Outside the Bounds

Well, trying to get the two-minutes-or-less video out the door today. Finished production last night. Typing without sentence subjects due to having only had a couple sips of coffee so far. (...shlirk...) Ahh, that's better.
Anyway, it was a stretch of my technological capabilities. I learned how to narrate a PowerPoint and also turn it into a Flash video so that someone can view it on Windows Media Player or whatever their choice of video viewer may be. Now I'm trying this website called YouSendIt. A friend recommended it for sending large files. You basically upload a large file, it sends the recipient an email saying it's on their server, and they go download it. Voila! No email backup waiting for a huge file to download, or wondering if it ever made it through SPAMblocker.
Speaking of trying new things, has anyone else tried OpenOffice? It's a completely free, no-strings-attached office suite. It's compatible with all Microsoft Office programs, but it's NOT Microsoft. It has all the good stuff, like a PowerPoint producer (that's what I actually did the beginnings of the video on,) and Excel, Word, a spreadsheet, and I think Publisher, plus a couple other things. I really recommend checking it out here. I just got it recently so I haven't even tried out most of it, but I really like what I've seen so far.
Well, I can see the bottom of my coffee cup. Time for a refill.

the digital age

So today my plan is to record old (some are very old) sermon tapes into a digital format so I have an easily accessible way to make CD's to send to churches who might, or might not, think it impressive that I did not send them cassette tapes to listen to. Videos are out since not a single church I've preached in has a camcorder, nor do I myself. ...Well, my digital camera takes about 60 seconds of video at a time, but that obviously won't do.
I have this fancy setup so I can either 1) record the cassettes from the stereo onto my hard drive, or 2) re-record from a microphone onto the harddrive. I gave myself option #2 because I don't know how good the quality of some of those older cassettes is going to be. I think it's pretty cool, but then, I'm easily impressed by technology. P has offered to take L out for the afternoon in case I need the quiet to re-record any of them. (Is that cheating since I'm not preaching in front of a congregation? Somehow it seems strange to send out a sermon I preached to my reflection. On the other hand, I did preach it at least once to a congregation. Maybe that's what counts.)
Either way, I think it's really cool that I'll have voice recordings of my sermons on my computer.