Saturday, February 28, 2009

Frustration



Well, all was going very well, till tonight. I've ran into some video rendering problems and some audio sync. After figuring out this was due to and updated driver, I was able to find an older driver that worked.


I'm so wishing I would have gotten a Mac now. Mac has some much easier to use program's when it comes to media. The above photo is one I've photoshopped, which I'm getting much better at that and figuring out all sort's of little trick's with that. I'm going to use this as a background. 1 down 15 more to go. Well, really I've got more than that done. I'm keeping them in files that can be layered so I can just add on the top, what I want to say and this gives me the ablity to change text, and add clues as I move forward with this.


I was able to hijack what I wanted off the net but then got it in a format I didn't want. So I went to try and find a program to covert it to a Mpeg4 format. Guess what. You can use the program for free, or buy it. The only catch is, they put a ugly watermark in the center of the video for the first minute. I started looking into the coding of the program to see if I could remove that, but haven't nailed down what makes that watermark. I guess I should just buy the dang thing, or there's always the torrent route....


Still refusing to give up on this part of my project, I'll have to keep trying some different thing's. I still need to move a video editing program over to this computer, then I will be down to one computer, instead of networking them all up and streaming stuff back and forth.


By looking at my computer desk, you would think I've got enough computing power to make NASA a little jealous. I'll have to take some photo's of the mess I've got at the moment. This would give a better idea of what I'm struggling with.


I'm beginning to have doubt's at the moment if I can pull this off. If I can it should make for a really unique geocaching series. At least that's what I'm hoping. Sadly I think after a few people do this intended way and solve the puzzle's put in place, to confuse, surprize, and frustrate the puzzle part's will just end up being passed over by word of mouth and people are going to take the easy route. I'm trying to figure out way's to curb that, but I'm running out of idea's. I've gotten some idea's from some other cacher's, about hiding code word's inside part's and then if they are listed as a mystery cache I can add the ARL and these codes will have to be e-mailed on to be before they can post a find, for example.


Speaking of giving away hides and puzzle answer's. I had a could of weird e-mail's. The first one was cause I was the last finder of the cache. I bet this cacher was a bit pissed at me, but I told them it was best if they would try and contact the cache owner and not me. I'm sure he will give a clue to them. Then the really weird one is I have a puzzle and someone in Vermont e-mailed me asking for a hint on how to solve it. So I asked are you wanting a hint for my cache or the one in Vermont. Well, I guess the puzzles are similar and the person was hoping if they could figure mine out, they could figure the one in Vermont out. It still baffles me on how they noticed mine. I got a pretty good e-mail from this person and we had some laughs over it. I think this person just enjoys puzzles and looks around for them and solves them without worrying about really going out and finding them. Just enjoys the puzzle aspect of them.


Anyways now it's on to what do I do next. I'm still waiting on some permission for some area's but at the point I need to head out and get some cord's so I can start assembling this whole thing. I'm getting close to a stalling point, without the permission. I wonder if I should just forget about the area's I had planned and find somewhere else or just keep waiting to hear back. Since there's so many caches involved I really want to spread this around over a few counties. But I'm finding some county's are slower about responding then other's. Well, just more of my though's as I'm moving forward with this whole project. It's a slow process, as I keep running into some sort of problem's with this or that. I so wish my cousion lived a bit closer so I could run over to her place and we could work on this together, instead of me shooting some files over the net, and then worrying about compression issue's. I guess time will tell here.

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