All I Needed Was Sleep!

By 4:30am this morning, I was wide awake, but I did start my going to bed preparations at 9pm, a couple of hours earlier than usual. And now, 7:30am, I finished posting a slew of posts to Shiloh Musings. The third wash is in the machine, and a bit later, I'll hang them all up.

I have lots to do. My new Israeli passport came in the mail, and I picked it up the other night, even though the "post office" wasn't officially open. G-d was good to me. The woman in charge was on the same bus going home, and when I asked her when exactly it would be open the next day, she offered to open it on the spot and give me the passport.

Next is to make an appointment for my US passport.

I also have to finish signing up for unemployment, which I should have done months ago, but it took a long while to get all the stuff from "former job." I've been signing in monthly as "looking for work." So I'm "in the system."

I ought to start getting rid of all my English teaching books, since I don't have any private students, and I can't see myself going back to work. I don't think anyone wants to hire me, and I really don't miss the job. Actually, I'm surprised at how little I miss it.

My new hobby is volunteer pr for A Package From Home. I've been wondering about the various online video options. I had trouble setting them up on youtube, so I got them on yideoz, and now I heard of WEJEW from Sharon Katz. Any words of wisdom from you readers?

Hesh's Mystery

Just a reminder that our "virtual" life

can disappear as if it never existed.

Hesh, of Frum Satire, just discovered that his youtube account has vanished. It's not funny.

A number of years ago, I invested lots of time writing a cookbook. And a number of people also invested time going over things for me. And then one morning, when I turned on the computer, I found a blank screen. The infamous Chernobyl virus wiped out our hard drive. I was so upset that I couldn't reproduce all my hard work. And now, when I work on something important, I also save on one of those sandisk things. Actually, that's where a copy of the next Havel Havelim is waiting, just in case. Yes, it's almost finished. Stay tuned. About Hesh's mystery, I don't know if he has additional copies, but I've become so paranoid that I have two copies of my youtube stuff. I copy my pictures onto a CD and then from the computer into one of those "portable storage things" which you need two "ports." I'm no tech expert, but I feel a little safer doing all that. Of course, they're all in the same part of the house, which is rather foolish, but...

Good luck, Hesh!

Tech-Type Updates

First of all, there's now a blog called The Kosher Cooking Carnival. It promotes the carnival and is run by WebAds. That means that KCC hosts should see more traffic, making it more worthwhile to host.

The next month available is February, so if you're interested, please let me know. And don't forget to submit a post for entry in the next Kosher Cooking Carnival. It will be hosted by Ill call Baila.

And now, something a little more "techie." I've found that it takes much too much time to upload my little videos on youtube, and frequently, the uploading process just falls down and dies. I noticed that the laptop, which is a bissel more reliable, has a firefox icon in addition to the explorer. So, you guessed it, I tried firefox. I was amazed that it uploaded the videos in a fraction of the time. Now I have it uploading some stills onto Photobucket, do people still use that term?

Bli neder, that means it's not a vow, I'll be posting some great pictures later.

Now on with my day!

Security First

Now that I've discovered the "video" on my camera and have a YouTube account, I'm having fun with the new medium, but...

Yes, a big but. I have all these cute mini-movies of my grandchildren and no way to send them other than YouTube, but YouTube isn't really secure. When I post pictures of the grandkids, I try not to make them very recognizable. They're the "bad" pictures according to the artistic standards my parents hammered into me my whole life. Outside of mailing cds, what can I do? The files are too heavy for email.

Playing With YouTube

After two years of owning my Cannon A620, I've finally begun using its video, the moving picture option. You can see one of my movies here. It's nothing very profound, just a busy Jerusalem street scene.

In terms of "art," it will never replace stills. Whenever my eyes wander, I find myself "composing" pictures, on what to focus etc. Movies, video--that's something else.

Photos, especially black and white, last forever, decades, a century. In our digital world, most of our pictures and movies are virtual, not real. You can't touch them. Nobody is going to put a cd or memory chip under their pillow or in their wallet.

Many people report that photos they've stored in various internet "services" have disappeared. Periodically, I print some important ones. If I can't hang the picture on the wall, make an album or look at them on Shabbat and Jewish Holidays, when it's forbidden to use electrical gadgets, what's the point? There's no reality in their existence.

Today the sky is pale grey, not photogenic at all. It may be a washout for all of the Succot plans. There's rain "in the air," at least the odor of those early winter, dust-cleaning rains. If there's something worth filming, and I succeed, I'll youtube.