Inside the House of Baldwin

My brother, Jason, alerted me to this nifty software that allows you to do multiple pans on a photo. I spent all last night playing with it by creating a slideshow of random photos that I found from 2006.

These are some thoughts I have about this software. First some downsides: I imported the pics randomly and found that it was a little annoying to try to move them around on the timeline, so I just left them where they were. There are no other transitions than cross-fade, which are inserted automatically with the pics. There is no fade in or fade out. The audio was not too bad to work with, but it would have been easier to work with the way iMovie allows you to.

The upside: I love being able to do multiple pans within a photo. It was lots of fun and makes for more interesting effects. You have more control over your pans versus Ken Burns in iMovie and you don’t mess the entire slideshow up if you change the length of a particular photo. It seemed a little harder to mess things up in here than in iMovie, which is a given with any project.

However, what is with the file sizes? It was a mere 7 minute slideshow with nothing more than photos, one title, transitions and two song files. A DV export was 1.5 GB and the web export was 60 MB. I imported the DV file into Final Cut and exported to a 320×240 using the compression settings given to Brad by Podtech for web viewing. Usually a file like this one would be about 7 MB. It was 28 MB! Ouch!

Jason uses this software to do pans in individual photos, he then exports those individual photos to DV files, and then imports them into iMovie. You can then move the photos about easier and use the cool Slick transitions. Plus, the audio is easier to work with.

After making lots of slideshows and videos, I have found that you cannot make exactly what you want without using a combination of software programs. One will not give you everything. It’s sad but true. Many thanks to Jason for keeping me up on the latest and greatest.

P.S. Yes, there are some red-eyes…but that is because iPhoto does not fix all red-eyes. You have to take some pics into Photoshop to fix the red-eyes, and I wasn’t in the mood to do so. Just another example of not being able to use one program for everything. Sigh.

We purchased an elliptical so Amy and I could work out in the cold winter months. However, now that the unit is just sitting there, Abby has adopted it as if it were her own. It’s so fun to watch her. She’s really a coordinated child. She has to put all her weight on one side of her body to get the wheel started. She then races off and starts breathing heavy. While she can’t see all the little lights on the upper deck, she knows she’s getting a good workout when she starts to huff and puff.

Dallen wanted just one thing on his 14th birthday: to snowboard. It just so happened that Dallen’s birthday fell on a Saturday, and we were able to accommodate his demands. Unfortunately, the only down side of the day was not many of Dallen’s friends could come up and hang with him because of basketball games, family things, and other lame excuses.

Dallen did get to hang with Stephen and Marissa for a while until Marissa’s cousin took a bad fall and was entitled to a ride down the mountain in the meat wagon. Speaking of meat wagon, Marissa was lucky that her box biff didn’t hurt her back enough to take a ride herself (watch the video for this action).

Dallen and dad golfing
Originally uploaded by BradBaldwin.

The weather has been really warm this past week (high 40’s - mid 50’s). Enough snow was melted that Dallen and I were able to sneak out at the end of the day and hit the links. Brad stunk it up at 6 over for nine holes. Dallen had flashes of good with about 10 over for nine holes. More pictures on Flickr.

This is a picture of the new posession. Isn’t it beautiful? This particular picture is the guitar laying down in it’s case, the case had to be made specially for the guitar it is so thin…

Now, here be the body of the guitar. You see the color is more green than gray, but it’s some kind of a mix, I don’t really know what the color is, to me it is a grayish green color, you can think what you want. You can see the three pick-ups there, with one single coil in the middle and two humbucker pick-ups on the sides. You have the pick-up changer over by the guitar sound area and next to that is the cord plug in, or whatever you call it…

Now here is a closer look at the body of the guitar. I forgot to mention the Tremelo Bar. The tremelo bar on this little piece of work is one of the best in the Ibanez company. It can also bend both back and forward, as my old Squier could only go forward. You also get a better look at the plug-in. Soon, I will have to post my new 30 Wat amp that I spent half a fortune on…

Now this is the Locking system of the new guitar. You may not be able to see it well but those round things are the locks themselves. This system is a deffinate plus than the system that I had before on the Squier would allow me to tune the guitar every day, if not every hour, with the new locks, I only have to tune maybe once a month…

You are curently staring at the awesome inlay of the fretboard. The frets are nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen. The inlay is a white little squigley and the twelve fret gets to have a little rainbowish inlay. This easily beats the pearl inlays from the Squier, and then you get the white dots on the side for when you can’t see the beautiful squiglies…

This is the back of the guitar, this is one of the coolest parts of the guitar itself. You get the slightly opened back that lets you change the tension of the strings, that what the writing is on the middle right. Yes, the back protector is scratched a little bit, but hey, when you get hundreds of people trying the guitar on a daily basis, the protector is going to be scratched…

This little thing is the one thing that I would change about the whole guitar. The neck is bolted to the body. Now from what I hear form guitar junkies and my teacher for one, necks that are bolted on meen that the guitar has room for improvement, not that anything doesn’t need room for improvment. Necks that aren’t bolted on the neck are usually better, I don’t know why, but I guess that they are…

(If you look hard enough you can find my arm in this picture…)

Dallen’s turning 14 this year. He had a party with 10 crazy friends.

Pizza, soda, and a classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off movie!

Here’s a little video.