Sitting in the basement office I picked up a kaleidoscope and wondered if I could take a picture with it. Putting the settings on manual, I was able to adjust light and focus to pull it off. The light sources are
1. a laptop showing Mac 5 (That’s Pope JP II inserting a letter at the Wailing Wall)
2. a desk lamp
3. a window looking into the back yard. For about 30 days, the sun sets and lights up the backside of our house, so sun rays actually come in the basement window for 15 minutes or so.
Here is a fun illusion. Make sure you do not have your mouse over the picture so that you can see the dot on the color negative.
I have all the pieces to convert VHS tape to DVD with our iMac and its iMovie, iDVD, DVD writer, and plenty of hard disk space. The only thing I lack is the analog to digital video converter, which I just ordered: a Datavideo DAC-100.
The article that recommended the DAC-100 gives step by step tips on converting VHS tapes to DVDs. It ends telling how to properly take care of VHS tapes, even after converting. So I’m thinking “leaving them around on the floor in the basement to be stepped on” is not recommended.
Keep your burned DVDs in jewel cases, and store them in a cool, dark place. And consider stashing a couple of backups in a safe-deposit box.
And what about those old videotapes? If you’re like me, you can’t bear to throw them out, even if you’ve digitized them. To prolong their life, rewind them and store them vertically (like a book), with the full reel on the bottom. Store them in a cool, dry location. Fast-forward and then rewind the tapes once a year.
Including one or more photos in a blog entry is a little tricky, but once you’ve done it a few times, it is easy. You may want to print out this tip to use the first few times.
Flickr is a site that allows you to store and share photos. It was acquired by Yahoo. You can create multiple albums. There is a neat way to create a “Flickr Badge” to put on another website that leads to one of your photo albums:
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