(By the way, the WordPress screencasts I create are mainly to test out some screencasting methods. But I hope they’re also useful to the WordPress community — I usually push them out to WordPress.tv.)

Here’s my first attempt to incorporate a human element. I just came back from playing basketball, and it’s late and dark, and there’s a bunch of junk in the background. I was going for the “real” effect here. But I made a fatal mistake. I plugged my mixer directly into my ancient Sony camcorder, and I think the camcorder’s default audio setting is on auto-gain, so when I’m not speaking, it increases the background static like a rushing wind.

I made another mistake: I thought I could use one microphone and just kind of discretely hold it, so that it was close to my mouth when talking into the camera or the computer screen. But when I’m holding that mic in my hands, every little hand movement transfers into the microphone, and it sounds like I’m stretching a balloon at times. It’s also just awkward to hold it.

Overall, the audio in this video is poor. The video is mostly uninteresting, and the screen demo is a little slow. But hey, this was my first PIP attempt.

With my second attempt I corrected a few things. First, I plugged two mics into my mixer and then the computer, not the camcorder. I stopped handling the mic during the recording and just attached them on little stands. As a result, the audio sounds a lot better.

New setup -- two mics, each on stands, hooked into the mixer/laptop, not the camcorder

I also recorded in a place where natural light abounds — my dining room, next to the giant patio glass door. There was just one fatal flaw in this setup: it was a Saturday afternoon and my three kids and wife were at home. In case you didn’t know, kids are drawn to microphones and video cameras like cats to string, and it was a little nerve-racking. Additionally, Jane says the kitchen is her office, and she doesn’t have to be quiet in her office.

By the way, Jane makes a cameo appearance in this video! Yep, pretty cool. Watch for it, though. It’s subtle. Look for her disapproving countenance as she passes.

Although the lighting was good, that’s the last time I will be recording anything in our dining room area. See Jane’s post for more details. :)

This video starts off with more explanation than I intended. The file size ended up being huge — 233 MB when produced through Camtasia into MP4 format. I opened the MP4 in Quicktime Pro and saved it for the web in a MOV format, which reduced it, surprisingly, to 50 MB. I then uploaded it to Youtube, but Youtube didn’t convert it to HD like it did the other one.

I’m not sure why it didn’t convert the video to HD. Perhaps Quicktime encodes the video with a codec that isn’t compatible with Youtube’s codec? I’m not sure, so I uploaded the 233MB monster MP4 video file and it did convert it to HD.

So what do you think? Does adding the human element increase the appeal, even as ordinary as I am?

One advantage with including a talking head, I realized, is that it fills the gaps when you explain concepts in videos (when you explain concepts, you usually don’t move your mouse and the screen is still). Without the talking head, you would normally resort to diagrams, charts, and workflows to provide eye candy during these static moments. But with the talking head, you can just talk to the user and still keep him or her watching.

I think I’ll invest in a couple of studio lights for my office to give it better light. I told my manager that I might need to add a studio light in a conference room the next time I record video tutorials for work, and he asked if I would also be wearing makeup to compensate for strong light that might wash out my face. Uh, no. Wearing makeup before heading off to a conference room … will be the last thing I ever do. In that case, he said I should try to bounce the light.

There’s so much to learn with video, I suppose.

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A lot of good things happened in 2008. We bought a house in Eagle Mountain, moving from an apartment to a two-story home that fits our little family of five perfectly. Jane started blogging more frequently, writing witty, engaging posts about so many things. Her readership shot up at least 300%. I started advertising in my sidebar, after much encouragement from Jane. I also began providing more WordPress consulting (in my spare time) rather than training, because it’s easier and more profitable.

I launched and redesigned writerriver.com, a community site that now has about 175 members. I also started a readscripturestogether.com site, which allows me to stay motivated spiritually. My proposals to the STC Summit about quick reference guides and product blogging were accepted, and I’m pushing further into these areas at work. On the basketball court, I once again found my shot.

As for our children, Sally (7) read nearly all of the Harry Potter books and has transformed into a bookworm, a perfect model of her mother. She’s quickly maturing into a young woman. Susan (4) continues to be the assertive middle child. We found out Spot (2) has Duane’s syndrome, which means one of her eyes doesn’t turn all the way to the left (but you hardly notice it). Spot exploded with speech this year, being more precocious with language than the previous two children.

Spot and me (her eye only looks a little cross-eyed when she looks left without turning her head, such as in this picture)

As for the year’s downsides, we ordered a subscription to DirectTV, and have all been spending far too much time watching the television. Jane and I had a few senseless arguments that I still regret. The snow in Utah turned out to be a lot less fun than the sandy beaches in Florida. We had to pay two months’ rent to break our apartment lease and move into our house. In our new location, I now carpool to work an unthinkably early hour in the morning, which often leaves me tired when I come home. We still struggle to find best friends in our new neighborhood. And we both fell prey to Twitter and the “release-high” that 140 characters shot across the Internet provides.

What’s next for 2009? Like most people, I have a few goals. Although my goals are essentially the same sort of goals that others make, I try to spin them with a unique angle to encourage surprising results.

Goal #1: Clean when Jane cleans. Being a good husband means sharing in household duties. By also cleaning when Jane is cleaning, I’ll ease the tension that arises when I remain stationary. Of course this is something I should have been doing all along, but alas, I am male. In co-cleaning, I’ll also gain more empathy for her hard work, and maybe stop leaving my socks lying around.

Goal #2: Post daily. Writing daily on my blog keeps my mind invigorated. It helps me stay engaged and improves my writing. It also makes me feel like I’m moving forward. I’ve found that posting daily (or, more realistically, posting multiple times a week) is easier than posting just once a week. The muse speaks loudest when I exercise it regularly. And so much good has come from my blog.

Goal #3: Run on my treadmill 3 times a week. We borrowed my sister-in-law’s treadmill and put it right near our TV in the living room. When I’m lying down on the couch, watching football, or Life, or some other show, it’s hard not to look over and feel a natural desire to run on the treadmill a bit. I doubt I’ll give up TV, and rather than feel as if I’m wasting my life watching some overly dramatic cop, doctor, or terrorist show, I can offset the guilt with the good feelings of exercise.

Goal #4: Comment daily on my readscripturestogether.com site. This is my spiritual goal. I’ve found that commenting on chapters posted on readscripturestogether.com site keeps me spiritually awake and enthusiastic in this arena. Who would have guessed that writing itself is the key to overcoming the spiritual yawn?

Goal #5: Dual-task and take hourly breaks to read a little from Safari. This goal is in the high experimentation phase. My goal is to increase my efficiency while also increasing my knowledge and awareness. I basically pick two main tasks I want to accomplish, and switch working on them every hour. As I switch, I take a quick break to read a few pages from a book in the Online Safari Library, which I have free access to. The library has a tremendously good selection of tech-related content. Because I keep switching between the two tasks, I maintain my attention level high. And when reading tech books becomes a treat, it makes the experience sweet.

That’s it. A modest set of goals, and not outside the traditional social-intellectual-spiritual-physical categories that underlie so many others’ goals. But hopefully I’ve given them a unique enough slant that some unexpected and beneficial consequences may result.

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Jane: the mommy blogger who trained me

Jane is the mommy blogger who has trained me. In case you’re unfamiliar with this term — “mommy blogger” — it refers to mothers who blog, with a focus sometimes including family, feminine topics, or simply anything really. Jane’s blog is http://whataboutmomblog.com. By following it you can discover a lot of personal details about my life.

This idea scares my brother-in-law, who doesn’t want his wife exposing personal details about him online. I used to be that way, too. I remember at one point asking Jane (notice that I call her Jane rather than “my wife”; Jane is a respectful name for a person, whereas “my wife” contextualizes her identity only in reference to me) to remove a paragraph from one of her posts that went over the privacy edge, in my opinion. She altered the paragraph a bit, but then added a footnote twice the size of the original paragraph. The footnote enlarged the issue even further.

Asking her to edit her writing with the purpose of protecting my privacy equated to censorship in Jane’s mind and only inflamed her more. After this experience, I learned to stop trying to change what others write about me, even if I disagree with them or if it embarrasses me.

For example, last week I made a stupid comment about not thinking I should have to change a diaper. As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they were fodder for Jane’s blog, and that I could not take them back, no matter how hard I tried. I could have reacted with a long comment below her post, explaining the circumstances of the situation, the emotionally driven build-up, my side of the story, but instead I did nothing. I’ve learned that going as silent as a lamb to the slaughter is the best way to handle these situations.

Corporate bloggers, listen up. When you embrace transparency and write with an honest voice, at times people will take jabs at you. They will quote you — sometimes out of context. They may portray you in ways that make you cringe. Don’t go ballistic. Allow people to have the views they do, without letting your stomach twist into knots. It all passes like water under a bridge anyway.

Sometimes my in-laws take pity on me and say, in reference to Jane’s latest post, “Poor Tom …” They feel sorry that I often catch the sharp end of the narrative. But I don’t feel sorry. I feel lucky. How many husbands out there get a glimpse inside the inner thoughts and emotions of their companion? Our communication has increased ten-fold because of Jane’s mommy blog.

I also think blogging is a smart move for full-time mothers. Blogs provide an escape from the emotional stresses of full-time parenting. They allow mothers to express themselves in articulate ways, to interact with other adults, to use their intellectual faculties. In a way, blogs are a coping mechanism for what might otherwise be a limiting home life.

One detail I appreciate with Jane’s blog is her use of pseudonyms. The pseudonym adds a slight fictional construct between what I read and the real me. On her blog I read about Dick and Jane and Sally and Susan and Spot. I remember that her perspective may not always match reality — protagonist Dick or heroine Jane are mental representations of people and events seen from Jane’s point of view.

I’ve mostly been exploring the negative side of privacy. Actually, most of Jane’s posts put me in a positive light. I assume this is why she stays married to me. To think that I occupy such a prominent position in her life that I would appear regularly in her posts is flattering to me. It makes me feel important. Whether I’m the hero or the villain in her posts, or even just a quiet bystander, the fact that I’m present (or that Dick is present) has the same good effect on me.

Overall, if your wife ever turns to mommy blogging, or if your husband becomes a “daddy blogger” (I assume there’s such a thing), embrace transparency, enjoy the glimpse into your spouse’s world. Whatever you do, never suggest an edit that changes her perception. Remember that you’re one of the lucky ones.

For the past two weeks I’ve been trying to figure this out without much success. But I did come pretty close to achieving it. See the final effect here. And if you’re interested in the how-to, keep reading.

First, to get a better idea of how Dooce’s Daily Chuck works, go to her site and click the dog picture in the banner. It opens to a large image of the dog (“Chuck”), and you can click the Previous or Next links to navigate to the photos for the other days.

Dooce's Daily Chuck

(By the way, I once met Heather at a book signing in SLC.)

Dooce is on Typepad, which may have some tricks that WordPress doesn’t. The easiest way to accomplish this same effect in WordPress is through the Post-Thumb plugin. (If you’re using Firefox 3, you may see a “Reported Attack Site!” message when going to the Post-Thumb plugin page. Instead, open the site in IE or go to the plugin’s page on WordPress.)

The Post-Thumb plugin scans your latest posts (of a specific category, if you want) and pulls out a thumbnail of the image with a link to the actual post. Perfect, right?

So I implemented it on Jane’s blog tonight and … down it went. I assume the Post-Thumb plugin initiated an intensive series of MySQL queries that triggered BlueHost’s extremely sensitive CPU Exceeded Error messages, and the site was down for a good 20 minutes.

CPU Exceeded Errors -- from BlueHost

By the way, the wp-supercache plugin seems to somewhat cure the CPU Exceeded Error messages, but I still think BlueHost has an abnormal amount of these error messages. If you google CPU Quota, most of the sites mention BlueHost. So perhaps the Post-Thumb plugin will work fine for you on a different host. If so, great.

There is, of course, more than one way to skin a cat. I’m still working on the way to show the latest thumbnail image in an RSS feed, but in the meantime, I found a neat little query script for the WordPress loop that shows the latest post in full, and then shows just the titles of posts after that.

The WordPress loop is the PHP script that calls the latest posts from the MySQL database. (Read more about the WordPress loop here.) The loop accepts various queries before it that control how the posts appear. (Read more about post queries here.)

Here’s the script (which I found here searching the WordPress support forums).

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php $count = 0; ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php $count++; ?>

<?php if ($count <= 2) : ?>

<h2><a class=”permalink” href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>”>
<?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

<?php the_content(); ?> // display the full content of the first two posts only

<?php else : ?>

<h2><a class=”permalink” href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>”> <?php the_title(); ?></a></h2> // Just the permalinks

<?php endif; ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php else : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

You have to massage the styles to fit your blog a bit.

The Subtle WordPress Theme has a similar feature hard-baked into the home page. But Jane didn’t want her home page like this, just a specific category.

Oh man, this is getting more complicated than I wanted to get into here. I was going for a 10 minute post, but ….

Jane wanted just one category to show the latest post like this. So I copied the category.php code into a text editor (Notepad ++), and then swapped the category’s loop with the above modified loop, and then inserted the styles of her theme to match. Here’s the resulting category code:

<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php $count = 0; ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php $count++; ?>

<?php if ($count <= 1) : ?>

<h3><a class=”permalink” href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>”>
<?php the_title(); ?></a></h3> <div style=”margin-top:-2px;”><small><?php the_time(‘m.d.y’); ?> <b>|</b> <?php the_category(‘, ‘) ?> | <?php comments_number(‘Comment?’, ’1 Comment’, ‘% Comments’ ) ?> </small></div><br/>

<?php the_content(); ?>

<b style=”size:2em;border-bottom: 1px solid black;”>Previous Entries</b>
<?php else : ?>
<h5><a class=”permalink” href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>”> <?php the_title(); ?></a></h5>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php else : ?>

<?php endif; ?>

I then saved it as a new file, titling it category-87.php. Why category-87? Because when WordPress serves up a category view, it first looks for category templates for the specific category. If a category template exists, it uses that template rather than the regular category.php template. In this case, category 87 is ID for the Daily Dick and Jane category.

(By the way, to find the category ID, go to Manage > Categories. Move your mouse over the category title and look at the numbers at the far right of the string in the task bar. Nice, huh?)

I also needed to exclude category 87 from the home page. To do so, I added this query post code before the loop in the index.php file.

<?php
if (is_home()) {
query_posts(“cat=-87″);
}
?>

Now all posts in category 87 are excluded from the home page, but not the feed. I use Feedburner, so I just edited the feed details in Feedburner to exclude category 87.

I just changed the feed from

http://whataboutmomblog.com/wp-rss2.php

to the following:

http://whataboutmomblog.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=-87

And then I added some style to the h5 tag that wraps the previous titles.

Check it out by going to Jane’s blog and clicking Daily Dick and Jane. By the way, did you notice that she has 600 comments on her underwear giveaway post?

In one scene, the main character, Keith, intentionally sets off a fire alarm to land in detention, hoping to sit near his daydream love, Amanda Jones. It turns out Amanda — unbeknownst to Keith — sprung herself from detention through her flirtatiousness with a teacher, leaving Keith to endure detention alone, with all the other deadheads.But it’s during the time in detention that Keith becomes friends with Duncan, an outspoken deadhead who initially seemed his enemy. Through his friendship with Duncan, Keith is able to take Amanda to a private art gallery and later, at the movie’s climax, escapes from Hardy’s planned pounding because Duncan and his friends fortuitously arrive at Hardy’s party to crash it.

Although Keith initially thought detention without Amanda Jones would be a big waste of time, and that associating with Duncan would bring nothing but misery, it turns out that detention allows Keith and Duncan to become friends, and Duncan later saves Keith in his moment of greatest need.

In general, I try to look at the Duncans I meet and the detentions I have to serve as possibly beneficial experiences. Many times undesirable experiences turn out to be beneficial in hindsight. This is why I don’t mind trying new things, attending new events, and keeping an open mind. You never know what may come of it.

In the above image, Keith arrives at detention, surprised not to see Amanda Jones.

Below are some experiences where I opened my mind to something new and had a good experience because of it.

Experience #1: SLC Bloggers

Last month I attended my first ever blogger dinner. Kind of nerdy, and I was reluctant to go. I had no idea that two months later I would still be keeping up with the blogs and tweets of people I met there. The same people let me know about Podcamp SLC, which was tremendously beneficial. And now Wordcamp SLC is in the planning. It’s nice to have a group of bloggers nearby that I can find camaraderie with.

Experience #2: Podcasting

Podcasting is another unexpected experience. I first started listening to podcasts in 2006 as part of a New Year’s Resolution strategy to exercise more. That morphed into listening to podcasts everywhere, recording local chapter presenters and publishing them as podcasts, and then becoming a regular podcaster. Today I was IMing with a guy from Malaysia who regularly listens to my podcasts.

Experience #3: WordPress

How did I get into WordPress? One day I saw an e-mail request for someone to be a webmaster (outdated term) for my local STC chapter. I volunteered, and while exploring the web host’s cPanel, I installed WordPress. A little while later, I converted the STC site to WordPress, and then finally created my own blog using WordPress. Now blogging has become a significant activity for me.

Experience #4: Technical Writing

I fell into technical writing in a circumstantial way as well. As a writing instructor in Egypt, I became good friends with a former technical writer who told me several times that I would make a “perfect technical writer.” Through his encouragement, I later steered my career in that direction. Despite my previous bias that technical writing was too boring, I was open to his suggestion, and after my first job as a technical writer, I knew it was for me.

Experience #5: Elephant.org.il Community

Some experiences don’t work out so well. One person I interviewed for a podcast invited me to become a regular columnist for his community site, Elephant. I thought hmmm, okay, I’ll try it, because you never know what may come of it. However, I didn’t get much traffic, feedback, or other knowledge from participating in this group. It started to become a chore. Finally, I said I wasn’t interested in posting on that site anymore.

You never know what may happen as you walk down a new path. Sometimes it turns out to be worthwhile, other times not.

The Challenge of Keeping an Open Mind

Most of the experiences I mentioned involve embracing an open mind for new ideas and technologies. It’s not difficult to keep an open mind in these instances, because you can’t know the end from the beginning. But how do you keep an open mind about things you already experienced?

As we get older, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain an open mind because all previous experiences harden us towards certain views. For example, if I later receive another invitation to start a column in an online community that I’m not a part of, I might say, no thanks. And yet this other opportunity may provide entirely different results from Elephant.

The challenge to keeping an open mind is figuring out how to prevent previous experiences from locking you into the same perspective.

Two Major CEOs Warn About the Value of Experience

At least two major CEOs (of MySpace and MySQL) both caution that people with experience in an outdated marketplace may be at a disadvantage today. A successful business strategy in 1970 probably doesn’t apply to 2007′s marketplace, where open source technologies, globalization, search engine optimization, and Web 2.0 are factors.

Someone highly successful 30 years ago may look at a product and think, we can’t do open source. We can’t do blogs. We’ll never survive. That kind of thinking can put that CEO (and other leaders) at a disadvantage.

The Baggage of Past Experiences

As I said, the challenge of keeping an open mind is to figure out how to hold on to your previous experiences without putting too much stock in them. You can’t discard them because most of the time, the learning from past experiences works toward your benefit. From an evolutionary point of view, it’s stupid to throw away everything you’ve learned.

Let’s return to the example of contributing a column to Elephant. If I were to welcome another opportunity to begin a column somewhere else, and then experience the same result — lack of information return, thinning of my time, poor traffic results, etc — wouldn’t I be an idiot? How many times does it take for me to learn my lesson? Wasn’t it Einstein who said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

At the same time, dismissing a new opportunity for community involvement due to one experience may be a close-minded action.

Obviously this is a topic for a larger discussion, but in short, I think the way to maintain open-mindedness is to note the details of how situations, environments, and contexts vary from the previous. A few details of difference can lead to widely different results.

I learned this weekend that in navigation, if you veer off course one degree and circumnavigate the world, when you return to your original latitude, you’ll be 500 miles off course.