Canon Warranty Repair, File/Video Sharing Sites, Lossy Flash

Canon Warranty Repair

The Firewire on my Canon Zr500 camcorder works great. Or did work great. Or actually works great again.

Anyway, one day while using it (without going into specifics) - the Firewire stopped working. I even tried it on anther computer and with another Firewire card on my computer, and different Firewire cords. Nothing.

I was just sick. But fortunately, unlike computers and many other electronics nowadays; Canon has a good year-long warranty on their electronics.

After a quick look through the manual for warranty info I made a quick call to Best Buy (where my wife had bought the camcorder at Xmas time) - just to see what they say about warranty repairs. No extended warranty through them; so I had to send it to Canon themselves..

I called the number listed in the manual and got the location of the nearest Canon repair center, along with a reminder to include in the box the camcorder would be in: a) insurance b) a copy of my receipt c) my name, address, and contact numbers.

I dreaded sending it back, you always hear stories about people sending someone back for warranty repair; only to have the company tell them they damaged it themselves and it would be large $$ to have it repaired. I also dreaded the amount it would be.

Not long ago I had sent a dead laptop to a friend of mine in Toronto. He needed it desperately for parts and despite me sending it with no insurance and the cheapest rate it was still over $20 and it took weeks!

But the shipping turned out to be only $4.90 and with the insurance less then $10 over all. Not bad, not bad at all.

File/Video Sharing Sites, Lossy Flash

I'm not a real big fan of the video and file sharing sites that convert your video to Flash. It's lossy, there's no way to adjust the compression factor, and even if you try to counter it by uploading higher quality (i.e. LARGE) videos it still is negligible quality.

Sure, it's okay and sometimes necessary to keep storage space down and for faster transferring.

But when I want to show someone a fairly good quality vid I'd rather host it somewhere and embed it manually in the site or blog (like below, the WMV file is stored at Box.net). Or alternately provide a direct clickable ink to my original file stored somewhere - like this.

Launch in external player

Most video sharing sites like Youtube or Google Video and file sharing sites like divshare.com convert your vid to Flash and allow you to embed it in your blog or site. Easily done, but you loose quality and have no real control over it. Good for most purposes.

Maryann's Blog

My niece, Maryann, has started her own motivational quotes blog, check it out here. Leave her a quote if you have one!

Box.net Bookmarks Synchronizer

Box.net Bookmarks Synchronizer

Brian, an intern at Box.net, e-mailed me after reading my blog entry about the Scribefire Blogging addon.

He wanted me to know about Box.net's new Bookmarks Synchronizer addon for Firefox - just in case I might want to write about it on my Blog.

The addono synchronizes your Firefox bookmarks between the website and your browser, or multiple Firefoxes on various machines. And provides a good online backup for them also. You can also access the bookmark file from anywhere, manually.

Firstly, I checked out Box.net. I vaguely remembering seeing some references to it in a few newsletters I'm a member of.

Basically, Box.net has both free as well as paid storage for your files. You can upload docs, photos, files of all types. Then you can access them from where ever you are, no matter what browser, and even from your mobile phone. And they give you 1 gig of space and no bandwidth limits.

Sure, there's a number of sites like this. Hundreds, thousands maybe.

But there's a few things that this seems to have that sets it apart from some of the others - though there are some which have hodgepodges of the same features.

For one thing you can edit Word or Excel docs right online. You can also share your files with others and there's even a widget for your website or blog to allow others to download your files. You can e-mail files directly to your account, too. There's also an Open Office plugin, a Microsoft Office plugin, a file uploader, and a bunch of other stuff. I didn't check this out but they are there if I need them, and I'll probably check some of the former-mentioned options out at a later time.

Some pretty nice features, well-organized site, and easy to find everything.

Oh, and before I go any further - I'm not getting any benefits from reviewing their website or addon, just doing it for the fun of it.

Anyway, so I tried the Bookmarks Synchronizer - which you can get from the Firefox addon site here or direct from Box.net here.

It installs like any other addon (and is small - in case you; like me, have a bunch of addons and are always concerned about memory usage and browser speed).

After resetting Firefox and hitting TOOLS and ADDONS and clicking the OPTIONS for the synchronizer I get the following:

Not having an account at Box.net I clicked CANCEL, went back to the site, and signed up for a free 1 gig account (easily done). Once I was signed up I went back to the addon and entered my info in the above boxes. At that point I could either SAVE the bookmarks to the Box.net site or restore them to my Firefox, or Firefox on any computer (that has the addon installed).

After messing around with it for a few minutes I could see it worked exactly as advertised, fairly quickly (I have a LOT of bookmarks) and slickly (a little box pops up to let you know it's doing it's job, and what it's doing).

The next tab:


A few options here. Browse lets you browse for your bookmarks folder - just in case it's not in the standard place. I would guess that you could also use this to backup bookmarks from other Gecko-derived browsers, like K-Meleon - since they also use the same filename for bookmark files.

You can also have it automatically download your stored bookmarks from the Box.net website, and/or automatically upload your bookmarks when you close Firefox. It also will merge the bookmarks - good if you have the 'auto download' option on and don't want to overwrite any new bookmarks you have added.

The next tab (Help) gives you access to a button which you can click for online help. It takes you to their website for a quick little help page.

Here's a screenshot of their website, after I logged in and went to the folder holding the bookmarks (which is automatically created, of course):


Here you can access the bookmarks manually if you like, even download them directly; though it converts the bookmarks file to an .xml file instead of keeping it in the native .html form.

I guess my only quibble here would be that it would make the addon more useful if you could more easily access your bookmarks online without using the addon, if you wanted to. Say you're on someone else's computer or a public terminal and you just want look up a bookmark, without installing or using the addon or downloading the file - so you weren't putting any files on that particular computer. Maybe by not having the addon convert the bookmark file to a .xml or better yet - have both .xml and .html files available in the Box.net bookmarks older.

I guess the only other con is that I had a bit of long pause when I clicked the Help button in the last tab of the addon, but it worked after a few moments.

As mentioned - everything works as advertised. Nice addon.

Blogs, Friends, Clayton Car Show, the Environment, Indian River Conservancy trail, more Canon A570 IS, Scribefire Addon for Firefox

Blogs

I just can't see myself blogging and analyzing every strange bowel movement every single day of my life {SARCASM}.

I mean - I haven't actually seen the above chronicled but I'm sure multiple people have done so on numerous occasions. Gawk!

I've recently been enjoying using Flickr.com (as mentioned in an earlier entry) and some people do the same with pics. They have this 365 day thing. Kinda interesting, but along the same lines.

I guess to the student of psychology (or biology - if the above were the case); as well as the occasional odd stalker, delving that deeply into a stranger's (or a friend's) life would be of a certain fascination.

But I'm going to try to keep mine a bit more impersonal and more technically-oriented if possible. The entries won't be as often but I'd rather spare you the in-depth and likely excruciatingly boring details of any weird bodily function incongruities and such.


Friends/Clayton Auto Show/The Environment

The Clayton Car Show. Lots of cars, and people. BTW, the photo at left is just an amusing one I took - an Adirondack chair and table built on top of the bed cover of a classic truck.

Despite trying to be more environmentally conscious nowadays I still love the big musclecars and the old cars. They're part of our heritage, part of what made America great as well as a little piece of what still makes America great, as well as the human species.

I miss my hotrod (at right - '79 Olds Cutlass Salon, '77 403 Olds Rocket, etc etc - I won't bore you with the numerous details and money and work I put into it - great car, miss it every time I get into my Lumina), but on the other hand at this point in my life I'd rather have something more fuel efficient. Yet there are days I see a particularly nice older vehicle and yearn for something more then my Lumina Euro. A nice piece of engineering that's also fun and powerful is something that I can appreciate.

Yea, Human Ingenuity - both on a large scale (mass-invention and mass-production of the autos and auto evolution over a short period of human history) as well with the ability of individuals to improve on something that thousands have worked at creating. And despite environmental issues we all have to have the occasional thing that we enjoy in life.

That's one of the things that environmentalists and those with agendas forget - that we need to find a happy medium ground. That life is too short to live in mud huts and skimp and scrap for each erg of electricity. There needs to be a happy medium.

And of course; in the Clayton area - I saw a lot of another extreme. Lots of people with signs that say "No Wind Turbines" etc. I live near large power lines and a radio tower - I WISH for a nice big wind turbine. No EM fields, clean and productive, a good meshing of technology with the environment. And a nice comforting white noise sound. Unfortunately some birds and bats also blast themselves all over them. (Photo at right from the Maple Ridge Wind Farm, Lowville, NY - more of my photos of the wind farm at Flickr.)

I read somewhere that if we had taken all the money spent on the Iraq war we could have added some sort of alternative energy sources for every home in the US. What a waste that we have to put so much money into destruction.

I also saw an old friend there yesterday; a guy I'd been best friends with for many years when I was younger. We picked up girls together, wasted days, had fun, drove around a lot, etc. The type of thing when you do when you're younger and have less obligations.

Over the last decade I've seen him about as many times as I can count on one hand. Human relationships are funny - I still consider him a friend but if we now ended up spending time with each other every day we'd probably find that we are significantly different now. I noticed the differences in us right away, I'm sure he did too.

But it's one of the great things, as well as the sometimes-downfall of humankind - that we can still be friends despite our differences. I have friends and friendly acquaintances who have fundamental ideas so different then mine that it amazes me that we can even be civil. Yet I'm friends and on good terms with these people.

And then, the other and opposite hand, you have the people who were good friends but who turn on you for the smallest and most unreasonable thing. Whether it's hard feelings for imagined problems, drunkenness due to work and family pressures, or what-have-you. Oh, now I am getting personal...

Humans are funny creatures, that's for sure.

Indian River Conservancy trail
I stumbled across a couple interesting trails, off the seasonal Burns Road outside of the Redwood area (I sometimes wander on the way home after doing some work for clients).

Yes, I had my trusty GPS this time - 44'19.599N -75'44.450W (Still have to work on learning more functions of the GPS, so many and so much potential I haven't tapped yet).

These are apparently on state DEC land but the trails themselves (as well as the parking spaces) are created and maintained by the Indian River Conservancy. I couldn't find any website on them. But the trails look interesting, though some are very rough-looking. My trail page on it - click here.

I took a quick walk along one and at one point a cable of some sort was hanging across the trail just above head-height. After leaving and driving down the road I went by a house (with apparently no lines to National Grid ['National Greed' as my wife writes on the checks]). The cable seemed to go down and hill and into some solar panels. Wonder what the other end of the cables was powering at the top of the hill?

I also took a few shots of abandoned buildings on this road and the one leading to it. There was one old building far, far off the road and surrounded by high brush and woods. I would have loved to look at it closer, know the story behind it, etc. Fascinating stuff, and never enough time to do everything.

BTW, check out my Old Abandoned Buildings of Northern NY website if you like old buildings, I got lots of them!

More Canon A570 IS
Check out these two pics. I noticed this helicopter flying sideways nearby. Yea, it was windy but not THAT windy. It had some sort of device attached to it's side, which it seemed to be keeping pointed toward a large electric line that runs nearby. Camera, IR?

Anyway, I took a few shots at extreme zoom (full optical, full digital) not expecting a very good picture due to the above as well as the wind buffeting me back and forth and the overcast day, not to mention not wanting to mess with switching it off AUTO.

Surprisingly I got some pretty good pics, with a shutter speed good enough to capture the individual blades.

Scribefire Addon for Firefox
If you do a lot a lot of blogging, or even just occasionally, and you have the inkling and resources for yet another Firefox addon for Firefox check out Scribefire (formerly Performancing). It lets you blog from right inside a pane at the bottom of Firefox. Nice, though there are some idiosyncrasies that can be annoying. Overall real nice, though I do finishing up in Blogger itself (once I learn all the quirks I believe I will be comfortable enough with it to use it completely). Still working on figuring out how the API works for uploading.

Footbridge in Watertown #2, trail down to Black River, Kittens, Pool Table in an Aztek

Footbridge in Watertown, trail down to Black River, second post

Earlier this week I took my father to the doctor's for a routine procedure, so afterwards we made another pass by the footbridge off from Eastern Boulevard. This time the gate was open (last weekend was the whitewater kayaking event, I believe).

The bridge itself has a fine sheen of discoloring (rust?) all over it. The "island" it leads to has a fenced in area where you can look over the Black River, the plant on the other side along with the old walls and base of the original Eastern Boulevard Bridge.

There's also a (somewhat) steep walkway down to the rocks along the Black River. Here's some pics, a few more at my Flickr set.



Panorama from the stones. Taken with my Motorola Razr V3xx. A surprisingly good photo pano, taken with my cameraphone (forgot my Canon on this trip!).


The old bridge foundations.

The trail leading back up. Concreted stones. Nicely done, though maybe too steep for some people, probably slippery during wet times. More photos - my Flickr set.

Kittens are getting larger.

They're wandering around, playing with every other animal and thing they can find, and are developing their own little personalities.

Pool Table in the Aztek

We've fit pretty much everything into our 20005 Pontiac Aztek Rally Edition. The seats come out which makes for a large space, it seems none of the newer SUV's have seats that actually physically come out; just fold down.

Anyway, I didn't think this would fit but it did - a full size pool table.

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