January 4, 2005: Happy 2005 everyone.  I've got some big news with regards to the ACCs videos.  True to their word, BVP Marching Videos called me yesterday and they are willing to fill my order for the ACCs performances on DVD all the way back to 1992.  They expect that it will take about 90 days for them to fill my order, then I should get the DVDs in the mail.  Once I get them I will make an announcement on the site and start working on everything.  This isn't something that will be happening overnight, given the number of videos I'll have and the number of streams that will be produced, so please be patient.  This is a big investment and a big project that will probably mean both my systems will be tied up for a couple weeks with nothing but video production work.  I don't know if BVP is going to continue filling orders beyond a few years, so if you've had your eye on something, order it now.  I appreciate their willingness to fill this order, and without their cooperation, I wouldn't even be able to post the ACCs videos.

I will post more information as it becomes available, but until then, look for the first set of musical photos to show up in about a month.  The site address is www.sthsmusical.org.

March 4, 2005: I have the DVD, production should begin next week.

March 12, 2005: I'm checking out the stats information for the first time in a year.  I've fixed some minor problems like broken links on the news pages, but other than that, nothing spectacular to report.  I will update the countries list if I find anything, and I also deployed an update to Gallery earlier tonight.  I'm putting some finishing touches on the musical site and taking care of old business before I watch the DVD and start working on that.  Initially, I am only going to make the DivX streams available for viewing.  Why? I am moving to a new server within the next month and I am going to turn everything over to Windows Media Services.  That's the real thing for all connection speeds instead of all the individual links.  That will also save me days worth of production work.  Stay tuned for updates in the near future.

After reviewing the stats, the list of countries is up to 71!

March 13, 2005: I finished the DivX streams for 1992 through 2001, and will watch them all just to make sure everything is ok.  I'm having a problem encoding the video for 1999 so that's not online just yet.  Once this is all done, I will try to use Adobe Premiere to produce one massive stream of 1992 through 2004, but this is going to take some testing before I release it publicly.  In case you are wondering, I don't have any information on videos from 1990 or 1991, and the band was unable to compete in 1993, so that's why there are years missing.  I am going to continue working on the videos this week and expect to be running on the new server sometime next month.

March 29, 2005: I've been extremely busy and trying to rush the server migration before the next bill rolls in and before I take on this year's show at Tottenville HS.  As a result of that and some other issues, the site has been broken for the last day or so.  I missed some files, messed up some paths and in general did not get time to troubleshoot and test Gallery.  All of the issues are solved and things are running on the new server and email is running on the new server.  I will be applying the same fixes to the guard photo gallery tonight and also upgrading Gallery in case I didn't do that already.  In case I missed something, please call or IM me and I will do my best to fix it immediately.

April 24, 2005: I will be working on the new Windows Media streams over the next few days.  During this time, the old 56k, 300k, 1mb streams will be removed from the site and replaced with a link to the windows media server.  Currently, I am waiting on a new DVD of the 1999 show, so this will not be available right away.  I am also having a problem producing a stream from the 1997 DivX file, but I'll get that figured out and fixed.  There is also a stream to watch all of the ACCs videos straight through.  This stream will be modified as the new videos are added.

May 6, 2005: I've tried a couple different things to produce a new video for 1997, but I am still having problems.  I do have an old tape that I can use, but this will have to wait until after my move in June.  Yes, in June I will be moving back to the Harrisburg area and will continue developing this site and the content.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact me.  I will start adding 2005-2006 information to the site sometime around late June as information comes my way.

June 2, 2005: I posted a set of photos from last week's Jazz Band concert and updated the photo count.  I have a copy of the summer schedule and will see that it gets posted and that the 2005-2006 section of the site is created sometime this weekend.   I don't have any word on the replacement DVD for 1999 yet, I will probably ask about it in a few weeks.  I will make additional attempts to create the 1997 and 1999 streams later this month using whatever sources I can get my hands on.

June 4, 2005: The summer schedule has been posted.

June 30, 2005: I have the replacement DVD of the 1999 show and I am uploading the files now.  They will be posted tomorrow night.  If time allows I will work on 1997 tomorrow night and then make the changes to the "all years" stream.  The 1999 video is pretty quiet, I'm still working with the new version of the Divx software to try to improve the audio quality.  Unfortunately, Adobe Premiere elements doesn't like Divx AVI or WMV files.

July 1, 2005: The 1999 video is online, I am trying to produce a higher quality video to fix the audio quality.

July 5, 2005: For reasons I can't explain, I am continuing to have problems with the 1997 video, whether it's from the DVD, my old VHS master, or other encoding methods.  I will continue working with this problem using other equipment and see what I can do to get a decent video online. 

July 1, 2005: The 1997 video is online, the collection is now complete, unless someone has videos from 1990, 1991, 1993 that are from another show during the year such as Chapters.

August 9, 2005: The 2005 performance schedule has been posted.  If there are any changes, I will update the schedule accordingly.

August 29, 2005: The 2004 season related information has been added to the history area of the site.

August 30, 2005: I posted a set of photos from band camp.  The next updates will be this weekend following parents night and the first football game.

August 31, 2005: I made some text corrections under the history and the marching band pages for each year.  I also changed the contact information page to load over a secure connection, and to load the email address images off the server instead of from an outside source.

September 2, 2005: Parents night photos have been posted.

September 6, 2005: Photos from the first football game and a set of practice photos have been posted.  By request of the STHS Yearbook staff, I will be taking a few shots here and there during practices and posting them on the site. 

September 13, 2005: New football and practice photos have been posted.  Remember, anyone who is a Livejournal user can add the photo feeds to your friends list.  You can also add photo updates to MSN and Google home pages.  Xanga users can check nrsmedia for a list of photo updates on all my sites.

September 17, 2005: New football and practice photos have been posted.  Thanks for the card you gave me at practice this week.  For anyone who didn't see it, I posted 2 pics.  I also posted some photos from the demo at Holtzman Elementary.  Update information has been posted to the Xanga account.  I should actually be "at the console" and available to chat during the evenings this week in case anyone is bored or has any requests.

September 27, 2005: New football and practice photos have been posted.

October 4, 2005: Photos from the Mechanicsburg show are up.  I'm looking for a volunteer photographer for 10/15 and 10/29, and a volunteer to shoot a video on 10/15.  Contact me if you can help.

October 7, 2005: In order to protect copyrights, I've gone back to a system of visible watermarks.  Unmarked photos are available upon request, but I reserve the right to charge a fee for this service.  Any fees collected will be spent on new equipment and upgrades for the site.

October 14, 2005 (6am): New football photos have been uploaded.  Carlisle photos are being worked on now and will be probably available by Saturday night, along with photos from senior recognition tonight.  Reminder, I will not be at the Pocono Mountain show, so please bring me your photos and videos if you want anything posted on the site.  You will be credited, and originals will be returned to you - bring them to practice Wednesday and you will have them at practice Friday after school.

October 16, 2005 (2am): Carlisle photos have been posted, I will work on the senior recognition photos later today and get them online by Monday night. 

Changes have been made to the copyright and terms of service information.  Please review the updated pages and contact me with questions or concerns.

October 17, 2005: Senior recognition photos have been posted.

October 23, 2005 (3am): I'm having major server problems, and the photo gallery is down right now.  I am aware of the issue and will continue working on it until everything is fixed.  Updates will be posted at www.xanga.com/nrsmedia/ and I will put a note on the home page when service has been restored.

October 30, 2005: The ACCs contest has started, you have until Wed before ACCs at 8am to enter.  Everything was moved to the new server in the last few days and is working without any issues.  I haven't changed the photo on the home page in a while, so I'll do that today or this week.  Next year if I am around, I will start a voting system, and the highest voted picture will be featured until the next update.

I'm looking for musical items and information, as well as indoor guard related items and information.  See me, email me, call me, or otherwise communicate with me if you have anything I can put on the sites.

Photos have been posted for Cumberland Valley (rehearsing in the rain), Cedar Cliff and Pocono Mountain.  Thanks to Betsy Wittle for sending me photos from the Pocono show.  With these updates, the site has passed the 5000 photo mark.

November 4, 2005: Tonight was a learning curve for me on the new digital SLR camera,  I took 125 shots at the game, only 11 turned out.  Needless to say, I have some rereading to do, and I'll probably be taking photos at practice tomorrow just so I can get some practice in before Chapters.  I'll post whatever turns out at the end of tomorrow night.

November 8, 2005: I made a bunch of different text updates to the site and added photos for football and Chapters.  ACCs DVDs have also been ordered, I'll probably have them a month after ACCs.  I also added the write-up for this year's show.

November 10, 2005: Problems accessing the Windows Media streams have been corrected.  I forgot to enable anonymous access on the new server.  Thanks to Ben Rand for bringing that to my attention, everything has been reset and tested.  Things are also normalizing after an apparent denial of service attack against my hosting provider.

November 11, 2005: During my testing I noticed two additional problems with the streaming media.  First, I corrected the link for the ACCs All Years stream, I have no idea how long that was wrong.  Second, there is a problem launching the Windows Media stream for the 2004 Pocono Mountain show.  I recreated the stream and it is working fine now. 

November 15, 2005: All of the photos from the past two weeks have been posted.  I added a few photos for Chapters, added to the ACCs group portraits from practice, posted the show photos and everything else.  As soon as the ACCs DVD arrives I will work on creating the video streams and post them.

I disabled the links to all of the photo printing services and I am working on watermarking everything else on the site.  If you would like prints of any of the photos, including large format and posters (without the watermarks of course), or specialty gift items, please contact me for a price quote.  I am doing this in order to start covering the expenses involved in maintaining the site and the purchase of new equipment, I'm not out to make a huge profit.  I may drop this in the future in favor of a subscription for high resolution photos, but that's still in the research phase right now.  If you have questions about this, please contact me.

I saw a lot of people at ACCs and practice with cameras and camcorders, so if you have pictures or videos to share with me, let me know.  You can send them to me, or I can meet you and duplicate the contents of the memory card, scan the prints, or whatever else is needed.  I am also looking for anything related to trips, indoor, the musical or STSD items in general.  If you want me to attend indoor or other events, send me the information and I'll see if I can accommodate the request.

November 30, 2005: I've been testing the windows media streams for the last week or so and I think I finally have the issue narrowed down.  I have a few more things to try, then I will have to recreate and upload all of the files.  It should be a few more days and that will be done.  I'll also be adding ACCs related photos and videos submitted by Dave Miller. 

December 1, 2005: I fixed everything with the windows media streams, which required me to produce and upload all new video streams.  I'll be testing all of the streams over the next 24 hours and will address any problems I come across.  I'm producing a new DivX file for the 2004 Pocono Mountain show and will have that uploaded and in place tonight.  I will also have Dave Miller's photos added within the next 24 hours, probably tonight.  I'm working on an integrated ordering system for the photo gallery, or at least an order form, but for now orders are being accepted by phone, email and fax.

December 5, 2005: Ok, the windows media streams are fixed and have been tested.  As time allows, I may go back and try to boost the audio on some of the years that are hard to hear.  I also added the photos and videos from Dave Miller.

The new photo sales page is being worked on now.  I will be using it to recoup the costs of operating the site as well as provide a few $ for the band/music boosters.  I'm still waiting on the 2005 DVD order and as soon as it arrives in the mail I will post it on the site.  I did see the DVD the other night and they missed the magic trick, so you'll have to watch Dave Miller's videos to see it.

December 16, 2005: I just got the ACCs DVD today and it has been added to the site.