Video blogging before YouTube!

This was the kind of stuff I loved to make back when I started this video blog. I remember agonizing over compressing these videos to get them under 5 megabytes so that my hosting wouldn't explode. Sometimes the more popular videos attracted many downloads and I was worried about paying for additional server bandwidth so I made them as small as possible and it really helped people able to watch it in a browser window without stalling.

It was Boxing Day 2004 at Future Shop in Kamloops, BC, and a huge lineup had formed overnight as people showed up to get first crack at crazy deals on electronics. I talked to a few people in the line and was able to make an amateur "news" piece out of it. Wait for the rush as the doors opened

Wow this stuff was hard to do back then. Creating thumbnails out of Quicktime player screenshots that linked to the video on private hosting because Blogspot would only do still images. The video would look something like this instead of what's up there: