Personal

I’ve been taking the time to learn ffmpeg and some of the really useful stuff you can do with this command line tool (CLI). Here’s one example of a situation I find myself in frequently and have not had a great solution until now. The ability to trim a video file without re-encoding! “Re-encoding” means loss of video quality in my mind. Not quite as bad as copying a VHS tape, known in the analog world as a “generation loss” Having the ability to trim a video file WITHOUT suffering any quality loss, that was a WOW ffmpeg moment for me. ...

My wife and I have been going on long weekend bike rides for several months now. The COVID pandemic has given us extra time in our busy family schedule to discover a new date night-exercise opportunity. We schedule our start time so that we’re arriving at Colt State Park just in time to see the sunset. Regardless of the weather conditions or cloud cover, that’s our goal. The East Bay Bike Path offers great views along the Rhode Island coastline, passing through various areas including an industrial seaport, small cottage home neighborhoods, parks, and large estate homes. ...

On June 29, 2020 Ann & Hope announced they would close all remaining outlet stores following a series of previously announced store closings. This includes their historic headquarters location in Cumberland at 1 Ann & Hope Way. I stopped by to take some photos of the building yesterday, just to capture some images before the signs are removed and the building becomes mostly vacant. Ann & Hope is known as the first discount department store in America, pioneering practices now common in modern big box stores. ...

Backmagic Web Presenter, the perfect tool for the job. After several weeks on backorder, our Blackmagic Web Presenter arrived from BH Photo! The “black box” is a simple device that works out of the box. No drives, no software. Simply take the output of your video production switcher, professional SDI camera or HDMI source into the BM Web Presenter. Then connect a USB cable to your PC/Mac and the audio/video signal appears as a 720p HD webcam to the computer. ...

UPDATE: My setup for Zoom has evolved and somewhat less dependent on StreamDeck now. You may want to check out my new Blog Post with our updated Zoom setup for TV interviews. This week I purchased a Stream Deck XL ($235) to help streamline our video productions with Zoom remote guests. Since the COVID-19 crisis hit mid-March our community television station scrambled to adapt and help disseminate important information. Zoom quickly became the go-to platform for setting up meetings and remote show guests. ...

What a day today, just an incredible temperature jump this weekend. Two days of 60-degree temps in January is rare, so I made an extra effort to get a run today. The Blackstone Bike Path was really busy today, again highly unusual in January. The parking lot had 20ish cars and the traffic along the bike path reminded me of early spring when everyone is excited to be outside. ...

Part 1 – Why AWS Glacier Deep Archive? Backing up large collections of raw video footage and edit masters remains a real challenge for anyone working in the video production world. As the Executive Director of a local community media station, I’m responsible for maintaining a Synology NAS which currently holds 55TB of final edit master videos. The idea of incorporating “Cloud Storage” into our backup procedures has always interested me, but the expense has held me back. ...

Last Thursday, October 3, 2019 I had an opportunity to attend LastPass’s Unlocked – Cybersecurity & Identity Trends event in Boston, MA. The panel of security experts included: Bill Cheswick, Computer Security and Networking Researcher Gerald Beuchelt, Chief Information Security Officer/Vice President for LogMeIn Steve Gibson, Software Engineer, Security Researcher, and Host of the Security Now Podcast. grc.com I’m a big fan of Twit.tv, Leo Laporte, Steve Gibson and I use LastPass every day. So I was really excited to attend the event knowing I’d be participating in an engaging and fun conversation around security, passwords, and learn more about Steve’s solution for passwords, the SQRL project. ...

Picked up my copy of Marty On The Mountain at The Village Book Store in Littleton, NH. Mount Washington and Television, two of my life passions in one book. Marty on the Mountain is a wonderful book full of neat stories about life as a TV engineer on top of Mount Washington. Only 157 pages, the book is a fun read over a quiet weekend. I’ve had the opportunity to hike and visit the mountain on a number of occasions. In fact, I proposed to my wife after a hike up Tuckerman’s Ravine. ...

Some thoughts on running and a few training updates as the summer comes to an end. I never thought running would become my “thing”. When I first started going to the gym I’d always avoid the treadmill, it just seemed boring and frankly I could not understand why anyone would want to run in-place for any length of time. Running is now a passion, which I’ve come to embraced over the past few years. Something clicked for me a about three years ago and I’m so thankful that I was open to the idea. Thankful that I was willing to give it a serious try. ...