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Here’s a quick video I took of the kiddos. I’m playing around with youtube in HD…make sure to click “play in HD” or “720p” to see it full quality. The kids have been having a fun winter….for the most part. We’ve had a lot of snow, so there have a few good snowball fights and a snowman or two. But we’re coming up on Spring! Yay! Both are growing waaaay too fast for my comfort….here’s some snaps.
  Ivan at class I recently had the pleasure of doing projection design for Gustav Holst’s The Planets. The Butler Symphony Orchestra had it scheduled for a while and the conductor, Richard Auldon Clark, and I sort of joked about doing “some projection”. One thing led to another and whadda ya know- we did it. I thought that projecting images of space and the actual planets would seem kind of contrived so I started to look around for footage that would portray the general feel of the piece a little better. In my search I came across a couple of outstanding artists, Philip Bloom and Eric Schockmel, who were both kind enough to allow me to use some of their work (with proper credit in the program of course…..). Their work is crazy good and a lot of it fit the Planets perfectly. I’m a huge fan of the entire Qatsi trilogy and other visually stimulating films, so a lot of what I was doing was kind of leaning toward that. The technical end: My screen was 42′ x 18′ (roughly Cinemascope, or 2.35:1), a not-so-typical size. My projectors are capable of 1024×768 as far as resolution, but that size doesn’t really fit C-scope. So I decided to keep the horizontal rez and adjust the vertical giving me a final size of 1024×440…not exactly hi-definition, but close enough. All of my footage had to match that. I was using Isadora ( a piece of software I rave about often) for playback, since a lot of the cueing needed to be pretty precise, and this also presented an issue….framerate. Some of the footage was 24p, some was 29.97, some was 30fps. Izzy likes to see the Photo-JPEG codec so I needed to find a balance there….I ended up using Apple’s Compressor to render the clips 1024×440, P-JPEG, at 30fps, and that seemed to give me the smoothest playback. I have a pretty beefy Macpro, but not beefy enough for what I needed….it’s all about balance. Anyway, I was projecting roughly 120′ so I needed to find a balance between brightness and contrast as well. Check out this clip for an idea of scale. All in all, the orchestra played wonderfully…it was attended by 1000 or so people, and we received a standing ovation at the end. My hat is off to the Butler Symphony and Richard Clark…also to Philip Bloom and Eric Shockmel. I hope to do some more stuff like this soon….but not too soon….I need to sleep. Well Apple announced the much-anticipated iPad yesterday. There has been a flurry of hands-on and other reviews, but at the outset I would have to say I’m underwhelmed. The folks at OWC have been offering a tablet mod for the Macbook for a couple of years now and I’d be more inclined to go that route even if the price difference is pretty huge. I’m a huge Apple fan but I hope it means a change in the price and availability of the iPod Touch because I would buy one of those instead.
I know…very exciting. I have been trying to upgrade the home theater computer but I ran into a few stumbling blocks. I ordered a GB of RAM, an AGP video card, and a huge hard drive for relatively cheap. The video card would not get recognized by the motherboard, the RAM displaced one slot, so I essentially only upped it by 1 GB, and the hard drive (after properly formatting) made horrendous clicking sounds. In the end, I decided to RMA the drive, return the card, and just buy another 2 GB of RAM. It made a significant difference in speed, and now I’m just waiting on the drive to be returned. With the new video camera, we’re starting to require a boatload more storage space so it’s entirely necessary. More updates when the transformation is complete…. We have entered the 21st century and bought a video camera. It is actually our Christmas present to each other, but the reason is simplicity. We had a camcorder that we bought before Olivia was born, so it’s a bit outdated. Plus- digitizing all the tapes is a pain. It’s a surprisingly common problem. The camera we went with is the Kodak Zx1. Good ole Kodak. (Click for a decent review) It’s in a class that includes the Flip Mino series and Sony’s “Webbie”. All are “candy-bar” style recorders that record to SDHC or an internal buffer. This one shoots 720p h264 video that is stunning. It runs on AA batts and it’s weather-proof. The main draw is the fact that you can take it out of your pocket and instantly grab up to an hour of crazy-good footage. We figured the kids are growing, tape is dying (dead actually), and it might make it easier on the web. Plus the long term storage is a lot more stable and small. Look for some updates on the site soon!
I know I know….I haven’t posted in a while but here’s my big chance. There’s some new galleries over on the right- Ivan’s birthday party and some holiday fun. Christmas is ramping up to a fever pitch here and there doesn’t seem to be enough time to anything let alone actually work on something creative. Time only shows how fast the kiddos are growing up….unfortunate. Oy! It’s that time of year again. Nutcracker is in full swing at the theatre. I have to say- before I came to work here, I wasn’t much of a Nutcracker fan….but the Butler Ballet does a pretty maxed out job. The set and a lot of the props and such are from the Ruth Page Chicago Tribune set and it’s a big one. We use up all 56 of our line-sets and then some. There’s a live orchestra, the Butler Symphony, (reeeeaaaalllyyy good BTW), a children’s choir, large format projection and some really great ballet. In short- the Real Deal. I’ll put up some stills of the show shortly. Right now we have to get through dress rehearsal….. Not sure what rock I’ve been hiding under…but there is an online version of Quake at Quakelive.com It is completely OS independent, runs in just about any web browser, and free as dirt. I was a huge Doom, Castle Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem fan…and now Quake! Check it out! Look for me on a server sometime …Kingcaffeine! Let’s all remember the sacrifice that our boys, girls, men, and women in uniform have made and ARE making for our country. For me to wake up and enjoy a bowl of cereal with my kids in a free and democratic country is a great privilege and I owe my gratitude to my Father and many other vets from the Gooch/Pomeroy clan. |
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