Post Birthday Ramblings

Once again it has been far too long since I last blogged >.<

Theres not been that much going on in my life recently, just work which is even more boring than usual in this post exams period as theres so much non teaching time.

Last week was my birthday. Yes thats right I have reached the grand old age of 27. My parents came over for dinner on the day, but the main thing we did was go away at the weekend. Saturday was spent travelling to the hotel and then my brother and I went into london and saw Indiana Jones at the Odeon in Leicester Square. Second time for me but his first. Its a fun movie, and I think it has a similar enough vibe to the previous ones. I've never been a particularly rabid Indy fan but I enjoy them enough.

On the Sunday we went to Legoland which was fun. I took a bunch of pictures and some video, some of which I will be posting probably on my youtube account. I purchased a Lego AT-ST which is cool.

That ones not mine, I nicked the picture from the interwebs. But I built mine last night and didn't get round to taking any pictures of it. Anyway, its neat.

My parents gave me Okami for the Wii which I have only played a few hours of so far but its an amazing game. I love the art and the setting, and the fact its a game where you actually help people. Playing as a wolf has its appeal too ^^

My main present to myself was this

Which was suggested to me by Alex. Hopefully I'll finally be able to get decent quality audio recordings with a good setup like this, and its USB which is handy. Haven't had a chance to set it up yet as I had to get it delivered to my parents house as they were delivering it by courier. My Dad dropped it over last night. I'll have a fiddle with it tonight hopefully.

Until next time, sayonara

The Tripods!

No... not those tripods. Lets try again.



The Tripods!



Yes that sort of tripod! Yesterday I was working on a video idea and I've decided that I'm going to need a tripod for my camera, along with a blue/green screen in order to be able to finish it, so I think I'm going to invest in a tripod. Time permitting I might pop into Tescos tonight and see what I can find, just something cheap.


If this idea does work out it might be a way for me to make more videos more often in a not-quite-blog style, but to talk about films that I love.


In the meantime, stay safe from invaders from Mars!

Holy giant robot suits! (well, nearly)

So I was reading BBC news website today and I came across an article that was pretty cool:

US army develops robotic suits (excerts from article, it includes some video as well)

The lightweight aluminium exoskeleton, called XOS, senses [the users] every move and instantly moves with him; it is almost like a shadow or a second skin. It is designed for agility that can match a human's, but with strength and endurance that far outweigh our abilities.
With the exoskeleton on and fully powered up, [the user] can easily pull down weight of more than 90 kilos, more than he weighs.
For the army the XOS could mean quicker supply lines, or fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly. Initial models would be used as workhorses, on the logistics side.
Later models, the army hopes, could go into combat, carrying heavier weapons, or even wounded colleagues.
There are still problems to solve, not least how to create a mobile power supply that can last an effective length of time.
But the US military expects to take delivery of these early prototypes next year, and hopefully deploy some refined versions within eight years.

Sounds pretty awesome to me, this is something that could have a lot of uses as the technology improves and presumably would come down in cost.

*Imagines anime style powered armour suits*

Hugs

Love @ all

Boo to iTunes

What do iTunes think they are playing at? Its so damn expensive, at least for those of us living in the UK. I was looking at an album I wanted on there last night, and the album only has 11 tracks. iTunes wanted £7.99 for it!

Its so ridiculous that we have to pay this much for music from iTunes, particularly since the tracks have DRM so I wouldn't even be able to play it on all of my equipment. for just a small amount more I could get the album on CD and be able to play it wherever I want, plus the advantage of having a high quality physical version.

iTunes is a lovely system, but its far to expensive. Very glad to see play.com undercutting them and I hope that either play can expand their available catalogue of downloads, or that it gives iTunes a kick up the backside to lower their prices.

P.S. Its Feburary 29th, is that special?

Thing thats bugging me the most at the moment: Why can't I manage to record audio without lots of noise on my computer?

New Job - kind of

Last week I applied to be a DJ for AllFurRadio. On Sunday night I had an interview, which i thought went terribly, but last night I got taken on as a trainee which is really cool. So hopefully the training will go well and eventually I'll get to DJ again. I've certainly missed it as it used to be a lot of fun. Hopefully I can build up my confidence some more as well.

Other than that mostly its just work going on, annoying and stressful as always. I have a script for next video that I'm sitting on because I need to find a good narrator, but I'm excited about it and I think its going to be good.

Worst movie news I heard recently: DiCaprio is planning a live action Akira movie. So so wrong.

I Like The Way You Move

Its finally done!

Music video for 'I Like The Way (You Move)' by BodyRockers. Enjoy!



I filmed and edited this over approximately a 4 week period. I could have been less I think but I did start to get bogged down with how complicated the whole thing was which was demotivating and slowed it down a lot. Overall I'm pleased with it. I did a lot of new things again, as I try and do with each video, and learnt a lot especially about greenscreening and compositing and while its far from perfect I think the general effect is good. Plus I have now unleashed nine of me on the world ^^ (watch the last scene hehe)

Oversleeping

I managed to over sleep this morning, turned the alarm off when it went off and then went back to sleep for another 15 minutes, therefore ending up being late for work. But it didn't matter because I didn't have any classes first thing this morning. Made me wonder why I didn't just set the alarm for later.

Yep not interesting, but thats my life sometimes.

So what else, well I'm STILL working on my next video, its turning into a bit of a monster as I seem to have ended up in some sort of development hell with it. Well that might be a little over dramatic, but it really is starting to get me down how slow progress is going with this. It is by far the most techincally complex video I have done so I just hope the sense of accomplishment when its finished is enough. I worry that I might be horribly over working an idea that just isn't that great. We'll see when its released, I hope that will be next week. Was given a really great idea for my next project last night, should be really funny and hopefully much easier to make as its another predominantly editing project.

Thats all for now, more soon

Aliens vs Predator: Rejected

I had been waiting for this movie with no small amount of excitement, as those who know me will have noticed. I am a really big fan of both of the seperate series, and for all its very obviouss flaws I still thought that the last AvP movie was pretty fun. Surely, I thought, if an aliens and predator movie with as many things wrong with it as AvP can be enjoyable then they just cannot miss....

Oh how naive and wrong I was. AVPR is RUBBISH!

I was intending to write a review of it now, but I'm just not sure I can bring myself to. When I say its rubbish I don't mean in a 'worst film ever made' sense, as I always say anyone who says that about any big hollywood movie just hasn't seen enough of the truely god awful films that are out there. And even for these sort of movies there are worse. Its not for example as bad as Rise of the Silver Surfer, the most awful film I saw last year.

Ok I'm just avoiding the topic now, must try and say something about AVPR... well the title is rubbish for starters...

What I don't understand is how they can take two sets of such well established and interesting mythology and just make it so mind numbingly dull. I did not care at all about even one of the human characters, in fact I almost found myself wishing none of them had survived. The film isn't logical for too many reasons for me to even bother going into. The film makers seem to have decided to try and up the ante in terms of both gore and shock moments, but to the point where I could hear people around me in the cinema echoing my thoughts of 'surely not...' and they have done it in such a cynical way to appeal to a certain audience that I'm sure would rather go and watch Saw. Theres so many things wrong with this film that I'm just going to give up...

No not quite, what the hell were they thinking with that 'surprise' ending, to show something like that in a throwaway way at the end of such an awful movie, argh!

Ok I'm done *fumes quietly*

Don't go and see it, just don't

Don't watch it on TV

Just don't see it.... ever

Hello World

Hello again readers, if any of you exist :P

So its been a little while since my last post, I got totally bogged down there for a bit with work, but thankfully managed to get it all done in time. Just my luck though to get sick! I spent over a week in various stages of illness and had the majority of last week off work. I think I am finally approaching wellness again though, whatever that means for me hehe.

Still got plenty to catch up with for work, but I'm also trying to get back into the swing of making videos after a bit of a slow period part caused by lack of time, part lack of inspiration and part being bone idle >.> Filming a new music video at the moment. Thats going fairly well but slowly, I'm trying to make it a bit more polished and more like a normal music video than the last one. Also looking at experimenting with effects a bit more like I did in the 'Bunnies!' video. A couple of other projects I'm fiddling with too when I can be bothered, both still in pre production.

I suppose the other big bit of news is that I am working on a Uni application for September, to study film/tv production! Did most of the application about a week ago and since then been working on a personal statement, writing about myself is so hard. I think its nearly there though. So I'll be sending that in soon and keeping my fingers crossed.

Oh and Lego Star Wars rocks, of course =) Seems even more fun than the PC versions I had before, but its hard work playing with the motion controlled lightsaber, so for long sessions mostly using the buttons.

Good morning World, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

The Force Is With Me!

Yay, thanks to sweet Anne I finally got a copy of Lego Star Wars for my Wii!

These have been crazy hard to get, but now I have mine, and soon I shall be waving my wiimote like a Jedi/fool... well even more than normal ^^

Well I will be after I've made some progress through the piles of work I have to do >.< Anyway, thank you Anne!