TV on the PC

I just spent time watching the NASCAR race on my laptop. I’ve never watched a race on my laptop, and I was uncertain how it would work. I was expecting buffering problems and jerky pictures and all that, especially since I am using an older laptop over a wireless connection.

I’m glad to say I was very surprised at the results. The picture was nearly perfect, only a few freezes, otherwise the picture was clear, sharp and uninterrupted. Technologically everything worked fine, but I’m not sure I’m sold on the experience of watching TV on my laptop. I think I’m so accustomed to watching TV on a TV, that it’s hard to adjust to watching a show on a little screen. Add to that the ads and other stuff NASCAR squeezes into the screen, and the actual real estate for the race is pretty limited. 

I don’t have cable TV, so once NASCAR switched to TNT, I either have to watch the race online, go to a bar, or listen to it on the radio. To be honest, I can’t really pay attention for the course of an entire race, nor do I have the time to sit and just watch something like that, but I do really enjoy racing and it’s a nice diversion for a little bit. 

I’d rate this as a great solution to not having cable. My only real complaint was the annoying chat that was scrolling on the side of the screen The comments were mostly stupid, and I really wish there was a way to disable it so it didn’t annoy me. Other than that, I’d give it 2 thumbs up.  It would be fun to watch the race on TV and have the laptop running near by, just to see how the camera angles and such compare. I’d also love to see some kind of accurate ticker telling who is in what place. There was a leader board on the side, but it wasn’t working, so it was impossible to tell where drivers of interest were. 

Maybe there’s hope for TV on the pc for me. I know Hulu and youtube.com certainly hope so.

I’m not a graphic designer

I’ve spent the past 2 hrs trying to ‘design’ a logo for my 1 Minute Wingman website. I have no design skills, I simply downloaded gimp and went at it. I don’t even know how to use gimp and I must admit, 90% of the buttons and options in there are total gibberish. I wouldn’t know what most of them do if you put a gun to my head. 

But I succeeded!  It took about 20 tries, but I finally found out that gimp had something like a template for building logos and I picked one (after trying all of them) and then refined it until it looked decent. 

I’m sure the way I did this would make a real designer barf, but I don’t make any claims to be a real designer, or even a fake one. I have no eye for anything from painting my house to picking out clothes that look decent on me. Graphic webdesign is a complete disaster for me both from a technical end and a design end. But I can’t afford to hire a real designer and quite frankly, if people are put of by my design, maybe I don’t want them as part of my community anyway if they are that close- minded.

So that’s done. The logo problem has been bugging me for a week, since I moved the site to wordpress.org and a new host. I think it will change down the road, but at least it’s not totally humiliating like it was. That was the last big barrier to site design, now I believe I can focus 100% on content, then on building a community. 

Blogging my brains out

I’ve spent all my free time the past few weeks working on 1munitewingman.com, a website I’m building with a friend to provide tips and ideas for folks to improve their wellness, diet, finances, etc. one minute at a time. I really believe there is a niche to be found in this. There are lots of blogs and sites dedicated to massive lifestyle changes, but I don’t think most people can handle huge changes and that explains why people spend lots of money trying to fix things, but rarely succeed. 

So, 1minutewingman.com is an attempt to give folks ideas to take small steps – things that they can do in a minute or less that can make a positive impact in their lives. So we’ll see what happens. 

The technical side of the site has been a real struggle. I started on Tumblr, then moved to wordpress.com, then finally to wordpress.org. I feel like I’ve looked at 1000 themes and played with a few trying to get the look and feel I was after. I believe I finally hit on it this past weekend. I’m really happy with the theme I’ve settled on and it seems to be customizable to my needs. I hated spending so much time screwing around with the tech end of things, but I think it’s settled and I’m focused on creating content. 

Tomorrow I’m going to do a video or two for the site. I don’t know why more people don’t use video on their sites. Maybe visitors won’t pay attention long enough. Maybe people are afraid of video. It’s so easy, I don’t get why it’s not all over the place. 

I’ve been trying to train my body to be able to work until 12 or 1 am every night. I don’t know that I’m doing well. I really do need 7 or 8 hrs of sleep every night and I find that after a week or two of staying up until 1am, I’m pretty beat and I end up going to bed at 9 several nights in a row. So there is still balance to be found there.