BB FANS

Today I won the cup back in the Photography class at the local event.

The picture was a Peacock Butterfly on a Pink Delight Buddleia.

Last night and the early hours of this morning (Sunday) was spent editing and converting skating routines from Saturdays Junior Mens Long Programs from Courchevel France .And then uploading and posting the links to the videos on the Figure Skating Videos forum.

So that's around twice the video length (Approx. 7 Minutes each) to convert to a Divx AVI and around 14 Minutes to upload to Swoopshare. And there were 12 routines.
I did try and get one converting while another was uploading but still it took quite a few hours. Average video filesize was 78MB for DVD size and quality. But Uploading was only 89KB/Second ! Think you have to sign-up for faster upload speeds.

Congrats on winning the cup back yesterday, Larry.

(I'm not able for the technicalities of your video editing, but I've no doubt they are extremely impressive!)

Thanks.

Here's a link to the routine from Nan Song (CAN) 78.3MB
They are all Junior level in this event.
The next 3 - 4 months will be very busy with one event after another so the task of finding TV coverage begins again.

Wow, that was great to watch.

It's been a while since I've seen skating/ice dancing.

Reminds me of my childhood. No, I've never been on the ice, but watching the skating on the old black and while television was a major highlight. And then I'd try to do my own version...without ice, on the grey kitchen tiles.

Pay a visit to http://www.fsvids.net
Here you'll find all the skating you could every imagine. Both past and present. You might be able to find those skaters you watched in your childhood.
There's a good series of videos that make up the history of women's figure skating on there.

The videos are recorded by the members from various sources and then uploaded. Most are then available for at least 30 days unless re-posted.

In my day it was Jayne & Chris and Robin Cousins .Katarina Witt ,and Scott Hamilton .I think Jayne and Chris's rival was Bukin but I can't remember the full partnership.

I really wish I'd gone on to skate on ice after my first encounter with the plastic stuff aged 14 as who knows what it might have led to. I was the only one who skated unaided from the first step with the instructor who thought I'd skated before. Back then before any of the motorbike crashes I had near perfect balance.
It took me a little longer 25 years later to skate away from the barriers on ice for the first time but still less than two minutes.

Now if I could win a good amount on one of the lotteries I could spend every morning skating rather than having to work.

Today I discovered how to get Net Transport to capture streaming video so have been recording the Ice Skating From here.
If the link doesn't work then enter mms://livewm.orange.fr/direct-evenementiels
into either Real Player or Windows Media Player.
It's currently on a loop of around 3 hours with the Gala and Ice Dance from the Courchevel Junior events from last week. The loop is reported to run today and tomorrow so if you want to watch some good quality skating coverage then give this a go it's 640 x 480 696Kbps.

I spoke on the phone to a friend in America .

Apparantly, for $10 dollars over there, you can buy a call card that has over 200 minutes on it for international calls on it...


...Quick question, is there anything similar over here?

I'd try going into the Post Office Bluto, they can often help with things like that.

Today had a rather difficult job to do but it is over now, thank goodness.

Today I bought / ordered my Niece a New Digital camera.
The spec looks better then my Digital SLR for less than a quarter than mine cost 3 years ago.
x12 optical Zoom 10MP plus a host of excellent built in functions that'll make it easier to get some fantastic results. I think my 300mm Macro /Tele lens cost more.

I added a tripod ,case and a 8GB SDHC card.
I'll have a play with the camera when it arrives and set it up for highest quality in every mode and will get her rechargable batteries and a charger. I'll make sure she has two sets of batteries so she doesn't get caught out if they go flat at the wrong time.

I am sure she will love that

It's a Fujifilm FinePix S1000fd.
If I'd thought about it earlier I'd have ordered it via the link on the forum but it was too late by the time I remembered. But Amazon seems to be the cheapest source at present.

It's big brother with x18 optical looks interesting but is around £80 dearer so any ideas will have to wait a month or two.

Looks good.

That looks like an ace gift larry, am sure she will really appreciate it.

This evening got the first time in a while to just chill a bit which was very nice indeed! Managed to damage myself on Sunday night quite badly so the rest will help it as well cos bashing wheelchairs off it many times a day at work certainly isn't

Today I took trifles into work as it's my Birthday tomorrow.
The giant one went down very well with most people having seconds and thirds.
When I say giant it had 2 pints of sugar free jelly ,1 1/2 Strawberry rolls cut into slices for the base. Then fruits of the forest on top of that. Then 2 pints of Aunt-Besses Custard with a bar and a half of Dreamy white Chocolate dissolved into the custard to thicken it. Then another pint of thick regular custard on that followed by two large tubs of Creme Fresh with grated White chocolate on the top.
It worked well as you couldn't taste the chocolate and the roll slices absorbed the flavours from the jelly and the fruit.

The second one was enough for one and was a slimming version for one of the ladies who I knew wouldn't have eaten any of the other one because of her diet.