Today I learned that a former friend got remarried. I found a picture. They make a good couple.
Page 25 of 82
I have a Sony Handycam DCR-HC36 digital video camera that uses tape. I got it when we had our last desktop computer than ran Windows XP. I imported video using their driver software and a USB cable. Fast forward to today I could not install the software on Windows 7, Vista or Mac OS X Lion. Turns out I had to get a FireWire 800 to Sony DV i.link cable (9-pin to 4-pin). I got one for $5 at a local computer/electronics shop. I hooked up the cable between my MacBook Pro and my DCR-HC36, fired up iMovie and voila it worked. I was able to import my videos with iMovie. That’s the short version.
And now for the trials and tribulations of figuring the thing out. I suppose I might have saved myself some trouble had I read the manual (I still haven’t).
I first tried to install the drivers on the Windows 7 laptop. Got an error message saying software was too old. I thought I’d be clever and install it in compatibility mode. It installed but the laptop still wouldn’t recognize the camera via USB. So I did some digging on Sony’s website. The didn’t have newer drivers, but it said it would work with their i.link cable (IEEE 1394). Well, the laptop didn’t have a FireWire port. So, then I tried to install the Mac software on my Macbook Pro. Got an error message that PowerPC software was no longer supported. There weren’t any newer drivers online either.
I did some searching and I found a lot of different answers for Windows and Macs. So I tried to install the drivers on my Vista laptop, but first I had to remove the hard drive that had Linux installed on it and put the old drive with Vista on it back into the laptop. I ran into the same issues that I had with Windows 7. I tried compatibility mode and installed the drivers but still no such luck. I found the same thing I could use a FireWire cable but not a USB cable. And then more web research said I could just hook up a FireWire cable and it would work.
The thing is if you use FireWire you do not need to install any drivers, but there was nothing on Sony’s website on for support. There should be a paragraph stating that since this camera first came out, they no longer have updated drivers for anything later than Vista or Mac OS X Leopard, but you can use a FireWire/i.link cable and don’t need any drivers.
If the cable hadn’t worked, the I was stuck with an obsolete camera, and they only way I could watch videos would be to hook it up directly to the TV or record it on a VCR.
We got back from our second trip to Montana. My wife taught for a week at UM in Missoula. For the weekend we drove up to Glacier National Park and stayed in a cabin at Lake McDonald Lodge. Alas, the Going-to-the-Sun road wasn’t open yet so we only saw a fraction of the park. Of that fraction we saw was immense and gorgeous. The only wildlife we saw were prairie dogs and some birds. We plan to go back.
Missoula, at least downtown Missoula still has it’s old small town charm. Very walkable. Almost, a Something Wicked This Way Comes feel to it (sans Jason Robards). Replete with carousel down by the Clark Fork River. If we were rich, I could see spending parts of summer up there and escape the ever warming Tucson.
I did do one short hike at Avalanche in GNP. Didn’t go all the way to the lake because I’m still recovering from a minor knee injury, but I took some great photos including this one.
Was hoping to say hi to a friend while we were there. Email probably got caught in their spam filter, and didn’t want to pester them in case they were busy.
My friend Bruce Martin died last week. His funeral is in Apache, OK on Monday, May 21, 2012. He wasn’t a close friend but I was fond of him. He was your quintessential redneck farmer who played Starfleet Battles. I knew him from my gaming days back in the mid-80’s to early 90’s. And occasionally hung out with him when I lived in Stillwater going to school. I hadn’t seen him in person in over ten years, but did exchange the occasional email with him up until Christmas. He briefly had a Facebook account and decided it was a waste of time. He’d worked at Oklahoma State for a long time but after his parents died he went back to Apache and take up farming full time again.
Early this year his former girlfriend Jackie Molloy and renter died. She’d had an aversion to doctors. Left work not feeling well. Next day they found her on the couch. I don’t know the cause of death, but I suspect it was untreated high blood pressure. My friend Sean who’d Bruce had been a second father too, went back to Stillwater to help clean up the house. It was a mess and in bad repair. Sean would relay to me how depressed Bruce had been even before Jackie’s death. On top of this Bruce’s friend Darwin Todd was dying of cancer. Sean also forwarded Bruce’s emails from Darwin’s wife on his condition.
I knew Darwin, but not that well. He died last week. I knew he didn’t have much time left, so it wasn’t a shock when I’d heard he passed. At least his suffering was over. Then I got a call from Sean that Bruce had died too. His friends had dropped him off the day Darwin died. They found him in the clothes they left him in and on the same couch Jackie died on. I suspect suicide but haven’t gotten the details. He’d been in poor health, a heavy smoker and very depressed, so I suppose it’s possible he died of a broken heart. Darwin was one of his closest friends.
Here is the last email forwarded to me from Sean:
From: Bruce Martin
Sent: Sat, May 5, 2012 15:59:26 GMT+00:00
Subject: Fwd: DarHi Guys,
The latest unhappiness.
Unless Bobbi can achieve even a meager attempt out of the surgeon, then this is it.
Perhaps John Mantooth and I can find a final rabbit in the world in the form of some type of research doctor who is willing to tangle with Darwin’s vertebra as a type of experimental/charity case.
In the meantime, I’m going to dust off the saddle, strap it on real tight, and get ready to ride the bomb down.
Bruce
R.I.P. Bruce.
Update. Another friend of Bruce posted a picture of him on their Facebook page. It was taken at a wedding within the last few years.
I was sad to learn that author K.D. Wentworth passed away yesterday. Those who knew her called her Kathy.
In 2005 I had heard about this new medium called podcasting from Paul Fischer and wanted to give it a try to help promote Conestoga, our local science fiction convention in Tulsa. Kathy was very supportive of this endeavor and gave the very first interview. We were celebrating the 10th anniversary of Conestoga, Meisha Merlin Publishing, and Yard Dog Press. Alas, Meisha Merlin and Conestoga is no more but Yard Dog Press is still going strong.
I had the archive of all the Conestoga podcasts posted on another site but is now defunct. I’d planned to repost them here but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. But I felt it would be nice to reshare this one.
Here is Elspeth Bloodgood interviewing Kathy for Conestoga. It was recorded in Feb 2006 for the upcoming Conestoga 10 in July of that year.