I’m trying new things. I’ve been frustrated with my Outlook calendar not syncing properly on two computers with my PDA as the intermediary. Somehow appointments were getting duplicated or put on the wrong day (mostly birthdays and reaccuring appts). Clearly it is wise to have only one calendar. I wanted to put a calendar on my web site so I can make changes anywhere I had internet access. This is where Google rules.

I’ve set up a Google calendar, a task plug-in, and have signed up for GMail. That pretty much wipes out Microsoft Outlook.

The only thing I’ve not done is import my address book into Google. But, I think it’s time to rid myself of the old address book with contacts gone by to never be seen again. I have over 500 contact but only need a fraction of them. So, no importing of the address book. I’m starting over.

My web site got zapped by a virus. My father in law found it – or should I say that it found him. Fortunately, his anti-virus caught it before it infected his computer. Appearantly, one of my PHP programs had a vulnerability and this virus was running wild all over the web host servers. My Norton did not catch it when I viewed the site but maybe the virus did not “attack” me. I’m not entirely sure because my Norton subscription just elapsed a week ago. Yet, this virus is several years old so my scan should have caught it if it were present. We shall see. I stopped by Office Max and picked up a copy of McAffee antivirus.

I called my web host and they found the virus on the server, deleted it, backed up my files, and created a new root directory. This caused all sorts of problems as the inforation was older and I still needed to upgrade to the most secure versions of my gallery and blogs. Needless to say but I learned a lot in the process. I have to learn how to do my own backups next. My web host has lots of automated tools but I have yet to learn them.

So it comes to this – to stream or not to stream. Apparently, the flash streamable format is FLV – at least from my limited amount of information on the topic. I have software that will convert avi video to swf or flv. However, Flash video requires a bit of programming knowledge and special plug-ins that I do not have access to at this time.

I’ll learn Flash in semester four of my education. I’m currently in semester two learning about networks. The school is providing me with Flash Studio 8 when the time comes. Hopefully they will give me Flash CS3 instead since that is the upcoming latest version. My GoLive software does not allow me to stream flash video no matter if it’s swf or flv. Maybe it does but I cannot find the documentation, tutorials, or even forums on the topic.

So, I’m giving up my quest to stream Flash to pursue more profitable endeavors such as finishing my education and making a promotional DVD for the Florida Marine Biology trip. Nice.