Black is the Colour

2006-08-07T14:55:00.000-04:00

Path Of Honor Update: Thar She Blows

2006-08-07T13:21:00.000-04:00

Last night was the World Premiere showing of Path Of Honor for cast, crew and their families. Mom and Dad and the Pieplow family did an incredible job making it a very special event; not just a movie night but a Premiere. There were about fifty people there and the film was very well received by everyone (this is the Extended Edition, don't forget - not what Vision Forum is watching). After the fact I found out that at least one person came in with very low, almost negative expectations, and was surprised and impressed ("blown away" was the term I heard) by what he saw. I guess that's a good thing.

A lot of people congratulated me personally afterwards, which seemed a little strange. Perhaps because everyone was calling me the director, they figured it was "my" project - which in a certain way it was; I was the most fanatical about it, for better or for worse...I ended up doing a lot of the work especially in post mostly because I did a poor job at designing a workflow that could be spread around...but you know what, this wasn't my project at all, it was God's project and you can look at any part of the film to see His hand touching the project, from start to end. I couldn't have done this on my own strength; not even a tiny part of it. Even if it had been just me and God, I still couldn't have done it all. I worked with an incredible group of friends and family on this film that did an unbelieveable job. Every time I watch the film I see something new that they did that makes the film all the more poignant to me.

It is my hope and desire that each of us, whether it be making a film with Tom Cruise or with blind, dead ants, be able to look at the film and say, "This is truly a miracle from God!"

--
-Mike

"Caution is the common response to anything radically different, unique or creative in application." -- Dan Miller

2006-08-06T15:03:00.000-04:00

2006-06-24T11:47:00.000-04:00

Was over at Apple.com today browsing the new trailer releases, as I like to do every so often, and found a movie called "300."

"Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller, 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite."

One thing this company is doing that is very unique is that they have a video blog going on during production. They've done five "video journals" so far, from everything on weapons training to costume design to body training to the concept art. Fascinating stuff (Note: some of the costumes are a bit, uh, sketchy. Caveat emptor).

The thing that really caught my eye is the main character and some of the warriors. They really, really looked and acted like Leonidas and Spartans. It was incredible. Then I watched the workout video and I understood why. These guys had spent so long training that they had an incredible amount of time to become their characters. They literally grew into the characters and knew what it felt like to actually look like a super-fit war veteran (no foam latex here, folks). That's a really interesting approach; I don't know if the connection was intentional or not, but it worked. And how.

2006-06-23T00:15:00.000-04:00

*breathe in*

*breathe out*

Life has finally come back down to cruising speed. I hope. Have you ever done Warp 5 without a helmet? Besides the meteorites that wreak geo-surgery on your face, you get quite a hair makeover. Such has been my life for the past two weeks. I won't bore you with the details of why, only that it's basically over.

The good news is that *hopefully* (fingers crossed here) editing begins in earnest on Monday. That would be...wow....really cool.

I finally managed to get a halfway decent photo of one of my fish. I can't tell if this one is male or female. The colours are quite vivid in good light; bright blue/green stripes. Obviously, this light wasn't too good. They're fast little devils, so you need to get a shutter of at least 1/50 which requires a bit more light in the tank than I can supply at midnight.

I've also been buying quite a bit of music recently. Actually, that's not quite true; I received an iTunes gift card this past winter from my grandparents, so I've been spending that. Some interesting purchases I've made:

Songs from Albion 3 (album) by Jeff Johnson and Brian Dunning
Chronicles of Narnia Soundtrack
East Bound and Down by Jerry Reed
Real Gone (from soundtrack of Cars) by Sheryl Crow
Find Yourself (from the Cars soundtrack) by Brad Paisley
The Big Race (from the Cars track again) by Randy Newman
Dive by Steven Curtis Chapman
Famous Last Words by Michael Goldrick
Here Comes The Water by Chuck Pyle

I've a whole list of singles I'd like to purchase eventually. Some of the ones I'm more anxious to get (23/67):

February Sea by George Winston
God's Alibi by Capercaillie
In The Grip Of Stronger Stuff by Ian Anderson
January Snows by Lunasa
Postcard Day by Ian Anderson
Sailing to Philadelphia by Mark Knopfler
Sweet Nadya by Chris Rosser
Tumbleweed by Peter Rowan
Long Ride Home by Patty Griffin
Every December Sky by Beth Nielsen Chapman
Noah's Ark by Jeff Black
The Storm Warning by John Whelan
Wayward Angel by Kasey Chambers
Tubular Bells by Jem Moore
The Best Song Ever by Chris Rice
It's A Great Day To Be Alive by Darrell Scott
The Queen and the Soldier by Kate Rusby and Kathryn Robert
High Places by Leahy
Same Ol' River by Sam Bush
Kepplehall/25KTS by Capercaillie
Slow Learner by Nashville Bluegrass Band
Stand And Deliver by Mr Mister
Neverland (Piano Variation in Blue) by J A P Kasmarek

Draw your own conclusions about my taste in music...

2006-06-18T08:04:00.000-04:00

AquaCam

It's live. Literally.

2006-06-18T02:33:00.000-04:00

So! This is turning into a weekly blog thing. Oh well.

This week has been crazy two ways: first, we had a mailing go out two weeks ago and we've had one problem after another. The result is that on Monday we'll have about 700 orders stacked up...our second largest queue ever (the first was 800 on a late pollen shipment and occurred in our first year). By Monday, I don't doubt we'll surpass that number, maybe even to 1k. Hmm. The post office is gonna love us (bare minimum, they're making $1000 window sales right off the bat).

I've also been busy getting my fish tank set up. This evening while on a shopping trip I picked up the last essentials and 3 zebra danios. They're quite active - unless I get more light in there, photography will be nearly impossible - so we'll see. They're hardy enough to survive the initial nitrogen cycle, so that's what I need. Just something to get the bacteria growing. After that, I'd like to add some rams and a school of cardinal tetras.

Also in big news this week: we've cut Path Of Honor down to about half the length, at least in the script. Looking at around 35 pages now...we'll inevitably do some cutting ourselves; we'll see how much. We need to get started on that in some form or another next week.

My cousin's wife was admitted for emergency surgery last Thursday for an aneurism in the brain. One leaked or burst and she has had symptoms like this in the past; they have also confirmed the existence of one, possibly two more. She's in ICU this week and next week, after which she'll move to a neuro facility for more treatment. We would all appreciate prayer for Kirby!

2006-06-15T14:32:00.000-04:00

The best little piece of literature I've read in a long time:

The Hacker FAQ

Social issues: "My hacker seems to dress funny"...

Productivity: "My hacker plays video games on company time"...

What does THAT mean: "My hacker doesn't speak English. At least, I don't think so"..."My hacker makes obscure, meaningless jokes"

"Note: author is a hacker. Bias is inevitable."

2006-06-13T14:48:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it. I'm at the Akron Main Branch Library, the biggest library in Akron, and I can't find a single book on scriptwriting. How pathetic.

2006-06-12T00:01:00.000-04:00

Today was my dear mother's birthday, so we planned a trip up to the Fairlawn area to the Cleveland Metroparks system. There was a "butterfly walk" and a photo shoot time later in the afternoon at the NatureRealm, so we went up there to spend the afternoon and attend the functions. Total score at the end of the day: 24 shots, probably a new record.

The butterfly walk was a little anticlimactic; it wasn't very good butterfly weather (cool and overcast) and they weren't flying much. So, I lagged behind and shot photos instead. Once it disbanded, we walked around the park a bit. They have a very nice arboretum and a *gorgeous* little photo garden (note: must return there with B, R, G and B in tow). N used a Nikon N4004S and got some good shots, methinks. We'll find out on Tuesday when the prints get back.

Later some folks from the Metroparks Photo Club came around and hosted a little photo shoot around the park. Everyone was extremely knowledgeable and very helpful; if we lived a little closer N and I would very likely join (maybe I will anyway). I found the entire park absolutely gorgeous; can't wait to go back sometime.

I've also been working on getting my aquarium set up. Today I went out and dug up a big rock to put in; it's a sandstone chunk so it might increase the hardness a little but surely I can compensate for that somehow (need to research that). It's huge - at least a ten-pounder - and is almost too wide to fit the tank (which is 12" deep). Decided to boil it since there's no telling what kind of crud was on there, so I got out the biggest pot I could find and plunked it in. Barely fit (and wow! it's hot now) but I feel better since the water turned all yellow-green. Means whatever was on there, isn't now. Later when it cools down I'll put it back in the tank. Tomorrow I fill with water and then I can start conditioning the water to get ready for fish. I'm only going to put a few fish and a couple plants in for starters; just something small till I get the hang of it. Then I'll add a few more fish and deck out the tank more completely. Should be fun.

Nothing much going on this week. I'm hoping to make some progress on my short film, get some stuff straightened out for PoH and maybe, just maybe, Andrew'll be able to start cutting. Sweet diggity.

2006-06-04T20:56:00.000-04:00

The Modern Condensed Bible for Readers Who Start in the Middle:

King Solomon reigned for forty years, after which he went insane and ate grass by a stream, where the ravens fed him. Then the stream dried up because there was a famine in the land, so Mary and Joseph went to Egypt where the Pharaoh said, "I will not let the people go!" So God sent a flood.

2006-06-01T17:22:00.000-04:00

We had a summer storm here this afternoon, which passed by uneventfully. About an hour later, the power went out with no warning whatsoever.

Ten minutes later, it came back on, and the second time I opened up Google I found this:

Draw your own conclusions.

2006-05-30T23:52:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week I misidentified this past Monday as Labour Day, and today it seemed appropriate: if yesterday was in celebration of labour, today was Career Day.

I suppose I could trace the theme all the way back to breakfast this morning. We were reading in Proverbs and discussing Solomon. The amazing thing about Solomon is that he reigned as king over Israel for 40 years - quite an achievement compared to some of the other kings of that period!

Sometime after that discussion, I brought up the fact - in context of talking about myself - that the local Applebee's is currently hiring, which I expect would be a fairly nicely-paying job. I could probably put up with the environment and the people for the potential money I could make (how mercenary, I know).

Later that day I was coming home from Akron after a trip to the main branch library there and we passed Summit Racing. Mother mentioned that she recently found out that an old friend of mine is working there this summer as a Data Entry Typist (although she plans to resign and go to school - college, I assume, I'm sure she's graduated HS by now - this fall), with the implication that since it would at least be computer-related work - a forte of mine compared to some other jobs I could name - it might be more relevant to me (naturally, though, they don't have any openings of that nature anymore). Although the job would undoubtedly pay well, I'm not sure how long I could do my job well, simply because I am by nature a pretty energetic person, and while I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as very smart or creative, I need stimulus. That one item on the Walmart questionnaire comes to mind: "Do you get bored with your work?" Well, um, as in...as a rule??

This evening we went back to Akron for volleyball at Arlington Memorial Baptist with a group of friends. During one break while our team sat out, J and I were talking to Brian, who is a truck driver at some local place. According to Brian, he makes better money driving trucks than he could flying airplanes if he had finished his aviation degree or whatever it was. On the other side of me was J, and beyond him B - CS and EE degrees, respectively - and who are both currently working for Online Development.

On the way home...yes, I'll get to the point here eventually...

...I was thinking about myself. Most of my friends have either completed degrees or are in the process of doing so. Presumably they will find jobs in related fields and continue to do software-related work for a large portion of their careers, just as my father and grandfather have done. Then I considered myself. I am not pursuing any degree, don't have intentions of doing so, and am potentially looking at a career in film of some sort. All variables aside including the possibilities of God's calling for each unique person, I had to ask myself, who would I rather be? Would I rather be B or J or Z and prepare for a secure career which will probably provide a nice, regular income (after the past six years of my life, that's a pretty big plus), and which may or may not continue to provide interesting new work, or would I rather entertain the idea of a career which has a fairly decent likelihood of NOT producing steady income, which is decidedly NOT a secure job until you're at least halfway famous, but which DOES guarantee fresh new work, new people, new ideas, every half-decade?

Given the choice, I'd take the latter without a second thought and never look back.

Funny thing is, although I don't believe I have ADD, I meet almost all of the criteria in the first list on this page.

2006-05-29T23:29:00.000-04:00

FOR SALE: 16ft Boat Trailer

Has been kept in decent condition; was built new for current owner and has not been used to my knowledge. Padded rails; geared winch.

$400 asking price. If interested, drop me a line and I'll put you in contact with the owners.

Located in Lake Milton, Ohio.

2006-05-29T23:19:00.000-04:00

After today, I'm really starting to like parties for photographical purposes. Was over at D's today and got quite a few keepers. Wow - I'm actually developing a bit of a backlog of photoblog material (maybe this'll tide me through the dry months this summer - though I have a few ideas for interesting trips). I have to thank H for the horse photos...you have a beautiful horse!

G also asked me to help her out with grad photos of R, which is exciting. Should be fun. She has a Canon Rebel of some sort; she'd had some lens problems for a while but finally got it fixed last week. R told me he just bought a sharp-looking pair of cowboy boots last week so I'm thinking maybe something along those lines. Though I did say I want to try that place over on Marlboro Road...

Also hoping to make a trip to the Akron Zoo this Saturday...really hoping to get some nice stuff there. Meeting a fellow from the Cleveland area; he wants some hands-on experience and instruction on translating all the manual settings (he has a Nikon D50) into actual photos. He says he's read all the books and whatnot, but has a hard time retaining it without actually doing it hands-on. I think it'll be a blast. It's actually a trade for a 15gal aquarium setup; I've been wanting to try a fish tank for a couple years now and never really got up the motivation to keep after it. I'm hoping, though, that the photo opportunities will outweigh the work of keeping the tank up. Hopefully it won't be too expensive to maintain too (I wonder how much brine shrimp cost...). At the very least, it'll be a chance to meet another photographer, and that alone would about make it a worthwhile trip.

2006-05-29T00:17:00.000-04:00

Played Monopoly for the first time in years today; had lots of fun and whomped everyone grandly. Maybe that's why it was fun? Still, "discovering" a "new" game is always an enjoyable experience around here.

Also decided, rather last-minute, to go see Over The Hedge. I daresay it was the funniest animated movie I've seen since, wow...probably since the first Ice Age. It was terrific.

Tomorrow I'm planning on doing a nighttime photo shoot if the weather is clear. It's a sliver moon and there's a nearby lake that was giving some great reflections tonight. We also drove by some sort of - we presume - a drilling rig which was all lit up, even at midnight. From a distance it looked like a launch pad.

2006-05-27T21:52:00.000-04:00

Over 3k hits now...wow...where are all these people coming from!

Mum and I went to look at a triplex in Kent today. We're both sold on it; Dad's less convinced. Guess we'll see. Expect some photos on the photoblog after Labour Day.

2006-05-26T00:21:00.000-04:00

Played a game of BrickBattles with N tonight. Lost by six men (ie, she had six soldiers still alive when all my guys were dead). Wasn't that creative since we did it rather spur-of-the-moment and didn't take time to do buildings, terrain, etc. Just pulled out a bunch of minifigs and went at it.

Antonio Banderas, George Lucas, Indiana Jones, and George Washington were the first casualties of the game. Oh, besides the shark.

2006-05-24T00:17:00.000-04:00

This is what I see at night when I lay in bed. It's like my own little nightlight.

2006-05-24T00:14:00.000-04:00

A sad day for my LEGO life...

2006-05-21T23:33:00.000-04:00

Had an interesting lesson in working economics tonight. Specifically the age-old principle of supply-and-demand.

Was up a half-dozen times in the wee hours of this morning with an upset stomach, so didn't go to fellowship this morning (in fact, after I finally crashed at about 6am, I didn't wake up again till about 1pm). For a long time I've been considering rearranging my little studio/lodgings here, so I decided that since I was feeling pretty decent, today was a good day to do it, since I had no work calling my name.

To make a long story short, I spent a goodly amount of time construcitng a series of shelves inside the closet to house monitor/keyboard/pc/scanner/etc. Didn't quit till about 10pm. As I was sitting there in front of my creation about halfway through, realizing that these big CRT's are a lot bigger than they look, I said out loud, "This would be so much simpler if I had an LCD." I mused a bit about where on earth I would come up with the $150 or so I would need to buy a decent flatscreen, even on sale at Tigerdirect.

Later I thought, how unstewardlike is that of me. Here I am with a perfectly useable PC setup which, admittedly, has a lot more space and square footage than this current setup. I'm literally creating a need which then I desire to fill out of my own discontent, if you will (the move's motive is buried somewhere in interior design style). The way my chequebook looks, the last thing I need to be doing is creating something else to spend money on. Basic supply and demand. And I never saw it coming. Sigh.

Of course, I could solve the entire problem if I just bought an iMac.

Yes, that was a joke.

2006-05-21T01:10:00.000-04:00

Had a chance to go help some friends switch house today. Moved three families in one afternoon. Whee! I figure even if I don't get a chance to move every five years as seems to be our tradition, I can at least get my fix moving someone else (I'd take any of the three abodes we were at today - one 1200sq/ft cape cod style, one 1-bedroom apartment, and one 1600sq/ft quad-level).

Went out with the gang and played disc golf afterwards at the Louisville course. Got a few pictures of the flora; not too many good ones (*somebody* was too busy trying to hit me with a disc, so I had to keep an eye out...). Will post something on Monday...looks like the last photoblog image was Thursday. I have one left in the queue from last week, so hopefully today netted a few more. Might have a chance to get some interesting stuff on Monday or Tuesday while J and I do some ADR work.

Been raining here a lot lately; I've been wanting to drive up to Ravenna in a nice drizzle and see what sort of rainy stuff I can capture, but with gas at $3/gal I'm not too keen on pleasure cruises right now.

2006-05-17T02:14:00.000-04:00

The fight is fixed. It was relatively painless, praise God!

Hopefully J will come over this week so we can do some ADR, and hopefully it won't rain tomorrow so I can go record some stuff outside.

In tech news, I heard a reference to Elive today, a new linux Live CD distro I hadn't heard of before. Looks fairly good; burning a copy of the ISO as we speak (I'm thankful my burner is 8x...otherwise I could be here a long time). Debating whether to try it tonight or not...already getting on a bit...maybe tomorrow. I'd like to work on ChristianFilmmakers a bit tomorrow, and maybe get some writing done on Grilling 911. Either one would be productive - though S is a tough act to follow now that he's written the Credits and Disclaimer. Brilliant work on both pages.

*yawwwwnnnnn*....

2006-05-16T23:09:00.000-04:00

Chicken soup truly is good for the soul. Like yeah, duh.

Starting to recover a bit of sanity. Things are looking slightly more positive. Andrew is talking about reformatting the film into widescreen, which is something I originally wanted to do, forgot, then was hoping to do in post but didn't think would work out. Apparently when you're an FCP demigod you can do all sorts of awesome stuff.

Also figured out how to solve the problem that crushed me last night. Had some major obstacles with retouching some audio in the fight scene and now I think I've got it. Hopefully I'll be able to knock that out tonight - with all the indexing I've been doing, locating the right stuff is a piece of cake now.

Half the family went out to dinner this evening, so before everyone left I ferried over to the library and grabbed a half-dozen films (Moby Dick, anyone?). I also happened to see the Bonus Materials film that Lucas and Spielberg put together after they did the Indy series, so I've spent some time watching that. Interesting stuff. Also watched Sky Captain and the Worlds of Tomorrow this afternoon during a low-energy spell. Interesting film - if you can get past the point where you say, "this looks so cheesy" and understand what the director was really aiming for, it makes a lot of sense and achieved the goal very nicely. Also a great job by Gwyneth Paltrow.

And, of course, a nice warm bowl of clam chowder and soft slippers do wonders for one's morale when sitting down to a long editing session...

2006-05-16T13:17:00.000-04:00

"There are rumours he's gone bonkers."

2006-05-16T01:32:00.000-04:00

This thing is driving me crazy, slowly but surely...

But I'm tired, I'm grumpy, and it's only 1:30am. How pathetic is that.

I promise I'll add more pictures to the photoblog tomorrow. Using RAW is a pain sometimes. Fortunately I got some neat ones the other day at a birthday party.

2006-05-12T15:20:00.000-04:00

For a while I've been watching Luke's blog, where he frequently posts photos (it's still a Xanga, but it's balanced well enough that it can properly be called a photoblog). Today his stuff blew me away and I decided it was time to officially draw attention to his work.

http://www.xanga.com/luqe_aaron

Puts me to shame! Go Luke.

2006-05-12T14:30:00.000-04:00

I read this very interesting perspective on filmmaking this morning:

Beginning films are beginning films. I think we should do as good a job as we can, and accept their flaws because they are learning experiences. We should take the lessons we learn, and put them into another film, a little better one, with a little higher quality. Over time, we'll get better, but not if we stay stuck on perfecting our learning experiences. They are just that: learning experiences. So let's say, "Hey look, this was what I did, I know it's not great, but this is what I learned." And the next one will be better. It's all about progress.

I think the author is right. What's more, each project has a life, a usefulness, of its own. I think I'm reaching/overflowing that boundary with PoH. It's a good film and I learned a billion things from it, but the time has come where it's gotten to a point where it's time to just finish it and put it away. Not that the film is bad, or that it has no potential to bless others, but that because of bad priorities, commitments I've made, etc, it's taking away more from me than it's giving in return. I need to be able to put into practice some of the lessons I learned from making this film (which is very difficult to do right at the moment because of commitments I've already made).

Fortunately, I'm close to accomplishing my PoH goal, so hopefully soon it will all be over...

2006-05-12T02:04:00.000-04:00

It's useless for me to try to go to bed before 1 or 2am anymore, so when I crawled under the covers at midnight my mind was still in fifth gear. So, after mulling over some ideas I'd had a half-hour earlier, I pulled out the laptop, was thankful for wireless, and went to work.

1699 words later, I have a crick in my neck and the cat is snoring. Loudly.

Make that 1706.

2006-05-11T00:25:00.000-04:00

Been quiet recently. Been very busy and focussing more on photography than ever. Getting a bit behind on film work and am already two days behind on my photoblog.

Didn't get an opportunity to audiopost from the Tokyo concert the other night. I was all set up and waiting for them to come out when an usher asked me to "take it out." Sigh. Noticed later that there's a No Photo/Video/Audiorecording notice in the program book. Oh well.

Spent a lovely evening tonight with C and A. Great people, fun stories. And he's a great guitar player. One of these days we'll have them for dinner and I'll cut a demo of C with some stuff he's written.

Applied for a job with a film company today from LA to do some stills for a documentary film up by Lake Erie that's currently in production. It's a long, long drive (close to two hours) but they pay mileage, meal and ticket into the game (plus a "completion bonus" at the end of the project) so it would be worth it to me to spend the time to get the item on my photographic resume. Their credits offering is pretty nice.

I'm also thinking I'll apply for a night-shift position at a local grocer. It would fit my sleep schedule fairly well and I'm guessing the company would be more pleasant. Lost my wallet a few weeks ago, though, so I'll probably need to get my license replaced before I can apply. Would have done it today but the BMV's webcam was broken. Sheesh. Had my camera with me...should have just marched in and told them to use mine. If I'd had my USB cable with me, I would have (I should at least carry my xD card reader with me, I guess). I'd certainly get a better picture, that's for sure.

A (the editor for PoH) sez he's ordered his new editing machine, so the sooner I can ship this off the better. I'm feeling a little braindead now, so I probably won't work on it tonight, but I'm hoping to get a bunch of stuff done tomorrow. Guess we'll see.

2006-05-09T19:04:00.000-04:00

2006-05-09T18:29:00.000-04:00

2006-05-09T00:36:00.000-04:00

12:30am. Time for a quick Bzflag break and then on to indexing tape 7. There's only about 1.5gb of stuff there (a full tape is on average around 12gb) - should be really fast.

2006-05-08T17:43:00.000-04:00

One of the things I find very attractive in a photograph is vignetting. That is, a faint black fuzzy circle around the edges of the image that darken the corners a bit. I've seen it overdone and I've seen it underdone, but Mark Hamilton over at 4x6 really got it right on his piece "Elevator Door" which I ran across today. Beautiful work, Mark!

I also highly appreciated the quote accompanying that image:

Pointing out other wrongs,
...does not make anything right,
it only changes the subject.

A long time ago I read the book "A Whack on the Side of the Head" by Roger Von Oech. I didn't find it as interesting as the cover makes it look, but I've remembered the essence of this paragraph to this day:

"The playwrite Jeome Lawrence has an evaluation technique, the "creative no," that he uses whenever he's collaborating with someone else. It works like this: either member of the partnership can veto the other's ideas. However, when one partner does excercise this veto, he also takes responsibility for coming up with a new idea that both partners like. Thus it's not only destructive, it's constructive as well." - Roger Von Oech, "A Whack on the Side Of The Head"

I always try to remember to give a positive response when discarding an idea or a concept, whether it be in an email or a site design or whatever. I hope that it helps the other person understand that I'm not out to get them; I'm simply looking for the best solution. I wonder what our world would look like if our governments adopted the same strategy.

2006-05-08T01:09:00.000-04:00

Well, it's Monday again. Time to set some more goals. Since I seemed to be a goal-oriented achiever rather than a milestone-oriented achiever, it helps me accomplish more to have a tangible finish line.

There are two major things I hope to accomplish this week aside from cutting the grass. Again.

- Finish indexing video. I'm looking at around six or seven tapes. It'll be a lot of work but I want to pack this puppy off next week so I'm determined. If nothing else gets done but this, I'll be ecstatic.
- Finish Christianfilmmakers.org.

Second-level items under both goals respectively:

- Record SFX for fight scene (need another person to help)
- Complete dagger effects work w/ R (not too bad)
- Record dub lines (Chapter 0, 16, 20?) (easy, need J to come over for 20, need D or L to come over for 0)
- Fix timestamp stuff in fight (boring and time-consuming, but easy)
- Dub Chapter 0 per mishap last week (hopefully do that early tomorrow morning to get it out of the way if it isn't too windy) (easy, I hope)

High Priority:
- modify display.php to handle orgs/studios (slightly difficult)
- finish search.php (easy now, more complicated when I add orgs/studios)
- get site working in IE6 (mutters incomprehensibly)
- add join.php error/dupe checking (easy, almost done)
Mid Priority
- create advancedsearch.php (not sure)
- allow visitors to sort results by area (piece of cake)
- add box graphics (login.php, join.inc, etc) (easy in FF, rubbish in IE)
- create editprofile.php
Low Priority:
- create trailers.php
-- create subset viewtrailer.php
- allow studios to upload trailers via profile

I really don't know why I'm bothering to post this stuff - not like anybody cares really - but it helps me think clearly. Nice to summarize stuff.

I'm working harder to keep mtphoto a photo-a-day thing. Now that I'm dealing with RAW images, it's a bit harder to do, as each photo needs to be processed before I can literally do anything with it. However, I'm turning over a new leaf photographically so I think it's for the best.

2006-05-06T12:27:00.000-04:00

Finally, we made the last shoot of Path Of Honor. Good to be done. We now have all the footage we need to complete the film.

One small glitch in the process - thank you Mr Murphy - was that I made an error in the sound recording and as a result, none of our audio got recorded to tape. Fortunately, 98% of the scene is nature sounds, so I'll just go out in the backyard tomorrow evening and tape some ambience. The rest can be added in the studio.

Still, I'm quite happy with our achievement yesterday. A big relief.

2006-05-05T01:51:00.000-04:00

And wow...how slick is that. Less than twenty minutes and I have full Paypal integration on the photoblog. Not bad at all. Kudos to Jason Dunmore!

Unfortunately, the photoblog was kind of an impulsive thing, and then I broke the CSS *after* I declared it live. So, I rather had to finish it, or at least get it to a functional state. All of which means...I didn't work on the film tonight like I should have. I'm going to have to get cracking on that ASAP.

On the bright side, since my Aunt is here visiting till Saturday, we might head up towards Lake Erie tomorrow...which will take us right past Squire's Castle, where we'll film Chapter 0. Nice to multitask once in a while. Fortunately it's a short scene.

2006-05-03T15:24:00.000-04:00

Had a great comedic moment this afternoon. I walked down to the mailbox in bare feet to see if I'd received anything interesting, and pulled out a Land's End catalog. On the cover? "Footwear Paradise"!

2006-05-03T12:08:00.000-04:00

It's live.

2006-05-01T18:21:00.000-04:00

I've decided to split off my photography stuff here onto a separate blog. I don't know when, and I haven't decided how yet...but it'll happen eventually.

I realized today that if I really want to get serious with photography as a commercial enterprize (that is, my hobby that also brings in some income as a perk, NOT necessarily as a documentist-for-hire), I need to start treating it as such. I've already begun to do this in regards to my photographic intent and style - breaking off as much as possible from the "snapshot" mentality and more towards the 4x5 "takes me ten minutes to make a picture, so it had better be good" mentality. I've already seen improvement in my photos, so I know it's helping. I've also begun to concentrate harder on the technical side of a photograph: analyzing what makes my mind's eye say "beautiful!" and how that 3D live image must be translated to make the same point in a printed 2D still life. As any artist knows, it's not just a matter of pointing the lens in the right direction and pressing the shiny button on the front.

I also realized that I haven't been treating my photos as seriously as I ought in terms of display. These days my declared "photoblog" is walking a fine line on its definition. I'd like to split the photos out and create a separate, dedicated blog exclusively for photography a lá Jeff over at fstopcove. I saw a split site today similar to what I'm imagining that allowed you to switch from photos to personal with a single click.

I suspect I'll end up migrating to the Reality Check domain, since I really can't make any site changes while it's here at Blog*Spot. I like the idea of not having to mess with uploading files to my own server, but I may just have to get over that. I've been toying with the idea of trying out MoveableType and PixelPost together. Guess we'll see.

2006-04-30T22:34:00.000-04:00

I'm going to do a Twin Tracks-style post tonight, interspersed with some photos I'll explain about at the end.. For those that aren't familiar with the book, the author James Burke follows events through history which start in the same place and end at the same place - but with wildly different routes to get there. A condensed sample:

In 1710 the art collection was sold to Philip, regent of France, in a deal brokered by Benedetto Luti, the best painter in Rome at the time.... That year Luti took on an assistant.... By 1714 William Kent was painting originals.... His patron in all this was the trillionaire Earl of Burlington.

It's kind of like the Six Degrees theory. Here to there to that other place and that gets you here. And in that spirit, I write.

Everything started last week. I wrote out a fairly accomplishable list of things to do and, in a nutshell, it didn't happen. Spent Wednesday afternoon helping out my grandparents, spent half a day Thursday at the good friends the Pieplow's helping rebuild their garage door, spent all day Saturday over there helping set up for their 25th anniversary party that day, for which I served as photographer. Inbetween was alsp partially spent doing stuff on this end to get *us* ready for the party.

During dinner, I was reminded that my Aunt K is coming out this Wednesday on the last stop between here and Jordan for Arabic language training. As a result of the celebration, I set a new personal best and didn't get to sleep till 4am. Ergo, didn't awake till 1pm. Today, then, returned to help clean up a bit and get back some tables we lent them. Thus, my Sunday was pretty much shot.

Now of course these days I'm on a 2am-9am sleep schedule, so I'm not ready for bed yet. Everyone else was either in bed or doing something uninteresting, so I thought I'd boot up and entertain myself. However, the Lord had other plans and wouldn't allow my PC to boot. Since I've not done any Bible study today, I decided He was giving me a gentle hint...

So I laid down on the bed and thought about where to begin. First thing that popped into my mind was 1 John 3:16 - not to be confused with the oft-quoted "For God so loved the world..." Ten seconds later, I was completely and utterly, well, peached, for lack of a better verb. In other words, I was euphoric at the revelation.

1 John 3:16:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

It hit me immediately. I've been pretty annoyed that I hadn't gotten anything done last week, and, reminded that Aunt K will be here Wednesday through Saturday and that I won't have an available vehicle Monday or Tuesday with which to go shoot Chapter 0, I probably don't stand a very good chance of getting much done this week either. But you know what, I really don't care anymore, because that's not what matters. My own petty timetables are nothing outside of God's divine timing. My work will get accomplished in His grace, but in the meantime, I am much more useful serving others.

So I'm just going to run with this one day at a time and see what happens this week. Who knows - maybe the Lord will provide for me to be very useful this week: and maybe not accomplish any film work at all! And I'll be utterly content for that to happen.

I'll confess: of the 250 photos I took last night in the space of about 6 hours, only 150 of those were decent enough to save (used my tripod for the videocamera - otherwise the ratio would undoubtedly have been higher), and of those 150 very few had much merit as an artist rather than a documentist. Of those very few, I've posted my nine favorites.

2006-04-28T01:34:00.000-04:00

Very curious...Ben sent this link to me. It appears that a) you only get your photo in the book IF you purchase the book and b) it could take a seriously long time to get your book, because the ratio of people who pay to the people who are "semifinalists" is very low. Apparently there's a lot of baby-on-the-floor nonsense too.

Well, it was fun anyway. I'm certainly not going to pay $80 for a washed-out picture of somebody's "Little Angel."

Even if I had the $80.

2006-04-27T21:58:00.000-04:00

It's funny how one can spend one's time engaged in certain activities which may or may not have anything to do with stated goals of such person, and yet feel like their time has been extremely profitable.

Such is my case. I spent half my day yesterday installing a garage door. Certainly nothing near what I'd intended to spend the wee hours doing. Today I spent my afternoon doing odd stuff for my elderly grandparents who can't do much these days. Yet, even after having "wasted" my afternoon - in the sense that I didn't accomplish anything I set out to do - I do feel like I've been quite productive.

I suppose there is a certain sense of goodness one gets from doing the "right thing," instead of being goals-focussed to the exclusion of other priorities.

2006-04-27T12:58:00.000-04:00

Somebody else got the mail yesterday so I didn't see this until today. Pretty cool...maybe this will give me a platform for some new sale opportunities.

This is the photo in reference.

2006-04-27T10:38:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be lucky to get my list done this week, unless I really foot it today. Yesterday was productive in many ways; I spent part of the afternoon logging and then had a chance to go help out the P's put up a new garage door. Was done by 10:30pm; stuck around till 2:30am jamming with B and chatting.

A video soon to follow: us improv on Music Video 2 and a bit of his freehand keyboard work.

2006-04-26T01:13:00.000-04:00

Well, two days down and I've accomplished basically nothing. Just didn't get a chance to work on anything today. Sigh...must do better tomorrow. I intended to get cf.org up this week, but perhaps that ought to go on temp hold for a bit till I at least get the rest of the video indexed. I guess that's a bit more time-critical.

2006-04-25T23:11:00.000-04:00

320x240 WMV (3.5MB)

A new short "music video " (defined as: a video with music), partially inspired by the last one (notice a similar second phrase). As usual, my harmonics aren't very good, but oh well. Tough to do fast. Will work on that.

Paid more attention to lighting this time and less work on cinematography. Was reasonably satisfied with the result - after all, it's only 57 seconds. Apologies, no MOV this time. Wanna donate a few bucks so I can purchase a *real* video editor? Heh.

2006-04-25T16:15:00.000-04:00

The ChristianFilmmakers directory listing in Firefox 1.5.0.2 (this is what it's supposed to look like)

Same page using IE 7.0.5346.5.

Should I be impressed?

2006-04-25T12:28:00.000-04:00

Good news for webmasters:

IE 7, which Microsoft will release both as a stand-alone browser and as an integrated component of Windows Vista, includes a number of new features and functionality, including tabbed browsing, advanced printing, integrated RSS feed support, anti-phishing and other security-focused enhancements, and more standards-adherent CSS support.

It was released half an hour ago. I'm off to try it out. Let's hope they touched 16-bit alpha support while they're at it, too.

In other news, I've made it past initial questioning for a job in Cleveland doing point-of-sale PC installs. I'm supposed to hear back from them today. Praise God for that blessing!

2006-04-24T16:15:00.000-04:00

This week's tasklist is not quite as simple as last week, but not too bad.

- Finish logging all footage for PoH
- Release v1 of ChristianFilmmakers.org
- Transfer leadership of PoH to J :)

Actually, the latter item is more of a "wishlist" than a "worklist." It would just make both our lives much easier in the long run.

In other big news today, RED finally revealed their long-awaited, much-debated high-definition videocamera. This baby is capable of shooting HD video at the same resolution as a 35mm film camera. And you know what? IT'S CHEAPER.

I'll say this much for Red and its various accoutrements: With a price being where it is, I volunteer to use it as my A-Roll camera on my next feature film (Spring '08, Lord willing!). If nobody else has shot a major picture with it in that time, I'll let this be the first. And, I promise that I will hire someone specifically to create a "Red Blog" about our experiences with the camera. :)

2006-04-23T01:46:00.000-04:00

3.5MB WMV (email for MOV)

Thursday night I was doing some musical experimentations and discovered a new chord pattern. Friday afternoon I decided to get out a field monitor and videotape myself doing a couple things just so I wouldn't forget it. Saturday night, I cut it all together.

I filmed the whole thing in the span of less than half an hour, and it has the kind of quality you'd expect. Unfortunately, a couple low strings were slightly out of tune and you'll know what I mean when you hear it at a certain place. I also botched my harmonics pretty badly. So, expect nothing and then perhaps you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Also note that "normal" guitar players really couldn't do what I am doing here. I use an alternate tuning which makes the guitar sound nice even if you don't fret any strings (it's a variant of the Open D tuning). Anyway, if you want to give it a shot, try D-A-D-G-A-D. Having new strings helps the sound a lot - I put on fresh Martin Marquis Phosphor/Bronze Light strings a few months ago and it sounded classy. Alas, it wore of fairly quickly. Haven't broken any, tho.

2006-04-22T20:43:00.000-04:00

Haha! Found it! Thanks to C for reminding me that it's not called Red Baron but Sopwith (actually, the game I used to play was the sequel, Sopwith II).

*chuckles gleefully*

2006-04-22T20:30:00.000-04:00

Ah, spring.

2006-04-22T20:18:00.000-04:00

Spring is the time of year when...

...the dandelions bloom and flourish like the beautiful God's creations they they are...

...when there's a time for work, and there's a time for naps...unless you're a cat, in which case it's always sleepy time...

...a time when the shadows grow long, and the days lengthen into glorious summer...

...when our lawns become the focus of our diligent attention...

...when S and I begin to talk seriously about actually writing "Grilling 911" (again)...

2006-04-22T16:52:00.000-04:00

Go ahead, I dare you to tell me this isn't cool.

"As if the iLook isn't already hot enough...DUDE...."

2006-04-22T01:19:00.000-04:00

The occasional bird I can deal with. But when the barn cats find out I'm still awake and start miaowing outside the window, I draw the line. Time to close the window.

2006-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00

Some washed-up bird of a feather just tweeted right outside my window (which happens to be open - it's cooler outside than inside right now). Little stinker. It's 1AM, ALREADY.

Probably startled the whole [sleeping] family. I'm surprised the cat isn't in here investigating right this minute.

2006-04-21T23:13:00.000-04:00

Blogger featured El Pacifico today on the Blogs Of Note page. Check these guys out! They're three comics artists doing a collab series on a pirates theme. So far their artwork is fantastic, and I really like where their story is going. Maybe I'll talk to them about doing a screen adaptation. They really have something going here.

2006-04-21T23:01:00.000-04:00

Today I set up a virtual host on my machine to replace the networked system we'd set up last week. As usual, my PC is balking and refusing to do something - in this case, recognize the host computer.

This is a great tutorial on how to set up a virtual host on a PC with WAMP and some trickery.

2006-04-21T13:26:00.000-04:00

The old DOS games...no antialiasing, no special graphics, sometimes not even any sound...you were lucky to get 16-bit colour. Ah, those were...days.

Anybody remember the one side-scroller (I seem to recall it was called "Red Baron", but Google isn't turning up anything) where you flew a little tiny airplane in a dogfight and tried to drop bombs on the little buildings below? Every once in a while you were supposed to go back to the base to refuel, and if you crashed you lost the game. It was a really simple game, but it was loads of fun. I'd love to play that game again if anybody knows where I can find a copy.

2006-04-21T10:10:00.000-04:00

I was browsing some blogs at random this morning and found an italian blog called "Anarchico-Insurrezionalista." Obviously I can't read it, and Google Translate kinda went bumpity-bump with it, but I thought the image at left was hilarious. Total "who, what?" look.

Today I'm going to work on ChristianFilmmakers.org and see if I can't get really close to knocking that out before everybody starts adding features faster than I can keep up. That would be so nice.

2006-04-21T00:25:00.000-04:00

Today was great. Indexed three tape sides to finish out that work. Not much left to do before Andrew-time:

Shoot Chapter 0
Finish logging the rest of the video, make sure we have it all
Record dubs (chapter 8, maybe others)
Rip tape 1 (and 0 stuff when it's shot on tape 9)
Record FX for fight

and I almost had a job...

2006-04-20T15:29:00.000-04:00

I love these kinds of scammers. They try to be all innocent, but the minutest research blows them completely out of the water. This guy actually made it farther than the Nigerians.

I posted my resume on Craigslist a few weeks ago. Yesterday I got the following email from John Tompson (joohny44@yahoo.com):

I HAVE A JOB FOR YOU BUT I WILL LIKE TO KNOW IF YOU ARE THE KIND OF PERSON WE WANT COS WE NEED SOMEONE THAT IS LOYAL ,OBEIDENT AND HARDWORKING,PLEASE GET BACK TO ME IF YOU CAN FIT IN OUR ORGANISATION.

Yep, I'm a lazy rebel (like what did they think I was going to say??). So I sent this reply:

John,

I believe I fit that description. :) I'm interested in knowing more!

Mike Thorn
www.realitycheckmultimedia.com

Today I received this illustrious email in return:

Hello,
My name is JOHN TOMPSON(jnr).,I live in bolton,Uk with my wife and two kids and three dogs. [remind me why I care about your personal life...] I majored in business management and have been working in a small firm till i recently inherited my late uncle's company colex Fabrics and Prints,a year ago.The company produces various clothing materials,batiks,assorted fabrics and traditional costume for which we have clients companies that we supply weekly,montly in the states. before the demise of my uncle, he was in the process of expanding into West Africa and the US. [Nigeria is in Africa, right?] I am at the newly completed base in Africa right now and we have made such a large client base in the U.S. but I am always facing serious difficulties when it comes to selling to Americans,they are always offering to pay with a US MONEY ORDERS OR CASHIERS CHECKS, which is difficult for me to cash here in the United Kingdom or Africa. [So you have a degree in business management but you're not smart enough to set payment policies regarding how to send money. Right. Even the bottom-of-the-food-chain eBay chumps know how to do that.]
I am looking for a representative in the states who will be working for me as a part-time worker and i will be willing to pay 12% for every transaction made,This would in no way affect your present job or place of residence.This job requires someone who would help recieve payments from customers in the states and get them processed at U.S. banks. The requirements for this position are honesty,dedication and reliability.However arrangements are been put in place to set up an office in the states but for the time being the company needs a representative in the united states, who will be responsible for handling payments in the U.S.
These payments are in form of money orders and they would be made in your name, so all you need do is cash the money order deduct your percentage and wire the rest back. It wouldnt cost you any amount,you will receive payments(money orders) which will be sent to you via fedex or usps from my business patners, you are then to cash it,deduct your 12% and send the remaining cash to me via western union money transfer. all western union charges will be deducted from the remaining monies before being sent. [Pretty trusting of someone you've never met, don't you think?]
Kindly get back to us as soon as possible if you are interested in this job offer. further details will be communicated to you as regards your employment.

WARM REGARDS
JOHN T{JNR}
MANAGING DIRECTOR

But hey, I need money, so of course I'm interested in your "job offer!" In fact, I need a few yards of black felt for some photography at work, so let me look at your website and see if you have anything I need. Whoops, you do't have a website. But what's this? Hmm, looks like you've done some pretty heavy recruiting. Er, mass recruiting.

Don't contact me again.

http://blog.supersurge.com/latest-email-scams/2006/1/12/wilcox-fabrics-and-prints.html#comment333532

"Organization" is the right word for this. Organized crime is more like it. Nice try.

You'll be on my blog in ten minutes. Have a good life.

Love ya John. If you have some time someday, send me some more entertainment.

2006-04-19T22:57:00.000-04:00

I was sitting in the livingroom half an hour ago enjoying a cold grilled cheese sandwich, and I kept noticing this white dot in the sky. Normally I'd think it was a star or a plane, but it was really big. And it was moving (really slowly). Turns out it wasn't white after all.

(12x optical zoom; this is a 640x480 cropped out of a 4mp image)

Aliens? Or our friendly US gov't?

Moving east-to-west, about on line with the sun or moon.

2006-04-19T22:05:00.000-04:00

What a day! #4a done.

2006-04-19T18:06:00.000-04:00

Grass needs cut again. Bother. However, I have decided I'm only going to mow the lawn once a month in protest against ridiculous gas prices. At that rate I might be able to go all year on a single five-gallon can.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that my resolution will get vetoed.

2006-04-19T16:28:00.000-04:00

Tape 3 completely finished. On to tape 4.

After I find something to eat.

2006-04-19T10:17:00.000-04:00

I am dashedly determined to make progress on my goal today. I ended up spending two hours last night rendering a copy of the fight for J - for entertainment purposes only, ahem - and I never know how much this pc will let me multitask before it complains. For example, I crash this thing all the time running Audacity and OpenOffice - even without an 8-minute file render in the background. But, I've never crashed while running a copy of iTunes and bzflag, or doing web work, or something like that. Such a tichy computer.

What am I going to have to do to get something done around here??

A couple photos I shot over the weekend:

2006-04-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

Wow. I guess I'm a popular guy - five emails that require replies since yesterday. Usually it's one, maybe two.

Spent the afternoon excercising my black thumb with my grandmother, helping her replace some roses with groundcover. I'm sure the stuff I planted myself will die. It usually does (just ask my mother or sister about the loofah story - I'd add dad to that list but he'd just give you a blank look and no story).

Well, it's only midnight. If I can control my urges to goof off, I could probably get the remaining 40 minutes of Tape 3 Side 2 indexed before I collapse for the night.

2006-04-17T18:14:00.000-04:00

Yep - I get a lot of spam. Gmail automatically deletes spam older than a month, so as you can see my average spam count for any given 1-month period usually hovers around 300-400 emails.

New masthead coming soon. Got tired of the dumb block motif.

2006-04-17T11:10:00.000-04:00

Well, let's see if we can't start off on a good foot this week...

TODO List:

Log all audio.

I think that ought to be simple enough...

I was tempted to fire up Audioblogger and sing "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" from the old Mr Rogers show when I was taking out the trash this morning, but you're probably better off not hearing that.

I realized today that I missed a perfect photo op when the heating element in the stove burned up on Saturday. Sparks and fire and all that good stuff. Oh well.

2006-04-16T22:48:00.000-04:00

Anybody can sing. A lot of you can do it well. But can you sing harmony to yourself? How about accompanying yourself with a vocal drum track? Sorry, you're out of my league. I'm lucky if I'm even in key. But for Third From First, it's old hat.

A Christian band self-categorized as "Christian/Alternative/Rock," the six members of this band write and perform all original music. Steve Lowry, lead vocalist, performed the song "Lord I Lift Your Name On High" entirely a cappella - rhythm, melody, and, in his own words, "like, 200 tracks on top." It's a pretty cool arrangement. Their other songs, "Little Girl" and "Let the World," feature some neat guitar solos. Unfortunately, they've not been able to include their drum and keyboard talent on any of the songs currently on the playlist.

These guys are currently playing across Pennsylvania anywhere they can get a spot (and, of course, a show at Japan's own The Bodukon in 2008). Check 'em out!

(in case you're not familiar with my family tree, Steve, standing center in photo, happens to be my cousin - so I think I'm entitled to bragging rights!)

2006-04-16T22:31:00.000-04:00

It's not often I watch a movie that later comes back to me with a quote that is not only life-applicable, but has some serious truth embedded in it. This morning, just that happened, and from the most unlikely of films.

Our housechurch had just finished a praise song, and one of the fathers posed the question (I must paraphrase because I haven't gotten around to building those stealth headphone mics yet), "So, now that Christ has risen, and He is no longer with us physically, what do we do now? Since we're stuck here on this earth, how should we be living?" Being a postmil, of course, I laughed to myself, because to me there's no way this is being "stuck" here. It's about taking dominion in every area of our lives for the Glory of God!

I should clarify here that the person in quote did later clarify that he no longer believes that it's a burden to live on earth - it's not "cursed," as he put it. So we don't disagree.

Immediately after restraining myself to a quiet smile, I was reminded of a quote from the Project Greenlight 2 film The Battle of Shaker Heights. Towards the end of the film, the main character, Kelly, walks around back of a church where his crush is getting married after having been turned away at the door by his (supposedly) best friend, who also happens to be her brother. Misunderstandings all around. Anyway, Kelly (played to perfection by Shia LaBeouf), goes around back where he parked his bike, since his jeep was out of commission. Standing there by the back door, waiting for his cue, is Miner Webber, the groom. Kelly says (again, forgive my paraphrase - I couldn't find a copy of the script online), "So this is it. This is the end." - Meaning the end of the lifestyle Miner currently lives. A short pause. Miner gets a slow grin across his face and says, "Nah, man. This is just the beginning."

Wow. That hit me this morning like a ton of bricks. I was so tempted to slowly shake my head, chuckle and say, "Nah, man. This is beautiful." The problem was, I didn't know how to express the emotion I was feeling that explains why this is so beautiful, so I didn't. I'm not sure I could even now (I'll try anyway).

I think it's partially the gift of irrepressible optimism. Somebody, please, tell me, what is the point of glass-half-empty?? I mean, how miserable do you want to be?? Why not look at the beautiful side of life? Isn't it so much more joyous to be able to be happy while we live on this earth, rather than being Eeyores all the time? "This place really isn't that great after all. It'll probably rain..." Give me a break. Let's ENJOY life! Let's live it out! Let's make this a beautiful thing! Let us ask the question every day, how can I serve God today? - and let it be a question out of joy! I mean hey, if you want to be miserable all the time, be my guest - but don't expect me to sympathize with you...

Don't tell me this is a cursed world, mate. Ain't no way. I'm here for a reason - and I'm jolly well going to find out what that reason is. And when I've done that, I'm going to give it everything I've got for His glory - because that is truly a race well run.

2006-04-15T13:25:00.000-04:00

Aaah. Nothing like a good ol' PB+Cheddar+garlic. Only a true geek understands the social potential of garlic.

And yes, I took the poptart out of the picture first.

2006-04-15T10:03:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'm determined to get some serious work done today. I'll be leaving for a party around 2:30, but I want to get ChristianFilmmakers.org launched and if I have any time left over, I've been requested to do a graphics makeover for TechBlog. Here we go...time to get intense.

2006-04-15T02:45:00.000-04:00

Here it is nearly 3am and I'm sitting here yakking about what time it is. I'm a bit tired but I can't bring myself to go to bed...

I guess I should just go, since I'm expecting a call tomorrow and I want to be ready for it.

2006-04-15T01:16:00.000-04:00

Tape 3 Log Complete.

J, I think you need to take my PC for another week and work it back into shape - it's been misbehaving all week. :(

2006-04-15T00:15:00.000-04:00

I'm floored. This chap's amazing.

I was replying to an return email to my web job inquiry from earlier this evening, and over on the right sidebar an ad pops up for Jabu Studio, a [really good] design company specializing in logo/web/print/flash/cd design. Scroll down the page a little and see an intriguing picture (left). Cool mixes of blacks and browns and that nifty touch of green on the bottom. Gotta click it, so...takes me over to http://www.jeshderox.com.

...Who is a wedding photographer. Who's 20yo. Who is REALLY GOOD.

I would love to be his PA for even just one wedding - his work is fabulous. He's right when he says it's "fine art photography" each piece on the website could be an award-winner in its own right. Could be posed for all I can tell. I don't know how he does it!

And best yet, he has a blog - and he sounds like a really neat guy! I mean, how many businessmen who were really stuffed-shirt professionals would post a funny little story about getting up at 2am to brush your teeth and not being able to tell whos is whos once you get in the bathroom - and the life lessons learned thereof? I love it.

2006-04-14T23:04:00.000-04:00

Burnin' beetlejuice, that's a lotta whitespace!

Time to fill it up with something interesting. Accepting suggestions.

2006-04-14T22:06:00.000-04:00

I'm doing better, doing better. Crossed one more thing off my list just now. Unfortunately, the more urgent things aren't getting X'ed as quickly as I'd like. But the night is young yet.

~~- Fix lawnmower and get the grass cut before jungle animals start moving in.~~ -Wednesday
- Apply for at least 1 job *somewhere* -Friday
- Finish Christianfilmmakers.org and get it launched.
- Log the rest of the audio for PoH (just over six hours)
~~- Meet with S on Tuesday and get his presentation knocked out~~ -Tuesday

I logged about half of Tape 3 this morning and got interrupted. Hoping to finish that tonight.

2006-04-14T19:30:00.000-04:00

Ollie Hall just left me a comment on my "new hdd" post below, so as usual I checked out his blogs (I do this with everyone who leaves comments - nice to know who's reading!). I found one of his blogs particularly facinating: his personal field recording experiences. Basically, you take a recording unit and a microphone out into the wild and hear what there is to hear. If it's interesting, you record it. Really it's like photography, only audible instead of visible (ok, so if you can see the waveform, it's visible too). Occasionally you set out with the intent to capture something specific.

This statement particularly impressed me:

I record using a Sony MZ-R50 minidisc recorder, and a pair of binaural mics set into a pair of headphones for stealth purposes.

Brilliant! Terrific idea. The only way it could get any better is if it they were a pair of earbuds. The longer I spend listening to music on a regular basis, the more I wish I had a pair. Much easier to pull one out than with a headset, which tends to break wire connections (my family is particularly fond of sneaking up on me - or trying to - since my desk faces the wall).

By the way, Ollie..."email to memphis" is really good. ;-)

2006-04-14T19:05:00.000-04:00

Well, what do you know. I was experimenting with BlogExplosion today and ran across the personal site of an old friend, Jake McKee (aka "Community Guy").

That name won't mean much to most of the readers here, I'm guessing. But a few of you just might sit up and take notice. Jake McKee used to be the "Global Community Relations Specialist" for the LEGO Company. In laymen's terms, Jake was the lucky guy that got to tell us that LEGO was changing the colours of the brown and grey bricks. It appears he survived. But that's another story.

In all seriousness, though, Jake is a great guy. He performed an excellent PR stint at LEGO and I highly appreciate the work he did there. It's a shame he had to leave. I *told* him that LEGO didn't pay him enough...guess he agreed with me. Good to see he's enjoying life again (for a while, he had to wear an asbestos tracksuit to work and hire a food taster before lunch..."killing the messenger" was something of an understatement).

2006-04-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

My new hardware arrived today; another score for eBay.

This off-brand 250GB drive will, by the end of today, house the entire Path Of Honor project. Everything. Except perhaps some of the web stuff, there won't be a scrap of it left on my PC. Such a sweet feeling of freedom! (and I can go back to not worrying about drive space anymore)

It's a sweet little thing. Runs quiet, looks nice, great big space inside...and USB2, as well, so it's fast. I was surprised to learn that USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire 400, but I guess until we all get Firewire 800 drive enclosures that's just the way it works. More convenient for me anyhow.

The only inconvenient thing about it is that it's going to take a looong time...

There was a time when this read 230min...

2006-04-14T09:08:00.000-04:00

My mousewheel click is getting less sensitive every day (or my index finger is getting weaker, either one). Driving me crazy.

My keyboard is getting really clackety and some keys are starting to stick. I wonder...if I took it to a PC repair place, could they replace the rubber pads and clean underneath the keys, and maybe do some other magic to make it quieter?

Every time I take a keyboard apart, it doesn't quite function right when I put it back together ('course, that time I spilled Coke on it, it didn't quite work right *before* I took it apart)...

2006-04-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

Finished logging Tape 2/5. Big whup.

2006-04-13T22:04:00.000-04:00

N sent me this:

2006-04-13T19:02:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to get annoyed at AudioBlogger. I've made three audioposts in the last 24 hours and none of them have appeared anywhere. Urg.

MY SISTINE CHAPEL.

Did a little bike trip with some friends this afternoon. B, J, A, R and S joined me for a three-hour jaunt through the countryside to Walborne Reservoir (photos from last trip halfway down). Caught some good moments; I was after serious quality at the total expense of quantity today, so I hope it paid off. I'm looking at them now.

...ugh, what a lousy lot. Some of the ones I really hoped would turn out, didn't.

Ok, *technically* this one turned out. It's not out of focus, it's reasonably exposed, etc...but I totally messed this one up, in retrospective. I was trying to get that telephone pole and the daffodils in the background just for colour, but it would have been much more effective to shoot a 3/4 angle so you could get a better sense of the depth of the mailbox (and be able to see the painting on the front better), and still get the white fence in the background.

I'll be going back there when the trees leaf (it's just down the road). Pretty now, gorgeous later. What I'd give for a couple nice horses in the paddock (see below)

I wish I'd waited a split second for her to shut her mouth. All of us photographers were making her nervous (R reported she had a clutch of eggs).

I'm kicking myself for not shooting this in colour.

If I ever get into grad/senior portraitography, this will be one of my favs. Under the willow, trees in the bg, sweet green grass...

Shoot from a rowboat about halfway out in the pond for a nice DOF (use outriggers to slow rocking - if it's not deep, use chest waders). 90 degrees off of that would look nice too.

I have GOT to buy a couple Cokin ND filters.

Like A said..."Like a bunch of naughty little children peeking over the fence!"

The gander did not appreciate us being there - especially once R crept closer to the shore to get closer (the Powershot A90 only sports a 3x optical zoom). The goose honked at me a few times when I got closer for a photo, even though I was behind a fence.

I wanted to get closer to be able to see the eggs, probably provoking an attack (great "last photo I ever took" moment) but since everyone else was there I packed up so we could get to Walborne before we needed to turn around and go home.

I'm going to have to go back here. I actually didn't notice the horse till a moment later...but almost all of my pictures here turned out badly (and they were the once I was hoping would be the best, too). I might send this one to these folks, just as a gift. Doesn't impress me photographically much, though.

The horse was pleasant enough to stand still, between the branches of that tree, for quite some time. If I was more forward about my work, I'd probably have tried to coax him to the fence so I could get some closeups, but I wasn't in a mood to fend off angry owners just then.

This makes more sense when you look at the next picture.

*Sigh*...I didn't notice that the bones were out of focus till I got home. It's about a foot too far out. Oh well. I guess it gets the point across anyway.

I keep wondering what the person in the car was thinking.

A slightly more desolate version of my first photo of these crosses.

I messed up the framing pretty badly here, but on my second shot I used the Cokin 123S filter and it ruined the sun effect. Arg.

This really doesn't count as I wasn't after any artistic value. It's more a documentary of a curious fact about the neighborhood: it's loud. At weird times of the night.

The ugly rumour is that the people who live here raise fighting cocks. This has not been verified to my knowledge and should be understood as so. However, it's factual that they do indeed raise roosters, and lots of them. A few weeks ago I was going to bed at midnight, and one of the cocky little guys (ow) decided it was time to get up. AT. MIDNIGHT. IT'S DARK OUTSIDE. Freak.

At least some of them are kept in this little building here. The rest have their own individual 55gal drums to live in. Several years ago we heard that there could be as many as 200 roosters here, but they've been cutting down since then, so I'm guessing there aren't that many left. It's not nearly as noisy as it was when we moved in, anyway.

Ah well, that's life in the 'hood.

2006-04-13T18:53:00.000-04:00

Found this on a fellow photoblogger's site today:

"I was heading down Highway 21 towards Forest Ontario when I spotted these two trees standing there all alone against the sunset. So I pulled over, cranked up the radio, got out of the car and stood at the side of the road rocking out too INXS' Pretty Vegas and taking pictures in the fre fre fre freezing cold as cars drove past me probably thinking I was nuts. Sometimes you just have to let that inner child out to play at the side of the road and if he gets run over, you won't have to stand out in the freezing cold anymore."

2006-04-12T16:42:00.000-04:00

David Thompson passed on a link to a star wars fanfilm to me last night, saying "I ran across a SW Fanfilm the other day that had some pretty decent production values..."

Now, I think we ought to admit that most SW fanfilms are heavy on the effects & costumes, and light on concepts such as cinematography, lighting, acting, etc. However, "Reign Of The Fallen" proved a pleasant surprise. David McLeavy, director (and star) and Jonathan Wang (producer) pulled off an excellent production clocking in at just under an hour.

What impressed me most about this film is that they obviously expended a tremendous amount of effort on lighting & cinematography. Most filmmakers would rather just film the fight scene with the camera on a tripod and be done with it, but these guys made sure every shot made sense and was artistically complete. Some of their shots I found a little dark, but if they made it on a Mac I'll forgive them that (Mac screens having notoriously higher gamma values than PC monitors).

And the acting was sweet - a rare commodity among fanfilms! Well done everyone.

2006-04-12T01:18:00.000-04:00

So! You like what you see? Send me a DVD! I'll send you a picture, free!

(your choice, 8x10 in oak or satin black)

2006-04-12T00:40:00.000-04:00

Wow, what a day. Productive yet a total wash. How can that happen at the same time, I wonder?

S came over and we fixed up his presentation, so that was the productive part. It was fun; we got to talk a bit and I learned some new Flash stuff. I don't have a copy of PowerPoint so I used flash instead, which worked quite well. We added some video clips and an audio clip, as well as some really cool snakeskin photo scans for slide backgrounds (don't worry, I made sure it was in good design taste). Took about five hours, which wasn't too bad. About an hour of work per minute of presentation time tomorrow (plus the time S put into reading material and writing the presentation outline this morning).

The washed-up part of it is that I contributed zero to my goals today. Absolutely nothing. Oh, ok, I guess a tiny bit - I hooked up my mower battery to the charger and let it run all day. Whoopee. Gonna rain tomorrow anyway.

Tomorrow I don't expect to do a lot better. I have a lot of reading to do to help out with a careers session Mum is giving to a homeschool group in August. We're a unique family to do this because after I graduated, I was pretty much allowed to follow my own path. Most people probably wouldn't do that. Fortunately, I think I've had a pretty clear direction of where I want to go and where I want to end up, so it's been quite beneficial to have free reign to do what it takes to get there.

It was also encouraging to pop on over to bzflag an hour ago and play for a while with the midnight gang. In my opinion, these are the friendliest people (for the most part) and usually quite team-oriented, which always makes the game more fun. I was having a really bad game tonight, tho, so it was refreshing to just be able to play with people who are willing to be friendly and have a good time instead of playing like Captain Nemo. If I want that I'll play in the afternoon. As any of my friends will tell you, over the last six months or so I've pretty well lost my competitive taste. Any more, if I'm going to play a competitive sport or game, I want to do it just for the fun of playing with other people - and I like a good session where the other players are just there for the company, too.

Then there's the thought that if I don't go to bed really soon, my productivity tomorrow (midway through the week, I might add) will start off on the downhill slope because I won't be able to get up before 10 o'clock. Somebody hit me...

2006-04-11T09:57:00.000-04:00

All you anonymous commenters are driving me crazy. ;)

As a followup to yesterday's post about the audio problems, I thought I'd do a little photojournalism and post some photos of my experiences last night getting that to work (I was working till about 1am, with an hour or so interlude when R and G stopped by). I don't want to complain about this computer, because I truly am grateful to have such a fast machine, so I'll make it a tutorial.

HOW TO INSTALL THE CREATIVE SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! DIGITAL 5.1 PCI CARD IN THE ASUS PUNDIT-R BOX.

You can't.

It's not physically possible to install the Soundblaster Live! card in the Pundit-R. However, it's possible to install a mutant (or mutated?) Soundblaster in the mutated Pundit.

Most people wouldn't even go near their $400 computer with a Dremel. I think they go fine together!

This picture shows where I needed to cut off the bottom tab of the card. Previous modifications had left it such that it wouldn't fit in the slot properly.

But then, we find, the card is too tall to fit in the daughtercard slot (the Pundit-R uses a proprietary daughtercard PCI expansion board to double the PCI capacity and rotate their orientation to fit inside the box - see below). So, it becomes necessary to induce some wiggle into the bottom of the case by pulling off the port faceplate. This made me lose the serial port (never used it anyway) and the integrated mic/phone/line ports, as well as s-video and rca-out. As far as I know, the sound ports didn't work anyway, the RCA port was non-functioning and I had some problems with getting the projector to display properly when rigged through the S-Video port. So no big loss.

Hmm...then we find that the Soundblaster card is *exactly* as tall as the PCI rack. Since the rack is supposed to tab into the side of the case (visible in photo at top left), it was necessary to remove the daughtercard from the support. This works fine, except that tall, heavy cards like the Soundblaster then have no horizontal support, which would be a problem in the long run (but I'll be pulling the card again as soon as I'm done fixing my audio capture problem, so it's a non-issue for me).

As you can see, temporarily removing the daughtercard and putting the Soundblaster straight into the master PCI slot doesn't work either.

How did ASUS expect us to put in the Hauppage cards, either??

Ready to go. Notice that the Soundblaster is actually *touching* the side of the case and has a distinct sag. That can't be good.

All wired up. I actually prefer to run the box without the case, because it tends to run a bit hot and gets much noisier (the CPU fan is temp-controlled). It also moves a lot more air through the power supply, too, which was a concern for me when I bought the box back in August or July, whenever it was (check the archives!). However, the potential for cat hair is, well, guaranteed.

That's as far as I got last night before I decided that I was only getting more frustrated by staying up. So I pulled out my cd player (!), headphones and went to sleep with peaceful music in my ears.

Stressame Street! Yeah!

2006-04-10T20:46:00.000-04:00

Talk about childhood. I watched Sesame Street all the time. Now, usually I don't do forwards, or tags, or anything like that, but I just couldn't resist posting this video of the Yip-Yip Martians.

2006-04-10T20:11:00.000-04:00

It's quiet tonight. Well, it was, that is...before I got settled in.

I'm home alone (thieves beware..."I have five guards you don't even know about...*pow*") working on the film. Just me and the cat - and she's making herself scarce because I'm playing music on the boombox while I work. If she knew I ate a poptart, though, she'd probably muster up enough energy to come sniffing for handouts. She'll show up when I make some popcorn later, I'm sure.

Discovered a problem with some of the captured audio today, which is probably going to require me to recapture at least one full tape, probably more. If I get really lucky I'll probably have to recapture about half of the stuff. Sigh. If that happens there's *no* way I'll make my goals this week. Even the lawnmower refused to start after sitting on the charger all day today and all day Saturday on overdrive (five amps over the recommended range). I threw in my own battery that I used for the film to drive the mixer and it wouldn't even sniff. Maybe I should try charging that one too. It was giving me fits with the mixer a while back, presumably because it's run down.

Soooo...I'll be up late tonight. Fun fun. Actually that's true: I've been vaguely considering buying an iPod or similar recently, just because I listen to so much music and it would be nice to take it with me when I'm away from my desk. I'm an ultra-cheapskate, though, so name brand I won't be buying. Anybody have any recommendations? I won't be buying for a while, since I had to buy a harddrive last week which thrashed my wallet pretty soundly. Hafta find a job first (gee, another good reason to accomplish all my goals this week...).

Hey, this is interesting. I just popped by eBay to see what the Zen Neeon sells for (way out of my range, I found) and saw this on the homepage. Before I signed in.

My feedback score, just so you know, is 28. And I don't have any items to pay for, and one pending feedback (for that hdd). Nobody that has access to this computer has a score that high (I thought hey! Are they giving out free feedback now?...).

Signing in and refreshing the page fixed it, I just thought it was kinda weird.

2006-04-10T15:59:00.000-04:00

How to pay off the national debt with plenty to spare:

Man Shocked To Open $218 Trillion Phone Bill

2006-04-10T12:50:00.000-04:00

One of the pc's at work has some pretty wierd stuff on its backup drive:

Let me count the ways...

2006-04-10T12:11:00.000-04:00

Gee, there are all sorts of ways I can update this thing. Not like I'd ever have anything interesting to say, but it's worth knowing about anyway. Now just in case blogger.com is down and I'm away from my computer *and* I don't have access to a phone (but I have access to another PC with internet access which presumably *doesn't* have Skype)...I can blog from Gmail!

--
-Mike

"The dread of censure is the death of genius." -William G. Simms (American novelist, 1806-1870)

2006-04-10T11:35:00.000-04:00

Nifty. I'll definitely make use of this next time I'm on a film set. I bet readers would love that!

Unfortunately, the number you call to make a post rings in California. Guess I'd want to keep it short. The sound quality isn't too good, but that's the price you pay for such small downloads (300k for a 5min recording - the above file is only 1.5Kb).

2006-04-10T11:16:00.000-04:00

Since I'm getting much more serious about blogging these days (as evidenced by the fact that this is my 5th post today), I decided to ramp things up a bit.

Now I use BlogThis! and I'm working on getting AudioBlogger set up.

Muahahaha.

2006-04-10T11:02:00.000-04:00

Boy, I'm hot today. I wonder if I'll set a new personal best for Most Info Posts In A Day today.

Just wanted to say that I think this Blogger Help topic is a pretty good definition of a hacker. Go O'Reilly!