No posting tonight (except for this one)
Had a fairly busy day at the
store today. I want to automate our video rental system -- the previous owners had it all done with 2-part forms and odd little slips of paper. Needless to say, I am computerizing it.
I found some excellent software (
Video-Vision Plus) for about $500 but getting the 1,600+ disks into it was daunting to say the least.
Fortunately, Video-Vision Plus plays nice with another app called
Movie Collector and for $199.00, I bought the package including their Movie software as well as their Music CD and Book apps plus the coolest little barcode scanner I have seen in a while. It uses
MEMS to direct the laser beam and will store 500 barcodes.
I scan a bunch of videos, run upstairs to the office computer, plug it in an hit Search and the software will go to the Collectorz database as well as IMDB, Amazon.US, UK, JP as well as several other DVD databases. It will not only download the movie title, it also gets the actors, director, author, composer, plot synopsis, etc... Even a copy of the cover artwork.
Video-Vision imports Movie Collector databases including the cover pics... How cool is that!!!
The collector software is really nice, stable and well written. Any of their versions (DVD, CD, Book, Comic, Game, MP3 or Photo is only $39 - well worth it...
After work, Jen and I drive into town, kidnapped my Dad and we drove about an hour south to Stanwood, WA, home of "
The Lights of Christmas""
They advertised over a Million Lights and I believe that. WOW! $12 to get in, we looked at most of the stuff, had a draft horse carriage ride, had a tractor pulled wagon ride, scritched some goats and sheep and had some of their signature fresh doughnuts with some hot chocolate. All in all, we spent about two hours. We could have spent some more time (didn't see everything) but Dad was getting a bit tired and so were we...
The site is a Christian Camp and we were worried that it might be "preachy" but it was not. There were a few signs with relevant quotes from Scripture and Psalms but the words were appropriate to the setting and there was no proselytizing. A really nice vibe for everyone.
Posted by DaveH at December 23, 2007 11:27 PM