January - 2006

Archive for January, 2006

Radio Free Chalupa Episode Zero

Thursday, 19 January 2006

To prove I’m completely unoriginal, I’ve come up with my own podcast, Radio Free Chalupa.

Download Radio Free Chalupa Episode Zero

It’s great. Pulitzer winning shit. Trust me.

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A reminder that time has passed

Saturday, 21 January 2006

(Photo credit: Roger Katz from 2003 collection)

Was on the phone with Ben tonight talking about the movie and had lots of discussions about where the actual showing will take place. I want this movie to be shown in a real movie theater; it’s just something I want to do.

There were three movie theaters I went to as a kid. Killingly Cinemas (which still exists), Putnam Twin Drive-in and what is now known as the Bradley Playhouse. Of the three, the Killingly Cinemas was where I frequented most. I saw The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi there when they were new. Most recently I saw Revenge of the Sith there - and that was a bit on the nostalgic side seeing a Star Wars film there after all those years.

Once I have my film completed I going to try like hell to get a showing in Killingly Cinemas just because that’s the place I always went to see movies when I was a kid. It’s a sentimental thing.

Pic Above: That’s the Putnam Twin Drive-in. It’s been closed for years. This is now an old photo. The last time I looked at this place before I moved out of CT, all the land had been cleared out… so someone probably bought it and will do something with the land now. At this place I remember seeing Tron and The Cannonball Run. Any others I don’t remember because I was too young. I got a totally weird feeling every time I passed by this lot because I remember going there and now.. it’s gone. And it’s never coming back. It’s not that this drive-in was great or anything, but, I dunno. Maybe I’d rather see nothing at all rather than a broken down lot. I’m hoping whoever bought it does something nice to clean it up. It is a good piece of land.

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Shoot it

Saturday, 21 January 2006

The final piece to my digital editing suite (said tongue in cheek) is a camcorder. I needed something that would do 16:9 widescreen without sending me to the poorhouse, and the Canon ZR-200 seemed like a good fit. It’s miniDV and has FireWire, plus I can convert analog to digital (as in convert VHS to miniDV) and that’s cool too because I have lots of old VHS footage.

The price sneaked in just under 300 bucks and I think that’s a good deal. I have no idea what the pic quality will be or any other of that stuff, but quality of shot starts with quality of videographer and I think I got that part covered. (grin)

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Funny/cool to those who remember

Sunday, 22 January 2006

I was digging around through my old video archives for FSP and found the intro I used for the old demo reel. It was a spoof on the CBS “Special Presentation” bumper. If you’re old enough to remember, you saw this bumper right before holiday shows usually such as A Charlie Brown Christmas. This is in the days before cable television came around.

It originally took me almost four hours to get this intro done. I had to match the colors as close as I could and get the animation just right. I was mostly successful. The only glaring mistake is that the “C” in “special” is not centered when the words spin, but I was really happy with what I got.

My videographer at the time got a huge kick out of this. It was cool. It still is.

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Track the iMac

Monday, 23 January 2006

Above: Tracking my new iMac via FedEx because I haven’t received it yet. It isn’t late or anything, but darn, that’s one long journey. I circled the starting point (and yes, that’s China).

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Almost have all the pieces

Tuesday, 24 January 2006

My copy of Final Cut Express HD arrived today. Why didn’t I order the pro version? Because Express is one thousand dollars less than the pro version - that’s why.

The Mac won’t be arriving until tomorrow, so I opened the Final Cut box to see what’s inside. There were four discs.

Four discs?

Disc 1: Install disc.

Disc 2 and 3: “LiveType Data”. I don’t know what this is. Sounds important, I guess.

Disc 4: Apple Loops for Soundtrack. Soundtrack? What’s this?

I perused through the manuals and there’s a whole big book on Soundtrack for Mac. If this is a multitrack audio recording program (which it might be), I might be using this instead of using Adobe Audition 1.5 on the PC for my new music release. I don’t know whether it will have the same capability as Audition but I might as well give it a shot. Could be worth something…

I was originally a little hesitant to order anything labeled “Express” because in the PC world, express means “watered down piece of crap”, but this is definitely not the case with FCE HD. It came with full documentation and there wasn’t anything cheesy about it. I’m hoping the software is as good as the package it came in.

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On a completely unrelated note, I may be changing around the site template again.

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Night Vision

Wednesday, 25 January 2006

Above: Night shot of crazy streaking colors from my ‘05 GMC Canyon gauge pod.

I just came back from a late night outing just for the hell of it. Sometimes I’m up in the wee hours of the morn’ and bored.. so I just drive out to the local 24-hr convenience store just for something to do.

The best part about driving really late at night is that there’s almost no one on the road. It’s a very peaceful driving experience which is a big reason I do it from time to time. In addition to that, all the stores that are open at that time have employees that are really laid back and easy to get along with.

You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to drive around when the roads are clear. ;-)

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New iMac impressions

Wednesday, 25 January 2006

Well okay, here we go. This is my first blog entry using my new iMac. I got it this morning.

The first thing I’m having to get used to is the keyboard and mouse. I find myself mistyping a few things but nothing major. The Mighty Mouse is also odd but I think I’ll get used to it.. it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Actually it’s quite good. I’m glad that I can adjust the right side of it to be a secondary click.

The 20″ widescreen display is nothing short of phenomenal. Holy SHIT is it good. It’s huge, colorful and well.. nothing I can say here will be able to accurately describe how it looks. You just have to see one (and use one) for yourself.

I haven’t installed Final Cut yet because I still have to get used to this new computer. I’ve been able to install Firefox successfully and Thunderbird is next on my list. Apps seems to install without a problem. It’s very different how they install compared to Windows but it’s nothing I can’t master.

This may sound corny, but the iMac is very.. futuristic. I’m impressed. Once I get to actual video editing we’ll see if this thing can live up to its claims, but so far so good.

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Overwhelmed

Wednesday, 25 January 2006

Overwhelmed in a good way that is. I don’t think I’ve had this much new-tech gadgetry in quite some time. I have my new miniDV camcorder, the iMac and a whole lot of learning to do. I still haven’t touched the Final Cut software yet. This is going to take several days to get in the swing of things!

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Lots of Mac stuff

Wednesday, 25 January 2006

Fair warning to anyone who reads this blog, I’m probably going to write a crapload about tech-geeky Mac stuff in my next few posts as I’m figuring all this stuff out. But who knows, maybe some of you out there can benefit from my experiences.

That being said..

First of all, I bought today what is probably the most expensive cable I’ve ever purcahsed, a six foot long FireWire (the IEEE 1394 kind) cable. Ready for this? Thirty-six bucks! And no, I’m not kidding. The reason I bought it is so I could transfer video from my new camcorder to the Mac and I needed this stupid cable. Thank you, Radio Shack, for overpricing your wares as usual (because of course Wal-Mart didn’t have it).

Before I trekked out for my cable, I was successfully able to transfer all my old (as in over ten years old) VHS footage from the VCR to the camcorder on miniDV. Worked like a charm.

Later on I hooked up the FireWire to the camcorder and the Mac. I haven’t used Final Cut Express yet, so I decided to try the built-in iMovie HD that comes with it. I was expecting (truly) to have a ton of problems making the video go from the camcorder to the Mac, but guess what.. it worked first try. I put together some clips and was done in record time. This is way too easy…

Other things I’ve done today: Installed StuffIt (think Mac equivalent of WinZIP), ICQ, Firefox and Thunderbird. All are running smoothly thus far.

Biggest “challenge” if you can call it that, “talking” to my Windows server, which is nothing more than a box with WinXP on it shared out on a workgroup. Here’s how that fared out:

Connecting to the XP box wasn’t too bad. After reading some help on a Mac site (the Mac help was worthless), I clicked Go then Connect to Server, then typed in smb://ip_of_box and it popped right up - but there was a problem - DOG SLOW TRANSFERS. I mean, we’re talkin’ real slow.. but I can at least talk to it.

I have VNC server installed on the XP box and have the ability to get to the machine via a web browser java client, but I wanted to know if there was a Mac version of Remote Desktop Connection. Turns out there is. So I tried it. It worked.

The best part is that you can share files between the Mac and XP using this, but it’s a bit weird how you do it. I enabled the option in RDC to share out local files. Then while connected to the XP box, I copy/paste files from there to the Mac, not the other way ’round.. and the speed seems more stable and faster. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea.

Here’s a screen shot of what that looks like: