Day -2 Preparing for our next trip across to the New World

We are starting to get ready for our next journey.  We going to Canada (again!) to travel on the Rocky Mountaineer and take a cruise up to Alaska from Seattle and hopefully see some wildlife. We leave Scilly on Friday.

But first back to the preparations.  The computer etc I use for the blog needed updating/upgrading and I wanted to be able to post videos in a more easy/user friendly manner.  I invested in a new netbook which is faster (it has a SSD if you are familiar with those) and is better in almost every way.   For the latter ! have found a free, open source programme called HandBrake which is very good and efficient at reducing the size of video files.  I record in HD and it takes no time to exceed the blog upload limit of 100mb but with handbrake the file size is reduced to about one eighth of the original. Uploading normal videos to Facebook etc went OK but sometimes took a long time but with the blog it just would not take a file greater than 100mb.  I am uploading here a video of some birds visiting our garden in early April which I think shows the programme off - the original was well over 100mb.



We were given a bird feeder stand at Christmas and have recently installed it.  Before this we occasionally saw greenfinches in our garden - we know that some nest between us and Middle Town - but very rarely saw goldfinches.  We now see up to 6 goldfinches daily feeding on sunflower seeds and so that is a bonus.

 

 I usually write the blog at the end of a busy day and so I am optimistic that these updates will make the task easier.  Tomorrow I will give more details of our holiday plans!