Green Screen Ideas...

And the ideas keep pouring in. I'm telling you, Green Wall is probably the bet thing to happen to me creatively since learning After Effects. For my next trick I'll be walking "through" the wall into a room created in 3ds Max. This is all too much fun! Anyway

Also on the music side of things... We have a new Tiesto album coming out soon!!!! It sounds like it'll be in the territory of Above and Beyond's progressive trance pop thing, check out the sample on iTunes!!!! Purists will probably hate it, but really, what trance fan isn't for something new and different?
Release date is April 10th, this may be worthy of buying the CD :)

Well, I thought it would also be fun to post another project I was working on a months ago. Still quite cool, In case you were wondering about the Post-It notes, that's more or less the "secret sauce" that makes it all work. I have two other VFX projects lined up soon I will be posting them as I they are completed.

here it is

lah dee dah

I've just had one of those moments where I do something I've been trying to avoid and finding a little bit of myself in the process. Let me explain:
For the longest time I've been trying to avoid the film style visual effects thing. It's something that I've wanted to do, but I've never really wanted to see how far that "rabbit hole" goes. Well, last night I took my first step, literally. As in stepping through the stargate. I placed my self in a scene of SG-1, and in all honesty it's one of the most natural technical projects that I've ever taken on. Once I get the thing on YouTube I'll post it on this blog. I need more ideas though, I'd like to start dabbling in this even more.

Yagi is sick!?

So yagi is sick right now :( It's come down with Bsoditis. Too bad really, looks like a re-install/reformat is in order right now...

In other news...
Spring is back! Well actually it's more like summer, but I'm not complaining. It's quite nice really. And the best news is that the A/C in my office area is working again! If it isn't raining I may just go out for a walk or something.

Hillary 1984

Unless you've been under a rock for the past few days (or just don't care) you know exactly what this post is about, so I'll spare you the gory details.

I love this story, being a video geek myself. I love the idea of indie political videos duking it out on YouTube in this upcoming election! I hope the web will become the new arena of ideas here, where the mainstream media has no control and Fiengold-McCain cannot sensor. I know I've been mulling some ideas over myself for my entry. To the conservative creatives out there: USE THIS OPPORTUNITY!!!! Show the country once and for all that the Left does not own the arts. Put your ideals of limited government, individual opportunity, and responsibility out there. Do it with the highest quality you can achieve with the greatest care. Move beyond mash-ups, do something entirely original. If this plays out how I hope it does, this is going to be good.

And more toys...

So, here's the deal.
I've had some rather major financial shifts recently, and I've been finding myself with a little more "loose change" recently. Unfortunately I've been using this to buy more toys. Although they are fairly classy, and fit well into my rule of a few nice things, minimal crap. I still think I can make better use of the money. I've even started thinking about long-term investing. ACK! That really would be a "grown-up" moment. Putting money in something that doesn't depreciate easily. Scary thought.

New toys...

I just got the Adobe software upgrades on my editing workstation yesterday. I'm so excited, the creative options are honestly limitless now. Just the new addition of Illustrator alone is enough to help my creative ability (it's my primary thumbnailing software). Then there is After Effects 7 (oh yes, the sweetness.) There are a few others, but they arent quite as important. Photoshop is essentially my "Swiss Army Knife" there isn't a day that goes by where I don't use it @ least once.
Stayed up late last night...crap.

NORMAL...

Before I go on with this rant I need to take a sec for a "Music Moment"
MUTE MATH!!!
Check this band out. For those who remember they used to a Christian band called "Earthsuit".
After 6 years they have come back. The sound is certainly unique, here's the comparison I've come up with.
Imagine BT, with a little Radiohead, some of dcTalk's pop sound, and a little Sting.
worth the download on iTunes...

This morning was wonderful.... Who knew that waking up @ 5:45am would feel so good. Recently, I've been trying to stay up later and wake up later. It doesn't do it for me. I find myself feeling more tired when I wake up. I tend to sleep till 7:00 or 7:30, and I feel even more tired even though I've slept longer. Then there is the added bonus of the 6:00am workout. For me, there is nothing like a 1/2 hour on the eliptical in the morning to get me going. The bad news is in order to pull this schedule off I get VERY cranky @ 10:30 pm or so, a state I've called pumpkin. I don't mind it all that much, but those around me can clearly tell the difference. So, hopefully I can get back into this routine, it fits my life a little better :) I hope to add some lifting again, once my first set of cardio/endurance goals have been met. That will happen in two weeks. Heh heh, lifting for endurance, I love that part. I want to bike around Milwaukee again.

end random rant.

St. Patrick's Day

Sometimes I do miss the old classroom St. Patty's. You know, when it was all green and shamrocks. But a single pint Guinness on tap is a nice trade.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

a note....

I'm moody, depressed, and I hate myself
...flashbacks to teenhood.

LATER THAT DAY...I am feeling better now, but I think it's important to keep this post around for a while. It's honest. It's how I've been feeling abit more than I like recently. I wish I knew why. It hasn't been a horrible month. In fact it's been pretty good. Im just having really hard time shaking this attitude.

Yet another note on the Iraq War...

I've been reading alot recently on the overall desire to "end the war." It's got me thinking what does it mean to end a war? Is a total troop pull out the end of the war? If we leave is the war really over? If we leave Iraq who would be the winner? If we turn our back on this conflict does it still exist? This new kind of war really really sucks. There can be no signed declaration of surrender, there can be no real victory either. Modern war can no longer be waged on a political state. It's a battle of ideals, and this new kind of warfare is dependent on who has more resolve. Negotiations have a way of putting a band-aid on things, but as we've seen time and time again they will break down, because those who have the big titles have no power over those who do the fighting. What we have in Iraq is the ultimate example of the meaning of the separation of church and state. I have very little problem with Islamic morality being written in thier laws, the problems come when the sectarian lines blind the government to the reality.
We don't need to look too far back in our own history to get an idea of what's going on. What we are seeing appears to be kinda similar to the Protestant/Catholic conflicts that ravaged Europe for centuries. And the echoes of those conflict continue to this day.
What am I saying? The Iraq war is just one part of a much larger conflict, and packing up and leaving will not make it go away. I'm not sure if the war will "come to our shores". But I do think it will affect our allies in Europe in ways we cannot predict yet.

Please ignore the previous post...

It's amazing how sometimes the obvious truth is just sitting right there in front of me. And how it's usually a word that reveals it. I'm having a difficult time committing to things right now. My usual policy of wait for it has been turning in to an excuse to do nothing. I am in fact getting lazy. As it appears, I've forgotten how to type.

Quiet Change

I feel I'm loosing ambition. Projects that used to get me excited, are just causing me to yawn. I'm not jumping at opportunities like I used to. It's it a case of "a little bit older, a little more wise" or is it there is something wrong with me? I want to strike out and do something new, but what comes after where I am now is the area of true design and film-style visual effects. Areas I never really intended to go. In all honesty I never thought I'd get this far. So what now? I need to find a new passion in this huge Vis Comm field. I can't say I love it all anymore. I need to choose something soon. That's the big goal now... I need to find a new passion within my field.

I've just felt so aimless recently, I give into the status quo, so easily, I'm feeling very very lazy. Have I really let things beat me up this bad? To the point where I throw ideas out because they are not able to be productized? Am I jaded? Am I disbelieving of whether things will get better? Where is the line between realism and pessimism? All I know is that I can't give up. I've seen how far I've fallen, I need to get back

So I've been running low on blogs recently...

I don't have anything I really want to blog about. Or @ least anything that I'd like to have out in the public. I've mostly been posting in the personal journal, which is little more than a very long .doc file. Journaling is a great practice, I used to think it was a waste of time. I thought this because it never seems to go anywhere. I mean, what's the point of writing in something that no one will ever read?
Well, it's a great way to think things out. Once it's all on paper it's easy to evaluate what I'm thinking objectively. Am I really justified in what I'm thinking and feeling? Most of the time I find myself going through the Psalms cycle. You know, talk about what's going on, then as I progress, I find myself seeing how things may fit in the big picture.

Math...
No thanks to BT and his latest album, I've been exploring some interesting math anomalies. What's really interesting is how they incorporate themselves in geometry and how I've been trying to incorporate that geometry into some of my latest projects.

Joost..
I give this service about an 80% cool rating. It's a great idea. Basically it's a P2P based OnDemand web video service. Once some better content becomes available, this may become very popular. IT also wouldn't hurt to add some live feed content and more 16:9 support. Oh yeah, and some better codec usage couldn't hurt either. What this service does do well is GUI. This thing is very sexy!! I'll post some screen caps soon.

I think that's it for now...

New Technologies....

Okay so I did it!!!! I finally, bought an HDTV. Here's the lowdown on one of the niftier toys out there.

1. HD does look amazing! However you really only get to enjoy it a percentage of the time. The only time you have Full HD signal "over the air" is national newscasts, prime time, and most sporting events.

2. The signal is only as good as the source... Rule 2b of video production. Most of the time what you get is upsampled 480i. If it's a digital source it still looks good, if it's off an analog tape...not so much.

3. I don't know if it's just the model I bought or what, but DVD looks really really good. Mind you, the pixelization is still an issue, but the contrast ratio is out of this world!

4. It makes for an awesome computer monitor! Yagi is now permanently attached to the HD system. That'll make races a little more interesting, no?

5. Over the air Dolby Digital is nice.

6. Joost, need I say more?

Here's a thought...

Why do dems support a withdrawl?

What happens if the US and Iraqi Forces succeed?

Deceitfulness of Wealth

The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful
Matthew 13:22

I recently took some time to catch up with some of Rob Bell's sermons. One of them was about, among other things, the deceitfulness of wealth. This is something I don't really think about all that often but it's something that I deal with. Just when I think I have it dealt with in one area of my life is sneaks into another area. The deceptiveness is that little voice that says, "If I just had a little more...". I know that more is not better, any one who knows me, knows that this is very important to me. But over the past few months this attitude has been finding it's way into my mind. I don't need more stuff, and I don't want to store stuff up, but I've found myself doing both recently. Agh!

Here's one of my recent inspriations...

Mr. City Men

This is a great set of amazing animations. Very very enjoyable.