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 
Good luck with the camera problems – I don’t have any suggestions, sorry – I am such a camera noob I can barely take pictures with my amazingly nice digital camera [which was a gift. My husband is obviously not very familiar with my gadgetry skills. hee] I guess you could research photography blogs? [like you have the time, I know. ha!]
Perhaps Boyo was being so secretive because he is here illegally? Interesting.
Yes, it is a small world. So many wonderful books waiting to be written. I will gladly buy Boyo’s book when it is published and share with others or stash on yet another shelf I am installing. Hopefully Boyo is here legally and gets to follow through with his plan.
It would probably be a pain but If you can get them to roll back your software again you might just want to shut down your internet while you have your camera attached so that it cannot “automatically” update. There is also conversion software out there that will do it.