above and beyond

I used to complain profusely about my vertigo when required to go and fiddle with cables and such in the gantry at the Odyssey Arena. This guy, on the other hand...

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

it's a book!

I haven't blogged since May. There are various, pointless reasons for this. But instead of letting me bore you with that, enjoy this instead. (h/t to @commentisfree and @heathercorinna.)

help! iDVD won't open! i'm ruined!

Every now and again - and they really are few and far between - I do bother to blog about something technically useful. So here's this term's attempt.

A while ago, to my horror, I received feedback from a client that noted how pleased they were with their product (in this case, a double wedding DVD - wedding and reception, full day of shooting plus ridiculously time-consuming cutting.) However, there was one minor complaint - I had made a common spelling error with the bride's name, not only on the printed skin of the DVDs themselves, but also on the menu of both DVDs. I was pretty horrified, as you can imagine, so set about to rectify the problem. That is to say, it went on the page stuck to the side of one of the machines with "Unavoidable problems" on the top. A couple of weeks ago, I went about trying to rectify the problem, only to discover - to much deeper, further horror, that iDVD - which I had cheated a bit and used to compile the DVD designs together - was refusing to speak to me. Icon would jump, 'iDVD' would appear in the menu bar for a few seconds, and then it closed.

What a situation - many arghs later, I began trawling the 'net for solutions. I was originally running IDVD 6; iLife has never been a priority upgrade for me, particularly in this case as I've been forcing myself to use DVD Studio as much as possible. Two weeks later, and the situation has been solved.

Apparently, this is bit of a common glitch that appears from iDVD 6.0 right through to 7.0.2. No-one seems to know where it came from or what it's doing. All they have are several different ideas about how to fix it. Honestly, you'd think we were talking about Vista here.

One of the most common starting points is to Repair Permissions for the drive, which takes 2-3 minutes via Disk Utility. It's probably a good idea to delete the Application preferences from your Home>Library whilst your at it. However, in this case, nada.

Next up, into Home>Library again and to locate the very fiddly 'com.apple.iDVD.plist' file. Out the window with that, and we were at the point where iDVD would stay open until the menu appeared.

In frustration, I nabbed a Family pack of iLife '08 and install the upgrade. However, as the error was already know to be common to iDVD 7, it persisted! However, having located an Apple Support post that was actually written by someone who understood the problem, I upgraded all the way to 7.0.4, and by a miracle, the issue has disappeared for now.

It's the first time I've encountered such a problem with Mac software. I've come across some random crashed before - Safari is the most obvious culprit, but grown-up programs like Compressor and LiveType have also been know to topple down pretty quickly in my presence after a long day. However, for a complete shut down to be caused by something as simple as a preferences tweak or a misplaced font (so says the gospel according to DJ anyway) is really a bit irritating. But I guess it's the small price we pay for using an OS structured the way it is. It could be worse. It could be Vista.

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a new power is rising, part ii

We got broadband. I've already used nearly 10% of the monthly limit getting through a backlog of updates and downloads I've been saving for the occasion. Considering we're in the back end of nowhere, it's bloomin' quick at 7 megs. Good times.

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twittering on

Always kinda liked Twitter, even though simultaneously considering it completely useless. Well, I might actually use it now after discovering that a little-known robot makes it completely Skype compatible - and therefore completely eliminating the need for running an extra application if you couldn't be arsed logging on to yet another web-based app - as my previous diatribe against Google Reader et al has already indicated, I like things to be possible in as few clicks as possible.

I don't know if this means I will actually use twitter now - I still think facebook updates are, for me, a more-viewed version of the same thing (not as public, but people who might actually be interested - you never know - will see them!) But at least, if the notion grabs me, it might be a whole lot quicker.

Find the article about the quick setup for twitter for skype here.

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a new power is rising

Something I honestly thought would never happen is about to begin... the homestead here is going broadband. Honestly, we had the internet before most people around here, back when Dixon's Freeserve existed (before it became Wanadoo, and we were still using it, and Orange, when we're not) was the ISP of choice, when men were men... etc. and everyone thought downloading Buck Rodgers via Napster in less an hour was about as cool as it could get.

Anyhoo, for the last few years my mum was cranking along on BT Surftime 24/7, an anytime dial-up provision which sufficed without being particularly, you know, useful. And this was fine until I moved home as a bankrupt postgraduate. For a while I never got round to it, and after the half way mark I assumed/hoped/prayed that I'd be independent again by the end of the year (I love my mum; I love my family; not such a fan my best friend being a dog, out here in the wilderness. A particularly hapless mutt, at that.) But now, despite the fact I'm hoping to move out in the next couple of weeks - heard it here first - we are, in fact, finally going hitech with BT's Option 1.

Option 1 you scream? 10GB download limit? It's my mum, folks. She downloads some stuff off TeacherTube, fights with my little sister about her (my sister's) inability to use her own e-mail address when buying crap, and that's about it. In fact, here's the thing: so far, BT have been - wait for it - rather good.

Had a live chat with an adviser when purchasing, and am assured that the stuff will be delivered tomorrow, and activated tomorrow night. Nothing has gone wrong. I know it will. I know I'll open the box tomorrow, and there'll be a severe absence of, you know, an ethernet cable or something fundamental like that. But until then, my blissful ignorance leads me to say that so far, so good.

But I'm itching for it to be otherwise just so I can moan...

mind the pregap

OK, so maybe I'm a bit slow. Pregaps are something I was vaguely aware of, but never really bothered to understand. My bad. Having now read up on them, I spent the last hour or so raiding my CD collection, and finding some absolute gems of hidden tracks from some great artists. A quick hook-up through the desk to Garageband, and I'm up a load of new, easily accessible mp3s.

Favourites so far include the original demo of "9 crimes" on 9, wherein it sounds like Damien Rice does all the bashing and backing vocals himself, based around a much harder and edgier guitar riff - much better to me than the piano-based single. Another great one is "I Just Can't Get Through To Myself", a snappy two minute wonder from David Gray on White Ladder. Do yourself a favour, find out what the hell I'm talking about on wikipedia and then get stuck in. Happy hunting!

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streams of joy

"This is the app that lets me drink straight from the Internet firehose, and I couldn't live without it." - Cory Doctorow [Boing Boing]

Having been consistently irritated by the way I get at all the RSS feeds I like to follow, I threw in the towel with all previous attempts at a fulfilling relationship today and went a-hunting. And with immense success. Was playing with Flock for a while and its built-in reader, which I still reckon is a nice concept if a bit messy. I also could never find myself enamoured with web-based readers, such as Google Reader which Dave only yesterday tried to rope me into.

Happiness, it turns out, appears to come in the form of the frankly-gorgeous NewsNetWire, a free Mac stand-alone utility, that already I find myself horrendously attracted to. It's sleek, it's slimline, and more importantly, it works. Really, really well. Download it now and pack all others in, children, the king of readers/aggregators has landed and I can't believe I only came across it today.

It also has an iPhone version, and yes, some plug-ins for Outlook etc. so that those backward Windows users can join in to. Check out the selection here. Then do yourself a favour and download the lot.

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shiny

Booted up our monstrous Dell desktop (machine of a thousand faults, don't buy one unless you have a thing for talking to people in call centres) to try out the Windows-only Beta of Google's much-hyped Chrome browser. On first look, it's a bit underwelming, being basically Firefox 3 with the Flock 2 startup page. It's very tidy and all, but that's really the only improvement on open-source browsers; i was really expecting little gizmos such as a RSS signal or something similar to Flock.

But then again, sleek and minimal puts it in Safari's range, and that's the market it's probably aiming for. Still, I wonder once the buzz dies will all the techies quietly remove it from their docks, or does it have enough to make it the default? Maybe the lack of bells and whistles will be what sells it after all.

seinfeld plus gates equals...

The script for this ad is so terrible I don't know where to begin. I thought I was alone in this, or maybe it was one of those things (like Alan Carr, Catherine Tate or the entire cast of the original Office) that I just don't get but everyone else insists is so cool, the polar bears gave it an approval of 94%. But thankfully, Darren Waters at the BBC Technology page has vindicated my thinking.

oh, cuil

Hip new search engine Cuil launched today, and I was intrigued. It looks nice, I thought. Kinda like the search engine version of Flock - personally, I'm not big on chunky and cute, but damn it if it isn't appealing all the same.

Pity, then, that it runs about as well as a recently blinded fish. How do I test this sort of thing? Search for information about myself, of course. Now, maybe I've got too used to the monstrous Google index, whereby you just whack in random words and out come the highest associations. My first experience of search engines, back in the pre-Google days, was with the now utterly hopeless AltaVista; but, in a shadowy form the service that made it obsolete, it was based on web directory and so the graduation to googling wasn't too much of a shock (unlike the horrors of Lycos and Ask - phrasing your search as question is a little annoying after a while when all you want to find is... well, what do men want (more than a visit from The Rock?) Come on, I was a teenager. (Obviously, as an incredibly employable NQT and media professional, those days are several partitioned hard drives behind me now.)

Cuil can find nothing. I can't work out what the system is it is working on. It looks nice, but nice won't get you anywhere. It's a lot like my MySkip experience. If you can't get your head around it in thirty seconds, the kids move on.

Thankfully, Rory Cellan-Jones has already torn it a new one on the dot.life blog. But still try it: and if you can, work out what it's smoking...

...maybe we can get it out on the streets in Belfast and use it to slow the spides down when they're legging it from the scene of an ASBO. "Wasn't me officer, it was the tosser in the baseball cap who looks like he's sprinting through tar..."

"Cheers, son. You know, that reminds me of a search engine I was using earlier..."

falling slowly (in bullet time)

Can't believe in hindsight that it's taken me a couple of years to finally go out and pick up the truly outstanding Max Payne 2: The Fall Of Max Payne". True, it's probably because, after spending several weeks tussling, puzzling, and mostly shooting my way through the awesome initial game, it froze on the penultimate level and became an object of great angst and pain. This should not reflect on the game as a whole, of course, because both are mind-blowingly good.

There are very few games that you will look at and be able to say, "This is why I want such-and-such a console." The few that spring to mind have been the Grand Theft Auto series for the PS2, Halo (if you like that sort of thing - not particularly fussed myself, too easy to survive when your life automatically regenerates, ya wusses... want you mummy to complete it for you, too?) , Super Monkey Ball for the GameCube (ok, joking a little there.) I honestly think the two Max Payne outings should be right up there at the front of Playstation's achievements. Why?

It's not the fluid gameplay. It's not the beauty of curving through the air, dodging bullets and returning in style. It's not the brilliant puzzles (which don't need to resort to extremes like Tomb Raider used to... how to kill a T-Rex with a shotgun, anyone?*). It's not even the sheer range of innovative structures brought to what should really be a straight-forward third person shooter.

It's the story. Currently being turned in a Mark Wahlberg vehicle (who to be fair, was probably the only option to play "tortured cop", after Thomas Jane stalled at The Punisher (I didn't hyperlink that one cause you don't want to know how bad it was). Borrowing from every film noir technique ever dreamt up from the 1930's forward, via David Lynch's back catalogue, this is storytelling at it's absolute best. Anyone who has ever sat through the marathon cut scenes in the PS2 Metal Gear Solid games can testify, even the best storyline can be killed if not told in the right way. Payne's saga is so gripping that even though most of the cut scenes are told in narrated graphic novels, you will hang on every single line. It would be criminal not to.

And the gameplay reflects it. The most striking thing about the first game was the nightmare sequences. For the uninitiated, the premise of the game is the murder by mobsters of Payne's family, and his subsequent quest to banish the memories. At least three or four times, the active gameplay returns to Payne's nightmarish memories, warped and haunted, of the scene, and you as the player actually play through his dreams...

The same happened to me today. Sixth chapter of the second game, you walk around an abandoned, warped but terrifying theme park fun house. This sequence does not contribute to moving the story in any way. There are no enemies, no gun battles, nothing necessary other than get to the other side to meet a contact. But the number of times I found myself whacking the bullet time button, diving out of the way, shooting at a cardboard cut-out that had just appeared, and most of all, jumped out of my skin... you become totally immersed in Payne's world, to the point of understanding how the character is haunted. It's an effect most modern filmmakers don't even bother trying any more.

Do yourself a favour. You can get both games preowned for a fiver. Do it now. NOW, dammit.


* In case you never worked it out, I tried sliding underneath him when he stood still and blasted him in the chest with the shotgun. But you got to have huge cajones to try it, amigo... cause everyone knows what happens if you get stuck at the mouth...

youth works

Perennially amazing folks Alliance Youth Works have a shiny new website, as designed by (the incredibly hard to stalk online) Craigery. (Nontheless, if you do wish to stalk him, there's a lengthly news story about him winning a scholarship for basically being a geek here.)

It's a very attractive website. But then, I did take a lot of the pictures, and what I presume is video - I say presume, because it utilises Shockwave which is still not accepted by Intel-based Macs. Apparently for no particular reason.

make like a shepherd...

I remain irritatingly drawn to Flock, despite the fact that it inexplicably crashes every time I check out the Times Online US Election blog. But this is what happens when you try to make Firefox sexy, I guess.

happiness is...

A discovery of some wonder made at the studio yesterday:

One of these + some of this + something like this + a couple of these = this.

(Ok, and a little of this.)

we must go

Spent yesterday working on the recording of a praise album in support of Mollie's Mission, a vehicular trek from Norn Iron to Cape Town in aid of several children's charities, including the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. So 13 hours were spent back at the COISC using the Church of the Res for session recording, produced again by the good folks at Komodo (who, many moon's ago, all the MNC stuff was recorded with.)

Was split reasonably evenly between the safe acoustic and more personally groundbreaking lead (electric) duties. Been playing for about a month with Dave's Hot Rod Deluxe, which although breaking the unforgiveable axiom - Fender + Fender = Musical Suicide - has actually been quite nice with my Strat. However, it just wasn't coming over right in the mix (a bit too wah) so to crunch things up a bit everything was channelled through an almost antique Marshall Valvestate. My word. A long way from my dodgy G50 RCD.

Actually, I was more pleased with my Tanglewood acoustic. Frequently accused of buzzing, particularly when capo'd on lower frets (mostly, I think, the result of the neck being snapped in half three years ago) it came across beautifully.

Certainly, compared to the painstaking process of the somewhat legendary MNC experience (somewhat documented via youtube herein) this varitable blitz of session recording was relatively smooth! There's still a lot of vocal and guitar stuff to be recorded and redubbed, but it's a pretty snappy turnaround for what sounds like a pretty unusual, great praise CD. (Unusual because it is great - as for my sins I've implied far too much before!)

DoubleCross

In order to somewhat polish off the narrative arc begun in the last post below, I thought, what the hell... so I digitised up the epic that is DoubleCross as well. I've got to admit, for me watching back all the outtakes (that no-one will ever see... well, not for a while anyway) has actually been the fun bit - not so much a trip down memory lane as a cruise along recollection road in a battle tank constructed of things I'd blanked from my consciousness.

DoubleCross began life... actually, it's probably more relevant to pick up the story where we left off with Discarded. [Still with me? You really should try getting out more. Anyway.] If you haven't read the bit from last time, scroll down and do so now. We'll wait until you're done.

SO... despite the lack of a narrative or any real skill whatsoever, Discarded did actually start something. The following summer, after several nights in a row spent immersed in film (regularly racking up five a night, stats fans... it was reckoned at the time that we watched at least 30 more during the course of making DC, which probably explained the number of script changes to incorporate swiped lines) I sat down and hacked out a script called Blown Away. The expletive-laden draft read somewhere between Snatch and Mallrats. Either way, it was pretty much unfilmable. I blame the rage on the fact that I did most of the writing whilst waiting for Russ to wake up in the morning, regardless of how many objects were hurled at him.

So we took it, and I started rewriting. I'd write a few pages, and we'd work out how to film it. The other two 'actors' Matthew and Martin, were roped in pretty early on - Russ subsequently used them both in legitimate short films over the next few years: Matthew's now something of a cult figure, I suppose.

Anyway, long story short, it turned out pretty great.

a) The police car at the start is, as previously hinted, a real police car. The Gardai resided across the road, and the local sergeant was usually warned before Russ started blowing things up to avoid any confusion. However, someone further up the street rang in to complain that some young hooligan was sprinting down the road with what appeared to be a handgun, and they came around just to make sure. Russ decided to leave the camera running to see what would happen, and got the perfect shot. It's pretty hilarious with the original audio. ("Howya lads... what's going on today then?" "Ah, howya Pat...")

b) The sound dips a lot in the YouTube cut for the obvious reason. Didn't want anyone to be offended.

c) The narrative is actually pretty understandable. There's a bit of a dip in quality in the middle, as some of the dialogue seems to have been swept behind Bob Marley at one point. A great pity if you're a fan of wordplay.

d) As in all productions, Puddles appears. Spot for a prize.

e) Early on, it was decided that for the look of the thing, we would film at the "Magic Hour" every day to try and get that really soft lighting as the sun goes down. It meant we could only really film for an hour and a half each day, and made rehearsals a mad panic. And we did rehearse!

f) The shoot out at the end was meant to have flash-and-smoke added, but we ran out of time in the edit - so it looks a bit wick.

g) Check out the irony in the "No Dumping" sign just at the end. Genius.

h) The graveyard featured is the same graveyard mentioned in another famed tale of decadence from this stable; it will however, not be discussed here.


So without further ado, ladies and gents... the two-parter that is DoubleCross




If you aren't sure about any of the storyline, check out this (old) synopsis.

Discarded

Every now and again, it comes up in conversation: at what point did I decide to get into film? I remember a great conversation had at my enrollment as a fresher for QUB Film: something around the area of, "Your A Levels are in... I'm sorry, what?" [For the record, Maths, Chemistry and Physics (ABB, don't be pedantic.)]

Anyway, I could cite lots of vantage points along the way. But really, my cousin Russell is to blame more than most. I spent two summers in a row sleeping on his floor and pestering him to let me do stuff. The second production, DoubleCross has moments in it that I can honestly say remain among the most special I ever had anything to do with - come on, it's REAL cop car and a graveyard shootout in a REAL graveyard! With fleeing spectators! - but the first, Discarded was, well... different. In all honesty, it was buried pretty quickly at the bottom of a deep pile of shame. But tonight I finally managed to get the VHS copy digitised. But perhaps I should explain a bit more about the production.

a) It was made on one of those big ass '80s cameras. You put a VHS-C straight into it, taped what you want, and never even imagined editing existed. The picture quality is something to behold - believe it or not, a lot of the 'damage' - e.g. light distortion and glare - was there on the original.

b) We circumvented the editing issue using two VHS machines. About as accurate as trying to hit a paperclip with a custard pie. From 100 yards.

c) Sound? No sound. Weeeelll.... we opted to have no dialogue (bad move - narrative is completely incomprehensible) and instead used pillaged film music throughout. How did we get it on tape? Used a HiFi turned up really, really loud...

d) Colour filters? What colour filters... went to the hardware shop, bought some coloured bulbs.

e) There's actually a truckload of our homemade fake blood - it's a bit lost in the graininess of it all though. Look out for it on the tree near the end.

f) The exploding grave shot makes me squeal with joy. I might upload the blooper reel, which gives away how it's done.

g) I had never acted before. I had never written anything before. I was, in fact, 13.

h) I mentioned the lack of a coherant narrative. To find out what the film is actually about, check out this page I built about it on my old, old website (geocities-tastic).


And so, ladies and gentlemen... surfacing for its first viewing in at least five or six years... I give you, the genesis of it all: Discarded.

here's lookin' at you, kid...

Was back up for a review day at UUC yesterday, and took full advantage of the non-restricted broadband to access lots of things I've been meaning to look at for a while. Top of the list were Blitzen Trapper, whose combination of country music and electronica is currently fascinating me greatly. (Cheers to Jonny B for that one... oh no, public exposure! What if your pupils find you...)

Speaking of pupils, a lot of people may now be living in fear after the realisation that more than a few of the people on our course all already popping up on the wonderfully uncomfortable Rate My Teacher website. Oh dear.

Was shopping for a new DVI to VGA adaptor earlier this week, and decided to also avail myself of some new clothing for my MacBook Pro. I remain quite fond of my eco-friendly cardboard protective casing, but society deemed it time to move on. So I bought a memory-foam-tastic LArobe case instead. [Making me, obviously, the envy of all my friends.]

Also, on Dave's recommendation, I've been Flocking around... it's not quite as exciting as anticipated, but again, the dial-up warlock may be responsible for that too.


Of course, the most exciting news there is is that tomorrow, the short epic that is Noir goes up against four other films in the final shortlist of Cinemagic's Young Filmmaker of the Year Award. We're probably more confident than we should be, but initial feelings are good. If you're free tomorrow (Sunday) at 4.30, all five films will be screened and then the award awarded in the QFT. There's very few tickets left but if you give me a shout there are some spaces left on our guestlist! (There's a lot of unsupportive girlfriends out there...)

half-term hangover

The last fortnight or so has been nothing short of mental. But, rather than try and simplify things and give a brief overview, I think I'm going to give a full blown commentary. [That, and I'm tired of marking discursive essays...]

Playrights went really well (the weekend before last - see below for more.) Spent all of the Sunday holed up in a trashed dressing room in the freezing cold QFT, staring at my MacBook and willing the footage to make sense. Eventually it did, and the finally four minutes went down a storm as it opened the show. Sadly, I don't think it'll get on YouTube (soundtrack copyright) but cheers to everyone who came up to the 'Film Crew' after and said it was awesome I guess. More work with Drama types is lined up as a result - the Film Studies experience lives on! (But with funding... gasp.)

Recovered nicely to go and witness the glory of The Frames at the Grand Opera House on Monday night. Though they played a mixed bag of really old and new (no Fake, hardly anything from For The Birds or Dance the Devil, for Frames fans...) it was an awesome gig. They've really come into their own when it comes to just getting up and playing whatever the hell they feel like, and the organic feel really shone through whenever they just started dragging on random collaborators and jamming away (including an inspired rendition of support act Mark Geary's It Beats Me which is a brilliant song. Apparently they do cover it quite a bit but Marketa Irglova was joining in which made the harmonies all a bit crazy...) But that's enough ranting about that.

Caught another great act on Tuesday, when we popped down to Common Grounds to see old favourite Mr Andrew Good introduce us to his new brand of muzak.
Andy's songs have always been quite good, but needed something to take them out from the realms of being 'just another singery-songwritery type.' And it has very much happened with the music now channelled through an absolutely brilliant five-piece, as yet unnamed band. (I'm going to keep calling them the Andy Good Experience until I hear anything better!) The songs have filled out magnificently, and as most of South Belfast is probably aware of by now, I think they're the best thing in a long line of good things.

Got to hear them again Monday night just past, as they were on the same bill as us down at Stranmillis' Student's Union, in what turned out to be a very homely, and pretty busy night of live music. Me and old PJ attempted to bring the sexy back somewhat with the first outing of a load of newish material we've been putting together. Though we felt it was a bit ropey, to be honest, a lot of it went down a bit of a storm which is really encouraging. Of course The Andy Good Experience then stole the show a bit (I thought) but then that was only to be expected.

In between all the pretending to be an undergrad again and whatnot, we did of course start back to school on Monday. Up to my eyeballs in marking, but starting to get the hang (or just getting less concerned!) of lesson planning and time management. Even managed to fit in some time for a bit of quality Need For Speed: Carbon action. [Ok, not really quality, more numbing escapism. Hey, there's not enough light for kicking a football off the wall anymore.] Between one thing and another, I'm actually physically wrecked. What's hilarious is that I lived the kind of life last week that I never bothered to do when I was actually living in Belfast, on account of being so lazy. I reckon Joni and her Big Yellow Taxi might have been onto something.

And one other thought... was gearing up to finally buy a proper domain and start getting a legitimate website for mediatree, but there are no decent domains left. Time for a rebranding? Possibly. Probably. Annoying so.

Back to work!