Friday, December 10, 2010

STUCK WITH HACKETT

Stuck With Hackett Premieres tonight on the Science Channel.
Check it out... It's a fun show. I know, I edited it!

Sunday, November 28, 2010

The smartphone

Yes, 1 in 4 or you -- or some inordinate percentage, already have iphones and blackberries and androids -- but until two weeks ago, I was stubbornly holding onto my old dumb txt-ready-but-not -much-more-than-that cellphone.
Upgrade - to a super duper fancy dancy smartphone; a MYTOUCH 4G to be exact. Never one to fall into the Apple camp readily, I didn't actually forgo the Iphone so much as say NO FRIGGIN WAY to another ATT contract. Been there, done that, made a vow never to go back.

So, Android-phone, you are my new techno-lust, my newest obsession. You are so sexy.

So, iphone store has about 200,000 aps, the android store has about 100,000 aps. In looking through the countless lists of top ten must have apps for this or that, I see basically the same 20 or so apps. Is it so? Is it really like cable television (with an exponential number added) Are there really so few good, download-worthy apps for either system.

Huh.

Let me know. tell me what you have on your phone.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

I was on Jeopardy


Last night, on Jeopardy, the 1600.00 question in double Jeopardy, under a Movies section was --

Pretty cool. I was, well a movie I made, was a question... wow.

Still feeling giddy, but as I was falling asleep, I did ponder a few goofy things.
1. I was happy that the contestant was able to quickly answer the question correctly.
2. I was impressed that he did so as I do think it's a bit obscure.
3. My next goal is to somehow be another question on Jeopardy, but - a cheap question. I'm aiming for 100 dollars. That means that I'd be sufficiently in the pop culture as to be expected to be an easy answer. Yeah, that's the goal. Now, how to to accomplish that without doing evil???

Thursday, July 08, 2010

The Bit Rate Calculator is all wrong!

Facebook has killed the blog. That's kinda true, isn't it? There was a time when I would spin a ten word thesis thought into an essay. Admittedly, some were better than others - and that was the overall life of a blog. Facebook as killed that. The ten word thesis is nothing more. "Today I am blue" "Shouldn't have had that last Chili Dog" "Earthquake".

argh.

So, here's an attempt at a blog entry again. The fact that the microsoft word plugin that worked well with google blogs doesn’t work anymore, doesn’t make this easier; I’m typing in the clouds now, hoping that this will work. Life is a continual experiment.

I’m working on two new projects, both similar to each other. Action/coming of age movies. One is being fast-tracked. If we can get it all together, we could be shooting in the fall. In Europe. More realistically, it will be in the springtime. No matter, it’s very cool and exciting. More to follow. Hopefully.

To my left, the machine that was rendering a nine part DVD series for three months now renders another DVD project. For some reason, this supposedly simple output, something that should have taken no longer than a few hours, has taken three days thus far. Don’t know what it is, but the computer is getting a lot of predictions wrong. With DVD authoring, predicting final size of files is of utmost importance. You want to play as close to a zero-sum game as possible. You want the disc full, but of course it can’t go over. Normally, the calculators and bit-rate predictors are accurate to within a few “K”. For some reason, I’ve been off wildly on this one - hundreds of MB, signifying - failure. Argh, Frustration. Hair pulling - virtual.

I need to wrap this one soon as I have another job coming down the pike. Gonna be running a Sumo Wrestler over with a Smart Car. Gotta get prepped and in gear.

Fun times ahead.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

working and rendering

To the left of me, my Mac-Hac-Pro is rendering away at a major show -- 18 hours that will span 9 DVDs. It has occupied my time non-stop for the last two months. At last, I see light and it is with great delight that the computers are doing their jobs without complaint.

I am allowing myself a bit of time to blog (all too rare these days) and return to a story which I've been working on. In scraping up childhood memories to exploit for this current screenplay, I am recalling a favorite childhood book, The Magnificent Inventions of Alvin Fernald. Anybody here remember it? If you have kids, a boy around 8 years old, this is a good one to have him read. I don't think it matters how long ago it was written, I believe it would still be very entertaining.

Back to work...