![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Went mini-golfing with Dad and my nephew.
That was fun. My nephew is really enthusiastic about it, as he is with, well, just about everything, actually. Since he'd been that morning, he cheerfully acted as my guide as well as playing.
He'd go first. Putt. Run. Knock the ball into the hole. Then cheer us on as we took our first shots. When the ball got onto the green (as it generally did with the first shot), he took over. Usually, he'd wait for it to stop. But once that happened, he'd helpfully herd it into the hole for us. So, my every shot (as far as I was concerned) was a hole in one. (Though I did actually get a hole in one at one hole. Possibly a second. I'm not sure, because he decided to catch it that time.)
I used my putter and my cane (I've been using one for a few weeks now) almost interchangeably. Tried not to use the putter as a cane too much (I tried it, but then decided that it wasn't my property and wasn't really designed for the purpose). But it was really humid out and there were a lot of stairs. For a while, I needed both. My nephew wasn't too happy with me using the cane as a putter. I thought he'd laugh. His sister would have, I think. But he said I shouldn't. I asked why not. "It's too silly!" I told him he was being silly, because there's no such thing as "too silly." But he still told me not to every time I tried. So I only did it on a few holes.
The cane as putter thing is kind of mixed. The handle is hollow plastic, not shaped quite right, and not really angled right. Even when I hit the ball squarely, it didn't go even close to where I'd planned. And yet... it's mini-golf. The fairways were, for the most part, narrow, twisty, and banked. And I was selective about which holes I used the cane for. And so, even though the ball didn't go the way I'd been aiming... it rolled and bounced around and actually got pretty close to the hole. Perhaps closer than I would have come if I'd used the actual putter.
And then, just as we got back to the car, it started to rain. I'm glad. Hopefully, that'll take some of the humidity out of the air. It was well-timed, though.
Oh, and the random feature on the watch does work. Mostly. When I tell it to play music, it picks a random song. When that song finishes, it picks a different random song. Good so far. Only problem (and what was confusing me before) is that if I tell it to skip to the next song, it goes to the next song alphabetically. If I tell it to go to the previous song, it doesn't go to the one it just played, but rather the previous one alphabetically. And then, when it finishes that song, it picks a different random song. Unless I tell it to skip. So if I let it just go, it goes randomly. But if it picks, say, a Beatles song, and I'm not in the mood for the Beatles, and all my Beatles songs have file names starting with "Beatles"... I may have a lot of skipping to do.
Oh well. Still getting really good sound quality through the headphones. And still fit all of my music with plenty of room to spare. And it's still a freaking video watch! So I'm cool with it.
And Batman seems to play well. But I only watched for a little while. I've only got two eps, and I want to save them for the plane ride home.
ETA: Forgot to mention before, and don't want to spam your flists any more than I already have (especially when I just said I didn't expect to be around too much)...
I was wearing my S-shield belt buckle the day of the flight, as I always do when flying. My nephew was raised on Disney and such and doesn't really know superheroes yet. He's heard of Superman, but doesn't really get it. And, it seems, doesn't recognize the logo. (*sigh* I know. I've failed to properly indoctrinate him.)
So he sees the belt buckle, and he goes...
"That looks like... ... That looks like Mushu!"
Took me a sec to figure that out. I'm used to thinking of floury pancakes, chicken, mushrooms, plum sauce, and so on when I hear "mu shu." Luckily, even though I haven't seen the movie, I did recently see a video with the character in Disney. (They totally gutted the MGM animation tour and replaced it with and about Mushu.) So I remembered relatively quickly that Mushu is the name of the little red Chinese dragon from Mulan. You can see the resemblance:
That was fun. My nephew is really enthusiastic about it, as he is with, well, just about everything, actually. Since he'd been that morning, he cheerfully acted as my guide as well as playing.
He'd go first. Putt. Run. Knock the ball into the hole. Then cheer us on as we took our first shots. When the ball got onto the green (as it generally did with the first shot), he took over. Usually, he'd wait for it to stop. But once that happened, he'd helpfully herd it into the hole for us. So, my every shot (as far as I was concerned) was a hole in one. (Though I did actually get a hole in one at one hole. Possibly a second. I'm not sure, because he decided to catch it that time.)
I used my putter and my cane (I've been using one for a few weeks now) almost interchangeably. Tried not to use the putter as a cane too much (I tried it, but then decided that it wasn't my property and wasn't really designed for the purpose). But it was really humid out and there were a lot of stairs. For a while, I needed both. My nephew wasn't too happy with me using the cane as a putter. I thought he'd laugh. His sister would have, I think. But he said I shouldn't. I asked why not. "It's too silly!" I told him he was being silly, because there's no such thing as "too silly." But he still told me not to every time I tried. So I only did it on a few holes.
The cane as putter thing is kind of mixed. The handle is hollow plastic, not shaped quite right, and not really angled right. Even when I hit the ball squarely, it didn't go even close to where I'd planned. And yet... it's mini-golf. The fairways were, for the most part, narrow, twisty, and banked. And I was selective about which holes I used the cane for. And so, even though the ball didn't go the way I'd been aiming... it rolled and bounced around and actually got pretty close to the hole. Perhaps closer than I would have come if I'd used the actual putter.
And then, just as we got back to the car, it started to rain. I'm glad. Hopefully, that'll take some of the humidity out of the air. It was well-timed, though.
Oh, and the random feature on the watch does work. Mostly. When I tell it to play music, it picks a random song. When that song finishes, it picks a different random song. Good so far. Only problem (and what was confusing me before) is that if I tell it to skip to the next song, it goes to the next song alphabetically. If I tell it to go to the previous song, it doesn't go to the one it just played, but rather the previous one alphabetically. And then, when it finishes that song, it picks a different random song. Unless I tell it to skip. So if I let it just go, it goes randomly. But if it picks, say, a Beatles song, and I'm not in the mood for the Beatles, and all my Beatles songs have file names starting with "Beatles"... I may have a lot of skipping to do.
Oh well. Still getting really good sound quality through the headphones. And still fit all of my music with plenty of room to spare. And it's still a freaking video watch! So I'm cool with it.
And Batman seems to play well. But I only watched for a little while. I've only got two eps, and I want to save them for the plane ride home.
ETA: Forgot to mention before, and don't want to spam your flists any more than I already have (especially when I just said I didn't expect to be around too much)...
I was wearing my S-shield belt buckle the day of the flight, as I always do when flying. My nephew was raised on Disney and such and doesn't really know superheroes yet. He's heard of Superman, but doesn't really get it. And, it seems, doesn't recognize the logo. (*sigh* I know. I've failed to properly indoctrinate him.)
So he sees the belt buckle, and he goes...
"That looks like... ... That looks like Mushu!"
Took me a sec to figure that out. I'm used to thinking of floury pancakes, chicken, mushrooms, plum sauce, and so on when I hear "mu shu." Luckily, even though I haven't seen the movie, I did recently see a video with the character in Disney. (They totally gutted the MGM animation tour and replaced it with and about Mushu.) So I remembered relatively quickly that Mushu is the name of the little red Chinese dragon from Mulan. You can see the resemblance:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
And yeah, your nephew definitely needs to start learning about Superman and Batman. (Especially Batman! *giggles madly*) ...no need to mention Spidey. But Wolverine, though... Oh, OK, Spidey is fine, too! Totally makes me want to go get my box downstairs with all these old comics from the 90's. Back before they tried to make us believe that Peter Parker was a clone. (and before they did away with his memory and erased his marriage!!!! OMG, how could they?!) And... and... and before we learned just exactly what Wolverine's past is. Darn it, I like him better with a sketchy past and all. He was more fun!!
Shuffle feature on MP3 players are so overrated. ermm... I mean... heh. I wish I could believe that... The one on my iPod Touch doesn't work very well either. BLAH! If it wasn't for the fact that I can watch Batman TAS (and I'll be able to stuff all my Justice League and Superman on there, too) I'd go right back to my old iPod. *is frustrated*
Sorry to read you've had to use a cane. :( Glad to know you've had a nice time playing mini-golf, though. :) Sounds like it was a fun afternoon!
Ooh! And I might have found something that would enable you to skip a step in the episode-transcoding saga. Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr) will rip your DVD and turn it directly to an AVI. It'll let you pick chapters. This is what I use for ripping to a format that my iPod reads, and I just discovered this week that there's a PC version for it. It's free, too. On my new Mac, it takes about 9 minutes to turn an episode of TAS into a medium-quality MP4 file for my iPod. I don't think it'll do the AVI format you need for the watch, but then again, I haven't tried the PC version of Handbrake, so it's not impossible it might already be in there. Anyway... the point is this would eliminate the need for you to rip, then convert to AVI and the to the other format -- since this will read the DVD and make you AVI files. It works wonderfully, as far as I'm concerned. :)
...I think that's all. ;)
From:
no subject
As for his education... I have limited influence. I'm only the uncle, and I'm lucky if I get an hour or two a week, on average.
But yeah... Spider-marriage stunt... Incredibly stupid. And you know what's worse? They got new writers to take over on the very next issue, and those bastards are actually making things good and interesting! Damn them!
Shuffle is a must for me. I just load everything and let the randomness take over. If I'm not in the mood for it, I'll just skip. But since it's my music, I know I won't dislike it, no matter what comes up.
And thanks for Handbrake. I'll give it a shot.
Really, I'm not sure why I need the first program. All it does is copy the files off the DVD. I can do that by putting the disk in, opening the folder, and copying the file myself. *shrug* And the program that came with the watch is (no pun intended) handy. Puts it in the right format, and shrinks it to the right size. (Though, as mentioned, the files are still pretty big.) Thing is... when I watched the eps, I noticed a fair amount of pixelation. Color shading wasn't great, especially with black backgrounds. But still... it works. Well enough, anyway.