The Rant: July 29 episode

This week, we talked more about the upcoming concert, “This Thing We Did,” scheduled for Aug. 8 at Old Gilliam Park in Sanford and featuring great bands like Hammer No More the Fingers, I Was Totally Destroying It, Dr. Powerful, The Mitchells and many, many more.

Click here for more information on the 2009 THIS THING WE DID

Also this week:
• The Rant calls Paris Hilton (gets her voicemail)
• We discuss people who park their cars in their yards
• Local headlines, Entertainment News and much, much more.

Dancing with the Stars

As I’ve said before, I’m participating in the Dancing with the Lee County Stars event on Aug. 21 in Sanford … so my partner, Cortney McCullough, and I decided to have a little fun with the video we’re supposed to make to intro our dance.

Enjoy … and vote for us at www.dancingwiththeleecountystars.com today.

Lost’s new ad campaign

So did the Juliet-induced explosion of the H-Bomb in 1977 change the course of history as we know it in Lost land?
The following videos, revealed at Comic-Con this week, suggest it did. Or maybe they’re playing with our heads again.
Below: America’s Most Wanted clip with Kate still at large; Mr. Cluck’s commercial with a “lucky” Hugo Reyes; and an Oceanic Airlines 2009 commercial touting a perfect record.

Enjoy.

Yard parkers

Almost always, when an elected official starts talking about a law concerning the way our yard should look, what kind of fence we should be putting up or whether or not we should be allowed to pile trash in our driveway … that elected official is met with resistance.
That resistance is usually in the form of, “What gives you the right to tell me how my place should look? I thought this was a free country.”
Sometimes the above quote is said a bit more eloquently, and other times, it’s laced with four-letter words. I’ve seen both instances.
As much as I love our freedoms, and as much as I tend to lean toward the “leave me alone” opinion on government, I have to admit — when it comes to laws that may make the community I live in aesthetically better (I’ll settle for just “less trashy), then I usually back that law.
This doesn’t mean I think our code enforcement folks should be measuring the height of our dandelions (in reference to a letter earlier this week), but it does mean if the city has a logical explanation behind a dandelion rule, I’m up for listening to it.
This whole thought process began swirling in my head this weekend when I read an article out of Raleigh that said our area’s largest city was discussing an ordinance that would ban people from parking their cars in their front yard.
I know, I know. The mean ol’ government is now telling us where to park our cars! Shame on them! Next, they’ll be going after our guns, right?
Not so fast, America. This is actually a good plan.
You see, I live on a street and in a neighborhood full of homes with cars parks right up to the doorstep. It’s as if my neighbors (who I hope don’t read me on a weekly basis, particularly this week) decided that being able to jump straight from their seat to their doorstep was worth the damage it did to their yards and the decline in property values it caused on their neighbors.
In all seriousness, it looks bad. It just does. You may say, “Well, so do really ugly curtains and paint colors, but you don’t see the government dictating that, do you?” But ugly curtains won’t keep emergency crews from getting to your front door after a 911 call, and raggedy blinds won’t destroy yards and reroute storm runoff, either.
This isn’t the first time I’ve ranted against improperly kept homes in this column. More than a year ago, I wrote about the need for stricter policies against rental homes, which for whatever reason (and I want to stress, this doesn’t apply to all renters), seem to house more of the families who park their cars where they please, don’t keep up their yards and let their property decay because they have no stake in the home’s overall value.
A lot of you disagreed with me, and a lot of you were on my side. Some asked me to get off my high horse, which ignited a smile in me since few know I grew up in a family that didn’t make a lot of money. But despite the fact that our house was small and our budget was smaller, it was my mom who insisted that our yard was always mowed and our house was always clean. She took pride in our little house, and ever since then, I’ve always wondered why more people didn’t take pride in their property.
So, if you’re one of the many in our city who ignore the driveway or the curb and park where you please, don’t take offense. Just know that there are people who don’t like it … so much so, that they’re talking about banning it in a large city.
And if you agree with me … then why not bring it up to your councilman. In the very least, you’ll get the conversation flowing. And if it turns out that more people agree with you … it may just become law.
Because that, my friends, is democracy.

The Rant: Dance edition

Another solid effort this week, as The Rant talked a little Ben Roethlisberger, listened to a Nirvana/Rick Astley mashup, talked about a new sales tax referendum and much, much more.
Our guests were Holly Riley and Laura Biediger from Communities in Schools, who were on the air to promote Dancing with the Lee County Stars (click here for the Web site), an event scheduled for the evening of Aug. 21 at the Dennis A. Wicker Civic Center in Sanford. Click here to see a list of the dancers and to make monetary PayPal votes for your favorites.

New camera

My wife and I bought a Canon ZR200 video camcorder a few years back for our first video cam, and we loved it. We used it a lot, in fact, and I’m still burning DVDs from old videos.
But this camera that still recorded onto digital “tape” quickly became antiquated. I had to have a big orange firewire cable to transfer to my computer, and the video itself was lower quality than the cameras coming out these days.
So for my birthday this summer, I wanted something that shot HD video, something that transferred easily to our Macs and something cheap. Surprisingly, there were several options out there for these demands, and after studying, we chose the Kodak Zi6 HD video recorder.
The cost was $159 at BestBuy, and for a high-quality 8G memory card that can save up to an hour of video, we had to dish out another $40. Still, having something that can shoot HD, fit in our pants pocket and quickly transfer the expected hundreds of videos we’re going to shoot of our daughter (due late September) made the price not seem so bad.
But do we like it?
Well, the above video is all we’ve shot with it so far after a week (we’re going to test it out more this week), and I must say, it’s already better than what we had. The video above is a YouTube version of what we shot, so the quality is a tad worse than what appears straight from the camera (still haven’t figured out YouTube’s HD option), but if you look at video I shot of the recent Family Fourth festival or our commercial for The Rant, this is tons better.

The pluses:
• The picture: Crisp, clean in the outdoors. It loses a little quality indoors and loses more quality in the dark … but for the price and what we’ll be using it for (in other words, I’m not producing Hollywood films any time soon), we’re pleased.
• The sound: I’m amazed what this little thing can pick up. The portion where I’m filming the bee in the bushes, I can hear a buzz when I listened with the headphones on (may be harder to hear with just your computer speakers).
• The size: We thought out Canon was small, since it fit in one hand, but the Kodak Zi6 is just a little larger than an iPhone (thicker, but still small enough to fit in your pocket as long as you’re not wearing tight blue jeans). Plus, it’s light … ridiculously light.
• The ease: Click a button on the camera and a USB port pops out. Plug it straight into the computer, and a folder appears with .MOV files — one for each time you hit record. I have iMovie software on my Mac, so I was able to just drag the .MOV files into iMovie and edit from there. You can also transfer straight to YouTube if you’re not worried about editing what you shot.

The minuses
• Shaky: Too shaky … though not as shaky as I thought it would be after reading reviews. The camera has a tiny hole at the bottom for smaller tripods, so if you “must” shoot still shots, you can get a cheap tripod and have that option.
• Not a great zoom: The zoom option is limited, and when I zoomed as much as I could at the very end of the video, it looked like it pixelized the picture a little.
• Auto focus didn’t always work: When I’m trying to shoot the bee in front of my house, it never did focus on it. I know … that’s probably asking a lot of a $149 camera, but still…
• Memory Card: I just wish memory cards weren’t so damn expensive. I chose the 8G because to me, an hour is all I need, but I would have liked more if I could have afforded it. I may opt for two 8G cards in the future.

All in all, after one use and a few tests with the TV (yes, it plugs directly into your TV, whether it’s digital or HD), we’re pleased with the new buy. We’re going to hang on to the Canon for a while because it allows us to transfer our old VHF to DVD, but for the recordings, we’re sticking with the Kodak.
The above video was shot on our deck and in our front yard, and it shows Jennifer at seven months pregnant, showing off her belly and our new stroller for the little girl.

Kodak Zi6 links:
Kodak Zi6 site
Computer TV review
CNET review

Ready to dance …

I’ve been chosen as one of about 34 people to participate in the Dancing with the Lee County Stars competition, set for Aug. 21 at the DAW Civic Center in Sanford. My partner is the talented Cortney McCullough from the Lee County Partnership for Children … and I’m grateful that of the two of us, she has the experience (trained dancer who performed for N.C. State University as a student).

But more important than how our performance will be is what the event is for. Funds raised will go toward Communities in Schools of Lee County, a great organizations that has, unfortunately, fallen on hard times of late (as have numerous nonprofit organizations throughout the county). Dancing with the Stars, while serving as an entertaining night, will also serve as the organization’s primary fundraiser this year. Aside from sponsors, dancers will be raising money through “votes” and by selling tickets. “Votes” are $10 a piece, and tickets to the event are $50 (buy a ticket from a dancer, and you’re offering 5 votes his or her way).

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR ME AND CORTNEY (Just scroll down to our bio box and click the PayPal link to donate. If you’d like to buy a ticket from me, e-mail me at bliggett@sanfordherald.com, and I’ll get with you and get you your tickets.

And if you’d like to help promote us or read updates about our routine … VISIT OUR FACEBOOK PAGE, where you can also click and vote.

Our routine is a secret, music wise, but I can reveal that we will be doing the cha-cha, and for somebody like me who’s never trained and never danced, I can attest that this is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.

Hopefully, it will be worth it.

I’m baaaack …

With a Rant posting (and a promise to blog more).
No guest this week, but a few “surprises” in this week’s episode. Topics we discussed:
• Jon’s shaved head and shaved head myths
• Ortega Tacos
• Entertainment News with Mary
• Local election talk
• Dress code talk

and much, much more.

Family Fourth Festival

Video footage from the second annual Family Fourth Celebration in downtown Sanford. Enjoy.

The Rant: July 1 edition

Our guest this week was Dr. Diane Schaller from Willow Creek Animal Hospital, who was in studio to talk about her business, click here to visit their site, upcoming animal CPR classes, ways to help your pets cope with the summer heat, the need for animal tethering laws and much, much more.
We also talked about:
• Michael Jackson’s death (are you surprised)
• This Saturday’s pie-eating contest
• Local education-related headlines (school cutting jobs, school enacting Facebook policy, school sex-ed policies)
• Entertainment news with Mary Mason
• A surprise guest (hint: she’s Gov. Sanford’s “soul mate”)

Enjoy.