November 22, 2009

There were 2 posts published on November 22, 2009 (this is page 1 of 1).

Thanksgiving reunion day 1

We finished up our first full day in Panama City Beach, Florida today. So far its been a fun trip.

Yesterday we got up well before daybreak and made the long drive from Raleigh. The sun was just rising as we passed South of the Border and into South Carolina. We made good time all the way until just north of Florida, when we took a detour to Folkston, Georgia, to see the Folkston Funnel.

The Folkston Funnel is one of the busiest stretches of train track in the country, with up to 60 trains passing through each day. Being a family of railroad fans we looked forward to seeing it in person. Three freight trains went roaring through this stretch of track while we had lunch on the viewing platform. It was a good distraction from the day of driving.
Continue reading →

Camcorder crash

aghvx200a

Once again we’ve had a Sony camcorder mysteriously die on us. Our almost-new Sony DCR-TRV280 gave me a “reinsert cassette” error this morning all of a sudden and would not accept the tape no matter how many times I put it back in.

We purchased this camera about 3 years ago in an effort to have something that would play the dozens and dozens of Hi8 8mm videotapes we have in our collection. Like our last video camera this one has apparently suffered a failure of the tape transport system, essentially rendering the whole camera useless. The cost to replace the tape transport mechanism exceeds the value of the camera.

I’ve been jonesing for this Panasonic HVX 200 HD camcorder I’ve seen on Craigslist but I don’t have the bank to buy it now. That’s probably for the better because if I owned it I would be tempted to buy a beefy Mac and a few terabytes of storage to make beautiful videos with it.

Hmm. Maybe I could buy it and make it the centerpiece of a new business doing video production. Yeah, that’s it!