melinthropy

So, after I read a review of it by David Pogue, I went out and bought… The Flip!  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a video camera that’s smaller than my cell phone, runs on AA batteries, and has a little USB plug built right into it.  It was so easy — I opened the package in the car, put in the batteries, and started taking videos before we even made it home!  (And we only live 5 minutes away from BestBuy!) Then I got home, took a couple more videos, and plugged the Flip into my MacBook.  It opened up a little window where I double-clicked on the Mac software, and I could immediately see the videos I had taken, and could easily save them to disk (or even trim them down first).  Then I opened up iMovie on my Mac, which I’ve never used before (I don’t have iLife ‘08 yet — I have the old version.) and put together a little movie. The sound track doesn’t go with it at all — it’s just the first thing I could find that I had recorded in Garage Band (it’s me on the vocals).  So about 20 minutes of editing, adding in the music, and exporting to a web-friendly size, I had this little video! It was fun.  The Flip is so small, it will fit in my pocket or pocketbook, so I can take random video of things I find interesting.  (Yes, this was an uncharacteristic random purchase, wasn’t it!)

I’ve recently completed a project for a friend of my mom’s. I knew years of my mom’s bragging about me would eventually come back to haunt me, and here it was — my mom’s friend, Robin, a science teacher, who had heard all about my genius, super-incredible, awesome musical talent, asked me to help her finish up some science songs she had been recording. I had just bought my new MacBook and had played with Garage Band a bit, but I was wanting a reason to play with it some more, so I agreed to help out.

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mel·in·thro·py /mel’ ən throh pee/
–noun.
Melinda’s cool new blog.

Yes, that’s right, it doesn’t even get any hits on Google! That means no one ever thought of it before! John said there was a reason no one ever thought of it before… Clearly he means because I am an innovator. Honestly, people should hire me to come up with names for their companies.

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