Vacation Project Slips Between Cup And Lip
Authoring a DVD: Not even close. But I have learned to convert a .MOV file from the digital camera to an MPEG-1 of roughly the same file size. Many miscues along the way, but they were fun miscues, more like experimentation. The first tool, a freebie, has the delightful name of Bink and Smacker from RAD Tools, named for a couple of special file formats. That got me to .AVI format, but that file was way too big. The next step was VirtualDub (free!), which I’ve used before, but the MPEG files came out of that scrunchy when I used the Pegasus (not free) PICVideo MJEG codec (snicker, Word™ doesn’t recognize “codec” – “hey right hand, where do you want to go today?”). Sometimes all green and stretchy (fragment, consider revising). So I had to save the file as a massive (15 times the original size) behemoth, but the filters included with VirtualDub allowed me to adjust the brightness/contrast – as well as strip out the audio to remove all the crap that AGC adds to it (that’s an automatic gain control, which unfortunately also amplifies background noise during silent interludes in the audio) and add some sprucey Carl Stalling cartoon music! Last tool used was TMEGEnc from Pegasus (also, alas, not free), which allowed the audio and video to be combined while outputting an MPEG-1 file just slightly smaller than the original .MOV. It could be made smaller with various boutique video formats (like DivX), but I wanted a file I could email to Liz’s sister (it’s a Christmas video of her and her youngest son bickerering about the merits of Chinese manufactured fireplace tools - "Didn't the Chinese INVENT fire?," he asks...) in England without having to explain how to play it. Windows Media Player has no problem with the last file – and it’s small enough to email to someone with broadband. Whew!
Making Bockwurst: The bangers were obviously made instead. Liz wanted to roast them in a circle around the turkey, but her oven was acting up and she didn’t want anything but the turkey in there. She even pan roasted the parsnips. So she has a bag of 14 poached bangers (I made some secondhand stock out of the poaching liquid which is incredibly rich) and I have a bag with about 50 more. I had four of them pan-fried in butter for breakfast with an egg cooked in the same pan right afterwards. Mmmmm. I have enough English friends to take the excess off my hands. Maybe they’ll chip in and buy me a pint. No bockwurst.
The 6-legged Chicken: A minor setback. I looked at legs and thighs at the grocery store (then I went to the poultry section, bada-bing) and the packages all had either right or left and I need two of each to complete the roaster. It makes sense for packaging because the crook in the legs all face the same direction, but it means I’ll have to buy 8 legs’n’thighs to get 4. Bummer! Maybe I should make two 6-legged chickens.
There might have been another project, but I can’t remember it right now…
3:58:32 PM 
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