Opening new line

Today I have opened new line of communication (for me, that is) with the world, that piece of it that might be interested in what I have to say or show.

As much as I'll use this tool, it will be mainly about photography, more specifically about railroad photography and railroads, as inevitably both themes go together hand in hand, or as we say here in these places where I live, like shirt and ass.

What actually triggered me to start blogging was my accidental bump into this option, refinedly offered to me by Google when I edited settings of my YouTube account. Curiosity has won (since I'm not a cat I guess it won't kill me, at least not in this instance), one click followed another, and now I write this lines. Ah, well, if I'll have something to say I'll put it down here, otherwise the blog will stay dormant. No harm in this.

Nuff said...

What I'd like to say this time is my joy about my new discovery. Of course, it's discovery just for me, not for the rest of the world, or if I paraphrase one of the most notorious sentences - That's one small step for the mankind, but giant leap for me...

So, what's all about? Well, in the morning, when after the long time - actually since February - I started again the Photodex's ProShow program for the slide presentations and I was greeted by pop-up window telling me an updated version is available and I should check if I'm eligible for the free update.

Of course I checked and it showed I am eligible, so I downloaded the new, 3.2 version, and installed it. Among the new items offered there is an option to load ProShow slide show directly to YouTube. I've always considered YouTube to be place for the videos, not for the slide shows - the place for the latter is, or was, the Photodex's own website. However, this site has one serious glitch - only the PC owners can watch ProShow created shows - Mac owners are simply left on the dry.

I have several shows on this site and it always annoyed me that some of my friends with the Macs cannot see them. Therefore I grabbed this new opportunity with the both hands and immediately tested it with one of my old shows. Of course, as it usually goes, the thing didn't work and I was getting upload error messages all the time. Not throwing the gun into the bush I tried it another way. I saved the show as a Flash Video (.flv) and then I tried to upload it directly to YouTube. Of course it worked, why shouldn't; after all this is the standard and only ignorants like me should be thrilled about this.

Few minutes later, when YouTube has digested my show, I was able to watch it there. Well, the images are smaller and not that sharp and there are some glitches here and there in fading, but hey - Mac owners can see it too, and PC owners don't need to download and install ProShow viewer before they can watch the shows - something that makes every owner of the already overloaded PC to quaver at the very thought of it.

Now the new line is opened for my shows to reach the wider audience (in the few first hours it already scored 10 views without being announced to anyone plus one 5-star rating), and the rest of my shows will follow as my time will permit.

Now if I only figure out how to upload my show to this blog...

Here it is, I hope!



Nope, it doesn't work... It keeps saying "Video is no longer available". I don't know why, because it is still accessible on YouTube. Hm, weird... I'll try to figure out tomorrow; tonight let's try with a different approach - direct loading from the computer to the blog. It works...