Sunday, May 28, 2017
It is a beautiful quiet holiday weekend here and I do not have much on tap.
Things I have been up to?
- Working one or two social media projects i.e., Hanover Maryland Businesses and posting to my high school alumni group [end of the year school events].
- Catching live action at the French Open.
- Minor updates to the Amazon Stores:
Those in the area may have noticed, I have been out a bit more researching and photographing ongoing projects.
Also still thinking about new websites [discussed in the last post] and all that entails.
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Recently, I have been working several projects mostly associated with the HanoverMDBusinesses Page maintained on Facebook.
Preliminary tasks [for one of the projects] included, registering two new domains:
- hanovermaryland.org [future full blown website similar to ococean.com]
- reginadenisethomas.com [software and other support tools for my projects that I do not want hosted on my business sites, i.e., qisoftware.com and hosting-q.com]
I also created a new Instagram account that will be used exclusively with the HanoverMaryland Businesses page and site.
Currently, the Facebook page uses the QiSoftware Instagram account w/hashtag "hanovermdbiz". In the future, the new HanoverBusinesses Instagram account will be integrated on both the page and site.
To provide a more professional appearance to the photos published via Instagram, I have been playing around with the Photo Apps that were pre-installed on my Android and Windows10 platform.
Both apps, quite frankly are pretty sophisticated and allow for incremental angular rotation and image cropping- both of which I find quite useful. I use these apps because I post Instagram photos from my Android to the QiSoftware account and now from the Windows10 platform to the new HanoverBusinesses Instagram account.
The HanoverMDBusinesses page is sort of a hobby that I started in 2010 and work when time permits. I hope the new [future] website and other online resources will engage visitors and promote the business/entertainment/shopping/dining community that exists just outside my back door [figuratively speaking].
Friday, May 12, 2017
In March, when I ordered my new camcorder, I did not order a backup battery nor a condenser microphone. A week ago, I ordered those accessories and yesterday the purchases arrived.
Check below for links to the specific camcorder accessories I ordered:
Amazon order:
Short video demonstrating the difference between using the camcorder with and without the condenser microphone.
What else have I been up to? Actually several projects, however I will have to update this later.
Monday, May 08, 2017
Last month I scheduled an eye appointment [for today], with the Arundel Mills location of VisionWorks.
For awhile now, I have been trying to get over to the mall for new photos of all the new stores opening @Arundel Mills.
Most of the photos will be used for posts, Instagram feed photos, or events associated with the HanoverMDBusinesses page, I maintain on Facebook.
As most know, the Maryland Live! Casino is co-located with Arundel Mills Mall and the new seventeen story hotel [Live Hotel], under construction now [due to open late 2017 or early 2018], appears to be bringing in a lot of new stores.
Imagine, the casino, live entertainment @Center Stage, the new hotel, shopping, world class dining, and all of the other entertainment venues the mall has to offer- all in one place. It all looks very exciting.
Today was the perfect opportunity to walk the 3/4 of a mile distance around the mall and shoot a lot of new photos.
Tuesday, May 02, 2017
About a week ago, most of my family went out of town. Before leaving, the fridge was stocked and I have been testing different recipes almost everyday.
One of my favorites- a roasted chicken breast with olive oil, cayenne pepper, salt, and the original chicken seasoning by McCormick. I roasted it in the convection oven-- according to the instructions in this recipe and added sides of fresh cranberry sauce and white rice.
Today, I grilled a steak on an indoor grill I purchased last year as a holiday gift that I decided to keep. The price on the grill was such a great deal, Amazon does not even list it with the order. Check here for more on the grill.
Short video capturing the grill in action today.
My new Canon camcorder produces MP4 and AVCHD [MTS] video files. Often I use the AVCHD setting for the higher resolutions. The camcorder has a built-in utility enabling quick conversion of AVCHD videos to MP4.
I also found a great video conversion utility which works with the MTS [AVCHD] video files, allowing for slightly higher file resolutions than the camcorder's built-in function.
Here is a screenshot of the AVC program.
This week, I also made a video showing how to make fresh cranberry sauce with frozen berries, however that video was 35 seconds and the steak video only 15, so I opted to use the shorter to discuss the AVC utility program.
By the way, I also love the grill.
