Swimming update

The Juniorette has attended her first two swimming training sessions and absolutely loves it. Each session is 90 mins long and she is mainly concentrating on her breaststroke and backtroke. She is very excited and proud to be finally learning how to do turns. She is swimming 25m lanes and has made friends with a blind girl who is a few years older than her.

Above is a clip of the Juniorette with Minnie Mouse on our Florida trip at the start of the year

Technorati Tags: Juniorette, Swimming, Marburg

Goofing around

Since returning from our Florida holiday at the start of the year I have been struggling to edit the video I took there. Before the trip we purchased a Panasonic DVD camcorder. It’s a simple to use device, and is great as to can just take the DVD out of the camera and play it in a normal DVD player. However if you want to edit you video it is not quite so simple.

Firstly you need to rip the video onto your hard drive. If your recorded DVD disc has no errors this is straight forward enough, but if there are errors on the disc you need software that will ignore these errors.

Secondly you need video editing software that edits VOB files and doesn’t recode it to MPEG2. Else you lose quality and sync between video and sound. A loss of quality really shows up on a 42 inch TV.

Thirdly a straight forward DVD burning program is required. You won’t believe how many man hours were required to figure this all out. But I finally achieved it. Many thanks to the follow software – Alcohol 120%, Womble DVD Wizard, & DVDClone.

Above is a little YouTube clip of the Juniorette with Pluto, her favourite Disney character.

Technorati Tags: Juniorette, Disney, Vacation, Camcorder

I hate Mickey Mouse

Well perhaps not hate, probably more like severely dislike, but that's what happens after 2 weeks in Orlando. To be fair I never liked Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald etc when I was a kid. The Disney gang just didn't appeal to me. I liked Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo, Danger Mouse, and Rhubarb & Custard, to name a few.

The Juniorette on the other hand is really into the Disney gang and she's now got the cuddly soft toys to prove it. But to balance it out we both got a couple of Star Wars light sabers which we have had a lot of fun with since our return to Germany. They light up and make noise, which is quite good for chasing the cats when they have been naughty (incidently our cats are called Mickey & Minnie - I was vetoed on calling them Mickey & Mallory!)

We are back safe and sound in Marburg, but we are parked out, shopped out, and roller coastered out. I rode some rollercoasters that I thought I would never do. The Juniorette made the height requirements in all parks we visited, so it was coaster hell for me at Busch gardens, but coaster heaven for the Juniorette. It was a great holiday and we found the place where we want to stay next time we are in Florida, it's on the Gulf coast and its further away from Disney!

Technorati Tags: Juniorette, Disney, Vacation, Rollercoaster