From the Philadelphia Inquirer of March 9, 1836, reporting on the stabbing death of my first cousin (five times removed), Robert Allen Jr:

“We learn with much pain, that Robert Allen, esq., son of Col. Robert Allen, of Smith County, and formerly of this place, was stabbed by a blackleg, on the 29th January, on board the steam boat Selma, about twenty-five miles above Bayou Sarah, on the Mississippi river, of which wound he died in New Orleans.

The circumstances we understand to be these. At the dinner table, in conversation with other gentlemen, Mr. Allen expressed himself in strong terms of professional gamblers – remarking in substance that he considered them little better than horse thieves. After dinner, a man named Hamilton Taylor, formerly of East Tennessee, who was at the table when the remarks were made, called upon Allen to know if they were intended to allude to him. Allen replied that his observations were general – that he knew nothing of him [Taylor] or his profession; but that if he were a professional gambler he fell under the general remark.

After some warm words, Taylor struck Allen with his left hand and immediately thereafter with a large clasp knife stabbed him just below the right nipple through the lungs. Taylor was secured and will be tried at the May term of the Feliciana criminal court.

Mr. Allen was a young man of high promise – a member of the Bar – and was on his way to Alexandria in the state of Louisiana where he intended to settle himself, with a view of attending to his profession.”

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotape, audio recordings, photos, negatives and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website. And be sure to watch our TedXEustis talk and let us know what you think.

July 31, 2020

The video that won for best Company Promo during the recent 2020 Hanley Awards was a web commercial we did for a local businessman to introduce his teaching series for individuals looking for a fast track to a career for themselves.

Jeffrey Chilton has developed a technique and the methods that can be applied by anyone to gain the skills, knowledge and expertise to become proficient in the window washing field and compete for business at a professional level. He has given his permission to allow me to post his video on our site as an example of the work we can produce.

The other award we received was for Best Studio Promo. Similar to the Company Promo award, the Studio Promo was a commercial we did in-house to promote one of our many quality services. In this instance, it was for our Life Stories service where we help individuals leave a personal legacy or history behind by recording them telling the story of their lives.  Highly emotional and hugely important, it is something of a passion for us. It is a passion I hope comes across in the video.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotape, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.

2020 has to be the weirdest year ever. As one TV pundit put it, “It’s like we’re living through the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, the 1929 Great Depression, and the 1968 social unrest… all at the same time.”

Yesterday, in our quaint little community of Mount Dora, we were placed under curfew in response to the rioting taking place across the country. The word curfew is of French origin, derived from an Old French phrase “couvre-feu” which literally means “cover fire.” It was in reference to a 11th century law enacted by William the Conqueror which instructed people to cover or put out lights and fires at 8pm to help prevent the threat of spreading flames within and between the wooden buildings of their communities.

The flames that are currently burning in the hearts of so many; flames that are resulting in the wanton destruction of property and the putting of innocents in harms way – it is hard to imagine they would ever spread to my little town but I suppose stranger things have happened.

I understand the anger and the distrust so many feel. I don’t understand the violence and destruction taking place. I simply don’t see how that helps anybody’s case. True change, if that’s what people are seeking, will never come from external forces or pressure. It can only start from within. We must change ourselves first. Change the way we act; change the way we react; change the way we view people. We look in the mirror and make the deliberate choice to become the person we want others to be. If enough of us do that and, by leading from example, encourage others to follow, perhaps we’d be on the way to building a world that doesn’t provide us with so many cringe-worthy or heartbreaking moments.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio Mount Dora specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.

We, at Home Video Studio, are kind of in a time capsule business. People bring us items that have been buried for 50, 60, even 70 years or more and ask us to unearth their secrets. And sometimes, after we’re done, they let us keep some of the old capsules themselves.

The camera pictured above was given to us by one of our clients. It belonged to his family, most likely his grandfather.  It is an Agfa Movex 16mm camera circa 1930s, complete with leather case and light-gauge. It was a German camera and what makes it remarkable to me is the film that we transferred for the client that brought it in. There were 4 reels of 16mm silent film and after transferring the footage and watching it back we were mesmerized to find that our client’s grandfather, most likely with this camera, was seated in the stands of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, filming the games.

The final reel was taken much later and showed a jeep ride through the rubble-strewn street of post-war Berlin.

I’m not able to show you the actual footage we preserved for our client but I found a website with some pretty spectacular still photos of that historical event.

https://historycollection.co/a-look-inside-hitlers-1936-nazi-olympics-through-amazing-photographs/

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.

As the country inexorably moves towards “reopening,” pundits everywhere are offering their opinions on what our new normal will look like. The bottom line… no one really knows.  It will be dependent upon which way the wind blows (and what may be in that wind as it’s blowing.)

At Home Video Studio Mount Dora, we certainly altered our operational protocol to reduce the amount of physical interaction needed to take place while the coronavirus threat was so strong. And in many ways, the changes we developed made us more efficient and allowed us to maximize our time management to a higher degree. So, speaking for ourselves, our new normal will be a continuation of the processes we put in place to keep everyone safe while we continued serving the community during this time.

We are in the studio 6 days a week from 9:30am until 5:00pm but we request that our clients call us to schedule an appointment so we can be sure as to manage the traffic flow in and out of our studio.

Simple drop off and pick up of orders can be conducted curbside. More complex transactions will be handled inside our sanitized studio which will be re-sanitized after every visitor. We will be wearing masks during all face to face interactions and ask all to do the same.

We’ve been doing the above for the past month and have been able to operate without a hiccup. We’re thrilled to be able to continue providing the services that allow our customers to preserve and protect their memories from loss or damage and look forward to the time that we can help you with your next project.

The individual pictured above is famous for saying: “What, me worry?” Like him, we have no reason to be worried. We’re getting through this in fine shape.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio Mount Dora specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.

May 2, 2020

Thirty days.  You’d think I’d be climbing the walls by now. And who knows…some of you may be…

In all honesty, this distancing we’ve been asked to do has been manageable for us. What does that meme say: you realize how anti-social you are when the world goes on lock down and you hardly notice.

Believe me, we’ve noticed. But we’ve also found ways to accommodate whatever it is we’ve had to do without.

Eating out:  We used to frequent local restaurants once or twice a week; for date nights or just to avoid having to cook. So for the past thirty days, we’ve had our date nights at home and we’ve still managed to support our local eateries by ordering takeout and plating it ourselves at our dining room table.

Live entertainment: No theater, no concerts, no movie house experiences, that’s true… but there has been more network and streaming entertainment made available than could ever be consumed in a thousand pandemics.

Family gatherings: This has been the toughest part. My mom (91) lives in an assisted living facility which has blocked visitation for over a month now. My mother-in-law (92) has been sheltering in place in her home with a full-time caregiver.  We get by with daily calls, care packages. In some ways, we’re more connected now than before and we take comfort in knowing that the lockdown, in a large part, was designed to protect them from this virus.

On the plus side, our house has received a thorough cleaning, we’ve been able to catch up on some reading, we’re healthy and in a position to bounce back quickly once we receive the go-ahead from our health officials.  I hope all of you have found your way of enduring this unusual time. Just remember, this too shall pass. Keep yourselves safe and know that while it may seem like you’re going through this alone, we’re all in this together.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio Mount Dora specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.

April 29, 2020

We listened to our governor’s address today as he explained the steps Florida is taking to “re-open” our economy. In phase one, not much has changed.

Our restaurants seem to have been given the biggest consideration, allowing them to offer outside dining (tables separated by the 6 foot social distancing parameters) as well as inside dining (as long as it does not exceed 25% of capacity.) In other words, let’s keep on ordering take-out to support our local dining establishments.

Assisted living facilities are still on lock down as well as bars, hair stylists, nail salons, and most other personal services. Non-essential retail establishments can begin to open but they are also under a 25% capacity rule along with masking requirements and the other CDC guidelines.

While we are a small business hybrid which is not under specific closure guidelines, we have chosen to err on the side of caution. We will continue to meet with people on an appointment basis. Call us and we will discuss your potential project. If you decided to move forward, we will schedule a day and time for you to bring us your source material. We will meet you at the studio for a drop off transfer. We’ll take your material, draw up an invoice which we will send to you via email. You can put down a deposit via electronic link. We’ll process the order; notify you when it is completed and you can pay any balance due electronically while scheduling a time to pick up the finished order.

This has proven to be a safe and effective way to conduct our business during the pandemic. Thank you for your understanding. We’re actually doing it to protect you as well as us while not interrupting the service we can provide to you.

On a positive note, we have decided to extend our “quarantine sale” at least until we reach phase two of the Florida plan. So, if you are still stuck at home, now is a good time to go through those closets and find all those home movies/videos/slides that need to be digitally transferred.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio Mount Dora specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information call 352-735-8550 or call our website.

April 26, 2020

As we venture out to perform our essential duties, we follow the CDC guidelines and always wear our face mask while in public. And because of this we are finding out about a problem that is all too common among people in our age group. Our breath fogs up our glasses.

Fortunately, AARP has some answers for us. The following are quotes from their article.

“The Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England published an article in 2011 that offered a simple method to prevent fogging, suggesting that, just before wearing a face mask, people wash their spectacles with soapy water, shake off the excess and then allow the lenses to air-dry.

“Washing the spectacles with soapy water leaves behind a thin surfactant film that reduces this surface tension and causes the water molecules to spread out evenly into a transparent layer,” the article reveals. “This ‘surfactant effect’ is widely utilized to prevent misting of surfaces in many everyday situations.” Anti-fogging solutions used for scuba masks or ski goggles also accomplish this.

Another tactic is to consider the fit of your face mask, to prevent your exhaled breath from reaching your glasses. An easy hack is to place a folded tissue between your mouth and the mask. The tissue will absorb the warm, moist air, preventing it from reaching your glasses. Also, make sure the top of your mask is tight and the bottom looser, to help direct your exhaled breath away from your eyes.”

Hope this helps someone.  Me, I think I’m going to try fitting a snorkel under my mask.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio Mount Dora specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.

April 22, 2020

It took 21 days but I finally looked into where we got the name quarantine.

Socially distancing contagious people has been around for a long time. There are records in the Bible of people with contagious infections forced to stay outside the city gates. People affected with leprosy, arguably the oldest of human infections, were kept segregated from the rest of the population, in colonies established on remote islands or on mountaintops.

The word itself was coined in the mid 14th century. The bubonic plague, aka The Black Plague, managed to kill one-third of the European population in the space of 3 years. During this time, a law was passed in the Venetian controlled port city of Ragusa (now in Croatia). Called trentino, which means thirty days, this law established a thirty day isolation period for any ship arriving from a plague afflicted area. No one was to board or disembark for those thirty days.

The law was quickly adopted by other cities and within the next hundred years, an additional ten days was added to the isolation and the practice went from trentino to quarantino, hence our English word quarantine.

The United States Congress, in 1878, passed the National Quarantine Act permitting the federal government to act during an outbreak of yellow fever. By 1921, the quarantine system was completely nationalized.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio Mount Dora specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.

April 21, 2020

You can tell that the days are blurring together. Two days without updating a post and I didn’t even notice. (So if you’re looking for days seventeen and eighteen, they aren’t there.)

But on day nineteen under our stay at home order, we are looking more closely to what our “new normal” will be when our governor lifts the ban and allows us to once again light up our OPEN sign. Here’s what our plan will look like.

Right now, we are going to the studio at the times when someone has made an appointment just to receive or deliver their order. When the stay at home order has been lifted, we will resume our normal operating hours of 9:30 am to 5:00 pm Monday through Saturday. But we will continue to encourage our customers to set appointments so we can better control the flow of people in and out of our studio to avoid people arriving at the same time and having to share our space in close proximity.

Right now, we maintain a six feet distance from people and will continue to do so until signs of the virus are no longer present. We are currently wearing masks while dealing with the public and will continue to do so for their safety and ours.

We still have and will use sanitizing products to keep our studio germ free. Please don’t be offended if you see us wiping down doorknobs and surfaces as you leave. It has become a habit for us and we’re doing it for everyone’s safety.

We hope there will come a day when these stringent health precautions will not be as needed but for right now, it just makes common sense to continue to employ them. I read a meme on Facebook the other day that summed it up. Abandoning safe practices now just because we’ve flattened the curve of the spread is like saying, “Look, the parachute has slowed my descent… guess I don’t need it anymore.”

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio Mount Dora specialize in the preservation of family memories through the digitalization of film, videotapes, audio recordings, photos, negatives, and slides. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit our website.