved comments to appear in-line with the post. That took about an hour this evening to figure out on my blog. Unfortunately, making that work is theme dependent. Figuring it out once should make it easier to plug into any of the other themes. So, if anyone wants that capability, let me know. I think it should be a configuration option and built into standard WordPress, but so far that hasn’t happened.

Three posts in one day. “That ain’t natural….”

The video segment that didn’t work was to show some fall colors in Pocatello. For some reason, each individual segment shows just fine, sound and all. However, when I use iMovie on the Mac to combine them, the audio disappears. Very strange and a problem for a different day.

So, I’ll just show the fall colors in a still picture. This was taken from my back deck and is the hillside to the west of us. The fall colors are in full glory….

The Sunday morning session of the 176 Semiannual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has just concluded. Nina will be home from the prison in a few minutes. It’s a lovely day outside, partly cloudy with very pleasant temperatures. All added up, it’s a great day to be living.

Yesterday between sessions of conference I put some weed killer down on the front yard. In the coming few days I’ll do the same in the back yard and then put fertilizer down for the winter. I’m hoping to have a much more weed-free yard next year.

I’m writing this post on my iMac Mini computer. I put together a little video piece — four snippets of video — looking out over Pocatello, Idaho from the east side and from the west side. Using the Mac and iVideo, I made them up into a single segment and uploaded that to YouTube. I wanted to try using imbedded video to see how that works. Essentially, the plan is that you can click on the link and the movie will play…. There’s not a good way to test this, so here is the video segment!

Well, it didn’t work out so well…. There’s no sound!

I have a little Sony digital camera. In addition to being a great point-and-shoot camera, it can also take short video segments. So, I signed up for a YouTube account (they’re free), shot four really short segments of video while we were in Colorado Springs, and have uploaded them to YouTube. I’ve said that they’re private, so I don’t know how that exactly works. Anyhow, here’s the URL’s. Let me know if you can see anything or if I have to change the security settings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLBc0sT1BaU 1:18 in the RV in Colorado Springs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HH6sD84-fw 0:48 in the Garden of the Gods
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL06Xypj4t0 0:20 in the Garden of the Gods
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q700-t7dxZQ 0:36 in the Garden of the Gods

We left last Thursday to drive to Colorado Springs at about 10 a.m. We arrived in Green River, Wyoming, to spend a few minutes with my brother Perry and his wife Chris at about 1:30 p.m. Perry let me know that the blog server was down. So, it was down the entire weekend. We got home about 8:30 p.m. tonight and I’ve reset the confounded Qwest DSL modem. It’s been locking up fairly regularly the past couple of weeks and, of course, according to the logs it locked up about an hour after we left on Thursday. Something has got to be done about this! More on the trip tomorrow.

Nina and Pam drove to Salt Lake to spend the night at Heather’s house before Pam gets on the airplane back to Cleveland, Ohio tomorrow morning. So it’s just Bradica (the dog) and me tonight. She’s not much company — in fact, she’s sound asleep on her bed in the family room. I expect in about a half-hour she’ll be in here with me, prancing around in hopes of getting her night-time biscuits. She doesn’t get them until about 10 pm when she gets put to bed, but she’s always hoping that we’ll get around to it sooner rather than later.

It’s been a very busy week and weekend. Last night Nina and I went to the first event of the season at the Performing Arts Center. George Winston put on quite a show on the stage — mostly with the piano but also including two guitar pieces and one on the harmonica. His ten-minute fantasy on “The Saints Go Marching In” left us both breathless and tired. I’ve never in my life seen anyone play the piano so fast and all over the keyboard. It was definitely the hightlight of the program! We enjoyed last year’s programs so much that we purchased season tickets for all the events at the center. Unfortunately we’ll miss the concert next Friday evening featuring the Orchestra At Temple Square. We’ll be in Colorado Springs but the tickets will get good use by some friends.

Nina will be back tomorrow evening and we will have one or two days of normality. Then we’ll leave on Thursday for Colorado Springs where some very good friends are celebrating (in a big way) their fiftieth wedding anniversary. We’ll take the motorhome and stay at the Garden Of The Gods Campground for the weekend. That just might be our last trip in the motorhome this year.

I had a few pictures from the past couple of weeks which are posted in the picture album.

Today was about 40 degrees cooler than two days ago. The clouds came in last night. The rain started mid-morning this morning. More rain is forecast for tomorrow as well. As I drove home from work, I looked east through the Portneuf Gap and first saw the clouds draped over the mountains and then I saw that there was –SNOW– on the tops of the mountains. Summer is finished. Winter is not far away.  I’m not ready for snow. Perhaps tomorrow I need to dig out the snow blower and make sure it’s ready for the season to come. I’ve just gotten used to summer and now it’s over. Dang!