Catching Up & Two Questions

: : First off, a belated blog birthday greeting to my sister Gail in Georgia. She is “GG”, Isabella’s grandmother, and she celebrated an unnamed/unnumbered birthday on Thursday. May this coming year hold only joy for you Gail!

: : Speaking of Isabella, she now weighs 8 pounds, 14 ounces or 4.03 kilograms and she remains bright as a new penny, endlessly entertaining and adorable.

: : Do any Apple computer aficionados know of a good personal health record or medical record template for Numbers? It could even be a Microsoft Excel template, which can be opened in Numbers and then saved as a Numbers file. I found a couple on-line, but none of them seem to be as sophisticated as the sort of templates which come with Numbers.

: : Are any of my readers using HD Radio? We just began learning about it and, despite its nascency, it seems pretty nifty. If we could reliably get the Boston Red Sox ballgames via HD Radio we would be all over it like white on rice!

: : Keith Olbermann has left MSNBC. I am unhappy about this. I like Keith. I liked his show Countdown. Even though there were times when he tipped over from determined to strident; from angry to wrathful; from funny to obsessively mocking, I always admired his courage, his convictions and his willingness to speak truth to power. I shall miss him.

: : So far, Downton Abbey is fabulous! The series is airing in four parts here in the States as part of Masterpiece on PBS. There is a lovely warmth, humor and humanity about the characters and the storylines. We have been captivated by it and are keeping our fingers crossed that it finishes well. And that the next round of episodes, filming this spring, will be equally wonderful.

: : I thought of the late Jeff Barnard many times this week. Each time we drove through Worcester we found folks walking in the street because sidewalks were unshoveled and we played dodge-cars with other vehicles because lanes of traffic suddenly disappeared under unplowed or poorly plowed snow. As we inched along, I couldn’t help but think that Jeff would have held those responsible up to his high standards and kept their feet to the fire.

: : It is now -9F / -23C! I’ll let that sink in. Yes, it is incredibly frosty. The sky is crystal clear as it usually is on such bitterly cold nights. The moon is just past full and the snow is glittering under its gentle light.

The (Sentimental) Geek That Is Me

Friday evening, the “Celebration of a Life” in honor of Ted Kennedy was broadcast on television. It was in the spirit of an Irish wake, but on a much larger scale. Held at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston, with Teddy’s flag draped casket right in front of the podium, there was singing, stories, laughter and tears. It truly was a celebration. And it was exactly the sort of thing that Teddy would have loved. All of the speakers did a good job of revealing additional facets of Senator Kennedy. It’s hard to say, but I think the funniest moments came from Senator John C. Culver. He and Teddy were on the Harvard football team together. Let’s just say the story of the salmon salad sandwiches coupled with a storm tossed sea was priceless. The singing was great, including the finale of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” which no one wanted to stop singing. But the most touching was when Nick Littlefield, an attorney and former senate chief of staff for Teddy, sang “Love Changes Everything” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Aspects of Love”. Mr. Littlefield explained that it was a favorite of Teddy’s and that Teddy sang it the last time they were together. We all could understand the relevance of the lyrics because of the way Ted’s life had been transformed by his wife Vicki.

Today, we went to iTunes to see if we could find a recording of “Love Changes Everything” that we liked. There were versions by Sarah Brightman, Michael Crawford and myriad other artists. But none of them had the heart, the passion, nor the personal connection to Ted and Vicki which had captured our hearts. Then I remembered what I had done in a similar situation last January. So I began hunting for a video clip of Mr. Littlefield’s performance. Sure enough, it was already available on YouTube. I went back into the archives here on Pink Granite and found the post where I explained how I stripped a video down to just the audio for a song. (It’s a good thing I turned it into a post because I didn’t remember all the steps!) In just a few minutes I had Nick Littlefield singing “Love Changes Everything” playing from our iPod.

Here’s the video:



Thank you Mr. Littlefield.

OCD? Not Me!

I have reached the point of being truly frustrated by and therefore obsessed with making this audio clip work easily for you all. It was very cool that a few of you could listen to me reading my poem, but it bummed me out royally that so many of you were thwarted by technology. Or, more accurately, thwarted by a blogger who ran right up against the limits of what she understood about that technology!

So today I applied myself to the challenge once again. I was able to get a flash player successfully embedded and to work (big happy dance - thanks Jeff)! Then I read a notice on the media storage website I just started using (MediaMax). As of tomorrow, they are becoming another company and that’s the end of their free storage. Everyone who has files stored with them for free, must upgrade to their fee-based service or those files will be deleted.

Since I don’t want to pay their new monthly fees, that means I no longer will “control” server space. That means I can’t direct the the nifty flash player where to go and what to do. It also means that I need to take down all of the links in the previous posts which connected to this storage company, because as of tomorrow, my files will disappear from their site!

Abrupt end to happy dance.

I’ll still leave the audio bar up (in the earlier post and on the sidebar) which connects successfully to Archive.org.

Thanks for your patience and your advice!

Once More - With Feeling!

This Post Has Been Edited!

May 8, 2008 - Well, this is a first for me on this blog. I’ve had to radically edit this post due to some technology snafus! Here’s the explanation.

Sue stopped by this morning and was unable to listen to my audio clip. Because this has been the case for many of you - including both of my sisters - I decided to try a different hosting service.

I hope this allows you to easily listen to my poem: “Two Days In August”!

Still no little audio bar visible to you? If all you see is a big blue Quicktime “Q”, try reloading the page. Or here’s the direct link. It should bring up a new screen and the audio clip will load and then begin playing.

Let me know in the comments section which one of these worked. Thanks!

UPDATE 5/7/2008: Inspired by a suggestion from Jeff, I’m trying another change to this audio clip. Fingers crossed...


I can't put in a direct link to this version. When I do it automatically downloads the file to the computer!

"Two Days In August"

Between Chuck (who reads directions) and me (who dives in without reading directions), we have managed to record my poem. I hope that you are able to listen to it and that you enjoy it!

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement, your caps-lock congratulations and your enthusiastic support!!!

And today, thanks for listening...

Note: Can’t see the little embedded audio bar above? Just click on this link which will take you to a page outside Blogger, where the audio file is stored. BTW, it should begin playing immediately. Thanks!

Update: Thanks to feedback from DancingMorganMouse, I learned that something is glitchy with both the embedded audio bar and the hot link in the Note above. It may have something to do with different browsers (more on that tomorrow). So, until I can get it more streamlined and reliable, try clicking on this link. It will take you to a page where you need to click on a blue link which says “756.2K” under “Advanced Audio Coding” on the lower right. Good luck and thanks again!

Second Update: I may have identified an additional factor in why some of you have been unable to listen to the audio clip. Archive.org (where the audio file is presently stored) has been experiencing some “System Slowness”. I don’t know if this is rare or common, but it might be complicating things.