A New Header

My son tells me I’ve just discovered the internet.

Let’s see, I first started working on computers in 1968 on the first IBM 360 ever built. We didn’t have none of these fancy terminal thingies. No way, we used punch cards. And when we wrote stuff, we wrote it on a typewriter. It was before your time.

As a matter of fact, I had a portable Underwood I hauled back and forth hitch hiking across Canada on good old number one. I even packed it across the Yellowhead and up to Williams Lake.

But I’m not talking about writing here; I’m talking about all this new-fangled technology stuff. It’s unreal. We never had this click, drag, cut and paste stuff. When we needed something we cut it in FORTRAN and used drivers in Assembler. And, let me tell you, you cut your own drivers. A new printer, plotter, terminal, modem or whatever came along and you whipped up a driver using some Assembler Code and cut it into FORTRAN to make it look nice and you were away.

After a while I broke down and learned C and eventually C++, enough to keep up to the mathematical software coming out. I kept an eye on what was developing because I was interested in what the nerds were up to. So when I started out on this project, I thought I’d give blogging a whirl.

Holy snot is there ever a lot of new stuff you can get your hands on! And it’s free too. The blog site is fairly common, everyone can do it. I’ve noticed the news stuff is mostly techie with some news feeds from the pros. So I think I’m a little on the edge. Of course my wife has pretty well always thought I was on the edge, but that’s another story.

I’ve done a fair amount of writing and I’ve had some very positive and supportive feedback on the stories I’ve done. But there’s a bit of glitch here. You see, pod casts don’t download text and I don’t feel like writing a text driver for I Pods. So I have to pod cast a summary of my stories every time I post.

And as you can tell, I’m just starting out on this vid-casting stuff. I’m not very good at it. At least that’s the feedback I’m getting, mostly from my family. And they’re trying to be as polite as possible. So I decided to cut a header vid just like the pros.

I grabbed the camcorder, hopped on my bike and headed off in a blazing streak of pink. My bike’s a pink European racing bike, about twenty years old – an old Steve Bauer – a Canadian firm.

I took various shots heading into and out of town. It’s not hard to find homeless people and fairly easy to find the mentally ill wandering downtown. Of course, it’s important to keep the camera at the ready. And you have to pack it in your knapsack while you’re riding around.

The problem is that you spot something good to shoot, like a homeless campsite by the river, and you have to jump off the bike, dig through the knapsack and get out the camera and take the shot. It’s ok when you don’t have people around. You can take your time. But when I got into town, I had to lock up the bike and get the camera at the ready while walking around.

And you can get into a bit of a jam if you start shooting druggies doing deals. It’s best to act real casual and shoot from the hip. It takes practice and you waste a lot of film, or tape.

Nevertheless, just as I’m packing up, some man wanders by rummaging through garbage cans and I have to dig out the camera really fast and toss caution to the winds.

Later, I was approaching the east end of town when I managed to capture an old fellow who couldn’t sit still, though he tried. He looked like he was trying to adjust to his meds. He had that medicated shuffle while he walked and a fearful, paranoid look in his eye while he slowly passed.

Going by the river, there were many homeless sleeping in the park. I don’t know if they were mentally ill or not; I didn’t ask them. But it was good to get out and take it in. No one waved or said hi. Last week I did a walk around and there were a lot of friendly people calling out hello and telling me to smile more.

I even saw a small group of First Nations people helping and befriending an older man who looked pretty spaced out. I don’t know what that is about, so I’m tucking it away for future reference.

I got home and fire-wired the vid into Movie Maker and started hacking. I got it down to 35 seconds and used some of my son’s music as background. He wrote and recorded it. I stole it. I hope he doesn’t find out.

I’ve posted it here and I hope to hear some criticism on it. I’ve got to stop “umming” so much. I do that since I’m trying to think of what to say next. I’m trying to remember what I’ve written and get my thoughts in order. It’s too much. From now on I’m scripting my pod casts and concentrating on being smooth.

But I’m really more of a writer than an actor or pod caster. I guess I’m just old fashioned.

Nevertheless, it’s time for this old dog to learn a few new tricks. Thanks for hanging in there. Hi Sarah.