Great going, Lindsey! Take care of Mr. Booth......

Hope he has an umbrella for Tuesday. They are calling for heavy rain and thunderstorms here in Hanover, Virginia. Then a cold front with an early morning frost and a high of 57 degrees on Wednesday. It hopefully will be dryer and warmer up ya'lls way.

Well I'm back home a bit earlier than expected. Rain is suppose to start tonight followed by thunderstorms. I am not equipped to handle such weather so I thought it was best to get out if there before the weather turned. On the bright side, I did shoot A LOT of footage and I am very satisfied that I will be able to construct a great finished product despite the shorter duration. I still spent three days and two nights in the woods and I think it gave me great insight on Booth's condition and mindset. I'm looking forward to sharing my experiment with you all once I go through the footage. For now, however, I'm going to enjoy sleeping in a bed again.

Best,

Dave Taylor

Glad to know that you are back safe and sound, Dave! We're looking forward to see what you learned during your time in the woods.

Very smart move, Dave....glad that we don't have to worry about you out in the wilds in a thunderstorm.....

Still, that was a great experience for you AND for us! Can't wait to see the finished product!

Question: Did you get so bored being in one place that you were tempted to wander into the woods a tad more? Rick and I suspect that Booth and Herold did and we're hoping you can confirm it. I grew up with woods all around me, and I spent a lot of time in them - but generally looking for wild flowers and other things. I can't imagine staying in one isolated spot for more than ten hours. And, I do not have ADHD.

I love the photos on your website. You must be tired, and I bet you will sleep well tonight!

(04-15-2014 02:37 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Question: Did you get so bored being in one place that you were tempted to wander into the woods a tad more? Rick and I suspect that Booth and Herold did and we're hoping you can confirm it. I grew up with woods all around me, and I spent a lot of time in them - but generally looking for wild flowers and other things. I can't imagine staying in one isolated spot for more than ten hours. And, I do not have ADHD.

Right; in fact, I think that Thomas Jones had an even greater desire to move JWB & Herold than they did. Thus the move to Newport near the Adams Tavern. Keeping the fugitives on the move to avoid capture.

It has occurred to me that the "pine thicket" of today, is not far from Capt. Billy's. Any chance that Tom Jones was getting "provisions" from that emporium?

I think I'm correct that Billy Robertson started his emporium in 1942. I have always been curious as to whether or not he was related to Samuel Cox. I believe that Cox's sister, mother of Samuel Cox, Jr., - whom Sam, Sr. adopted - was married to a Robertson.

The weather that Dave experienced was quite a bit worse than that experienced by Booth & Herold. There are weather details for the time in the David Rankin Barbee Papers, Box 7 in the Lauinger Library Special Papers Collection at Georgetown University.

I'm finding video editing to be a long and tedious affair. One issue I have been contending with that has delayed me immensely is the fact that while my computer is fast enough to run the video editing software, when I try to create the video file after putting it together, my computer overheats and shuts itself down. It appears I do not have enough CPU to render videos longer that 2 min or so. I tried different methods to fix this. I even went out and bought some compressed air and sprayed out the computer yesterday hoping that it was just dust that was causing it to overheat, but my problem remained. I honestly just don't think my computer was made to handle intense video rendering.

However, I have found a workable, yet time consuming solution that I discovered only today. My computer can handle rendering videos that are about a minute long. I upload these clips to Youtube and then, using their editor, I can recombine them back into one video without losing quality.

Here is the first part of the series that I'm calling "John Wilkes Booth in the Woods":

(Go to the next page HERE to see the updated version of this video)

You should be able to make the video play in HD (if it doesn't automatically) by clicking the gear icon near the bottom of the video and changing the quality to 1080p.

Sadly, this is all I have done so far. Now that I have found a workable solution for my problem, however, I'm hoping the rest of the editing will be smoother.

Very well done. I like it.

That's one biggggg knife you have there - I didn't realize it was that big.

Great start, Dave. I never remember seeing the engraving of Booth and Herold together crossing the bridge. Where did you find it?

Absolutely wonderful, Dave! I can't wait to see more....

This is very professionally done - and you are a wonderful speaker!

Are you doing video editing on a laptop? If so, perhaps you need a cooling board. I have one and it keeps the fans going so it doesn't overhead the machine when doing high video/graphics editing. The board plugs into a USB port and keeps the PC cool. They are fairly inexpensive - about $20.00.

(04-18-2014 09:27 AM)Gene C Wrote:  Very well done. I like it.

That's one biggggg knife you have there - I didn't realize it was that big.

Thanks, Gene.

The knife I'm using is modern replica of the same type Booth had. The length of the blade is about 8 1/2 inches.

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(04-18-2014 09:43 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Great start, Dave. I never remember seeing the engraving of Booth and Herold together crossing the bridge. Where did you find it?

Laurie,

The engraving of Booth and Herold crossing the bridge comes from the book, "The United States Secret Service in the Late War" by Lafayette Baker. It is one of two color engravings in that book along with an engraving of Booth in the Garrett barn:

https://archive.org/stream/unitedstatess...4/mode/2up
https://archive.org/stream/unitedstatess...4/mode/2up

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(04-18-2014 09:57 AM)BettyO Wrote:  Absolutely wonderful, Dave! I can't wait to see more....

This is very professionally done - and you are a wonderful speaker!

Are you doing video editing on a laptop? If so, perhaps you need a cooling board. I have one and it keeps the fans going so it doesn't overhead the machine when doing high video/graphics editing. The board plugs into a USB port and keeps the PC cool. They are fairly inexpensive - about $20.00.

I'm doing my editing on a desktop computer, Betty. For some reason, my CPU runs hot even when I'm not doing video editing. When I start to render, however, it kicks into overdrive and the temperature jumps way up real fast. I may need to reapply thermal paste, but I'm not experienced with messing with the inside of my computer. I'll probably need to seek the advice of an expert, but for now, I can make do. Thanks for the suggestion and the compliments, though.