__bjh__

Found this on a friend’s site. He is a really awesome animator who apparently also program’s flash games and or puzzles. It is really cool you should check it out.

Apple has my Macbook Pro. They haven’t computer-napped it or anything… I had to send it in for Applecare. This is the computer I bought with college loans two and a half years ago to insure that I could make media for the next couple of years. It is a extremely over used computer… I do everything with it. I have the PC server box that my house uses as the media network share and that is where this post is being written, but I have gotten really accustom to using my laptop to do basically everything having to do with media and the web.

My mac has been a fantastic machine it has been beaten and abused… I mean I don’t smack it around or anything but it has been known to spend entire nights (notice the plural) crunching MPEG2s so be I can give a client or friends a DVD the next day.

My mac has had a lot of problems. It is the first generation Macbook Pro. The main chip in my mac is an Intel core duo not a core 2 duo like all their current machines. I have few complaints with my computer other then the immense amount of heat that it creates. This has specifically to do with this chip in the guts of my machine. All of my problems can be traced back to this one heat problem. The dvd drive stopped working a month after I got it. I sent it into Applecare and got it fixed. Then it happened again and they fixed it again. This time the keys “A-L” on the keyboard would stop working whenever it got hot. So that is why it is in for more Applecare.

Apple is known for releasing very chic top of the line computers (albeit extremely expensive), but god help us all when they do major revisions to their product lines as they often end up making some less than stellar computers during the transition. This latest major transition from the old G4 chips to the Intel chip has been a revolution… and really it a contributing factor to why I bought this computer was its ability to boot Windows and OSX. But I just have to say that buying Applecare was one of the best decisions I ever made. I bought this mac from Apple’s online store in the refurbished section. I recommend doing this for anyone as it saves you money and the computer gets treated the same as if it was brand new. As I was getting the box sent to my house so it could be sent to Apple’s repair warehouse I have talked to a product specialist who has told me that if this last repair does not fix all of my issues they will send me a new computer branding my old computer a lemon (see below.) All of this would not be possible without Applecare. Lesson for today: if you are going to drop the money to buy a mac… buy Applecare too.

I am sour...

So yeah this is probably the most boring post on this blog right now (which is saying something) but I wanted to let you all know why I have not been posting for the last few days. As soon as my mac gets back into my greedy little hands I will be posting some videos of the vjing I did for the Stevedore last Friday which are pretty awesome.

So the show went great on friday. The Skylark Cafe is a great place to see a band… and also a good one to do vjing work at. Charlie the sound guy who works there is on top of his shit. He was super helpful and gave me a little cramped spot right next to the soundboard to setup my gear.

So yeah the show went really really good. This is the first time I felt in the least bit prepared for. I had 4 days to prep and primp and boy did it come in handy because The Stevedores threw me a curve ball right before the show and changing the set list.

I was also able to get a soundboard recording of the show and a two channel video feed of the show so video will be popping up around the net.

Here is some video from The Stevedore’s New Years performance at the Skylark. The song they are playing is called Blackcat Contraban.

Another one of south/west seattles neatest bands Bend was there. They are pretty amazing live. I have seen them play with the Stevedore before. They were great tonight. They talked to me about doing some vjing for them so who knows!

So yeah good show good people… nice time all around. I will be edting the video from the performance over the next few days and I’ll post some of it down the road.

So I have been asked who what where and how of what I’m doing for these performances and I wil be detailing that soon if anyone on here is interested.

It is 5:14 in the morning and I can’t stop poking at this old ibook. It was given to me to fix by a friend and I am doing my damndest to make it work again. So kernel panics galore- this is basically when a mac does the equivalent of a windows blue screen of death… it means something pretty significant is screwed up in the hardware. I thought it had to do with the hard drive as the panics would happen anytime I tried to install leopard on the machine it would get 15% into the install and kernel panic on me… So I told the guy maybe it’s the hard drive so he went out and bought a pimporific 250gd ATA hard drive from newegg. I took his ibook completely apart ala this article. After i got it all pieced back together I turned it on and it powered on! This is always the first test to be done on any electronic device after an intense tear down. But alas upon attempting the Mac OSX Leopard install… kernel panics. So I tried a PRAM reset… The magic Apple-option-p-r hold down after restart trick and…

it worked a little bit longer but still now dice.

Technology does not like me much right now. I give up for the night. Tomorrow… well today really i do vjing for The Stevedore at The Skylark in west Seattle. If you don’t have something else to do be there it should be a good show!

more video goodness for this rather geeky post… it is even weirder than the previous attached video. This one was me playing with a video glitch in a bad rip of the Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto… to quite beautiful results I think.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

So just got The Hot Dog Cycle site up… it is janky but functional. Have a bit more work to do before I call it good. Stooopid HTML CSS making me crazy. Just put that there!!! Oh well.

Had to give Jed a lifeline phone call on web crap ala Who wants to be a millionare? He informed me of awesome things that I have yet to explore involving a video embedding implementation of a free flash plug-in that plays just about every file that I work with.

Also put up The Hot Dog Cycle trailer up on Youtube… I am super dissatisfied in the quality. Probably going to upload again in the next few day.

So the trailer is up on the site.

You can see it by clicking the play button in the “Video I have worked on.”

The movie is almost done… completely… for reals.

I am in the process of finishing up thehotdogcycle.com so that will be up soon and I also have to write a thing called “Production Notes” for our Withoutabox submissionto the Seattle International Film Festival. Withoutabox is amazing. It takes a lot of the pain in the ass out of submitting to festivals. Withoutabox has a special deal with just about every festival out there for an extra special withoutabox only exteneded extended deadline.  This extended deadline is the only way we are able to submit the film at all as this tuesday is the final mix session at Bad Animals. That process has been pretty amazing… but I’ll save that up for an upcoming post.

So I don’t know about you but when I see something cool or different or innovative that has to do with technology I have tendency to spend weeks pining over the thing. I do google search after google search trying to read up on the item to see if this piece of tech is something I actually need (which I rarely do).

For christmas I got a ThingamaKIT and have spent the better part of a month trying to find out everything I could make it do.

What is a ThingamaKIT?

So I got the ThingamaKIT for the day little baby Jesus wasn’t born on and have spent the last month waiting impatiently to assemble the kit… but alas no time for love Dr. Jones. Until last week when I found my desk covered with resistors and capacitors and other amazing electronic bits. I was also reading every guide I could find on how to make this thingamawhatever the best thingamawhatever it could possibly be.

Hack-a-day is a beautiful blog that I have spent many a day reading and marveling at it’s sheer brazen worship of people who say fuck the manufacturers warranty in favor of technological understanding. Hack-a-day had an amazing article on hacking the thingamakit (which is highly encouraged by the people who sell the kit no warranties are being voided here). So yes go and be merry and buy thingamakits and make little noise making friends for yourself because making the things you play with is super cool!

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

I will post more video of my new little bleepy friend sometime in the near future.