Bob Dunn's Brazos Riverblog

The title's a double-entendre. The video (Quicktime version or Windows Media version) consists of a series of segments of my 14-month-old daughter rolling around on the floor, connected by a series of video transitions. Yet baby Emily is in transition herself. She just began walking on Saturday (but refused bipedal locomotion for the camera). And she has begun attending daycare twice a week (to allow me time to launch a new business). Click the image to play the video And the videographer's in transition, too. It's been almost a year since I gave up my business in favor of full-time fatherhood. Now I'm anxious to get back out in the world and create something, something I believe will enrich the community and provide for my family. Yet I hate the idea of giving up my days with Emily. I never got to feed my other kids every day when they were babies, never got to rock them to sleep at naptime or hear them waking up in their cribs. Never got to watch them at earnest play, learning about spatial relationships and soaking in vocabulary and experimenting to see how their bodies can move and bend. It took months, but I came to except being a stay-at-home dad, and I want to keep taking care of my little girl. But I can't take care of her and conduct business at the same time. But we can't provide her with the things we believe she'll need as she grows up unless I get back to work. So it eventually happens that, just as with her older brothers and sister, Emily will have to rely on hired helpers to provide her with milk and food and shelter during the day. That's what family life has become for most middle-class Americans. Emily's brothers and sister have turned out to be pretty good humans, and I feel certain she'll turn out well, too. I'm still not ready to give her up.

It's the end of a tough (for me) but enjoyable experiment in producing daily web video amidst the chaos of daily life here at what we wryly refer to as the One-Acre Ranch. And after a hard week of work, it's always good to eat. Thus, this video is all about smoking a ham. The particulars: We used a 7-pound, bone-in partially cooked ham - the kind you sometimes find on sale at the grocery, then come home and realize the reason it was so cheap is that it's not fully cooked yet. Instead of heating it in the oven, why not fire up some pecan wood and put it in the smoker? Before cooking, the ham should sit out of the refridgerator for about an hour. Score the flat face of the ham in both directions with a knife - about 1/4-inch deep. Rub it all over with cracked pepper and cracked mustard seed or dry mustard. To reach the proper internal temperature of 140 degrees (F), I smoked the ham for about 3 hours. During the last 20 minutes I applied a tasty marinade of: 1/2 cup Jim Beam (or other fine) whiskey 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup pancake syrup 1/4 cup dijon mustard Whip the ingredients together in a small bowl and refridgerate while the ham is smoking. The marinade seeps into the meat and creates a glaze on the outside. The results are delicious.

All over the country, owners of old, damaged structures fade away, to leave their buildings to the whims of street people, wildlife and urban explorers. But as this video shows, poking around where you don't belong may have consequences. It happened on day 6 of the Amazing Videoblogging Week 2005, which happens to fall on April 1 this year.

All over the country, owners of old, damaged structures fade away, to leave their buildings to the whims of street people, wildlife and urban explorers. But as this video shows, poking around where you don't belong may have consequences. It happened on day 6 of the Amazing Videoblogging Week 2005, which happens to fall on April 1 this year.

As karmagrrl and Joel Carner have noted, it's Vincent Van Gogh's birthday today. However, it's also my mom's - and this video is dedicated to that occasion. (And mom, here's the Windows Media version.) In case you're wondering, mom, I've been learning from a terrific group of what is known as videobloggers - a pack of cutting-edge artists creating not only video for the Internet, but an entire new media order. In short, they're busy standing the world of media on its head. The collection of videos below is part of an exercise known as VideobloggingWeek2005. But don't let that put you off. This is your day. Double-click on the picture, check out your movie and have a good time today, huh?

As a couple of videobloggers have noted, it's Vincent Van Gogh's birthday today. However, it's also my mom's - and this video is dedicated to that occasion. In case you're wondering, mom, I've been learning from a terrific group of what is known as videobloggers - a pack of cutting-edge artists creating not only video for the Internet, but an entire new media order. In short, they're busy standing the world of media on its head. The collection of videos below is part of an exercise known as VideobloggingWeek2005. But don't let that put you off. This is your day. Double-click on the picture, check out your movie and have a good time today, huh?

All I wanted from this video was to capture a minute of morning birdsong and then, beat it back inside to the kitchen for that first cup of coffee. As the days go by in this 2005 Week of Vlogging, coffee is taking on an even more crucial role than normal. Day 4, leaving me wondering whether it's really video "flogging." Stop it. Stop it some more.

You gotta figure if you make enough noise, sooner or later somebody's going to hear you. Hence, this video warning from the corporate media stakeholders. What does it mean? Day 3 of the multifaceted VideobloggingWeek2005, sports fans.

The accompanying video is my Day 2 entry for videobloggingweek2005, one of those events that lies in wait and then springs out as if from nowhere upon the unsuspecting. I'm going to have to let the movie speak for itself this time.

This video is dedicated not only to the fact today (what's left of it) is Easter, but also that it's Day 1 of the somewhat less reknowned but yet specialvideobloggingweek2005. Video bloggers, or vloggers if you will, take up the challenge this week by vowing really hard to make one video per day, each day of the week. The parameters are that the vids are supposed to be meant for a special audience of one, or for yourself. Or for a really small audience of not many people. Or something like that. I think. As for Easter, I'm sure the Lord will be pleased to know that we purchased and consummed our collective family weight in plastic egg replicas filled with various sugar concoctions. After the requisite several hours of deluxe church services, of course.

As a yankee transplant to the Lone Star State, my observation is that the Texan has not achieved his refined sense of genteel style and mannerly sensitivity all alone in a vacuum. Certainly positive family reinforcement is a strong factor. As this video shows, however, improvements in children's educational toys also have made an important contribution to the resident character. Surely.

This little 2:20 video experiment was as much an exercise in frustration as anything. The intent was to apply video transitions and overlapping audio tracks in a way that caused the viewer to try to assemble a single story line from the jumble of parts. It was intended to be kind of the video equivalent of the typical Paul Simon or Steely Dan song lyrics, where they juxtapose ambiguous words in a way that subconsciously causes the listener to believe he or she knows what the song is about. When in reality the words may not mean much at all. The problems began when the levels on one or the other of the audio tracks were set too high, causing speaker crackle. I think I resolved that issue, however, each time I went back to re-do the audio, I couldn't stop myself from fiddling with video transitions, or tweaking this or that clip. I finally managed to put so many transitions over other transitions that the video output now includes vertical black bands at most of the transition points. There may be a way to edit them out but, as is probably obvious, I am not adept in the ways of Adobe Premier. It's not my favorite program, either. After fiddling with this thing for hours, I'm tossing it out there as a flawed experiment that still, I think, manages to hold some potential viewer interest. You decide. The footage is confined to 100 yards or so of the Brazos River running behind our house. The musical track was written and produced by the multi-talented Steve Scallion, an artist, cartoonist and musician who churns out his creations from an amazing digital studio deep in the Arkansas backwoods.

As you'll quickly note from the accompanying video, I have a lot of learning left to do. But that's OK, because here's the important thing: It's do-able. Web video embedded with explanatory text, together in a format allowing easy and "quick" updates by the author or authors. I put "quick" in quotes because I have yet to determine just how quick the process can become. However, I have some new tools and ideas to play with. It's rough, but it's a start and, eventually, this is going to be cool. This first video contains me singing a horrid little song I wrote on the spot yesterday for the express purpose of having something to shoot. I have no external mike and was trying to sing over the distorted amplified guitar, so the sound is horrid also. That's showbiz. What I'm psyched about is the fact I was able to figure out how to use an appropriate codec on a raw .avi file, and convert it into something of manageable size while retaining reasonable quality. Still, it's a 3-minute clip weighing in at 12 megs. I don't know if that's really reasonable or not. But Quicktime starts it up with no or very little delay for the end user. I think. If that's not the case for you, let me know via comments below. Meanwhile, the sound quality is so awful that I'm reproducing the song lyrics below. That's part of the contextual enhancement you don't get on TV, right? Public Airwave Blues Went down to the broadcast station, to get my groove thing on I needed some positive P and R just to move my career along Commenced to knockin' on their door and sung 'em my best song They said, What you layin' this crap on us for? Get back where you belong (Refrain) Well they kept me off the radio, wouldn't let me on TV But I'm pumping video through the Internet and now there ain't no stoppin' me Just wanted a seat at the table, wasn't after my own show Warhol said we get 15 minutes, but Clear Channel just said no I tried biting commentary and some witty repartee They said, Don't call us, boy, we'll call you, now kindly go away (Refrain) Then I stumbled on Michael Verdi and I got my Rocket Boomed I took 'em all back home with me into my livingroom Wrote some RSS enclosures and I got my Quicktime on Now I'm makin' little movies from the dusk until the dawn (Refrain) I warned you it was bad. And there's more where that came from.