-30- For Michael Levy

I was really saddened when I recieved my World Market Update this morning and found that Michael L. Levy, a financial and market analyst that I greatly admire, is calling an end to his career after 40 years in the business.   Micheal Levy, is currently the Executive Vice President & Financial Analyst for Custom House which is a world leader in currency exchange, amongst other things.   From Michael’s final comments:

-30- The end of a story

In days past, before internet and other instant communication devices, reporters or columnists filing stories by wire service would use the figure -30- to denote the end of the story so editors would know that they had the complete filing.

-30- among older reporters and columnists also began to be known in those days as the end of an era, an end of a career as they signed off for the last time.  Today we say -30- to our career which spans over 40 years in this and related businesses and write for the last time in this our final go at the World Market Update.

I have seen Mr. Levy speak 5 times in person and listen to him most Saturday mornings on “Money Talks” on QR77, a syndicated financial show broadcast nationally.   Friends with the likes of Dennis Gartmen and other greats like James Dines, Levy’s comments were always entertaining and on point.   He called the dollar hitting par when it was just an infant in the high 70’s.

The update that I read each morning served as an important snapshot of what is going on in the macroeconomic part of the world that directly influences my decisions each day and will be greatly missed.   I hope that another budding career analyst will take Mr. Levy’s spot.

I doubt you will ever read this Mr. Levy, but you will be greatly missed by me.   I wish you all the success in your retirement sir.

Are You A Wordpress Fan?

Matt posted something up today on the addition of Wordpress as official site on Facebook! Are you a fan?   On a related note, I happen to be fan #19 which is my lucky number!  

I Should Have Paid Attention…

Here is the situation.   I was 6 years old and my parents forced to me learn an instrument.   The simple choice was obvious because my sister played the piano.   I guess I was learning piano.    These lessons lasted 8 months before my teacher learned that I couldn’t read music and was playing completely by ear.     I was not as far ahead as my teacher thought and going backwards was going to be a problem.    So I quit and started playing hockey.   I should have paid more attention.

Other than the melodies that I still to this day remember how to play by ear, I can’t read sheet music or play the piano.   It is only because of my burning desire to learn and my ear for music that I am even trying to play the piano again.    In fact, I am working on a difficult piece for a starting piano player with “Good Enough” by Evanescence.    Not easy.

I did purchase the official sheet music online tonight and then played away on the keyboard.    It started coming back to me and I was soon getting quite a bit of the beginning of the song.    Intro to verse, verse to chorus.    Then the issues started.   I was leaning away from reading the music note by note and listening by ear again and playing what I thought should be played.    Not a bad thing, but not helping me learn how to read music.

That is when I decided to sit down and really get into it.   I even found another version of the sheet music over on another online Evanescence resource to try out another version of the song.    While into my massive session, my wife told me to watch my son as she went for a bath.   I, of course, got back into the music and my son got into the oil paint in the other room.   Not a good sight and not a happy family towards the piano learning father…..

I will not quit and will record a version of “Good Enough” on piano at some point fairly soon.    If I say it here, I am bound to finish it.    I don’t really have a choice because I won’t stop until I learn it.   I just wish I would have paid more attention in piano lessons 24 years ago…..

Consolidating Web Experience

Many of us work in businesses where there is constant takeovers and changing of assets.    This happens all the time in the world as the smaller players get bigger or the bigger players get massive.    It is the nature of business.    Don’t believe me?    Play Monopoly and that should straighten you out!

When I was talking with Tammy this morning, it dawned on me that I am really a person that likes to consolidate my own web experience. With all the takeovers and mergers going on in the world, you wouldn’t really notice all the ones that are small, but important to what I do on the web. Some of these are Yahoo taking over Flickr, Automattic taking over Gravatar and Google taking over YouTube. So really, my important sites to me today are:

1) Yahoo - The most obvious site that I use that is now from Yahoo is Flickr. Recently, they also bought out MyBlogLog and now that is also running under my Yahoo login.

2) Google - Fairly straight forward, but I use Gmail, PicasaWeb, Documents, Reader, Calendar and the recently purchased YouTube for all my videos.

3) Wordpress - Frankly, I use Wordpress.com for almost all my websites and that includes the same login for my forum helping. The wordpress.org side is also the same login as bbPress. Simple enough.

Another big one that I use is VodPod because of the simple addition of all videos into a collection. That is still on its own right now, but I would imagine that it might be picked up by someone at some point.

So what do I do on the net? I blog (wordpress), I have photo galleries (flickr, picasaweb), I have videos (youtube and vodpod), I forum help (wordpress.com/.org/bbpress), I facebook (slowing down), I spend time with Apple products, I collect data (read news Reader) and I play with software on my own server.

There are other things, but that is most of my time and really could do all my things with 5 or so web companies.    That is consolidation.    I am not sure what to think about that

YouTube Mac Issues

It has been a really interesting weekend in terms of my video management.    I have been on a mission to get all the videos that are on the Sony DCR-TRV6 onto YouTube.    I know that particular camcorder is from the year 2000 and older than dirt, but it is all I have right now!    On that note, I have been struggling to get the videos off the digital tape, onto my Macbook and then up to YouTube.

Without even thinking about it, I have just been taking the videos off with Quicktime Pro.    It was a really easy way to get the videos into my desired format and was really easy with only one real step.    The problems that I am having with that particular method is that my videos have audio problems once up onto YouTube.    The audio is actually about 0.5 to 1 seconds behind the video.    One of the worst problems to have when watching a video….

So, without wanting to download yet another program that costs money, I decided to try out the native iMovie HD that comes with the Macbook (no, I haven’t updated to Leopord yet!) and sure enough, the one video that I tried to upload to YouTube had the proper audio, was a smaller .mov file to upload and frankly a better video quality.    How that happened, I am not sure, but I would recommend using iMovie HD on an older camera like mine.

Now, I did try something else after that as well.    That method being the “quick capture” that YouTube presents in the upload process.    It managed to find my camcorder and said it was going to connect, but after a couple of minutes and a couple of tries, I knew that would never work.     It gets stuck on the “connecting” screen.   This method does work fine with the built in iSight, but not something that wants to work with my old Sony, so iMovie works for me!

Love to hear from anyone else that has some great ideas on getting movies from a camcorder up to YouTube using a Mac!    What the hell, tell me what doesn’t work as well

Under The Lighthouse

This is my version of “Under The Lighthouse” by Big Wreck. Not sure if too many of you know this song or about this great band, but I really love their music. This song was recorded on my Macbook with my simple Samson mic and my Ovation 6-string. I have yet to setup Logic again with my proper equipment on my iMac, so I am still recording using this equipment and Garageband.

“Under The Lighthouse” is a great song that really is self-explanatory, but a song that I could relate with back in the ’90s when it came out.

[audio:http://onvertigo.com/multimedia/under-the-lighthouse.mp3]

I actually pissed around and put up a quick video as well.

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