Saturday, November 12, 2011

Day 697

I shop at Sam's Club frequently. It's definitely not my favorite store, but prices are low. The irritating thing about Sam's it that once you get used to buying something, they package it in a larger container and make you buy even more. Instead of buying two bottles on Windex, you have to buy three. Almost every week, something gets less convenient to buy. Today, I needed to get butter, and instead of the normal boxes with four sticks of butter to a pound, they just packaged the butter in giant one pound slabs. You had to buy four of these slabs at a time. The huge mounds of butter wouldn't even begin to fit on a butter dish. Who needs this much butter? I passed on this item and went on to the next thing on my list: glucosamine chondroitin pills. I had to buy two large jars. Much to my chagrin, I found that I already had glucosamine when I got home.

When the shopping and laundry was done, I experimented with my editing software to see if it was going to be easier to edit files from my new video camera in Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer. Final Cut seemed the clear winner. This may be because I know Final Cut backwards and forwards, while I'm still learning to use Media Composer. On the other hand, Final Cut Pro may be easier to edit with, because it transcodes the AVCHD files to ProRes, while Avid tries to edit them directly. I don't think my computer is fast enough to edit AVCHD files directly.

We're still having spectacular sunsets. Tonight, the dogs and I got quite a show on our evening walk. The sky seemed like it was on fire. It was almost like that scene in The Poison Sky episode of Dr. Who where the earth's atmosphere burns. If the dogs would actually stay put while I told them to stay, I could have gotten a few more pictures. With squirrels to chase and strong smells everywhere, I'm lucky to get any clear images at all. The iPhone doesn't help matters either, since there is no control over shutter speed. At dusk, most iPhone pictures are blurry anyway.

Tomorrow is Pet Fair. I'll be taking video footage of the event from noon through 4 PM. This is an event for kids, so I'll probably have plenty of pictures of bounce houses, face painting, and children holding puppies. Hopefully, it won't rain.

Jada is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day