senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
slippery sunday
permalink Sunday, 26FEB2006:slept in after i set my alarm 12 hours off. got to the college just in time to catch the boys wrapping up the filming of the 2d round of auditions for the mahaha film project. we're still looking for a couple of young gents to play the brothers in the script. afterwards, i stuck around to do a bit more editing on my poker doc. i got most everything on my list finished off, but there's still one piece of audio that i want to clean up before calling it a wrap. i'll burn off a compressed version and post it online later this week.
on the quirky side, i'm dubiously pleased to note that it's currently raining in iqaluit. yes, go ahead and check your calendar to confirm that it is still february. hey, if we can have snow in june, why not rain in the middle of winter ? any one need any further evidence of climate change ? as for being pleased, the warm weather combined with strong winds means that we'll likely have a blizzard tomorrow, and if it's not blowing snow, it'll be roads slippery from freezing rain. in either case, a longer weekend would be the result
if it's not recorded, does it even exist ?
permalink Monday, 27FEB2006:so it's been a year since i started blogging. i've surprised even myself with my online verbosity. since then, i've added an archive, permalinks, a webfeed, podcast links and comments. who knows what the next year will bring ...
tonight i zoomed over to the college after work to try to burn off a copy of the movie, but got sidetracked by the captions again. they weren't quite long enough for some people to finish reading, and their uniform green colour was still difficult to decipher quickly. i ended up switching most to a hallowe'en orange which is legible, but oh so far away from my original 'table felt' concept. the uplink will have to wait until tomorrow.
i found out that i had messed up my recorder settings on my pc, so i didn't get a copy of my evening radio show either. it's probably for the best as i had a few glitches in the booth today. the show was made up of a collection of songs that i envisioned as a soundtrack for my poker flick.
Aur.Oral Exposures setlist for 27feb2006:
- the hardest game - havana 3 a.m.
- Money (That's What I Want) - The Flying Lizards
- No Limit - 2 Unlimited
- Gamblin' Man - Mike Ness
- luck in my eyes - k.d. lang and the Reclines
- lucky to me - The Blue Shadows
- Joker's Wild - Blue Rodeo
- Gamble - Lowest of the Low
- I Hear You Calling - gob
- With These Hands - Tom Jones
- I want to hold your hand - The Beatles
- 52 pickup - brown eyed susans
- Lucky You - Lightning Seeds
- Lucky Number Six - the Lux
- Lucky Ones - Loverboy
- Pokerface - Ron Hawkins
- The Gambler - Kenny Rogers
- The Biggest Loser - Frank R. Wallace
- Hold - Gravity Kills
- Out of Hand - Bad Religion
- take me out - Franz Ferdinand
- Bad Luck - Social Distortion
- Sold Me Down the River - The Alarm
- Busted Afternoon - Old 97s
burning issues of the day
permalink Tuesday, 28FEB2006:ran over to the college first thing in the morning to pull out the burned copy of my movie. however, it was not the last version that i had produced last night, so things were still a bit off when i showed it to chris and malcolm during the morning coffee break.
after work, i was going to head back to the college to wrap things up for good, but instead got sidetracked by a pancake supper (yes, you read that right). the supper was a fundraiser for the local anglican church for them to replace the cathedral that was gutted by arson late last year. after waiting in line for nearly an hour, those pancakes and sausages tasted fabulous. i even gleaned a stock tip from a politician!
i finally made it to the college just before 8, and then decided to tweak the captions one final time. it's *amazing* how changing the font can really enhance legibility. after updating all of the captions one by one with the new font and changing the colour to a burnished gold instead of pumpkin orange, i rendered the video and then output it to disk. i then tried to export the video into various quicktime formats, but before i could find out how big the resulting files would be, the security guard came by and pointed at his watch. drat ! as the dvd was only partially burnt, i'll have to pick it up tomorrow.
- ip idiocy link of the day: from down under, australia's copyright collection society wants to force schools to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website.
filmable follies
permalink Wednesday, 01MAR2006:iqaluit broomball chronicle:
team white: mark, jacques, me
team black: JFra, dan, martha, (and for the last 40 minutes) julian
we started off with even teams of 3, and team white kicked things into gear by building up a commanding 7-4 lead. dan scored on his first shot of the game as i watched the ball drift by me right into the open net. the French masters JFra and Jacques each notched hat tricks while mark and i had to make do with a pair each. however, once julian arrived to shore up team black, the tide turned mightily. team black rang up a tally of 5 goals (the JFra and julian variety show) to team white's solo (a breakaway by yours truly) to take the lead 9-8. with only minutes remaining, mark managed to tie the game up and when the buzzer sounded, we finished even steven at 9-9.
ran over to the college afterwards and finally succeeded in burning off the various quicktime versions of the film. the smallest is 230 megs, while the best quality one is over 2.1 gigs. i'm going to burn the medium one (at 610 megs) to a cd to sneakernet around, but for those with wide enough bandwith pipes, i've uploaded the brutal quality version HERE. it's best to watch this at half-size to minimize the numerous artefacts.
behind the scenes notes follow the SPOILER SPACE :
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
some of the original footage was accidentally recorded without sound. most of the pieces affected weren't included, but the video of the poker chip riffling was too good to lose. i ended up recording the sound separately by riffling a whole bunch of times in front of a mic and then spent a good hour trying to match up pieces of sound with the video.
i repaired a pair of socks and a pair of pants while playing the tourney.
my 'intro' to the online tourney was filmed 2 days afterwards - check out the beard !
the ron hawkins featured is the lead singer of the band 'lowest of the low', not the 1970's icon.
gord was not acting at all - he really *is* that expressive when he plays poker. i could've done an entire video with just closeups of his animated face.
my reaction shots are filmed later than the scenes facing gord - and i didn't make sure that the hands / chip piles matched, so i had to be *very* selective about which pieces i used.
yes, that is a 'matrix' screensaver on the computer monitor in the background.
the poker vest was picked up in a shop in montreal on mount royal street that featured a wide selection of emily merchandise.
footage was filmed on sunday and tuesday evening, while editing took place from tuesday thru the following monday. total time from beginning to end was just over a week. total cost was $500 for the final cut pro course and $40 for the online tourney = $540.
camera: canon ZR 50MC A; editing software: final cut pro ver.5.
this was the first time that i had ever used a mac for more than a few minutes.
i played 2 more online tourneys after the one featured in the flick, but did not match my performance in the first one.
online gambling sites are still illegal in canada. if you can figure out the site from the film, great, but i'm not going to explicitly state which one i used.
i have now moved up to riffling 2 stacks of 8 chips each :)
touching the metal lamp was to minimize static.
the excerpt from the frank r. wallace book is: available online.
types of typing
permalink Thursday, 02MAR2006:found out that my sister will be starting her own marketing company in april. she's already designed up a logo with bold red and white type and has had business cards made up. she can't leave her current position yet because she's helping to bring the rolling stones to shanghai after SARS messed up the earlier attempts.
- link of the day: making lots
of typos
will
not thwart acoustical spies
The researchers show that a simple audio recording of those keyboard clicks can betray the text you just entered, from passwords to secret love notes. The researchers were able to take several 10-minute sound recordings of users typing at a keyboard, feed the audio into a computer, and use an algorithm to recover up to 96 percent of the characters entered.
saturday full of games
permalink Saturday, 04MAR2006:got up around noon as the beautiful sunshine flooded into my eyes. swung by the northmart to cover my ticket-selling shift for the banff mountain film festival. christian brought his laptop, so we were able to show off the short previews of the films to catch the eye of passers-by.
iqaluit broomball chronicle:
team A: marco, dan
team B: jacques, mark
goalie: me
it was a pretty tight game until the second half when jacques busted things wide open with 4 goals in total. mark and marco each gone one apiece as well.
in the evening, i picked up some supper from the nav and then wandered over to todd's where he was hosting a one-table game. my online adventures seemed to give me a bigger edge than usual and i bet into some hands that i normally wouldn't have. todd doubled me up later in the session and that was enough for me to limp into 3d place and get my money back. j.d. faced off against karen for the final and mouthed his way to triumph. in the side game afterwards, i was first out - i blame the shot of rye :) when i left around 3, patrick and john were still battling over the winner-take-all pot.
after i got back home, i stayed up even longer to re-install diablo II on my machine. everything went smoothly and i started up a game. however, when the video started going wonky, i worried that i had gibbled my machine again. after a reboot and a downgrade of the video settings, tho, all was in order and i began to play my necromancer whom i had neglected for almost 2 years.
i started with an earlier level, but finding an experience shrine, i got cocky and went to the highest level to maximize the benefit. errrgh. mistake. speedy scarab lightning beetles surrounded me and my posse to do me in. my attempt at corpse retrieval was also spectacularly unsuccessful and with all of the opponents swarming around the portal, i gave up my 2 hours of effort and re-set the character back to where he was when i started today's run. a pink glow was just starting to creep up into the darkness of the night when i finally allowed myself to turn in.
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