Graceland

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Originally uploaded by Tim Morgan.

Yesterday, we visited the home of Elvis. Frankly, it was a bit of a letdown, though it was a neat to see that Elvis lived a bit more humbly than I had pictured. Yes, he had some extravagant things in his home, but it wasn't near as crazy as the things you hear about in other celebrities' homes (none of which come to mind at this moment, but you get the idea).

The downer came in the cost and the hype. It was 22 US dollars per person, it was very crowded and hot, and the "guides" were anything but friendly (I say "guides" in quotes because they were more like cattle herders; the real guide was a pre-recorded message on a portable headphone device given to each person at the beginning of the tour).

I was hoping for something more like Mt. Vernon in Virginia. That was a very neat, cool (literally) place, wasn't crowded at all, and had very friendly guides (in costume I might add).

Thank you, thank you very much.

Tomorrow Jennie and I jump in a rented Suburban along with her parents and grandparents and head towards Memphis. I'm less excited about the destination than I am about the chance to get away from the grind for a few days. I'll be lugging with me the iPod and new Mac laptop, so I'll be fully "plugged in" -- I'll finally be able to truly play with all these gadgets I've acquired lately (I think).

We'll no doubt stop at Graceland for a bit to see the home of the peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich and other such peculiarities of the King of Rock and Roll. Should be fun.

Tracey's Wedding

Here's a compilation of video and photos from Tracey's wedding. Think of it as the wedding in a couple minutes or less.

Tracey and Wayne

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Originally uploaded by Tim Morgan.

My sister Tracey got married yesterday. It was a nice, simple, small ceremony. I was able to get several good photos of family, including this one of my brother Wayne and the new bride.

You can see all the photos from the wedding here.

Re-Jump

Here's another try at doing the same video... this time using Eyespot. Eyespot doesn't have as many cool transitions, but I still think I like it better than Jumpcut, mostly because the mix video is rendered to a new video instead of pieced together via Flash.

Jump

Here's a quick video of people jumping off our dock at Grand Lake. Being the complete Web nerd that I am, you would expect I'd find a way to create video online... Jumpcut is an awesome site for creating and sharing video online. Eyespot is another good one, though I had trouble getting it to work with my DivX files (I will try again later).

Update: I've noticed the video gets a little out of sync the first time you click it sometimes. Seems you have to click play to get it started downloading, then wait a bit and start it over. Sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully I'll get better at doing these things.

Dad on Senators' iPods

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Originally uploaded by Tim Morgan.

A bit strange... I was recently informed that this photo was included in the IPac project -- iPods sent to senators preloaded with open-licensed content.

From their website:

Each iPod has been pre-loaded with video, music, images, and text that is in the public domain or released under permissive terms like those provided by Creative Commons licenses. This means that everything on the iPod is free.

Go Dad!