And now, back to the CPR theme:

Remember that badass mom I have? She's also happen to be an extremely trained nurse in almost every field of nursing.

About two months ago she went to do groceries shopping on a Friday. Halfway through, she heard a screaming. She couldn't remember how, but after two minutes a dead toddler, probably not older than two years old, landed in her arms. Automatically she began CPR for about 20 minutes, until the ambulance came, and protecting the toddler from "helpful" "spill water on her!" suggestions. Eventually, she saved the baby's life, without any brain damage. And my mother, a woman with more than 30 years of training in this life saving field, was shocked. Mostly because she had no equipment to take care of the baby properly and it came out of nowhere, and at work she used to be in a certain state of alertness at all times.

As for me: I don't care much about the spit and other fluids. I had a CPR course 8 years ago, but the bottom line is if I'm afraid to do more damage than help or not, not to mention not to freak out at the sight of bad injuries (I can be a wuss about it, because I can't stand knowing when others are in bad pain), but then again, I'm also good with keeping calm when hell breaks loose.

Meh. I'm having uninspiring salad-lunch.

(The new recipe tryouts will be dinner).

Ita - what you said about righting a balance in the moment. Beautiful.

Vortex - bigDuluth could be checking the firefly or boxed set threads.

Kat - I used a flip for the first time on Friday and it was great. You just reminded me that I'm coveting one. We have a great camcorder but this would be so much easier to take with. One question - probably better in tech... Is audio separate? The writer talked about using a nano with mike. That could be a bit of a pita.

Wow, Shir -- your mom is a badass.

Is it that people are so afraid that they'd do NOTHING if spit were involved?

I think it's this. A local news segment about the compression-only thing was asking random people if they'd do CPR on a stranger, and most people said no -- but are most people trained in it? I wouldn't do CPR on someone because I had like 10 minutes of training almost 20 years ago -- I would be more afraid of doing more harm than good. I would call 911 for sure.

Anyway, good for you for helping that guy, ita.

Do any of you have or have any of you used a Flip Video?

We have one and like it a lot for our simple attempts at recording a few moments and zapping them off to interested relatives.

I have CPR training, and even though it's only about a year old, I still feel tentative on it, and would be reluctant to use it. Though I wouldn't be able to just walk away from someone in distress, I'd probably just do it wrong.

Man, these morning don't get any easier, do they?

I'm with jesse- I feel like I really, really don't know how to do CPR because I learned in health class in 9th grade. And I am 34.

I have called 911 for people, when I worked in a grocery store. Someone once had a heart attack in front of me and I called 911 while the other people were sort of flapping an flailing. They thought I was weird, but I was right next to the phone, and other people were holding the guy up.

Also, I am really frustrated right now, because I am trying to watch the fall Out Boy "beat it" video, and I'm trying to make it bigger than that little player, but I can't find a way. I want to flail, but I can hardly see the video when it is that small.

Here if anyone sees a way? [link]

I fell in a responder category for a long time because I had CPR/First Aid/WSI and a raft of other certs. Didn't think that I would know what to do when something happened, but the opposite was true - even though there was a nurse present (YAY NURSES) when a woman had a seizure at our local sandwich shop, and it had been yonks since my certifications expired, my brain just went all flowchart: "First responder? Check. Ok, someone calling 911? No? Then call. People crowding in for a look? Suggest politely that they move back...." it was good.

I lurve my Flip! Except they still haven't fixed the annoying audio problem that the last Quicktime update caused, but Apple shares most of the blame for that.

I don't think I'd use it to shoot a film (unless I was specifically going for a low-budget verite video diary kind of look) because the fixed lens *is* really limiting, it won't fit onto a real professional tripod/dolly/etc, the video it records is encoded with a proprietary codec, blah blah blah. Also take into account that he's edited the two versions together into a single video file, meaning that they now share the same relatively low resolution & frame rate, as well as the same optimized-for-online-viewing codec, which wasn't true of the footage that came out of the cameras. So it's not quite as true a comparison as he makes it seem - the HD footage could be printed to 35mm film and projected in a movie theatre and look pretty decent. You could not do that with the FlipVideo footage.

That said, it's absolutely perfect for home movies because it's so compact. And the "flip" aspect is brilliant - I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to put baby pictures on my parents' computers only to realize I've forgotten the #%(!#$( USB cable.

Two improvements they could make would be a slightly wider lens - to get the same shot with my still camera and the Flip, I have to hold the Flip a couple of feet back - and a better mic, because the built-in one is complete crap. It will pick up the voice of the cameraperson just fine, but anything *in front* of the lens, like, say, the thing you're POINTING THE CAMERA AT is basically a lost cause unless you want to spend time in post futzing with the levels (which for a 40-second baby video, I really don't).

I just discovered the other meaning of degradable.

English may be one weird language, but I can see the logic of it. Sometimes. If I close one eye and blinks really fast, you know.

(Remind me to tell you sometime the story about "Shir using "nail" as a verb". It's a funny one).