Our friend Nif threw Tara a baby shower Saturday. It was cool, I wasn’t there but I’m taking other people’s word for it. They brought back a lot of stuff (diapers, wipes, carseat, bottles, etc) so we had to start getting the room ready. The futon went over to Brad and Liz’s for a while because there’s just not enough room here, which is fine, I have no emotional attachment to the futon. I did find out that we need to get into the attic and start throwing some of the junk away. Seriously, we’ve only been collecting stuff for a few years, how did we get so much junk?

Regardless, here’s a pic of the current state of Leah’s room:

I know, it’s awesome. Everything’s packed into one corner because that’s obviously the best way to setup any room.

We put some shelves in the closet/stairway so that we would have a place for the little clothes, diapers, etc we’ve been getting. It seems to be working out well so far but there are still two more showers.

I’m looking forward to moving next spring.

Noel asked me to set up a video feed to the lobby ar Riverview.

We started by getting a projector hung in the lobby directed just above the fireplace. The idea is that this will allow overflow into the lobby, give the RivKids an idea of where things are at in the service, and announcements can run out there between services. The bonus has been that we can easily record that feed and the band or elder doing the message that week can look back on it and see how it went from a different perspective.

So, we have the projector in the lobby and a DVD-R connected to the output of a video mixer (Videonics MX-1) which has four inputs: computer, remote camera (a Canon VC-C4), a stationary camera (some piece of junk from the early nineties), and Kite brought over his sweet Panasonic 3CCD kick-your-behind camera.

Now, assuming you too can borrow Kite’s camera rather than buying one of your own (not likely) this project would be quite affordable.

A decent projector: around $800
Canon VC-C4 on ebay: $300ish
Videonics MX-1 on ebay: $350ish
Stationary camera that you pulled out of a dumpster: $melly clothes
DVD-R that noel got a ridiculously good deal on: $100

I’d say that’s not too bad for a two/three camera feed plus powerpoint/video output to a recording.

Suggestions anyone?

Ok, I’ve been researching this a bit and so far haven’t found an answer…

1. Say you have a regular analog phone line (POTS) just waiting for something to be plugged into it.

2. Lets also say that you have a wireless network in your home or office (b/g/a/n or whatever)

3. You have a wifi enabled PDA/Cellphone/VOIP phone.

Is it possible to use a wifi device with your analog service?

This seems like a perfectly reasonable request to make. As wifi becomes more popular it is evident that more people will start using VOIP services to send and receive calls wirelessly. If you work in a large building (that doesn’t have a LAN VOIP service) and aren’t always in your office but have to use their phone system, why shouldn’t you be able to use your wifi device anywhere in (or out of) the building that has wireless coverage to make a phone call? Why hasn’t anybody made this yet?

I know, I know, yet another ridiculously tech-geeky post… it’s just what I do.