Well.. I figure that this little web log of ours is as much about recording the small events of our own personal history-in-the-making as it is for providing an occasional 3 or 4 minute hit of entertainment for you brave souls who have subscribed to our foolishnesses. A year from now.. or two or three, as Patti & I age our way through our life together, we (meaning Patti and myself) can return to these old web journal entries of ours, hit the play buttons on these videos and sit back astounded at how young we looked way back then in 2006. (This is also a way of saying that some of our videos may not be all that entertaining and.. ahem, perhaps the one below may fall into this particular category.) Still, it is our history-in-the-making and boring or not, we're going to post 'em as they come out of our brains and camera. View this one at your own risk.. (of falling asleep).
Also..on a technical note, I have made some changes in the quality of our videos.
I've not been happy with all the "visual noise" and pixelization that occurs when trying to keep the video's file size down to a minimum for the benefit of those who do not have cable or DSL and are still on a telephone modem. I've bumped up the bit-rate of the movie which improves the visual quality of video but doing so also increases the file size which makes for impossible load-in times for all you modem users. I may increase the bit rate even more in the future.
The 4 minute video below is around 18MB .. a piece of cake for broadband users but by my calculations that makes it about a 9 or 10 minute stop-n-start ordeal to streamload for modem users. Nobody but my sister in Iowa has the patience to do that.
So then, having qualified both the technical and artistic value of the video in question (and future vids as well), I shall post the thing and let it stand or fall on it's own merits ..or lack of. :-) It's just us being goofy as we like to be.
And so.. last week Patti and I decided to shake off the winter dust, jump into the car and drive to Ocean City for an overnighter.. We were almost fooled by the warmth and cherry blossums and nice weather here in DC. As you will see, spring had not quite arrived at the beach just yet.. chilly.. windy.. OK to be out and about on the boardwalk, but I am damn glad we took our coats!
It was perfect timing on our part while walking the boardwalk to come across a photo shoot of about a dozen Miss USA contestants creating an ad for a jewelry store. Too bad it was so cold.. bikinis are much more fun to gawk at.
