So you may have noticed 
that I have been slow posting blogs lately. Well, I have been swamped. But now something has complicated my blogging even more! I have a FLIP Mino HD camera that I use to shoot my video. It’s pretty awesome for the price range (about $200). HOWEVER, there is one thing that drives me crazy and has now twice brought my blogging to a crawl. Their current software versions only output the files in MP4 format. Previous versions of the software made an automatic conversion to Windows Media Video (WMV). The issue here is that the movie editor that comes with Windows and YouTube both don’t work with MP4 files, but do work with WMV. So now I can not edit or upload my videos.
I have spoken to their support team and they even rolled my software version back, but it has now automatically updated itself again. Aghhh!!! This cost me several hours last time it happened and will require several hours again. Maybe I should get a new camera…any suggestions?
So the bottom line is that I am skipping Days 295 and 296 for now. Sorry…have had to jump to 297 since this entry has no video.
On Day 297 I tried to give my $10 to an older gentleman in front of the Verizon Center. He refused and I walked a few blocks away to the corner of 9th and G Streets where I found Boyo. That’s actually not his real name but he was not comfortable with me using that. In fact he didn’t really want to share any details about himself. He didn’t want pictures taken either.
Boyo was selling the Street Sense newspaper in front of the Gallery Place Metro entrance. Born in London, he moved to his parent’s birth country of Nigeria at the age of five. At some point I guess he moved here, but he wouldn’t go into details about that. Boyo, who I managed to learn was 45, talked about putting his life story together in the form of a book and said that once he did that we could read it and learn all that we wanted to about him. But until then, he preferred to stay anonymous and advised me to speak with him through his “editor” which coincidentally is a person that I know. Small world.
Anyway, I did get Boyo to tell me what he would use the money for. He said he would get something to eat.
I gave him an extra dollar and bought one of his newspapers and caught the 42 bus home.
Year of Giving 