Just like the title says, I haven't blogged for about seven months. In my blogs, just like on my website, I spend most of the time talking about my hobbies. My hobbies tend to go in cycles. Currently, I would have to say that I am spending the most time with my computer programming hobby and my videography hobby.
My hobbies are intertwined though. For example, when I am doing computer programming, I am typically programming something with an amateur radio influence. I am presently trying to learn ASP.NET 2.0, which is a Microsoft technology. Once, I have some of the basics down, I hope to develop a page on my website where people can type in a ham radio callsign and get results such as name, address, license class, and so on. That type of page, however, is nothing new. There are probably a couple of dozen "lookup" pages on the web, but I want to develop a lookup page that is accessible from a web-capable cellphone. I think that there is currently only one other lookup like that in existence. Together our lookups can share the bandwidth for that sort of lookup. The other thing that I hope to develop is a web service for this lookup. That, I believe, would be unique. A web service gets its name from the fact that it uses the world wide web to communicate the data (specifically the HTTP hypertext transfer/transport protocol), but it doesn't necessarily use a web browser. Another programmer, could design a Windows or Mac OS application and call the web service to get the license details about a particular ham. Perhaps that functionality could be added to a contact logging program.
Videography is the other hobby near the top of my list currently. A couple of weeks ago, Adobe just announced their new Production Studio bundle. I think that I am going to upgrade my individual Adobe applications to the new versions. My videography pursuits many times are related to amateur radio, but I haven't been involved with any amateur radio events lately to videotape. The most recent videotaping that I was involved with was a acquaintances' wedding. Now I have volunteered my services for another wedding in June ('06). Actually at the upcoming wedding and the recent wedding, I was shooting the pictures and my best friend was shooting the video. In either case, however, I am processing the video afterwards. Mainly I am bringing the video into the computer and then burning it to DVD. With the pictures, I am copying them to the computer and tweaking things such as brightness and sharpness and burning them to CD. After this wedding in June is complete, I think that I am going to concentrate on organizing a portfolio of my work. I don't plan to quit my day job, but I think that I could make some extra money on the side by shooting weddings. I have come to realize that good money can be made once a creative effort has been put forth. That is where I need to concentrate. I seem to be able to understand how the software works (Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing, for example), but I am not very good at making a decent video. My videos will look good from a technical standpoint (low noise, little to no artifacting from the MPEG compression), but I won't have the appropriate transitions in the video, or use the right music (of course, you have to be careful about the music you use in a video). I need to work on my creativity.
That's all for now. I hope to blog again soon (less than seven months).
