Dance Dance Revolution

Waaay, back in California, just before we decided to move to New England, Deb and I signed up for a West Coast Swing dance class. I think we took about 3 or 4 classes before we did the big move and, although we really enjoyed it, we never "cemented" what we learned and it just faded away.

For our Anniversary last year, I found a place that had swing dancing and had a beginners class before the dance. We got there early and (I) struggled through the intro lesson and then kind of shuffled through the rest of the night. It was enjoyable but we really didn't know enough to make it fun.

(It was also kinda weird since, evidently, it's common practice to swap partners at these dances and therefore we had to dance with people who 1) we didn't know and 2)were way better than we were. The dancers were...how should I say this..."skewed toward the Big Band era" and so during the lesson where every woman shifted around the circle to the next guy after each part, Deb and I were paired with every imaginable shape and size of Foxtrotting Fun.)

Knowing that we really needed focused lessons to get over the hump (so to speak), Deb set about seeing if she could find some. Well, lo and behold there was a new place opening up in one of the mills in town that was going to have dance lessons. Of course their first series was "Latin Lovers Salsa Dancing" or some such theme. Oh perfect.

We've been to three classes so far and we are really enjoying it. We are learning the Rumba and the Cha-cha and I don't think we've even scratched the surface yet. We are supposed to practice between lessons and we haven't been very good about it so I think I'll go downstairs and see if I can interest Deb in a little Rumba before bedtime...

More Video Fun

This is kind of a convoluted story that starts with the editorial section in the local paper. Basically, these columns - written by local right-wing zealots - are a journalistic and grammatical embarrassment to modern living. I often want to send in rebuttals or simply point out the travesty of reason that they've committed in paragraphs 1, 2, 3, and 4 but I don't because I know it's futile. It does make me want to write *something* however except that I never could figure out what I wanted to write about. Of course, it finally hit me - I should write about computers and how to do things with them. So I sent a couple of emails to the editors asking if they would like me to do a column on computers. The answer? One said they might be able to squeeze in an article once in awhile and the other never even responded. Well, crap.

OK, switch threads...

It's been awhile since I was first bitten by the video bug. At first there was a flurry of projects and editing and enthusiasm but, like most of my hobbies, it has died down a bit. Loosely associated with the video editing is photo editing - specifically with Photoshop. I use it for tweaking photos of course, but it's also very useful for graphics creating and editing. For such a popular and powerful product however, it is very difficult to use. These are the kinds of things by the way, that I wanted to write about in my computer column for the paper. Anyway, during a trip to the High School for some meeting, on something, some night, I saw signs for an Adult Education class on Photoshop and I thought "I should sign up for that." Well, I never could find out when the classes started so I never did anything.

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to surf to the local access cable TV station and saw that Adult Ed classes were starting so I went to the web site and looked for the Photoshop class. The class was scheduled but after looking at the description, I realized that it was probably a little too basic for me since I had already learned a lot through trial and error and tutorials on various web sites. What I did notice however, was that there was a class starting that showed you how to make video for the local cable station. Hmm... Maybe, if I learned how to make my own cable access TV show, I could make one about how to use computers for various things like photo and video editing. Yeah that's it, screw the old school newspapers, we're going video!!!!

So I signed up for the video production class. The first week, the class was canceled since the instructor had to cover the local selectmen meeting. The next week, after wandering around the High School looking for the video room, I finally found the guy who was in charge. He informed me that there was a change of plans for the class tonight since somebody was coming in to tape a segment of their cable access show. "Great" I thought. I was looking forward to finding out how to use the equipment and now I was going to have to sit here and watch somebody else work on their show. Well, it turns out that Barry, the instructor, is a student of the "education by immersion" school so by the end of the night, I was running camera three, wearing headphones to get instructions from Barry in the production room, panning and zooming and being a real contributor to the making of the show. It was wicked cool and I had a blast.

It turns out that a small percent of every cable bill is earmarked as local access funds and goes back to the community. Well, a small percent of a lot of money is still a lot of money and this guy has equipment that is "the shit" (that's good). He's got studio cameras, hand held cameras, high definition cameras, portable mixing stations, the works. Plus, people who take the class can sign out anything and use it for their own projects.

This is going to be fun...