Ryan McFarland

Earl protecting his noggin

Originally uploaded by zieak

Earl is modeling one of the skate helmets we have at Zoom. I’m sure if you don’t know Earl that you’re impressed by his beard. Good. Earl is planning on entering the World Beard and Mustache Championships next spring. It will be in Anchorage. I’m thinking i’d like to go too. It will coincide with the Iditarod.

Flickr announced that you can now upload videos up to 90 seconds long if you’re a pro member. I thought I’d give some brief impressions comparing the Flickr video service to YouTube. Here’s a video i uploaded to Youtube a while ago…

I like that on myspace you can see a list of the sites that link to your video. Another nice feature is the number of views your video has.

And I just uploaded the video to Flickr. It gives you a progress bar while the video uploads so you know how long you’ll be waiting. After the upload and processing you can then embed the video…

I really like that there isn’t a Flickr ad on the corner of my video like YouTube has. I also love the way the status bar fades in and out depending on the cursor presence.  You also can easily watch the video full screen.

At the end of the Flickr video it provides a link to my profile, option to comment and even a share this icon. Finally, next to the link to my Flickr profile is a text link to Flickr.

I foresee switching all my videos over… now…which one’s default code validates better with my doc type?YouTube has 6 markup errors and Flickr has 4.

When do we get spring?

Originally uploaded by zieak

I woke this morning to a few inches of snow on the ground. It’s still coming down. But there are crocus in bloom!

Friday was a going away party for Orin. He’s moving to Sitka to start a pizza business. Because he works so much he hasn’t been to our place for a FFF in quite a while. This one turned into FFFF (Formal Finger Food Friday) when Mike, Josh, and Earl showed up dressed in suits. I went upstairs and changed of course.

Last Saturday I was in bed working on the computer. Having a laptop is a true luxury isn’t it? Anyway, Hex settled into my left armpit and after a while Yeti wanted to sleep on my chest. He slid off and right onto little Hex who took it like it happened a few times a day.

Peerflix sent out an email to members yesterday…

Effective April 23, 2008 Peerflix is discontinuing the Marketplace and DVD buy/sell/trade portions of Peerflix.com. While the Peerflix.com web site will be available beyond April 23, 2008, you will no longer be able to buy, sell, send or receive DVDs on Peerflix as of that date. While we have made considerable investments in our marketplace platform over the past four years, unfortunately the escalating costs of operating the marketplace do not make that business viable at this juncture. As we move out of the DVD marketplace business, we are focusing our energy and resources on building the Peerflix Media Network which is now the web’s fastest growing vertical movie network.

The Peersafe Protection Program will also be terminating effective April 23, 2008 meaning that you will no longer be able to make any Peersafe claims starting April 23, 2008. So, if you have DVDs that you have been holding on to but were planning to send at some point, now’s the time! If your Trade Cash account balance is greater than $10 and you would like to cash out your remaining Trade Cash balance, you must do so before April 30, 2008. To request a cash out of your Trade Cash, please log in to Peerflix.com and click “My Account” in the upper right corner, then click the “My Cash” tab and then click on the “Request Cashout” button and follow the indicated steps. As of April 30, 2008 you will no longer be able to request any Trade Cash payments from Peerflix and your Trade Cash will immediately expire and be forfeited. All cash out requests remain subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Peerflix Service Policies and will be charged a $10 processing fee.

Peerflix was neat because you could trade your DVDs in by sending them to someone that wanted one and then you would have a credit to request one. At first postage was paid by the person mailing the disc but eventually the fee for postage was added to the exchange fee and it was included on the “envelope” that you printed out to mail the DVD. Eventually they moved from a 1:1 ratio for exchanges to a dollar value associated with a disc. If you sent one to someone then you were given a credit based on the price of the disc. If you bought one you would use your credit by requesting a movie. They allowed people to cash out their credit if you had over $100 accumulated. I have a $34 balance which i can now cash out for $24. So long Peerflix.

At first Cena and i used this system to trade in movies we had but didn’t want any more for things we did want to see. (If we couldn’t get any value out of selling them on Amazon of course.) Then when they shifted away from Peerbucks (or was it Peerbux?) and to a true dollar value we saw that we could make a little money by shipping things off but not requesting any. We set notification rules for our yahoo email accounts that whenever we had a notification that someone wanted a movie on Peerflix then yahoo would send us a text message. Plenty of sleepy mid-night scrambles to try and claim a movie to send off before other Peerflix users claimed it. It is time to pull the movies i have listed on Peerflix and move them to Amazon (one which was formerly worth only $3 was now worth $13) or pass them off on friends.

I spent today stomping around DC some more.  It was another nice day (although yesterday was overcast and rained).

Last night i watched Doomsday in the theater a few blocks from the hotel.  Unfortunately i took a route there that was about 3 miles out of the way.  I’m learning that the shoes i have been wearing just are not built for long hours on paved paths.

I’m also really into craft. In fact, back in the early 90’s when i was Northeast Region Chief of the Order of the Arrow “craft” was one of my buzzwords when we were planning one of the national conferences. I would say it very nasally.

This is a closeup of a banner on the outside of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Renwick Gallery. The full banner says “American Craft” and is hanging vertically on the outside of the brick building. Sadly, when i went back today to go take a look at the exhibit the outside banner had been changed.

I’m a fan of words and text.  I love signs and textures.  I also like thrift ships and lately have been trying to be extremely thrifty with my use of my money.  So this picture of part of one of the signs of the Office of Thrift Supervision is nice.  Remember my other Office of Thrift Supervision picture of a sign that’s just around the corner?

I saw a string of photos that someone had made using toys, postcards, and money in the foreground of photos of famous places. I’m imitating that with a few pictures in D.C. and also did it one time in Cambodia at Angkor Wat.