Right, so I want to make a little film about Cubling's first year. I was all set, and converted the original files (HDD) to mpeg files. Now the real trouble starts: The recommended software is windows movie maker and apparently there are people who use it and manage to make a video. So far, I've failed miserably. Apparently, it doesn't import mpeg files, particularly mpeg2. Which is what I have. So I need to convert to something else, such as .avi or whatever. Just that every software I or my beloved have tested so far either doesn't work or windows movie maker still can't import, in spite of the lovely .avi extension. Or the conversion takes hours for a 2 minute clip.

I've tried trial versions of conversion software and it didn't work
I've tried using a different video editing tool and it didn't work
I've looked into open source stuff but my head exploded in a cloud of smoke. My beloved is still working on it as open source is for people who understand code, not me.

At this point, I'm very willing to spend money on software that will a) work and convert into files that Windows Movie Maker can import and handle, b) do a batch conversion and c) do it in a reasonable time. Like 5 hours for my 100 files. I'd just about accept twice that time, just about. Or invest in a good and straight forward video editing tool. I don't want fancy special effects, just something that can shorten clips, put them together, add music and add subtitles. Maybe do some nice fades and add some photos. Really, nothing fancy. Just good enough to get my dad's birthday present finished in time.

Anyone?
Suggestions very welcome.

In between waiting and willing Cubling to leave my tummy, I'm trying to do useful things. Not very successfully I have to admit. Strange things happen to your mind at times like this and I find it almost impossible to focus or concentrate on anything not pregnancy or baby related. It's sad, it annoys me, it angers me even. Above all, it's not me. I've got a pile of REALLY GOOD BOOKS I long to read, but my mind simply meanders to other places. So I try the simpler stuff, things that don't take much time and can be done in between.

For example, we've got a new gadget. A HD camcorder. Apparently, this is a really special camcorder (I don't know about these things so don't ask me for details) and it needs to be figured out. So, I can record on it, playback, and now even transfer files to my computer. They are VERY large, just as well I have an external hard disk, because my computer wouldn't be able to cope with many clips. Now, because this High Definition format is so cool and futuristic, it's also not yet compatible with computers or file formats that play videos. To me, this sounds a bit daft, but hej, what do I know. I do know that this means files have to be converted. So I'm trying to figure that bit out.

To share clips of our darling cubling (once she actually comes out of mummy's tummy), I've set up a youtube account. I could now enter a rant about youtube, but suffice to say that it is anything but intuitive and I can already see severe difficulties ahead of me, trying to explain to my non-English speaking dad how to register so he can actually watch the videos. I guess you're not allowed to complain if something is for free, but I need to be convinced that if someone like me who is reasonably computer literate and a semi geek is struggling, it will be an impossibility to navigate your way around for someone who is not so keen with computers.

Anyway, on the pregnancy side again I have to say that I'm very pleased with the midwives at the Southern General Hospital who really managed to calm me down and give me back my sleep last night. I'm 41+6 today, and after checking that baby is doing fine and things are moving, if slowly, along, they assured me that induction wasn't necessary at all but they would do it if I asked for it. They are happy for me go over 42 weeks even and assured me that I will go into labour naturally. Soon. And it looks like all is set for a natural delivery as well. I'm both impatient now and overwhelmed that cubling will be with us in the next few days most likely. I can't wait to experience birth and I'm trying to sleep as much during the day and at night to gather energy for this. Thanks to the hypnosis CDs I can actually go asleep for a surreal part of the day. It is getting hard though to stay patient and calm. My hormones are playing havoc with my mood, I feel utterly confined to the house because of SPD pain (i.e. can't walk) and my inability to concentrate on things I usually love to do makes me quite irritable. Butbutbut, only a little while longer (even though I think I've said this for the past 8 weeks or so by now....).

Sigh.

Oh it's lovely. I've just come across a great site, www.readitswapit.co.uk. It's really very straight forward, a simple idea which is pure dead brilliant:

Register books you've read which you would like to swap, then look what's been registered by other users and swap. All for free, only for the cost of posting the book. Let's hope it'll stay like that and that google & co won't buy this one up as well.

Of course there's one problem: I signed up, really keen to get one particular book. Instead, I've swapped two other books just because I was so excited and wanted to get started. Now my library of swappable books is a bit poor (I'm quite precious about most of my books) and I stand no chance. Ah well, look forward to the other two books though! I can just see how I'll end up reading books I would otherwise never have read, while still maintaining my usual Amazon wishlist (see right, just in case anyone wants to get me something nice for my birthday next weekend ).

Another great new discovery is the freecycle movement - local free exchange egroups where you can get rid of your stuff and get stuff for free that others no longer need. Unfortunately there's been some trademarking scuffle internationally and also for the local Glasgow egroup, so that they now call themselves freeshare to keep things going as unburocratically as possible. Let's hope that the original freecycle doesn't go down the drain of commercialism and corporate sell out. Instead, it should continue to use the internet to make life easier and people happier. So far, I haven't actually received anything, but it's the greatest pleasure to do someone a favour by giving something that otherwise would have been swallowed by another black bin bag.

what on earth happened to the layout of my blog? Help!

Why do people post so many spam trackback? By the rate of this, I'll disable trackbacks. I don't really know what they are there for anyhow. Can anyone explain? And how do you actually do stuff with RSS feeds - I've read a lot about them, tried to understand and failed. I even tried to add an RSS feed to my blog, and it just won't work. A real simple guide would be could (must be getting old if computers start posing riddles to me...). Not to speak of my increasingly slow internet access in spite of Broadband, it's excruciating. Really. I love surfing but not like this.

Let's turn to the important issues of the day: Immigration minister Tony McNulty got sacked. Now that's interesting and I'm sure it's due to John Reid reading my last entry and realising how crap the asylum system is. He just needed to be told by Cartside. 

Something I forgot to mention in my previous post is that another major failure of the asylum process is to recognise human rights abuses committed against women - well, I hinted at it, but the truth is that many forms of persecution that women experience are not generally recognised as persecution in the light of evidence in support of an asylum claim. And the person removed yesterday was a woman, and had suffered gender based violence, so it strikes home even more. Here is an interesting link on this topic: Refugee Women. I found this through a very moving article by Natasha Walter and I'm glad to see that she is working on a campaign with regards to this issue.

After all that, I'd like to end on a positive note. Our Amnesty International Glasgow South Group Ceilidh, which is our main fundraiser in the year, raised a profit of over £640 750. I'd never have believed this success to be possible a week before the ceilidh, when we were still sitting on 100 onsold tickets. This is the best ever result, and above all, it was a great night, lots of fun, laughter and dancing. Another success to note is the publication of a letter to the editor which I sent to the List, a Glasgow/Edinburgh livestyle/entertainment/what's on magazine. It didn't just get published, but won letter of the fortnight, thus getting extra special publicity. Which means two bottles of some stuff for me, hehehe. Next I got confirmation that my successful motion at the AIUK AGM will be acted upon, but probably not before October. This means campaigning for a family amnesty for asylum seekers, failed or not, who have one child in education, and have lived here for three years or more, is now supported by AIUK's policy. I think that's what it means anyway until I'm told otherwise.

Now where is the booze???

Sorry for the silence. I've been busy, very busy. And exhausted.
While staring blankly at the computer screen, my hand moused its way through some search engines and came up with a few blogs relating to refugees, or even written by refugees, and those should provide a nice diversion from my most recent, partially drunk, jokes played on some personal weblogs. I had a good time, believe you me!

So here are the first few highlights of refugee blogging: Interestingly, there's a lot going on in Australia. It's interesting, but not surprising because the practice of detention somewhere in the desert must have been an eyesore to anyone with an understanding of what that can do to a torture survivor. So there's Mark Thomson's  view of Australia's detention of asylum seekers and a search for an antidote to the dictum "might makes right",  and a view of African refugees in Australia. Still down under, a very interesting blog is Bridging the Gap, it's definitely worth a visit.

Jonathan Cox's Living Ghost Endurance Challenge is a short but succinct blog on surviving on handouts, what many failed asylum seekers have to face in the UK. I guess I don't need to particularly mention Burma Underground which is already featured as one of my links. Not exclusively refugee related, but featuring the topic occasionally beside other exciting stuff, is the Advocacy Blog. Closer to home, there's the No Borders Glasgow campaign blog of course.
And that's it really. Not much, but I'll keep looking. If you come across any blogs written by refugees, or any other interesting and refugee related blogs, please leave a link in the comment box.

I'm the proud owner of a 250 GB hard drive. I must be turning into a geek to write this on my blog. It's not installed yet so I'm still trembling in anticipation.
Now that my C drive is no longer 100% used (apparently that's scary, and should never ever happen - I had exactly 29 KB left and it didn't crash!) I've installed a webcam.

Webcam, Digital Camera, Broadband and my Portable Hard Disk (aka MP3 Player) all need a USB port. I have two. I need at least three, better even, four.
1. I need a USB hub.

You think you've bought it all and there's always something else you need.

I also have a negative scanner to digitalise all my photos. In a previous life, my ambition was to become a photographer, but I was scared off by the prospect of having to do studio shots of married couples, babies, first communion and other dressing up situations. Even then, I was more into landscapes than people (purely in photographic terms of course). Dreams may not always come true or rather come true in a different incarnation, and I still adore photography and will ban anything on film or memory stick until battery, film or the megabytes run out. Now I'm all excited about digging up all my negatives (and I still do SLR - not totally gone digi yet) and scanning them, it will take me years I'm sure. So many steps to get started though: thanks to ebay, I paid 1/10 of the normal price for a great scanner, second hand and a few parts missing. Then I had to get the missing parts. Next, a SCSI card. A hard drive. Somehow the cable doesn't seem to fit into the SCSI card and looks ominuously like a printer cable. Could it be that the cable I have connects the scanner to the printer, while the SCSI cable is missing? They all look so similar really, and I'm approaching the age where it gets difficult taking all the new technology in. Even if you think computers are the greates thing ever.

2. I think I need a SCSI cable.

3. I need to talk sweetly to my beloved to install my new hard drive. And give me a spare connecting thingybob to connect hard drive to my computer.

I also tried to setup my webcam so I can video skype, but then found out that it takes Windows XP to do so. I really don't want Windows XP. I mean, I bought the bloody thing to do video skype, and now it doesn't work! Not happy. So either:

4. I need Windows XP or the skype people have to respond to my suggestion to make video available for Windows 2000 too, or I have to figure out how MSN Messenger works. Or maybe someone has an idea how to combine video and skype on the ancient, yet trustworthy Windows 2000?

Of course I also need a holiday, sunshine, the perfect honeymoon destination, a haircut and a massage, but won't go into that. If you have a suggestion for honeymoon destinations, let me know. Or if you know about video skyping. Or about negative scanners.
And I know the colour is daft, but I like violet.

I spent the Sunday transferring files and MP3s on my new baby, a 80Gig MP3 player. Mind you, it's not cool, pretty or anything like that. It's rather large, but it's got a lot of space. A lot. I love that and rather carry a bulky, utterly not iPod like thing around with me. Well, nothing madly interesting about this weekend perusal of mine, just that I managed to cut rather than copy all my digital pictures. Read: delete from my harddrive. Gladly, I noticed only a day later, and instant pang of panic was swiftly replaced by faint memory of the potential error in my system. Phew.

So, now that I've outed me as someone who can't tell a CtrlX from a CtrlC, and while my computer is working hard to this time copy my lovely pix back to its own hard drive, I've come across some useful stuff for the geeks out there. Firstly, SDP is a nice free programme that allows to capture Windows Media Stream. I think that means you can record live streams (video and the like) to your hard disk and view them again. And copy them onto moveable disks and take them even further. Apparently, my beloved chops in, it's not perfect as it doesn't do any such thing with Real Media Stream. I'm not quite sure what that means, but thought I'd tell yous anyhow.

Secondly there's a fascinating website that I haven't quite managed to pay its due attention: It's the Open Source Academy . It's aim is to promote the use of open source software in government offices, but they also have lots of exciting news, articles etc presented in a really nice way, so it's definitely worth a look.

As to blogging, I've been contacted about a research project involving a survey, into the usefulness for community engagement and participation through the use of blogging within nonprofit organisations. Sounds interesting indeed, just that the survey was multiple choice throughout which is simply bad practice as my trainer and developer incarnation can confidently tell you. No space for qualifying comments, and consequently a feeling that my answers may not be useful at all. Strange too that the research is geographically linked to the US, while I'm on the other side of the pond, so have I actually contributed to a misrepresentation of the US voluntary sector blogosphere? The timing was a shame too, with just a month since the Mount Florida Community Council blog was launched. And I would really like to link to this research project just that the URL is at work, and I can't google it. and should be boycotting google anyway. hence no link.

Now, once my music is all in portable format (just imagine, shelves of music in one handheld piece of magic!), the film scanner will be next, to digitalise my other passion; photography. If I finally manage to buy the right SCSI card or whatever they are called.
Yours happily foraging in the technology jungle without having a clue, eh, compass.

The slightly lengthy silence has been due to busy times at work and my little free time spent figuring out the best way for the Mount Florida Community Council website, which we decided to set up as a blog. Why a blog? Mainly because it enables not so web design confident people to contribute. Secondly, because it's easy for a larger number of people to contribute, thus ensuring co-ownership. While waiting for the go ahead for a blog on civiblog (my preferred option was to host it there, both because of the ethics behind civiblog and for the slightly egoistic reason that I'm most confident using and customising a blog on this platform), which took longish due to the success of civiblog and the resulting waiting list for new blogs, I had a look at the various blogging options. My research into the different types of softwares and free blogs made me realise that there aren't actually that many free platforms out there. Blogger is the obvious one, but mostly, blogs either cost a bunch, or are full of advertising.

Eventually I came across some information on functionality and a comparison of services, and Wordpress came out best there, and is very open sourcy as well, so I gave it a go, especially as I couldn't do much with the not yet assigned new civiblog space. Well, Wordpress certainly came recommended, but if you are looking at having a template blog hosted at wordpress.com, there are both pluses and minuses in comparison with Civiblog. Wordpress allows the creation of pages, which makes it look like a proper website. Nice. Not so nice is that customisation is very limited indeed, and nice features of civiblog, such as adding a photo or image to your header, are simply not there. Of course, if you know what you're doing you can download the software and host it yourself and customise to your heart's content, but that is obviously time consuming and involves having a server to host it on. Somehow, with what is available as templates, I couldn't quite share the enthusiasm of other users. Civiblog may not have the option of pages (please correct me if I'm wrong and I simply haven't found it) but this is easy to work around by using categories and posts. I also found the actual posting procedure much easier, so that the civiblog will be easy to use for total beginners. I also really missed the option of having sticky posts - essential if you want to use a blog as a website, because you simply need some initial information.

But there were glitches too, which drove me bananas. On wordpress, posts posted to specific categories would not appear there, while currently the civiblog site doesn't change the template for some bizarre reason. I solved the first problem, no idea how, so confident that some magic will happen on civiblog soon too. Interestingly, it took me a lot more time to even figure the essentials of the wordpress tools and features out, even though there were less of them, while setting up the same blog on civiblog took me only 2 hours while watching TV at the same time. Ok, part of this is of course already being familiar with features, and having the advantage of simply copying posts from one blog to the other, but still.

Finally, I added a php forum, through one of the many free, but advertisement heavy, php forum providers. Previously I had used forumup.com, but their server was down, so I used myfastforum.com, not such a nice name, but what the heck. It worked in no time and the choice of templates seemed much wider than in forumup.

I shall now leave it to my fellow community councillors to decide which of the two blogs is more intuitive to view and to use, after having added some more content that is. Let's see if I can prove the critic wrong who feared that the website wouldn't be used and be a waste of time.

Last night I was at the Mount Florida Community Council meeting, as I should in my new role as a community councillor. And, quite in line with what I enjoy doing, i.e. networking and using the internet and new technologies to facilitate this, I volunteered to set up a community council website for Mount Florida. I had put forward some ideas to the chair, and we set up a sub-group to discuss this. In my research for the suggestions I submitted for consideration and decision, I came across some interesting initiatives which I'd like to share.

Napier University in Edinburgh ...   more »

KenYersel, I would think, means "know yourself" to the non-Scot. It's an Edinburgh based project with webpresence, which is kind of in the nature of it. They combine democratic renewal, community engagement, open source and philosophical enquiry to come up with a very practical tool, which should not go unnoticed.

They have contrived a software that enables firstly to visually represent a pro/con discussion, and secondly to add to it, both online and by the old fashioned paper and pen. The outcome is a transparent record and visualisation of a discussion which is open for additions on an ongoing basis. This doesn't just make discussions more transparent to participants and policy makers, but helps reflect about the topic even beyond the actual discussion while enabling a wider range of people to participate and contribute. Open democracy at its best.

How does it work? Well, computers aren't good at representing natural languages or any non-binary stuff, so the idea is to make the discussion as binary as possible to start with. Rules are set up, taken from the philosophical enquiry theory, whereby a discussion topic is given, and each member of the discussion group gives a response to it. One response is picked and everyone is encouraged to comment on this response, by a) rephrasing the response, b)stating whether his/her contribution is in favour or against and c)making the comment. Each further contribution also has to state whether they are in favour or against and they also have to relate to the initial point. This insures that people are actually listening to one another as they always have to repeat the point that they are commenting on, and it also forces people to clearly state if they are in favour or against, which makes the visual representation simpler.

The KenYersel software (still in the development phase) then provides an interface to add all this together and link the points, using signs that represent in favour/against/point of clarification. New ideas can be inputted by a scribe, someone with access to the computer, and participants can add to this on paper or directly on the website, as it's dynamic and allows change. People are thus given a chance to review, reflect and get an objective representation of the way a discussion went, which will make it clearer, lead to understanding and possibly consensus, while enabling everyone to contribute, regardless of IT literacy or not.

Sounds great? I think so, check it out: www.kenyersel.org, where you can find out about the project, see the discussion maps and read about wikis. The actual software is not available yet, but if you drop the guys an email, they'll surely be happy to tell you more about it.