getting ouit much?

I spent much too much time outside in the sun today. Didn't get heat stroke or anything, it's just hard to keep up on my facebook games when I'm picking 8 buckets of Saskatoon berries, running errands around town, and going to the night gardens on the opening day of New Dance Horizons' "Secret Garden Tour". Made some Saskatoon Gelato when I got home and now am hoping to do something useful like veg in front of the tv.

Saturday laziness

Margaret had to work all day at the Dunlop at Sherwood where they had an opening of work by Vic Cicanski, Donna Kreikle, and i-Ann Siwek, as well as some garden events and dancing by New Dance Horizons. William and I watched Johnny English this morning then went to the opening. I'm really tired from staying up way to late watching Veronica Mars season 3, which I've been waiting four months for through the library (I was about 25th on the list, but luckily there were 3 copies). I also read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, an amazing book which was mostly drawings, all set in1931 about clocks and cinema. Check out the sample first pages on the website. I had a nap and am ready to watch Veronica Mars again until morning.

New videos

Two new videos for you today, one Professor Delusia, which was the first one that we shot and was all done in camera like Melies would have done them, and one video I've been playing with for a week on William's Lego blog. William's friend Rowan was over today and I shot material for another video, at their insistence, but have not done anything with it yet. New Dance Horizons' Secret Garden Tour began this evening, William and I went to a couple of them and Margaret is volunteering at one.

256 test for Sock character animation in 3D

Finally started finishing some things today, delivered Tanya's disc she needs to her, and delivered all the work for New Dance Horizons to them. I can now purge my drives of all the material there and start on something fresh. At home I began trying to work with the 3D features in After Effects. Instead of the layers being flat on top of each other, they have a Z axis as well to allow the layers to be further from or closer to the camera. I've not figured out the viewpoint yet. I'd like to build the town out of tin buildings and let the characters move throughout them, but it seems you need to keep track of where the buildings are because if you don't, your moving characters will simply pass through them.
The BFA show opened at the MacKenzie Art Gallery tonight. I went alone, got Allan Dodson for my Warhol series. The art was very good, probably the best graduating show I've seen in many years.
Margaret and I watched two more episodes of Torchwood season 2 (thanks for downloading them Paul), both of tonights were tragic and more than a little melodramatic.

255

I bought and assembled a new chair for my computer today. It's not that I had a bad chair, but it was actually too big for the small space I have, so I often had to sit awkwardly to type. There was a sale, so I impulse bought. I might get William a new chair tomorrow as well. Felipe called me from the Filmpool and asked if I'd write program notes for an Ian Toews screening. As I'd planned to write an article on Toews in the near future, I said I'd be delighted. I've got about 4 weeks. I have the first two of three New Dance dvds done, and the third is probably done (left at lab burning, haven't picked it up and tested it yet). Paul came over and ate cheesecake, played Lego, and now we'll watch Torchwood.

247

I got new contact lenses yesterday but the left one isn't sitting right and I've got double vision with it. The doctor thought it might settle after I wore it a while, but after 12 hours I just had a headache. Today I'm only wearing the right one. We are wondering how many days/weeks/months I would have to do this before it seemed natural?
Today I finished editing the videos I shot documenting the secret garden dancing last year. Mostly it was just trimming head/tail of single performances, but I did do some editing on the big pelican performance since I was able to shoot it twice, once at the rehearsal and again later in that day. Other performances that were done twice didn't intercut well as the time of day differed too much (evening/day), but this big piece was in full day on the creek and looks pretty good. This afternoon I created my new video, but the sound isn't recorded so it's not posted yet.

223

I spent the morning editing, partially End of Life trimming and changes, partially dance videos. I have two Avids in one room and I roll between them. This afternoon I came home and worked on my updated website, although I'm having so much trouble with the Dreamweaver design tools I might as well be laying it out with a typewriter and a jar of paste. I'm figuring out how to connect elements, but how to make things go onto the page where I want them completely eludes me. I missed the Gordon Monahan opening at the 5th Parallel at the university today but I saw his other opening at Neutral Ground, even though the temperature dropped from -7 to -42 between the two openings. Monahan is an artist in residence in our department and does some incredible audio installations using things like Theremins and modified pianos with new wires strung 50 feet out the back. The last time I saw him was in the summer, June and I sat in on one of his workshops at the sound symposium held here. We talked about Theremins and he's going to take a look at mine tomorrow to see if he can make the final adjustments so that the volume arm will work. We watched Ocean's Thirteen tonight, it was much better than the last one but I'm wondering why none of the female characters were in it and if that made it better or what? William went to school today even though he claimed he didn't like Bingo, which they play every Friday and is usually a strong lure to get him going. He changed his tune after he got his first black out today, the big winner.

221

I finally have my new video uploaded; "Madonna for Congress", the fifth chapter of my fictional "She Said" series. I don't know what was the problem with my videos over the past couple of days, I made them in the same way as before but the upload kept failing. This afternoon, as I sit here at home because William is sick from the antibiotic that his dentist gave him, I tried the Flash Video Encoder I got with my Adobe master collection and made a video one tenth the size of the AVI. In the end, it looks like a Youtube video, which is what I made it for. I'll need to make a proper video output of these, although I can't imagine looking at them on anything but a computer.
I got back to the edit room this morning, we moved the room so I needed to put all the external drives back on, and I was able to work on two avids back to back. I digitized the super-8 footage I got back a couple weeks ago, it has more promise that I initially thought, and I also started working on the dance footage I shot at the Secret Garden Tour last summer. I just want to make some quick cuts in that stuff, throw it back onto disc, and hand it over to New Dance Horizons. Primarily I got back onto the End of Life workshop editing, starting to work on the notes I got from our last meeting. We meet about it again next week.

221

I finally have my new video uploaded. I don't know what was the problem with my videos over the past couple of day, I made them in the same way as before but the upload kept failing. This afternoon, as I sit here at home because William is sick from the antibiotic that his dentist gave him, I tried the Flash Video Encoder I got with my Adobe master collection and made a video one tenth the size of the AVI. In the end, it looks like a Youtube video, which is what I made it for. I'll need to make a proper video output of these, although I can't imagine looking at them on anything but a computer.
I got back to the edit room this morning, we moved the room so I needed to put all the external drives back on, and I was able to work on two avids back to back. I digitized the super-8 footage I got back a couple weeks ago, it has more promise that I initially thought, and I also started working on the dance footage I shot at the Secret Garden Tour last summer. I just want to make some quick cuts in that stuff, throw it back onto disc, and hand it over to New Dance Horizons. Primarily I got back onto the End of Life workshop editing, starting to work on the notes I got from our last meeting. We meet about it again next week.

blackjack

I spent a good portion of today, at least the portions that weren't raining and hailing, videotaping dance performances at the New Dance Horizon's Secret Garden Tour, and will be doing more tomorrow. As I can't wait to get back to Harry Potter, I'll have to leave details for tomorrow.