Category: Websites

Alan Webb 1 mile video

Alan Webb broke the American record two weeks ago for the 1 mile race. He did it in 3:46:91.

I saw a video of it yesterday. Even though I knew he was going to break the record, I still got caught up in the excitement and emotion of the commentators.

There is a hi resolution version and a low resolution version of the video. It took a while for the hi-res to load in, but that is the one I watched. Apparently many people are having trouble getting it to work. So the low-res may work better for you.

This video is done by a company called Flocasts. They do videos for a couple of different types of sporting events. Their FloTrack division covers track and field. Just buzzing around the site, it looks like they have training programs and such. I have just seen a few videos from them. They do a good job with those. From what I understand, they are doing the filming themselves. They are not pulling news feeds.

Even if you are not into track, it is really neat to watch him break the record at a very small track meet.

Wrong language in Picasa

My dad was having problems getting Picasa to work properly on his computer. Picasa was coming up in Spanish instead of English. I finally figured out the problem and just wanted to summarize it here for others with the problem. I am getting all my information from this Google Groups posting.

If you already have Picasa installed, you can got to Tools | Options | General | Language used in menus and dialogs. In that drop down box chose your language. Now the problem comes when you cannot read the language that Picasa has chosen for you. For example, Japanese. I am going to take a guess and suppose that the settings are in the same place in all languages.

Tools is the second menu item from the right (next to Help). Options is the last choice on the drop down. General is the first tab. The language can be chosen in the only drop down box within that dialog box.

If you have not yet installed Picasa (or you have un-installed it due to this problem and need to know how to fix it before installing again) you can do these steps that this poster describes. I do not have a Windows machine available to test with, therefore I cannot summarize more clearly. But if you are a Windows user, this probably makes as much sense as using Windows in the first place.

I went to Control panel–Regional & Language–Advanced, and made sure the Language for non-Unicode Programs is English.  Also to Default User account settings- made sure it is NOT checked, and to Default Input Language, and made sure it is English. I was able to reinstall Picasa in English!

I hope this helps someone else who has Picasa (or potentially other software) installing in the wrong language.

Do you Facebook?

I have not gotten into any of the social networking sites yet. Not even something simple like Flickr. I have uploaded 2 videos to YouTube, I guess that is a start. Of course, I have my blog. Technically a blog is not a social network, though some social networks are based on blogging and blogs can be a part of a social network.

I did try Twitter, that is a social network. But, as I suspected, I never got overly fascinated by it and have not sent out a tweet in a while.

I have had a Facebook profile for a few months but have not done anything with it. Last night I decided to update my profile a bit. I even searched for a few friends. It seems like it would be a good place to promote a blog or podcast if you actually got some friends surrounding you. I have 2 right now.

Like Twitter, I will play with it for a while, but I am not sure how “into” it I will get. Come, befriend me and maybe you can convince me as to why I need to keep using it. I have 3 friends requests from people I don’t know. If you are one of those, then leave a comment and let me know so I can add you. I am a bit afraid to just add everyone who requests. Is that a bad thing?

Only 3 days left!

Have you voted for the New 7 Wonders of the World yet?

I don’t know how important this is in the grand scheme of life, but it is fun to think your vote can be counted to make up the current 7 Wonders of the World.

I mentioned earlier that Chichén Itzá had been nominated as part of the final 21 candidates. I also cast my vote for my list of 7.

I was reminded of this vote today because at breakfast I was given a ballot along with my bill. The new Governor elect for our state (Yucatán) was asking people to fill out the ballot and they would cast a vote for you. I understand her desire to have Chichén become part of the list. I was, however, disappointed in the way the ballot page was presented. It had 3 steps. Step 1: Vote for Chichén Itzá. Step 2: Don’t vote for any of these (then it listed some of the candidates). Step 3: Vote for any 6 of these (then it listed the rest of the candidates). I suspect that the list in step 2 were places that were beating Chichén Itzá in the voting, while those in step 3 were behind Chichén in the polls. It just seemed inappropriate to tell people how to vote.

Looking through the list, I picked 6 of the same ones I picked before. The difference is that in the past I chose The Statue of Liberty (at my son’s request) and today I would have chosen Petra. My thinking is that, while I am very proud of the Statue of Liberty as an American, is it really worthy of being a great architectural, cultural and world-class wonder? I am not so sure it is.

Go vote. You only have a few short days. Make history.