Hmmcast #105 mp4

Maybe I should Google this one. Shop class was so long ago …

Hmmcast #104 mp4

Hmmcast #103 mp4

Shhh, don’t tell anybody this Hmmcast is late today. Playing a little Pinball FX (800 Microsoft Points) from Xbox Live. My favorite table thus far is Agents, shown in most the screenshots below.

My high score on the Agents table as of this writing is 135,272,800, rank 233. Go ahead and beat my score.

Hmmcast #102 mp4

We’ve been a strict charcoal-only barbeque family until this past weekend. Now we’re so caught up in it that we’re even grilling in the rain.

Probably the part I liked best was nothing to put together. It will run off the smaller propane bottles you can buy in most grocery stores. There is a small tray that you fill up with water and can soak mesquite or other flavored wood chips.

Another nice thing about this grill is that it’s portable so we can pack it up and take with us to the beach. It cost $149 and then we paid $29 for the larger propane tank plus roughly $15 in propane to fill.

We went to a local propane vendor and overpaid $30 for the 6′ hose. I see online where those can be purchased for $20. Doh!

We like the idea of keeping the propane further away from the grill and the tank will last a lot longer than the little bottles. We were only able to get through about three meals for our family of five with the small bottle.

Here’s my question for readers who do the whole barbecue scene, which type of BBQ do you have? Charcoal or gas? If you don’t have one, which do you prefer?

Hmmcast #101 mp4

The cliche better late than never comes to mind as UPS delivered the third replacement Xbox 360 to us in less than a year. This time Microsoft saw fit to include a free one month of Xbox Live Gold card. My son’s subscription ran out while he was Xbox-less, so this will come in handy.

Not sure I really want to thank Microsoft for producing really shoddy hardware, nor for the call center person whom we could barely understand, nor the fact that this replacement Xbox 360 situation took over three weeks. Unacceptable.

Plug and pray alright.

Hmmcast #100 mp4

Behind the Hmmcast
Wow, here it’s only April and the 100th Hmmcast has arrived already. Isn’t the 100th videoblog I’ve done though, as the first 30 Hmmcasts were podcasts, but this means around 70 videos have been recorded. Among my personal favorites are the Thursawday videos. Each week on Thursawday you’ll find a different way the SAW gets used. Perhaps some (or many) might find these excursions silly, but I’ve tried very hard to make sure the video medium was used. You cannot isten only to the Hmmcasts, you really need to watch them to get the message and I’ve kept most of them under two minutes. Many are under a minute and a half. It’s pretty much an extended commercial length only without the commercials.

Here are a few which stick out at me for various reasons:
#32 Too Old for Video blogging - I don’t think I’m too old but do viewers?
#35 Things you can do TV-less - the first and probably last time you’ll see me with half my face shaved. My first Hmmcast comedy or tragedy, you decide.
#38 Two teenagers interviewed on the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 - invited my sons into talk about the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 as boxheads. A visual experiment, not sure it worked, but they had fun.
#39 Cloudy chainsaw Thursday (Jan 11, 2007) - the true birth of ThurSAWday, although it wouldn’t be called that for another week (#43 Jan 18, 2007). You can follow the other Thursawday videos here: #48, #53, #58, #62, #66.6 (really, the numbering was not planned in advance), #71, #74, #79, #84, #89, #94 and yesterday the 12th Thursawday production: #99
#46 From an OnStar pizza galaxy not so far away … was my first trip out of the office complete with a Star Wars like intro

Do I feel like I know what I’m doing yet? Not yet, no. I’m still learning different ways to combine shots, clip frames and only this past week have begun to experiment with shooting and editing video on the Mac.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it all the way through 2007 videoblogging every day and I’m still not certain, but as long as there are ideas, there will continue to be Hmmcasts. Thank you for watching the daily 420 Hmmcast.

Hmmcast #99 mp4

Hmmcast #98 mp4

The water drama in town is over, the water is now declared “good” again. Might be cliched but it is true how we take for granted the simple things in life until they are gone. We had to shut off the water at the pipes to stop ourselves during the “possibly contaminated” period from using it. You go to brush your teeth and it’s just natural to crank on the faucet.

Event association

While the water was declared unusable, I received an Amazon book order and will associate the book with this event in life.

Hmmcast #97 mp4

Using your keyboard 1-8 keys in the MMORPG Lord of the Rings online you can make music. You can go to a lower or higher octave using the SHIFT or CTRL key. Here’s a list of LOTRO songs you can play with your lute. Every character can play a lute by level 5 and at least in the open beta you can find a lute for 20 silver or so.

My oldest son (17) and I discuss when and what he heard about the Virginia Tech shootings.

Hmmcast #96 mp4

Update 7:49pm PST: Apparently the Google Video upload failed. Please follow the mp4 link above to watch the complete video. Thank you to those who messaged me about the issue.

8:13pm PST: Recompressed and uploaded Hmmcast #96 to Google again:

via The Denver Post:

A gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, shot up a classroom building across campus today, killing 32 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history. The gunman committed suicide, bringing the death toll to 33.

Internet postings about the event appeared almost immediately and the Washington Post has a timeline of emails.

This is the worst mass murder by a lone gunman in US history.