Corn, Colds and Controversy

The word of the week is lassitude.

September 28 – Chugging Along

How’s the rest of the world doing these days?

With a federal election coming up in the month, Canada‘s going to be doing a lot of inward-looking in the next few weeks, as people try to decide where the country’s headed.

But what about the rest of the world?

How does the rest of 2015 look, according to the experts?

Well, not that great, when you factor China into the picture. Which is a shame, because I’m just getting used to being able to order things directly from AliBaba.com …

All kidding aside, it’s a weird, connected world that we live in: I was just talking about this with my lady and as she's in the field of statistical research, she knows a thing or two about what's going on out there, probably more than I do.

Without getting into details, we both agreed - for different reasons - that the world's become perhaps a little too interconnected for its own good. Countries are far more codependent on far too many trade aspects to be insulated from one another's problems when they crop up – just look at Greece this summer, and China to a lesser degree. Economic cycles that used to take decades now take only a few years to rise and fall. Which makes predicting them extraordinarily difficult, even for experts in the field.

When you live in the global village, everybody's problems are only a few doors away.

September 29 – Myo

I'm thinking of getting an armband.

Not just any armband though: a Myo, which is a device that reads our movements and translates them into electrical impulses I can be read by a computer.

More accurately, it translates the electrical impulses that it reads from your muscles into unique signals that can be mapped onto functions via computer software. So you can simply make a series of gestures to open a presentation on the laptop, moved to the next slide, rotate diagrams and so forth - all of those are just the most basic application of Myo:

Where it really gets interesting is when you combine a pair of Myo armbands with properly configured software and accompanying drivers. This allows users to play their various games without a controller, albeit at this stage still with slightly less-than-perfect accuracy due to the fact that Myo was only been released to the world less than year ago.

It’s interesting to note that I found reviewers split in their opinions of how well the device works. Bitshift Interactive makes software called ‘Mapper For Myo’ that apparently makes all the difference in using the device, which I found out by reading some of the reviews on the device’s Amazon.com sales page - weird, but useful nonetheless.

I'm still keeping an eye on this device, hoping that it will be more mature in the next year, with support from major software houses for various games and devices. I'd love to be able to forgo having to use a mouse or game controller altogether, so that I can play for more than 15 or 30 min. of the time before my arms decide they've had enough.

September 30 – Prime!

I took the day off today. Not by choice: I was too sick to work.

Monday night I started getting the sniffles and by noon yesterday, the goal that everybody else had made itself known in my own sinus cavities – yay. I sucked it up( literally ) until I got home and from there things just went downhill, until this morning when I started killing Kleenexes at a rate of one every 5 min. or so: there was no way I be able to work in that condition, so I called work to sell the bad news, then went back to bed for a bit.

On the bright side, despite the extremely runny nose that made me wear off at least two layers of skin by days end, I got to catch up a little bit on a few things, including a TV series that I've meant to watch more of this year but haven't found the time: Transformers Prime.

Originally airing in late 2010, the series has one various daytime awards, including several Emmy’s and has impressed me with the quality of both its animation and writing. Among all the other excellent voice actors, it's also a nice touch that the show has Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime, reprising his role.

Through the convenience of Netflix, I made my way through to almost the end of the second season by the end of the day, interspersed with a few power naps and other projects. While I wasn't feeling better by the end of the day, I was feeling the worst.

It's been a while since I spent the day just watching TV like this and - I liked it. Looking at my substantial collection of series on DVD, I am again reminded how precious time is to me these days and how wisely I have to budget it… so getting to spend a day catching up was extremely satisfying.

  

October 1 – Doc Says I’m Weird.

It was a half-for me today, in several ways,.

I went to work for a half day this morning, which was probably a bad idea – my nose was still unhappy with me( I'll spare you the details )and I had little energy by lunchtime.

Fortunately by then, I left for a doctors appointment, to see a physiatrist.

I've been waiting to see a specialist of his type for a few years now, to see what can be done for my wrists. Ironically, it’s taken a year for my doctor to finally see that my right leg’s swollen tendon isn’t going to go away with massage therapy and so necessitated the appointment with a physiatrist today.

The results, after an hour’s exam? I’m ‘weird’ …

Or, in medical terminology, everything was moving correctly but as I still have specific recurring pains, the doctor’s going to send me to see a rheumatologist. It was unfortunate that the medical ultrasounds of my arms taken a month after my 2012 injury could be located, but somehow that seems par for the course of trying to get myself back to rights.

I'm tempted to facepalm a bit here, but at least it’s progress. I'm thankful that the doctor listen to me and performed numerous tests to see movements of my tendons and ligaments all over. He did mention that my hamstrings were extremely tight, another reason to suggest continuing massage therapy on a regular basis.

Guess it’s time for more patience.

October 2 – Guns

I was going to talk about the subject of guns here, but I got tired.

That, I think, is one of the problems in the States right now.

Too many guns, and everyone's tired of talking about how to fix a problem that nobody really wants to talk about in a country where people would rather shoot someone to talk to them about a problem.

How mixed up is that?

You can cite statistics until the cows come home to support the view of either side – this is a standard tactic of any political entity - but rarely does action take place quickly. The notable exception of this is Australia, who after a terrible mass shooting in 1996 instituted sweeping changes in gun control that saw the vast majority of weapons in that country removed from the hands of the average citizen - you can read about the results of that here.

I've mentioned before about how crazy it is, in my mind, to believe that in order to stay safe from harm you have to be armed not only at home but while going about your day, and in the minds of many Americans, armed at work too – just in case.

A too-plentiful supply of death means everyone gets a share, whether they want it or not.

October 3 – Farm time!

What a grand day!

As well as dawning sunny and mild, I was able to spend the day with my lady.

After breakfasting at the sublime Adrienne’s, we made our way back to town… but were sidetracked by a corn maze on the way.

That’s right: a corn maze.

But first we rode a train around the property, passing by their Old West town which was still the process of being readied for their Halloween nighttime shows starting in a week or so. It was pretty cool checking around the 40 acres or so of farm on the track, seeing the crops while the train driver told us all about the functioning of the farm and pointed out the fun attractions as we went along.

Things were less scary in the daytime, I must say, but more fun for sure.

The corn maze is an annual staple of the farm, lazy winding paths that sometimes loop and sometimes simply dead-end. The corn is thick enough that can't see where you're going, but there's little fear of being hopelessly lost as the entire maze is only a few hundred feet on aside in total. It was pleasant to simply meander in the bright sunshine with my lady.

Before leaving the maze, we took a detour to wander through the Old West town that had been set up as part of the Halloween events to come later this month. Only about half the electrical setups were working, but the small-scale town was fun to look at, giving you a hint of what it was like to be back in the frontier days again.

A fun time was most definitely had by all today!

October 4 – Media and a Movie

Ripping the heck out of my media collection is going well.

So well, in fact, that I'm running out of room: even with 6 terabytes of space on my Acer Aspire H340 server, it’s getting crowded. I'll have to repurpose a few more drives from older computers in order to move things around, but I'm determined to digitize as much of my TV series collection as possible in the next week and then move on to the movies until the trial period for the software I'm using runs out. I’m only using the single function to rip the DVD’s, but it's been useful enough that when I do get around to adding more storage, I may just purchase the whole program, though I don't know if I really want to use their software to categorize my collection, as are ready have things like Plex that make it even simpler to access my media.

In the evening, my girlfriend and I watched Disney’s Atlantis, a film I haven't seen for probably close on 10 years or more. My lady likes the film and we both enjoyed watching it, even with the logical errors introduced when you have things like people who have lived 10,000 years but somehow forgotten how to write or read…. Guess that slipped by the script editors. Which is surprise, as Joss Whedon wrote the first draft of this movie, but later edits obviously change things around substantially – the Wikipedia entry for the film is a gold mine of information about how this happened and it saddens me in a way that I’ll never get to see the potential masterpiece that this film could have been in the first place.

Sorry about the odd colours for the last few blog entries: I’ve been writing the blog earlier in the evening and adjusted the colours in Word to white text / darker background – oops. And with my sister away for a few weeks, I have the place to myself to Get Things Done - w00t!

New Ideas, Nimby and Now News

The word of the week is compassion.

September 21 – NIMBY

What’s a refugee, exactly? Do you know?

Given the dire situations in many places in the world right now, including Syria, you think more people would be aware of what a refugee is… but they don’t.

Some people just don’t care, but too many others think that refugees are simply people who have decided to mooch off other countries while running away from their problems.

Ignorance, in this case, is not bliss, and some smart people have a lot to say about it:

Myself, I find it shocking how easily people can dismiss the plight of others. How they can assume that many of the refugees are ‘lazy’ or ‘just terrorists pretending to be in need’ to gain entry to other  countries to cause violent mischief.

If you’ve watched the video above, you’ll know that’s a misconception, and a big one.

The world can be( and is, in places, too often )a rotten place. Don’t let it fool you into believing that those in need don’t deserve your compassion, or your help.

September 22 – Childhood

Play is making the imaginary real.

I did a lot of that as a kid, and I've retained the core of my imaginary play time in my creative side as an adult. I'm thrilled that I've managed to do so, as I've seen too many people for whom practicality is a way of life. Where imagination is something that they've sidelined or forgotten altogether under the daily bombardment of the mundane.

Did I mention that I especially liked playing with Star Wars spaceships as a kid?

The video below perfectly captures what it was like for me to imagine amazing worlds in my backyard( or elsewhere )as a child. The professional, high production value video was created as a tribute to a famous filmmaker who is involved in the Star Wars franchise and is a joy to watch:

September 23 – Small Steps

I’d like to stop being a renter one of these days and turn into a homeowner.

The problem is, it's not very practical for me at present, nor do I really need to own a home in terms of just having a place to keep my stuff. The average cost of a detached home in Canada is relatively high, but it does vary significantly from region to region. 

This graphic, based on recent data, shows how much a household has to make in order to afford a home purchase - assuming that the bank will talk you in the first place:

For my own situation, I'm exploring other options.

Mainly, I don't want to be stuck with a house that doesn't suit my needs, which are admittedly modest: I don't have a family to take care of, nor do I have pets that need outdoor space or a hobby that requires a workshop( that part may change, I admit ). There is no vehicle for me to park, eliminating the need for garage and I don't have a whole lot of furniture or other materialistic goods that would require additional storage rooms.

That's why I'm putting together a Tiny House mortgage package to present to the credit union sometime this spring. While I'm a fair way away from being ready to spring for such a shift in finances, the credit union is extremely interested in what I have to say, as it's a new market for them and quite honestly they'd stand to benefit greatly from opening it up here in Victoria( and Vancouver Island in general ). 

My plan is to put together as complete a package as possible, including how local bylaws affect the purchase and placement of a Tiny Home, as well as targeted research from many other Tiny Home projects across Canada and the United States. I want to make it as easy as possible for the credit union to tell me what they can do for me in terms of a smaller mortgage, one that doesn't fit within traditional boundaries of home ownership in Canada but is still extremely feasible to set up.

Wish me luck.

September 24 – Nerf Business?

Nerf has been on my mind all this week, for various reasons.

Apart from the fun factor, I've had an idea rattling around in my brain: could I start up a small business based around ‘Nerf Tag’ and make a go of it, while still having fun with my friends once or twice a month? Given that I can't do a lot of physical activities any more, including my beloved archery, it seems like the perfect fit.

The ideas not as silly as it sounds; there's already a Nerf Gun Rental business right here in Victoria, complete with a website:

NerfGunRentals.com - right here in Victoria!

There's also other similar businesses set up across Canada, including one in Winnipeg, though they seem to be based around the idea of taking the game to birthday parties, corporate events and the like.

That's not for me though; I'd rather not have to transport a whole bunch of gear all over the place all the time, mainly because I don't own a vehicle. That mobile business model is also dependent upon people coming to you and that necessitates advertising in all sorts of places an order to make yourself visible and get the word around that you exist in the first place.

I'd much rather set up games locally in a park, complete with safety signage, waivers and all the necessary details of a small business. I've put some thought into this concept this week and I'll be looking into it further as time permits. I like the idea that it has a low initial outlay for set up and operating costs, with potential for growth into a permanent facility depending on where I locate. The facility would also have the added bonus of not needing much work, unlike a business like laser tag, which has tens of thousands of dollars in upfront costs for equipment and facility modification.

More on this as it develops.

September 25 – 3D Business?

Holy business ideas, Batman!

Continuing my thoughts from above, the other business idea I had this week has to do with laser printing. Well, not exactly: it’s actually laser etching, cutting and engraving.

This month sees the debut of an amazing step forward in small-scale laser technology that anyone can use. It’s best explained by this short, fascinating video:

In a nutshell: until now, 3D laser printers have cost upwards of $10,000 and are complicated to use, though the results can be amazing. Yet, if you don't know exactly what you're doing, it's often a continuous exercise in frustration and wasted materials, not to mention the huge cost of the purchase in the first place. Hence not many people knowing about the potential of what 3D laser printing can accomplish( here's some examples )or even that it exists.

Enter Glowforge.

Designed to be as easy to use as possible, the Glowforge can print on all sorts of flat materials, up to 12" x 20" wide in the base model and much more in the upgraded Pro version. The printer comes with everything that you need to get up and running immediately, as all the complicated software is run over the web, helping to lower the printer’s initial cost significantly.

Now, don't get me wrong: this is not a cheap purchase, nor is it something the average person will have in their home or office. It's a machine meant to create things for other people, or for someone with specific needs… like cosplayers, or others who need its services.

I'll be researching local 3D-laser businesses in the next few weeks, to better understand how a Glowforge might provide me with advantage over other businesses in both market and cost. The initial outlay for the printer may be offset fairly quickly, depending on the demand for what it can do and how easily I can provide such services.

Who knows? I may end up opening an Etsy store, given the opportunity to provide Internet orders for projects such as this… 3D-cut gaming system tiles, custom-sized and low cost:

The possibilities are almost limitless and to be honest, I am more excited this point than anything else. Which means I have to sit down and have a good think about what exactly this sort of thing would do to make my life better financially, while not sucking up all my time that could go towards other things, like writing.

We'll see what the next few weeks bring, in that regard.

September 26 – The Eyes Have it?

My vision isn't great.

All the same, I'm glad that I can see - in general - without my glasses and that I don't need a heavier prescription, but many are the days I wish I had 20/20 vision. Having needed glasses since the seventh grade( and likely earlier, at that )it's really been frustrating sometimes to know that other people see far better than I do far more easily. Sure, I could wear contact lenses, but those raise their own issues that I don't want to have in regards to eye health.

Which is why laser eye surgery has always been on my mind.

However, the unknown long-term effects, coupled with the high cost, have meant that I've never seriously considered going down that route and ditching glasses altogether.

Enter the Ocumetrics Bionic Lens implant.

Developed right here in BC, the lens replaces the defective one in a person's eye in a procedure that takes less than 10 minutes and grants them perfect 20/20 vision once again. As an added bonus, the artificial cornea means that users will never develop cataracts! I also imagine that the lens would be replaceable if a persons prescription changes, and it opens the possibility of additional optical functions, depending on how fast implantable technology develops in the next few years.

Much better than surgery, in my opinion. The creators of the Ocumetrics Lens hope to have Canadian regulatory approval by 2017, which means that surgeries( and their medical results )will happen within the next five years or so - exciting times for people like myself, who tire of glasses and one just to see properly again day to day.

I'll be keeping my eye on this one.

September 27 – Going Well

How are things going overall of late, you ask?

That's both hard and easy to answer for me right now.

My work's going well, for as I've said before, I can leave it all behind at the end of the day and I'm neither physically nor mentally exhausted when that happens. While there's obviously some busy days at times, having a solid team around me as I do right now makes it so much easier to get through the more challenging workdays than at any previous job.

My personal life is doing happy cartwheels of late. I spent a good deal of quality time with my girlfriend every day this weekend, enjoying the good weather outside and watching Babylon 5 when the sun had set. Today we spent a few hours in the morning down at the Yacht Pond, which was fairly crowded with RC boaters, given the sunny skies and warmer temperatures. We chatted up more than a few folks, who admired our buoys and generally made us feel welcome – the president of the local model boat club, the VMSS, even invited us down to the Christmas club dinner, which was again extremely friendly and indicative of the relaxed air that we've noticed whenever we've sailed our Trawler on the Pond.

Financially, well… I'd like to be making more money, but as I said before: I'm holding my own right now and for the foreseeable future. The business ideas that I have above are to try and get ahead, while still keeping my own interests in mind for what I can do in terms of hobbies and other projects… bearing in mind that costs are costs and would come out of my own pocket.

Writing-wise, things are a bit stalled. I'm still struggling with the middle of Book 2, where the plot lines all tangle; getting those sorted out has been quite frustrating these last few months. I've taken it upon myself to focus just on getting the plot sorted for now and once that's done, the words will flow once more.

There are other frustrations, for the most part they're fairly minor. As lives go, mine's doing pretty well of late. I just have to discover the right balance of time spent on work, rest and play, finding out what's really important to me for the next few months and budgeting what's needed on a day-to-day basis.

Getting six hours of sleep a night, with a few interruptions, isn't conducive towards feeling rested. Thankfully, the next month will see a big reduction of interruptions, especially after my sister spends a few weeks vacationing in Europe, which she definitely deserves - she's been dreaming of going to Paris for years and finally, she's getting her heart's desire..

Purity, Politics and Perfection

The word of the week is assuage.

September 14 – Pure FBook!

At last: I can customize my FBook experience safely!

Ever since I first started using FBook in the mid-2000’s, the interface has bothered me, in that there’s many ‘features’ that I’d like to just turn off… but can’t: FBook won’t let you.

Heck, you can’t even change the colour of the titlebar!

Before you say anything: yes, I know there are various apps / software scripts that will purportedly allow you to do what you want with the way FBook is presented over the web, but almost every one of those is malware or spyware some kind.

The only one that isn't is FBook Purity.

Now, I am as skeptical as the next person, but I've thoroughly checked out FBook Purity and it's legit, safe as houses, etc. I downloaded and installed it as a plug-in today on my web browser, which is how FBook Purity was designed from the outset: it doesn’t operate in any malicious way, just works as a small plugin in your browser that takes all the annoying things about FBook’s website and lets you customize them as you see fit.

You can read user reviews of the product - which is free – here, as well as check out forums discussing its safety rating. Better yet: go find out for yourself.

Me, I'm just going to bask in the novelty of a green FBook title bar for a while…

September 15 – Scifi Air Show!

Well, colour me embarrassed.

Last week, I showed my girlfriend this image of a life-sized Tie Fighter cockpit:

This isn't real, sadly

… which turned out to be a Photoshopped image, albeit a damn good one.

It was an image from ScifiAirshow.com, a small and lovely site which houses all sorts of wondrous pictures of ships that don't actually exist in the real world, presented as though they were on tour at your standard airshow where the public can poke and prod them or even kicked the tires, so to speak.

Pretty cool idea, eh?

Sadly, this is real - most ppl can't visit it. Hence: sad.

An interesting note is that while most of the images on the site are completely digital fabrications, one section is not. The Space 1999 ships housed at the Eagle Boneyard are completely real, castoffs from the show after it was canceled in the late 1970s. All the ships shown are full-sized mockups, built for filming the TV series from all angles.

This is a similar idea to the Hollywood Scifi Museum, a Kickstarter project whose initial phase should open in 2016 - it's assuredly someplace that I want to go sooner rather than later and I'll talk more about it in detail in another blog post.

For now I just want to think about climing into an X-wing’s cockpit…

September 16 – Caffeine

Cutting back on caffeine seems to be doing me some good, in odd ways.

In the last month, I've reduced my daily intake of tea from the equivalent of three XL cups at Tim Horton’s to less than one. Even that isn't quite true, as I'm not even finishing the single thermos mug of tea I bring with me in a day.

I think that's a good thing.

My stomach has certainly decided it doesn't like more than one moderately sized cup of tea in a day. When I was working midnights at MMart, I would drink up to two full pots of tea in order to keep myself awake and that did not do my stomach any good whatsoever. For several years after I had returned to the day shift, I developed an acidic stomach if I drank any more than a single XL cup of tea from Timmy’s – yuck and ouchie.

I'm no longer as groggy in the mornings when I wake up, I get tired of the same time in the afternoon every day( about 2pm ) and again around 10pm at night. Not bad at all.

However, I am waking up around 6 AM, whether I like it or not and that's proving to be a bit of the bugaboo: while I'm tired, I'm not actually falling asleep until nearly midnight most nights.

I think in the short term all just have to go to bed earlier, whether I feel like it or not and see if sleep finds me more easily. My nights in the last few weeks have been interrupted by various noises and the dark circles under my eyes - which completely vanished while I was recuperating in August - have returned with a vengeance.

Ironically, one cure for those is to hold used tea bags under your eyes for a few minutes a day…

September 17 – Voting Tools

Are you certain you want to vote for this coming federal election in Canada?

Before I go, I make sure that I know where all the parties stand on major issues and who their candidates are, in terms of political history. I'll be the first to say that I don't know nearly enough about politics in Canada to make a perfect choice, but I do know enough not to just vote blindly based on hearsay or because I liked a particular party previously.

I've often wished for some kind of tool to help this process, and this year my wish has been granted!

Isidewith.com is a free, anonymous Canadian site that quizzes you on all the current political issues, asking you to weight your answers in order of priority. The site then tells you which Canadian political party your views most lean towards. So useful!

I was quite amused to find how much I agreed with my chosen political party. After asking me dozens of questions, the site stated that I had a 94% match with one of the major political parties, not unsurprisingly the one that I plan to vote for.

One can only hope that a majority of Canadians decide to show up this year to oust Harper, to stop the sweeping stupidity and greed he has shown in his time in office.

September 18 – Nerf!

My Nerf arrived today!

A few weeks ago, I found a pair of Nerf guns on eBay that were exactly what I needed for the cosplay my girlfriend and I are planning for spring of the coming year. Today I picked up the package from the post office and this is what I found inside:

As you can see, the guns disassemble quite handily, meaning that their components can be easily adjusted to fit our cosplay needs. While I still had to order several components from other guns from eBay this week in order to fully flesh out the required parts list, I anticipate that the overall cost will be far less than buying a pair of resin kits of the pulse rifles. Here’s what I hope our end result will resemble:

After the guns had arrived, I took a little time to check out various Nerf auctions both locally and across Canada. Toronto and Vancouver had a fair bit, but overall very few Nerf guns are for sale currently, which I find puzzling as they are quite popular.

However, that popularity also means that there's a steady supply of cheap Nerf guns out there and that put the bug in my head about perhaps starting a local Nerf gaming league here. I spent a while thinking about that as I browsed this wonderful Best Of Nerf Guns list...

But, more on all that in a later post!

September 19 – Discoveries!

Today was pretty productive: I sorted, organized and condensed a whole lot of things in the apartment over the course of the afternoon, tossing out a lot of boxes and…

Wait, what's that I’ve found here?

*unrolls the poster from the back of his closet*

Whoa! I had totally forgotten that I have this:

After I had carefully unrolled the poster, I realized that it was an original theatrical print and not a reproduction! While not exceedingly rare, vintage posters of The Dark Crystal are not easy to come by nowadays, 30 years after its release. This one, if you look at the picture closely, has a release number in the bottom right corner, indicating its one of a series printed for the natural release. As well, the colors on the poster are still quite vivid, indicating that it's is likely a product of the stone lithography method of poster printing, which gives lasting results and would explain why the colors are vibrant after all these years.

I'm quite excited to have found this sitting in my closet and I do believe I recall some of the details where I got it from before moving to BC. At the time I didn't fully appreciate what a find it was, as I do now, and I'll be thinking of how best to display it here inside a protective frame.

Now I just have to find some wall space…

September 20 – DVD Captures!

At last, it works! It works!!!

For years now, I've been trying to find a digitizing solution for my somewhat sizable collection of movies and TV series on DVD and Blu-ray. It's a pain to haul out the DVD case, pop it into the player and navigate the menus, as well as fact that you can't take those same movies or TV episodes on the road to watch them wherever or whenever you want to. Given my current time restraints, it would be nice to be able to watch something in stages from both home and work. I do have that capability with my Plex media software package, but it can only play media that has already been digitized onto my home server.

Enter the result of one last Google search for a solution...

Having given up trying to find a solution for my main computer, I had the brilliant idea( if I do say so myself )of putting my somewhat-idle Windows Home Server( WHS, used mainly for backing up my other computers )to use. And… presto! A solution!

As you can see, I've been BUSY today...!

Using MyMovies on my WHS, as well as an external DVD drive, I can simply pop in a desk and walk away: the software will cleanly rip the entire disc in the space of about 30 minutes. When it's done, the disc is ejected automatically, I load another and the process repeats, saving all the data onto my WHS server neat-as-you-please and allowing me to use my main PC without interruption.

I can't emphasize enough what an incredible time-saver this is!

Seeing as I have approximately 4TB( 4,000 gigabytes ) of free space on my WHS, there's enough  for me to digitize my entire video collection with room to spare, not to mention any future additions that I might wish to make available from my server. The video quality isn't superb, but it's eminently watchable and I can always do a few things to compress the file size further or otherwise modify the video data to clean it up, if necessary.

For now, I have 21 days in the no-limit Free Trial of MyMovies to digitize much my collection as possible. Seeing as it's a completely hands-off process, I can do whatever else I like or need to while waiting for the disc to eject.

Perfection.

In spending most of my Saturday afternoon tidying things up, I managed to make both my arms ache abominably, which matched the headache which has dogged me since Friday due to the weather change. Thankfully, both problems will abate with time, so I'm hoping that by the end of the workday tomorrow - if I don't abuse my wrists, that is - I'll be back to my normal don’t-pick-up-heavy-objects-or-strain-your-arms self again. I am inordinately pleased with all the things I did get accomplished this week and while not a lot of them were writing related, enough added up to bring me a feeling of satisfaction by the time the weekend was finished.