Tired of watching TV?

Spend some time watching videos that star people from the Albert Lea area. You just might be in them.

The Albert Lea Tribune has created archive pages on its website for its collection of videos.

There are several memorable movies in the collection:

• Freelancer Jeff Thorstad created a fun video that highlights boat rides around Albert Lea Lake and Fountain Lake. This allows people to see the shores from the water and surely will be useful to folks moving to the community. Many employers could find the video handy as a recruitment tool.

• Former Tribune photographer Brie Cohen shot and edited a masterpiece of a video about the 1959 Wilson & Co. strike. People who worked at the plant tell very moving stories.

• All of the episodes of the cooking show “Uffda Kitchen” are available. Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom and his son, Forrest, share dishes they like to make in their home.

• While the cooking series has reached its end, a new video series has begun. It is called “Say Hi to the Helmet Cam.” Engstrom and other Tribune staff members will take the helmet cam to various places, and if people see the helmet cam, they are encouraged to wave and say hi. The first episode posted Wednesday morning and featured Engstrom on a bike ride around Fountain Lake. The next episodes could be things like going down the water slide at the city pool, sitting among students at a sports contest, visiting the local wildlife or stopping down at the beer garden for a look-see during the Freeborn County Fair. It’s going to get crazy.

• Student performances during Tigers’ Roar in March. One highlight of this reel is the performance of the Albert Lea High School jazz band.

• Cohen’s videos of the students inside the mascot costumes at Albert Lea and Glenville-Emmons high schools.

• Former Sports Editor Nick Gerhardt’s attempt at eating too much food at the Freeborn County Fair.

• A video from December 2010 about the Albert Lea Fire Department and Allen’s Tow-N-Travel removing a snowmobile that has fallen through the ice of Fountain Lake.

• A robot made by an Albert Lea High School industrial arts class.

• Swimmers sharing their joy at the opening of the Albert Lea pool.

And there are plenty of other videos to see.

To get there, just look for the blue navigation bar across the top of the homepage and every page of the Tribune’s website. One link says “Videos and Photos.” Hover a cursor over it and a drop-down menu appears. The link for “Videos” shows the more recent videos, and the link that says “Video Archives” goes to the first page of older videos. On that page there are links to the second page, which has even older videos.

Each video page features a Twitter feed so that users never miss out on any new headlines.

Users also can go to the sports videos, but a sports video archive has yet to be built. Look for it within the next few weeks before prep football begins.

While the Tribune has been making videos since the spring of 2008, the videos in the archives date back to May 2009, when they began to be hosted by the website Viddler — which is similar to YouTube but with better branding capability and fewer data and length restrictions. Before, the Tribune hosted its videos as Quicktime files on an internal server.

Eventually, the Quicktime videos, too, will be on the Tribune’s website.