The Merricam - No-Cost "Steadicam" DIY

Via Kangas.
Good grief. This is simple. And the footage looks great.
Good. Grief.

Just a buncha tabs from my browser

It turns out that black loose clothes are the best to wear when you're trying to stay cool.

Ha! My inclination is to believe the director fixed some problems with this musical. The writer(s), shockingly, didn't think so.

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Reviews of the best altimeter watches of 2014.

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An XML - to FCP X translator (so you can get FCP 7 projects into FCP X) is ten bucks.
Apparently it will also get projects into Adobe Premiere.

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To get OMF's out of FCP X you'll need another translator which is either sixty bucks or a hundred fifty. I haven't figured out the difference between the two versions.

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Apparently the only way to scuba dive in Atlanta GA is to go to the aquarium and swim with whale sharks. They won't let you use any of your own gear except for a mask. I'm presuming this is because they're worried about where your gear has been.

Innovative Theater Awards

I really love the NYIT Awards. The thing, to me, about them is that they have a real "home town" feel in a place (New York City) which can frequently feel cold and brutal. Especially the theater scene.
Plus a lot of my friends won. Which is also awesome. Even more were nominated. Also awesome.
I'm just straight-up stealing these pictures from Facebook. I don't know who took them. I'd love to credit whomever.

Director DeLisa White

 Actually, I think the NYIT website hasn't actually posted the winners for 2014. But Backstage has an article on it.

Lighting designer Kia Rogers. 

Two thousand productions. The awards are based on two thousand productions. Thousand.
A list of the winners.

All The Things Going On

So you're supposed to live 8 minutes longer for every minute you exercise. But won't I be 8 times more miserable during that time I am alive?

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I can't parse my statements from Amazon Digital Services. They sent a check for $15.45 and another check for $10.49. I think that means I make more money as an author than as a musician. I'm not sure.

Turns out my decision about replacing the Mac Pro we have was not something that needed to be made. The Mac Pro crashed and died. Doesn't seem like it wants to reboot. Like, you know, ever.
So we've replaced it with a new i7 Mini. Which I'm spending all day setting up.
With 16GB of RAM (which I, of course, had to buy from a 3rd party in order to make the price $150 rather than $300) it's a pretty fast machine. Easily the fastest Mac we've had.
It's not quite the power workhorse that the PC is: but that's mostly because the PC has a thousand dollars of video card in it for 3D rendering.

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Gun laws in Colorado? There aren't any really.

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I am still really amused by Dead Raid (1301). I have "finished" the movie many many times. I had a computer crash and quite a few notes from our distributor which necessitated a lot of "back to square one" activities like changing the aspect ratio and re-creating all the robot sounds. But I still like the movie. There's a big ensemble scene which still cracks me up.

How Should Your Android Look Today?

As we frequently do, we need an android.

At first I was down with this pseudo-nude look. Making the skin look like this would be hard. And the reflective metal pieces would make movement a nightmare.

Trying to figure out what an android in our next movie should look like. Oof.

This armor is hard but maybe not impossible? Perhaps with a base of motorcycle armor and foam-filled cloth pieces and rubber sections it would work. I particularly like the piece over the abdomen and the neck section.

The base mesh is, to me, the tricky part on this costume. Plus, of course, getting it to not gather and wrinkle at all -- that's very tricky. The breast pieces don't work for me, but I do dig the tank-driver's helmet and the way it connects.

I also particularly like the pieces on the upper thighs. Getting them to not gather and flop when the actor walks will be tricky but they look great.

Big Monitoring

I got a Seiki monitor off of Amazon http://www.amazon.co...0?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It's a 39" monitor for $340 delivered (to the US). The refresh rate is limited to 30Hz at "4K" resolution and I drive it with my Quatro 4000 video card.

So far I really like it. I've fiddled a bit with Windows font sizing and such.

All of my "professional" work is audio-for-video so it's really nice to be able to have the mixer up, with a reasonably sized video window, while having enough space to edit on. It's also nice to have a reasonable number of tracks to be able to see at one time. Oh, and the 5.1 meters show up too.

I'll probably do some massaging of the way the screen is set up as I live with it. The slow refresh doesn't bother me as far as working goes but NTSC video looks very, er, "video" to my eyes on this screen at 30Hz. So I slowed it down even further: 24Hz. There is lag, sure, but the video is prettier.

Here's the link to the screenshot via Imgur: http://imgur.com/JCIYobp
The image below is perhaps annoyingly large so feel free to look at the imgur link instead.

Recording loud electric guitars in one's apartment (Opus 24, Volume XVI, No. 2)

I got my new Redco plate.

It came in a nice ziplock bag. The total price with shipping was like $80 which, honestly, is a great deal. Yeah, if I spent a couple days sourcing parts and stripping wire I could have made it for like what? $50? But I wouldn't have done as nice a job and I wouldn't have the front panel labeled as well. Oh, and I don't even have the tools for working with shrink-wrap so let's just call it an even $350 for me to do this work. Plus I'd need to practice for a couple days. So yeah. Redco is the way.

A fine job making cable.

First thing I did with it was to label the ends.

Now I just have to figure how I'm going to mount the plate. I may just put a whole bunch of holes in the side of my road case.

The big holes for the actual connectors are (I believe) 15/16" (don't you just love Imperial?) Then I have to add holes for the machine screws which you see on either side. Those are 1.25" apart on center. Then the actual holes for bolting the plate to the roadcase (in the above picture those are the empty holes -- you only see one of them).
I think that will be best. The plate is of course designed to go on an electrical junction box but I feel my method would be better. Unless it isn't. In which case I might change my mind.

Dreams of amplification

I need to record electric guitars. I decided that I'd use a real amp and a real speaker I just need to make the sound coming out of the speaker real quiet.
So I went ahead and got a road case. It still needs some silicone in the joints. But it went together well.
I also ordered some batting to put inside.
Lastwise I'm getting Redco to put together this plate:

The TRS will go to spade lugs and the XLR's will go to mic cables.
How far will I be able to knock the SPL's down? In my dreams I end up with like 60dB SPL A-weighted with a screaming guitar.
Those are my dreams.

Power consumption

Editor's note: you do not want to bother yourself by reading this blog post. 
So. These dang MacPro towers run very hot. Also, my studio now has a deal where I pay my own electric costs. As a classic model in economics, this now encourages me to reduce the amount of electricity I use.
Note that the amount of heat is directly related to the amount of electricity.
When asking about the charges per kilowatt hour, my landlord gave me this handy chart:

this month it's $0.34

in june it was $0.31

in april $0.27

Of course it's not consistent. That would make calculations too easy.
I feel fairly confident Mac Pro eats between 115 and 318 watts. is about 85kW/h to 235kW/h a month. And if we pretend that we pay thirty cents a kWh, that's somewhere between $25 and $75 a month. Probably not quite $50 on average. I'd guess about $30 on average.
Still, that's $360 a year.

Our office is number 10.

Thing is, nowadays, I could get a Mac Mini for a thousand dollars which benchmarks faster. Those are between 11 and 85 Watts. So maybe 20kWh a month? So electric cost of six bucks.
So it'll cost about $72 a year to run a new mini. Versus $360 to continue to run the old Mac Pro.
The new mini would pay for itself in about 3 years. And it would irritate us with its heat consumption vastly less. And the fact that the mini is faster means it won't even be working as hard as the Pro.
Huh.

Wetsuit Thoughts and Notes to Myself

I have an extremely light-duty wetsuit. It's basically a Lavacore 3mm rash guard. But my goal is to get a real wet suit.

Now I am dry suit certified. But a thing with drysuits is that you need to use giant-pocket fins because your feet are in boots. And dry suits are very expensive.
But there are these things called "semi-dry" wetsuits.

The Cressi Lontra comes very well reviewed except that it's not made anymore.

The Henderson Aqua Lock comes recommended. And it is very interesting in that it has micro-fleece as the liner.
Now the thing is I want a suit without boots so I can wear full-foot-fins. And yeah, my feet will get cold. But these full-foot-fins I have exhibit so much more speed and control than regular fins. So uh. So yeah.

Please Vote

Click on this: It'll take you to vote so we're eligible for this grant. I don't know what sort of chance we have, but I figure it's worth a try.

Click me

Please click and vote. It's relatively painless. You have to be logged into Facebook but it doesn't seem to do anything harmful, it just wants to make sure votes aren't double-counted.

Payout!

So we got a payment from a couple sales on Friday and looking at the report I realized we'd actually gone above our arbitrary amount of money after which we start paying actors and editors and writers and stuff on the movie Android Insurrection.

And I'm really kind of tickled to be able to start paying that "deferred" money. You know, "monkey points". Well the monkey is here and he has a banana for you. This is where the analogy breaks down. Look. Nobody's getting rich. Most of the checks I'm writing are for less than a hundred bucks.
But hey! It's something!
To be in the black like this is something, as a producer, we're really proud of. We hope there are many, many more checks to write.

Melissa Schlachtmeyer

Melissa Schlachtmeyer, sister of Laura, passed away on August 6th.

There's a memorial service in New York for Melissa:

Sunday, October 19, 2:00 p.m.
Fifth Floor Theatre
Tisch School of the Arts at NYU
111 2nd Avenue
New York, NY