Architecture Cruise Around Manhattan

Our friend Dee told us about this New York City Architecture Cruise. 
We had a day between teaching gigs at Senior Planet in the city and this was a great way to relax and learn more ourselves.

It was a perfect September afternoon for a boat ride.

We were welcomed aboard the gorgeous 1920's themed yacht Manhattan II and cast off for our nearly three-hour tour. 

Our captain gave us the required Coast Guard safety briefing and turned us over to our fantastically knowledgeable guide, Joseph Lengeling, a member of the American Institute of Architects. He kept up an entertaining narration for the entire circumnavigation of the island of Manhattan. 

We were amazed at his expertise about old and new skyscrapers, architects names and dates, residential architecture, bridges, Art Deco and Beaux Arts styles as well as waterfront parks and infrastructure through the years. He told stories of history, biography, design and current events with an enthusiasm that showed his love of the subject. All without notes!

We had great views the entire tour. We took lots of pictures and met some nice folks.

We circumnavigated Manhattan!

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge (George Washington Bridge)

We were treated to a complimentary beer, wine, or champagne and enjoyed some tasty snacks provided by the fine crew of two. 

You can't beat this tour for value. 5-Stars! Highly recommended. We'll be back.

Here is a link to more of our pictures. Enjoy!

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Diane, Andy, Elizabeth, and Clear Creek, Golden Colorado

After the RVSEF conference in Colorado Springs, we planned to visit our friends Diane and Andy in the Denver area.  We were thinking of staying in the inexpensive Elks Lodge, or Fairgrounds, but we also knew of a really nice little campground in Golden called Clear Creek.  We’ve spent a lot of money in the last few weeks, with not much coming in – so we didn’t feel like we could splurge on a real campground. 
But, lack of money has never stopped us before!  So, when Diane and Andy mentioned how close Clear Creek was to their home, we said, “What the Heck!”  And, I’m so glad we did.  It is just beautiful.  We paid for a couple of nights, then they let us move to a space right next to the creek, and we just didn’t want to leave at all.  There’s pretty good Wi-Fi here, and a 4bar 4G Verizon signal.  When we realized that the upcoming weekend is Memorial Day, we extended our reservation for 10 more days!  This is what our lifestyle is all about!  We're working all the time (lots of new videos on our website) - but we can do it in beautiful places, and be flexible in our schedule.

Check out this little video and I think you’ll agree we made a good choice.

The primary reason we just had to visit is that Diane and Andy now have a 2 1/2 year old daughter, Elizabeth.  The last time we saw them, Diane was still pregnant!  So, they came by the RV park and brought her.  They were fulltime RVers for a couple of years themselves.  I think they’ve been planting seeds with their daughter!

Elizabeth is ready to go, "My Mommy told me all about driving an RV"

Diane and Andy come to visit us at Clear Creek park

Elizabeth's favorite toys

Elizabeth and Diane

We know the truth! The one on the right is the kid.

Trying to keep up with a 2 year old

Come on!

Power Tools, Quiche and Cicadas

We were planning to leave the Marston’s driveway on Saturday, but I wanted to record some video for one of our ‘Gabbing with the Geeks’ and was enlisting Roxie’s help to run the camera.  That took us to about 11am.  We also needed to stop by a truck tire place on our way out of town to install some air fill extensions and get the tires properly filled.  Oooops, we called the place and they close at noon – no way we could get there and get it done in time.  And, they’re closed on Sunday.

So.we stay in the driveway for another couple days.  What a treat!  It was like I was just handed two days on a platter – two unexpected days.  Those things that we say “I just wish we had a little more time, then I’d ….”  Well, we now had that little more time!  I had wanted to get my closet organized but we hadn’t gotten around to it.  Now’s the time! Using a cool website for ClosetMaid, we feed in our closet’s dimensions and then drag and drop different combinations of shelving, hanging space and storage products to build your dream closet.  When you’re done, you can print out a shopping list.  It will show exactly what parts you need, including the various brackets, and cut lengths of shelving.

I think Jim was just happy to have a reason to use some of his power tools!  I’m thrilled to have shelves rather than piling boxes and clothes on top of each other.  A place for everything, and everything in its place!

Since we were here on Sunday and Roxie and Charles like to ‘do brunch’ on Sundays, I decided to make quiche.  Years ago, I was in a habit of hosting Sunday brunches all the time and my signature dish was quiche.  I surprised myself that I still remembered how!

We’re in Tennessee and it happens to be that special time every 13 years when the Cicadas come out, and boy do they make a racket! 

Dolphin Research Center

This was a cool day.  We really liked the Dolphin Research Center - the dolphins seemed so happy.  Most of them were born there.  It was over a week ago now.  I've taken so long  because I really wanted to include the video, not just the still photos.  And video takes a lot more effort to edit.  No, it didn't take 10 days to edit, just 10 days to get around to doing it!  In case you're interested, I used Adobe Premiere Elements 9 for the editing - I have a lot to learn before I get good at it.  Here ya go:

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Gabbing with the Geeks

I finally got around to editing the video we shot up in Goshen, Indiana of our friends Phil and Tracey May from TechnoRV.  I had a real problem getting any of my video editing software to work with the files taken by our Kodak Zi8 video camera.  I don't know why ... I've done it before.  It seems as if the latest upgrade to Windows Live MovieMaker removed the ability to work with the .mov files that the Kodak camera takes.

I had to use the Kodak software to convert the files to .mp4 first - then I used Camtasia to do the editing.  What a chore!  The results are below - I hope you like meeting Phil and Tracey, we sure did.  This video is part of our series we call 'Gabbing with the Geeks.'  You can see all 9 'Gabbing' videos on our GeeksOnTour.TV website.

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The Best RVing Stories

If you like to read about RVing, have I got a page for you!  Forget about that novel on your bedside table, this will provide you many, many hours of delightful stories.

RV Centennial Stories at RV.net

Did you know that this year marks the 100 year anniversary of RVing?  That’s the theme at The Rally, and there are some vintage RVs here to honor it, the earliest being from 1936!  We’ll take some pictures today and add them here.  And, yes, I had to submit my story as well … actually it’s my parents’ story, since I was only 10 at the time of our first RV trip.

I know I’ve posted this video in the blog before, but I think it bears repeating!  Here’s the video I did about my family’s early RVing days:

And, as long as I'm at it, here's a little video of our current RV home and how we modified it with our offices: And, here's a brief overview of where we've been in this RV so far: In case you're wondering, all three of the videos above were created using Photo Story 3 - a free program from Microsoft. We're teaching a seminar on how to do it (it is SOO easy!) on Sunday here at The Rally.

Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park

Nice Spot – Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park.  We stayed 2 nights.  Good Verizon signal for tethering our Droids to do our computer work.

Had a nice walk on the nature trail, and a wonderful site right on the water.

I love the summer sunlight!  I was able to put in a full 8 hour workday and still had plenty of time to enjoy the surroundings.  From 6-8am I answered emails and posted to blogs.  From 10-4 I wrote the first draft of our monthly newsletter.  Jim helped me write the article on ‘Have you Been Hacked?’, I wrote about Picasa’s new addition ‘Picnik.com’ and a MS Streets and Trips tip on navigating full screen.  You can get a preview at Geeks on Tour May Newsletter.  Or you can wait for the email which I should be sending out today to all Newsletter Subscribers.
With plenty of sunlight left, we put the kayaks in the water and had a delightful tour of Blackshear Lake and the Cypress Tress in the water.  Here's a video, including the kayak paddle we took thru the Cypress trees. Please be patient for the video to start ... if this high-quality video doesn’t work for you, here it is on Youtube  You can view this video in a larger format by clicking the icon at the lower right (just hover your mouse over the bottom and you'll see the icons)
 

Back in Florida

We got back just in time to go to our Kayuba Club picnic at John U Lloyd State Beach.  We hoped to go kayak diving, but it was too windy.

See for yourself in this little video we put together.

Show-Me-How

In case you were wondering how to get a new template for your Blogger blog (like I just did) – here’s the video I made about it.  I recommend watching it fullscreen.  Just click the button on the bottom of the video that looks like:  (use [Esc] to get back)

Video Interview of Geeks on Tour

We just got the link to this video that was taken of us by John DiPietro of RVeNews.

Google Map in Blogger Sidebar

I hope you've noticed the map at the right side of this blog. It is a live, interactive link to my custom map on google maps. It shows our route for the entire year of 2008. You can click on a placemark and see details, even a photo sometimes. Or, you can click on the link to 'View Larger Map', and it will take you to the full map on Google Maps.

My latest video ... still testing Camtasia ... is on how to put this map into the blogger sidebar. And, as long as I'm experimenting ... 'sharpening the saw' ... I embedded the video into my *other* blog called www.WiFiSavvy.com . I've had WiFiSavvy.com for quite a while, but have never decided exactly how to fit it in. It's a WordPress blog hosted by www.HostMySite.com , whereas www.GeeksonTour.com is hosted by Godaddy.com. I am a firm believer in not putting all my eggs in one basket! I use WiFiSavvy to learn more about WordPress, and to have a place to put more technology thoughts ... no travel/personal stuff.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it :-), is to visit Tutorial-video-google-map-in-blogger-gadgets and watch the video in both the .flv version (the first one) and the .swf version (the second one.) Leave me some comments if you see any difference. No, there is no pay for your services, but you do get the video for free! And my appreciation :-)

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Experiment with video hosting

There are now soooo many choices in how to produce, manage, and host videos. My head is spinning. I have decided to devote some time to exploring and experimenting. I may end up deciding the way I've done it on http://www.geeksontour.com/ is still the best way. But, I have to know about these other hosts.

This video is an old one of our first few months on the road. We created it using Photo Story 3, so it is a .wmv file. I upoaded it to http://www.screencast.com/ and used their procedure to embed it here. Please leave me some comments as to how this looks (and sounds) to you. I'm especially interested in feedback from Macintosh users. Since this is a windows media file, I expect that Mac users won't be able to see it at all. However, it is using a player from the web, rather than your computer's media player, so I could be wrong.

10/13/08: enough of you watched the video that we exceeded the free limit of bandwidth on screencast - so I have now linked to the free video host Viddler.

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Fort Lauderdale Sunrise Wreck

Our very own Mel Fisher in the family! Well, not quite. For one thing, my uncle John is investigating a shipwreck that wasn't carrying much in the way of treasure. And, for another, you are no longer allowed to touch anything off our shores that may have historical value, let alone dig it up and haul it out. It's still a pretty cool story. He discovered the wreck site when he was a kid diving these waters in the 50s. At that time it was 'finders - keepers,' and he did bring up several artifacts, including silver coins, an anchor, and a sextant. You can learn more on his blog (which I taught him how to do:-) And, here's a five minute video I put together from his talk at Bonnet House. I think my favorite part is hearing his estimate that he's spent roughly 13,000 hours underwater!

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More Zoo pics - Dead camera

Glenn was pretty quick on putting up his photos. Check out his web album for some beautiful photos.

You might wonder why we didn't take any good photos ... wellllll .. my camera died a few days ago. While we were at the Air Force museum in Dayton. I took a couple pictures just fine ...then the next one was half black. I thought maybe I had my hand in front of the lens or something so I took another one. Same thing. In fact as I kept taking more pictures the black starting getting bigger. Something was definitely wrong. When I got home, I tried switching batteries ... no change. I tried switching camera card ... lens .... no change. So, it's definitely in the body of my camera. I did a little online research and found that, indeed, this is something that happens. The mirror inside on the shutter falls down and blocks the picture. My camera's shutter is rated for about 10,000 pictures and I probably have taken close to 20,000. It's time for a new one.

So how did we get the few photos we did? With our cell phones! What a modern marvel those little things are! They've rescued us with Internet Access when our $6,000 system failed. And they've rescued us with photos when our $1,000 camera failed. Meanwhile, Jim took some video and I edited it and put it on Youtube. He also took some video at the airforce museum ... haven't edited that yet.

Sure wish Youtube delivered higher quality. I'm rendering the video in another format to upload to my own website. That one will look better. I'll link it here when it's done.

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Weekly Tutorial Video - Backup your Photos

Every week since mid-January, I have been posting an article on RV.net's new blog. My assignment is to write about using computers on the road. A few weeks ago, I came up with the idea to create a very short video tutorial for each blog entry. I make them small enough to be viewable on Youtube or Google Video (links are to GeeksOnTour videos) so I can embed them in the blog entry. It occurs to me that I should share them here as well.

This week's topic is about backing up your pictures using Picasa. Here' the video - it's only a minute and a half. Watch it! The funny thing is that, because of teaching other people to do this, it makes me do it! In the video I say that I'm making a backup of all my pictures and taking the DVD to my Mom's for safekeeping. Well, I didn't think to do that until *after* I came up with the idea to teach others. :-) I'm not only teaching you ... I'm teaching myself.

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My Google Earth Video

"Hey Mikey! They LIKE it!" Remember that commercial? Well, I think people liked the Google Earth video I posted on the RV.net blog yesterday.

How do I know?

At the end of the post I suggest that people can see more video by visiting our website at GeeksOnTour.com. I checked my Google Analytics statistics page and see that visits to Geeksontour.com were double the normal number yesterday. hmmm - that last spike was exactly one week ago ... and I post to RV.net every Thursday ... interesting.

We also had a spike in Newsletter subscriptions yesterday. Instead of the 1-3 per day that come in when nothing is going on, we had 17. Cool! That brings our total to over 1300 now. The newsletter is free, but developing a following like that is what will enable us to charge small amounts for our videos and have it add up to something.

This spike in readers is still nothing like what we got when George mentioned us though. Speaking of George, we expect to see him next week as he passes through Miami on his way to Israel. I don't know if we'll recognize him without Ms. Tioga! He is leaving his motorhome in Mexico while he takes a trip to Israel for a few months. That George is such an adventurous guy.

Remember to use the shoutbox in the right sidebar if you have anything to say about this. It's so easy. Just type your name or nickname, add your website or blog if you'd like, type a comment and click on 'Shout.'

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Investment Conference with Mom

I did my share of investing when tech stocks were hot in 1997-2000. That was fun. When they crashed in 2000-01 ... not so much. I never did learn when to sell. I really haven't cared much for investing since then. But, investing conferences are great. In order to learn what to invest in, you need to learn about what is going on around the world. Some of it is not so good ... shortage of water, food and oil is a major theme now. In investment-speak that means that commodities are hot. The other theme is emerging economies ... the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China. They are all becoming more free, and with more freedom comes more economic growth. In investment-speak, that means own global stocks. But, the best part of the conference was getting to spend this much time with my Mom. Even though we were in a hotel in St. Pete, Florida - it felt like we were traveling. We watched a piano recital by a Russian pianist, learned about resort properties in Nicaragua, and enjoyed a wine tasting of Argentinian wine. It was a beautiful hotel: We were in meeting rooms, listening to speakers most of the time, but we took a walk around the block a couple times and took a picture of each other: (more pictures if you click on any of those above) I love traveling. I mostly travel around this country, but thanks to Mom I have traveled to Chile, Ecuador, Turkey, China, and Borneo. Mom travels the world and she takes video when she travels. I help her edit the video and post short clips like this one of Namibia or this one of Bhutan. One of my goals for this stay is to help her edit the video of her last two trips; Central America and China-to-Tibet by train. We gotta get that done before she takes off on her next trip ... to western Australia. I had a great time being out of the RV world for a few days, and in the world of investing possibilities. I may have even learned enough to put my toe back in the investing waters - they taught us about a portfolio strategy so simple, you only have to trade once a year. Thanks Mom!

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Happy New Year

That's our 'official' holiday photo. Then, here's our New Year's Eve photo ... You see, the park held a fancy New Year's Eve party and it had a Moroccan theme. I love how Jim is game for dressing up! It's fun. But, he wasn't the only one ... Then there was the entertainment! She was really good. We took lots more photos, and video too. We've set up a blog just for Palm Creek go check it out at www.palmcreek.blogspot.com You can see the video there.

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Geek Work

This weekend we gave our "High-Speed Internet on the Road" seminar. We discuss the 3 choices: Satellite, Cellular, and Wi-Fi. Most of the class discusses Wi-Fi because that is the most popular choice and there is a LOT to know about it. The seminar is also sponsored by MatrixRV who provides the Wi-Fi here in the park. Here's a video giving just a taste of our seminars: Then, Sunday, Jim had an unusual assignment - to take a Datastorm satellite dish down from a motorhome's roof! When you put a dish up, it is on a mounting plate that makes it easy to just slide on the ladder. When you take one down, you leave the mounting plate on the roof - no holes that way - making it much more difficult to get it down a ladder. I'm not sure what is wrong with it - it's not one of Jim's installations. The people had to get on the road, and, since Jim had helped them with some issues over the phone in the past - they trusted him to take it and see if he can fix it. That's nearly 100 pounds he's holding on to there. As for me, I'm just writing and doing web-work. Not much to take a picture of there. So, here's a picture of pretty flowers! With the Arizona setting sun for lighting, they're even more brilliant than normal.

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Jane Seymour at Palm Creek

This park, Palm Creek, has lots of events and entertainment scheduled throughout the season. We've never really taken advantage of it before, but we're more interested this year since we're here all season. So, when they asked if we would attend the Jane Seymour event and take pictures - we gladly accepted. Jim decided to be the photographer, but I had to grab the camera at least to get a picture of him with Jane ... "Beauty and the Geek!" It was an interesting event, not at all what I was expecting. It was about a new website by the founder of Monster.com - Jeff Taylor. The website is a social networking site for those of us, "Lovin Life on the flip side of 50." The name of the site is eons.com and it does look pretty interesting. Here's Jeff Taylor lovin' this 55 - 80 year old crowd. So, the event was a little bit about Jeff Taylor, a little bit about the joys of middle age :-) and, then the headliner was Jane Seymour - their celebrity spokesperson. I really liked her! Lots more photos on our web album.

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