Down the mountain full of snow with the sun at my and I stop to take a photo. The photo to remind me of a wonderful day and a wonderful time and how great mother nature can be. Shadows on the freshly groomed trails.
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A great day for skiing
It is so cool to be able to go skiing in shorts. What a great day on the mountain.
Time for a climb?
Just thinking back to a fun climb on Mt. Theilson. It was a good day and I was in good shape. Time to recreate that feat? Here are the photos from it:
DVD Ripping Guide Coming
Just a quick note to remind myself to blog about what I am investigating. Currently I am looking at what it takes to rip my DVDs. I like having them on my PC so they are available via my Media Center interface. All my movies without having to worry about the actual disks.
Last night I spent some time messing with DVDFab Platinum to find the right settings to get a single file that renders in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. The nice thing is that I don’t have to use separate software to handle the encryption because DVDFab handles that. However, I still have not found the right settings to get the files onto the PC. I tried to use the VOB pass through setting but I cannot fast forward and rewind movies which is not cool. When I have everything worked out I will post the entire process here.
I did learn about one new piece of software, handbrake (from www.handbrake.fr), but it looks like I will need AnyDVD to get through the encryption. I will post results once I investigate.
Let’s get it started!
I am such a geek. I can’t help myself. I love learning new things, from new technology to a new word to new species of life I just love the excitement of learning something new. I also love to solve problems and help others. My intent is to marry all those things I love to do into this super blog where I can record all the things that I have done to help friends solve their problems. Mostly this is related to computer software problems but I don’t want to limit myself to just that. I will be looking into computer hardware, home theater, basic electronics among other things. Once I have my solutions published I can easily refer my friends to my blog when they need help. I am trying to fill in a hole where many people that offer tech support assume the users knows more than they actually do. I want my help to be easy to use, accessible and applicable to everyone’s lives.
So here are some things that I have been intending to do for a while. I am going to jot them down here with the hope that I won’t forget them and can refer back to this posting when I need an idea.
- How to rip my CDs to my PCs in a quick, efficient manner.
- How to get my songs on my PC onto my Zune.
- How to register your own domain with GoDaddy.com.
- How to use Windows Live Mail as your email provider using your personal domain.
- How to download and install the Windows Live Suite.
- How and why to create a Windows Live ID.
- How to import photos using Windows Live Photo Gallery.
- How to setup Windows Live Mail as your email client.
- How to tag your photos using Windows Live Photo Gallery.
- How to create your own blog at WordPress.com.
- How to Windows Live Writer to easily post to your blog.
- How to setup your XBox 360 to view your photos on your Windows XP or Windows Vista computer.
- How to use a newsgroup to get help with a Microsoft Product.
- How to get your DVDs on your Zune.
- How to edit commercials out of TV shows recorded on Windows Vista Ultimate Media Center PC.
- How to create your own website.
- How to create a logo.
- Create a movie
I am sure there is more for me to add but that is all for now.
How do you make a logo?
I am not talking about how you draw it. I can get around in MS Expression Design or Adobe Illustrator but what I want to explore is how I do I make a good meaningful logo for my web site that ties into then name of the site and embodies the purpose for the web site. With that in mind I went searching for a book or web site with helpful information.
The books I found so far are more about branding:
Killer Brands by Frank Lane
Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon
Killer Brands has a lot of neat stories of how a brand can make a company great and how a great company can make a not so good brand recognizable but not much on how to create an icon.
Primal Branding takes a look at how to connect to people by going back to their primal instincts. It was more focused on creating a brand but it had some things that were good to consider. There were 7 steps to creating a brand:
- The Creation Story
- The Creed
- The Icons
- The Rituals
- The Pagans, or Nonbelievers
- The Sacred Words
- The Leader
These steps were interesting and of course I took to "The Icons" step right away. I will post more about what I found later.
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