Class warfare

Ed Schultz talk radio said Romney’s recorded comments on 47% of Americans not taking responsibility for their own lives is a clear declaration of class warfare. I couldn’t agree more, and I think class is the biggest divider of humans through history…but. I don’t want to be fighting a class war. I want to make changes with my life and affect the things I care about, with something more creative than fighting.

It occurs to me that rich people are lost without their creative legal and finance guys, who are well compensated but in the rat race too, who could potentially be worked upon to exercise the ethics they’ve been asked to deprioritize.

How to play announcements at a community meeting

We had an event where the host wasn’t able to project announcements (or any other content) during the gathering, but they were able to offer us a CRT TV on a cart with a DVD player, located strategically by the registration table. I had wanted to try out converting our email newsletter to a Prezi, and this was an invitation to take it one (that is, four) step(s) further and get the Prezi to play off a DVD. And I did it! Using my work machine (Windows 7) and some freeware, I achieved this result. I didn’t pay any software fees, but the process was a roundabout pain.

The terrible steps:

  1. Create an e-Newsletter in Constant Contact and send it out. 
  2. Open and “Print as pdf” the email containing the newsletter
  3. Convert pdf into images (png) with GIMP. Each layer must be saved as a separate image. (If you take screenshots of the email instead, which I originally thought would be easier, they don’t all load into to Prezi at consistent sizes, and there’s no fine-tuned scaling in Prezi. Must start with the pdfs.)
  4. Insert png’s into Prezi, crop and align to get the same appearance you got scrolling down the newsletter in email.
  5. Add frames and set slide order to make the Prezi progress through each item. We organized our newsletter in blocks, so this was easy to do. Now the Prezi is done. If you’re projecting from a laptop with internet, you are done. If you are playing this from a TV with a DVD player, onward!
  6. Export Prezi (only option is Adobe Flash).
  7. Unzip Prezi files, open, start recording with Screencast-o-matic, and set the Prezi to auto-play. Make the Prezi display window smaller than SOM, because when you play this on an old TV, it’s going to cut all your margins off considerably. Maximize a blank Notepad file behind it for a white background, but in my case all that was cut off but the TV (including the frame of the flash window Prezi was in).
  8. “Save as avi” in Screencast-o-matic, then use Windows Movie Maker to edit off that bit at the beginning where you were setting it to play.
  9. Publish movie, “to this computer” (which saves it as an avi). Then open Windows DVD Maker, open that avi. Don’t forget Options in the lower right hand corner, which is where you indicate aspect ratio and to play back as a continuous loop. Burn the DVD. 

Tools used:

  1. Constant Contact
  2. Email client
  3. CutePDF
  4. GIMP
  5. Prezi
  6. Screencast-o-matic
  7. (Notepad)
  8. Windows Movie Maker
  9. Windows DVD Maker

Value added by looping announcements at a community meeting:

Questionable.

Greatest sense of accomplishment:

When I made a Prezi from a newsletter. That used a written resource I had created and turned it into a visual. After that, every additional step made my frowny-face frownier.

God Talk

I’m trying to discern who God is, and my more childish understanding of God as an old man who lives in the sky can be replaced by a broader understanding that will stand the trials of adult cares.

Conversation with my pastor today gave rise to these ideas:

God has an extreme “otherness.” God is not like us…different beyond just foreign.

If Christ could exist at all times and be born at one time, God can clearly do paradox. So praying to God calls his attention, while at the same time he was also always there. Not sure what the implications of that are yet.

Chicagoland biking

Bike shadow

Sunday we biked the Illnois Prairie Path from Forest Park to Berkeley.

View Illinois Prairie Path in a larger map

The temperature was roughly hotter than hell, so we both got burned – in part because the IPP along this portion is a paved deerpath between people’s back yards…but to start at the beginning:

We took the Blue Line, which was really convenient, and on a Sunday afternoon, there are so few people on the train you can use the wheelchair area for the bikes so we weren’t in people’s way. At the station, a CTA employee pointed us toward the Path.

However, it wasn’t as super cute as I mistakenly expect everything suburban to be. To get to the trailhead, first we went through a cemetery, then through acres of a ComEd parking lot, and then crossed a highway. But it was all well marked.

Then the Path itself – in Forest Park, Maywood, Bellwood, Hillside, and Berkeley – is really just paved over where the train used to run. People’s yards are on each side of you, or the back of a water treatment plant on one side and big wall on the other. And as a tourist, you’re pretty noticeable – I think it’s kind of weird for the locals on their porches to have people wiz by, all, “I say, my dear, isn’t this an excellent cycling excursion?”

The big detour in our map is where the trail hit a highway, and the signs suggest you go up to the light to cross. This was great, since it helped us spot the Dunkin Donuts where we took a break on the way back.

Verdict: next time we’ll take the Metra to more affluent suburbs and see how the trail changes. Still looking for some foliage overhead.