Piclens for Mozilla Firefox

I found this pretty cool plugin called piclens for the Mozilla Firefox browser that has a pretty neat museum gallery presentation interface for you to review photos stored in flickr, picasa, photobucket and a few others (unfortunately not Phanfare). Actually, it gets old after a while because there isn't much to it but it's a lot of fun to play around with for a while, very state of the art stuff. Disregard watching my clips below, I happened upon this one on YouTube that narrates and everything.

I know there are software tools out there that allow you to capture screen activity and I will research that and perhaps update the link below as the video clip I've captured isn't very crisp. But it at least gives an idea of how this thing works. The best part of course is that it's free. Once you install it (it will require a bounce of your current firefox sessions), all you need to do is get to one of these photo galleries on the internet (only works with Firefox, not with Windows Internet Explorer) and then click the little blue arrow button in the top right corner and away you go.



OK, so I found a new fun freeware software utility called Camstudio that lets you capture you screen activity (for training purposes and what not). It was discontinued in 2005, it seems Macromedia got involved and it became Robodemo. Then somehow Adobe got it and they now market a more advanced version called Captivate ($700). I haven't done a whole lot of research in this space beyond that, I read one feedback that preferred something called Camtasia ($300) in case anyone is interested...

I'm not sure if it was just my antiquated computer bogging down with the freeware recording software running concurrently capturing the hefty graphics of piclens, but the recording is as choppy as the actual experience was running the two of them together. I read someone slam robodemo for capturing all the lags. In any case, if I were to do this for a living, I'd want a monster fast computer and professional software that would produce a more smooth end result. So, it seems you get what you pay for. BTW, my Camstudio .avi file is 1/10 the size of my video w/audio file (and much more crisp image resolution). I don't like the choppy though and you should not see that in real life use of piclens if your computer is half decent. My dinosaur did fine without Camstudio running concurrently as witnessed in my video clip above!

A day in the life of Greg Baker (yawn)

My schedule is a little crazy, I have 2 jobs. I work four 10 hour days during my regular job (Tuesday-Friday), often working from home on Tuesdays. I work 24 hours on the weekend for the 2nd job, 7am-11pm on Saturdays and 11pm-7am Sunday-Monday. I sleep on Monday 8am-2pm. Fortunately, neither job is stressful and in fact, both jobs are rather enjoyable. The weekend job involves just being there in case of emergencies, and so I have a lot of "free" time. I was able to get my Master's degree making good use of that time. They've locked the firewall down pretty tight now so it's getting harder and harder to do things online during my "free" time.

I have family night on Mondays, racquetball challenge nights on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I try to take care of church work on Wednesdays and Fridays should be date night but we don't get out too frequently because to take Isabelle is hard and to wait until she gets to bed makes getting up early on Saturday mornings difficult. So it's usually a movie with the kids or just hanging out. After church on Sundays, I usually always get a good solid nap and then hanging out with the family or doing my home teaching. My biggest challenge, trying to fit in a little more fitness time into my schedule. 2 nights of racquetball a week isn't satisfactorily balancing out the ice cream and sweets intake during the week...










So, my typical day has me awakening at 5:20 to catch a 6:15 train. My ride to the train station (including walk from parking to platform) is about 15 minutes. My train ride is about 40 minutes barring problems, which I usually spend reading something (Yes, I took that picture of myself on the train pretending to read, wanted to capture "reality" as best I could).



My trip from my connecting lot where I pick up my trusty 1994 Camry (it's ugly but that's OK since it lives out in the elements) with 220K miles on it to my office is 15-20 minutes. I typically catch the 5:23pm train home, usually too tired to read for too long so I eventually listen to music and try to get a power nap and arrive home at around 6:30pm. I'd say half the year I'm arriving to and leaving from work in the dark. But again, fortunately that's only 3 days a week. Saturdays are spent almost entirely in a darkened room with a usual brief run at lunch to pick up food.

My 1995 Turbo M3

My first experience with BMWs was a mint condition 1999 328iS. The car handled amazingly, easily sticking through hard turns at 40-50mph, attributable to the expensive sticky Yokohamas and the highly precise German engineering in the M sports suspension. The only thing it lacked was horse power. It looked tougher than it was, and while it would smoke a Vette through a winding course, it had little raw top end power. People pulling up next to me expected more, which lead me to expect more. This drove me to want an M3. I didn't lose a dime on the 328iS, it was that clean (in retrospect, I should have just kept it).

When I saw it, I knew it had to be mine, a 1995 M3 Turbo with only 63K miles on it and a newer larger 3.2L engine (the 1995 was the only e36 M3 that had the 3.0 liter engine, the 96-99 had the 3.2). Not only that, it had an after market turbo that boosted the horse power by 50-60hp so theoretically it should be much faster than a stock M3, and it was. With nearly $30K just in after market parts (see the spreadsheet in this link), this thing was burning through custom catalytic converters every 2 years (at least that's how frequently I needed to have emissions testing), which translated into a good $1000+ each time. The fun factor was definitely there, but got undermined every time I had to go to Cathleen for the unbudgeted repairs. It doesn't take long to understand what you have to do when dental work has to be postponed so we can pay for Greg's fun factor. I sold the car October 30, 2007, after owning it for 2 1/2 years. I'm now hunting for something fun but slightly more reserved. (All you ever wanted to know about M cars)

I love the uniqueness of the clown shoe M Coupe, which is the same chassis as the e36 M3, underneath is the same suspension and motor. I hated the style at first, but it grew on me more and more, especially since I've only seen 2-3 on the road in my lifetime. I have a tendency toward the non-conformist. I also like the M Roadster, they're pretty common though. The only problem with these, they are two-seaters (not very practical for a man with 9 kids). My justification, I spend 98% of my driving time in my car alone. So, as long as we have another larger 3rd car (we do, a 2000 Volvo S80), we should be OK, right? Plus, I have a 4door 1994 Camry as my train car... The 1999-2000 had the 240hp engine, the 2001-2002 has he 330hp engine. The M Coupes and Z3 Coupes are pretty rare, they just come up for sale on occasion, I of course want the 2002. The Z3 Roadster is the slower cousin to the M Roadster and the Z3 Coupe is likewise to the M Coupe, both of which share the 328iS chassis/motor. I'd even gladly take one of these slower Z3 Coupe cousins, but they too are hard to find. The James Bond GoldenEye movie is what put the Roadster on the map. Cathleen does not want me to be 007, but prefers me to drive a low maintenance, high fuel efficiency Japanese car.