Tag Archives: Nerdy Stuff

Twittergrams

Scoble was down at the Facebook headquarters and was able to talk to them about why it was down. Apparently they where trying to push out some new features, and it brought the site down… Whoops. What is cool about Scoble, is he made a phone call, and immediately 4940 people knew the results. Cool technology. For more info, check out Twittergram here. All it takes is a simple setup, and you are ready to phone in. Updates show up in about 30 seconds.

Testing

Testing…
Found out this nifty way for people to email me. Here is a nice little contact form for the blog.

A Day At The Track

Or, How I Made A Mess Of Myself

For the last semester, in my advanced cinematography class, we have been involved in producing some marketing footage for Kirkham Motorsports. Kirkham makes replica Shelby Cobras. It has been a really fun project that was broken up into three sections. We had a shop day where we filmed promo footage at their shop. A day was spent at the Nebo loop, part of the Wasatch mountains, and, the last was part was spent at the Miller Motor Sports Park. I was really excited to be a part of this, especially after being raised by my gear-head father. I spent most of the day near the track, filming close shots with Chris Hill and Brandon Beckham. It was a lot of fun watching these cars making 130 mph passes. It wasn’t long befire I was really itching to have some of the action to myself.

During lunch, the opportunity arose to do some in car filming. Me and Chris both jumped at the chance to do it. Chris hopped into a Cobra, and I jumped into a brand new 2007 Subaru WRX Sti. Now, many people may balk that I would rather jump into a Subaru then hit the Cobras. I have been a huge Subaru advocate for a long time, and thought the idea of doing 90 mph all-wheel drive drifts sounded like a good idea. So, we took a few laps, it was great. We played chase camera to the Cobra, and got some good footage.

The shooting was pretty intense. It took every muscle in my body to try and keep the camera straight, and true. I ended up wearing a full face helmet that after a few laps started to get a little stuffy. Now, I have been snowmobiling for most of my life, and am used to wearing a helmet. This helmet, as soon as the lid shut, latched shut, and I was unable to open it…

As we raced around the track, I was giddy for joy. I just about giggled, but I thought the dude next to me might think less of me, so I restrained myself, and pushed ahead. Lap after lap, as the g-forces worked on me, I started to get a little queasy. Now, when I was a kid, I used to get car sick really easy, so I put down the camera, and just focused on the road ahead. I decided that some air would help, and I tried to lift the mask of the helmet. It wouldn’t move. It decided to just stay fastened shut. I used both hands to try to get the helmet open, but nothing would get it open… I started to get nervous, and a little bit of claustrophobia settled in on me.

It was the last lap, and the driver asked me if we were done. I was eager to finish. And we headed for pit row. I put the camera at my feet, knowing that it was valued around $7000, to the cars $35,000. I pushed and pulled to do everything that I could do to get the helmet off, but to no avail. I ended up puking into the helmet before I got it off. Then, all over the car. Then all over the sidewalk. It was way embarrassing… What a way to end the semester, puking all over yourself in front of your peers and a client.

In the end, I was able to get it all cleaned up, and the driver of the car was way cool about it. I feel bad knowing that he was only able to get a few laps in his cobra, and only a few more before the Subaru got destroyed for the day. I hear that we are going to have another track day, I will stay out of the the car, and there might be a little less mess at the end of the day.

Back From Collins’

So, I have spent the last few days in Tempe AZ. Boy, it is way to early in the year to be having 90+ degree weather. I went down with Todd, and we had a chance to interact with many of the students and faculty that are there. We went specifically for the purpose of recruiting for the Prodigy. We are looking to hire 20 people to work as mini film crews during the summer. There where a few things that I took away from the event, especially after seeing more then 30 demo reels over the three days that we were there.

Transitions

There is one rule that I learned as soon as I left high school video editing. That is anything beyond a cross dissolve, and a hard cut, is not allowed in any professional video. If I am looking at your professional reel, one that you want to get a professional job with, NEVER have a page flip, cube flip, anything like that in your reel. They are terrible, and should never be used.

Titles

In my mind, titles are just as important as the footage itself, so, never use anything that comes bundled with your computer. I.E, never use the canned titles that come with iMovie, LiveType, and anything else of the sort.

Footage

One of the things that I found the most difficult to bear was when someone handed me a reel that was only 45 seconds long, and said that that was all the footage that they had, so they put that all in. For the love of everything holy… You are in film school! Check out a camera, and go and shoot something! Really, that should never be an excuse.

All in all, we saw a lot of things that we really liked, and are really pumped about the prospects for this summer. I just have a few things that really bother me sometimes. I think that it is just errors that I have made, and, I don’t want people to make the same errors that I did.

Frets On Fire… And Why I Love It

fretsonfire1.png

I have a new addiction, and I am not ashamed to admit it. I pretend that I am a rock star for hours on end everyday. I don’t play in a band. I don’t own a guitar, well, I do have a bass, but that is a different story. I sit in front of my computer, and watch swirling notes pan in front of me to the tune of great metal songs of the eighties. What an addicting game.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, Frets on Fire is a clone of the ever popular PS2 game, Guitar Hero. The difference here is that you are using your keyboard, and there is no multiplayer. Aside from that, expect the same licks that you are used to with GH2.

So, Where Is Google Sky?

I was just reading over on the Google Blog, and something stuck out to me… With all the talk of new products, updates, there is still something missing… Google Sky.

One of my favorite open source projects has been Stellarium. It can simply be called Google Earth looking at the stars. If Google where to take this open source code, and give it the Google tweak, i.e. publicity, a few more engineers, and a little more, What a great app it would become.

What do you think?

Using Google Talk in iChat

Picture 3.pngI thought that I would take a moment to explain how to use Google Talk with iChat. I really like the ease of use and simplicity of iChat, and love that it integrates so well with Google Talk. I have a lot mre friends with PCs that are using gTalk, then Mac friends that are using AIM. So here it is.

1. Open iChat and Select Preferences/

2. Add a new account by clicking on the + button in the Accounts pane.

3. From the drop down menu, click on Jabber Account.

4. In the Jabber ID field put your email address. example@gmail.com

5. Password: Your password.

5. In the server field, put talk.google.com

6. Then click add.

7. Make sure that in the server settings that talk.google.com is being used, and that all options are selected.

That is it, you are now ready to start chatting it up. If you need somebody to chat it up with, don’t hesitate to add me, at whyisjake at gmail dot com.