Friday, February 29, 2008

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Yesterday William had two teeth pulled. It was pretty horrific I think, but of course he bounces back well. The tooth fairy brought him a bonus Lego set (the aqua-raiders shark). We hung out and watched tv most of the rest of yesterday, saw Eragon. It was okay, I was particularly amused by the way magic works, that the magic words in elven were not just spells, the words ARE the thing. In semiotics, that means the sign is the signified, which can only happen in fantasy.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

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I got the colour animation out of the computer at the university (chose full compression, if you do not choose any of the codecs or specifically select the no compression, then the default is to not let you export). I recorded a bit of William's voice (I should also give him writing credit as this is all him) and put it together with an after effects background. Enjoy.

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Watched Boewulf this evening with Paul. I couldn't get into it, I found the animated style (I was expecting a live action movie with lots of CG effects, not an entirely animated film) to be distracting. No one seemed grounded, people moved like they were Spiderman, sliding and almost hovering even when they were just supposed to be drinking mead. Overall, the constant feeling that I'd rather be watching Shrek stopped me from connecting with any of the characters (even though it was written by the generally solid Neil Gaiman). A disappointment.

This afternoon I worked with Jade Duckett, helping him to edit his film I'm mentoring him with. Cutting on Imovie was ridiculous but we finally figured out one or two useful approaches that weren't completely time wasting. Unfortunately, Jades first roll of film didn't work out due to a loop being lost in the camera. This meant that the poetic footage of the rooms in his house and his shower curtain that lead up to the fight scene were all lost. Only the fight scene remained. As I may have mentioned previously, he lost his actors who were supposed to fight so he played both fighters. I helped him set it up, getting the camera locked down so that we could do a split screen effect. We had to put that together in Final Cut pro, then export it and bring it into Imovie. It is a bit ridiculous but also quite entertaining. My main contribution today was to boldly put a lot of short edits into the film. I hope Jade can learn to be brave with the footage, jump in and actively work it and manipulate it.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

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I sat at the computer much of the day, I finally got my weekly video done for one thing. I recorded the sound almost two weeks ago but had no clever idea for the image until about four days ago, but needed the run of the living room during the day for a half hour and that didn't happen until this morning. The animation effect was supposed to be easy but I fouled up the photoshopping and made the flipbook image nearly useless. It ended up taking me three hours rather than 30 minutes. It's called Blockbuster Ballbuster. Enjoy.

It also took me much longer than expected to re-type the program notes from the Stan Brakhage screening I curated in 1997. I took one paragraph from it regarding "Moth Light" and put it into my other blog.

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Spent the entire day at the office today, mostly editing on the End of Life project. I need another half day to get the cut down to the right length, then some sound and graphics to make it presentable for our meeting in a couple of weeks. I've got an assistant who'll help with some of that work as well. I don't know where to buy sweetgrass anymore. You used to get it from Painted Buffalo on Dewdney but they closed a few years ago. There must be somewhere else but I can't guess where.
To break up the day, I worked a bit on the Flipbook computer, shooting a bit of animation with one of William's Bionicles. This is a software package that allows you to take single frames from a video camera into the computer and they'll be lined up as an animated film. I finally figured out how to shoot in colour (the trick being that the main layer that it defaults to will always be black and white and that you need to shoot onto the background channel, who knows why).
I also spent a while in my office finding missing elements for the website. I'll need to re-type a few things that I have lost the electronic copies of (I suspect a couple of them were typed elsewhere, perhaps the Filmpool).
William has been listening to a lot of books on tape before bed. Tonight I got him to record a Syd Hoff book (32 page Bernard On His Own) and have it on cd.
I am finally making use of my new 500gp drive. It has been sitting empty for a week. I have put all of my dvds into it (of my work, not my entire collection). I'll be able to burn copies of my work on the drop of a dime now (or about 30 cents actually).
I watched "Stardust" this evening. I've been really looking forward to it, it's based upon a Neil Gaiman novel that I listed to on tape last summer, amazing stuff. I was certainly not disappointed in the movie, but was disappointed that Margaret was feeling too sick and too tired to watch. We weren't sure if it was suitable for William (probably, but not on a school night, likely more for an early evening or a weekend afternoon due the occasional intense scene), so Margaret fell asleep and told me to watch without her. She'll love it, so I'll talk about it more after I see it again with her.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

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Margaret went to an Oscars party tonight. I watched clips but, as usual, not the whole thing. Neither William nor I got dressed today, staying in pajamas throughout. Margaret had to change of course, she's dressed as a rat. I think I need to stop typing as I just inserted all 80 or so of my video clips into my web site (still in progress, don't go looking for it) and the process was mouse heavy and very repetitive. Wrist and thumb are stiff. William and I watched a whole bunch of Reboot, season 3 today (I have very pool vhs copies off tv, barely watchable). He's into it, although mostly he likes to see them fighting in the games and this season doesn't do that as much as the earlier ones.

Happy Birthday Kevin.

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This afternoon we went tobogganing at Jeff Nye's house who lives near Lumsden in the valley. What an exhausting day! The snow was 1.5-2 feet deep and wouldn't support my weight. Even lying on a toboggan I would sink a bit, so had to push/paddle along with my arms just to get through the slower parts. Then in the end, I had to walk up. This required three rest stops, not only is the walk up-hill, but the sinking in snow makes everything so much more difficult that my heart was racing after only 20 meters. I shot some video, but I doubt it is any good. My energy was elsewhere.

Friday, February 22, 2008

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Had to got to get some routine medical tests today, no big deal but threw off my whole day and I didn't get any video out of it. All endeavors are better when you capture it on film. We lunched at the Novia and ran errands in the afternoon, including picking up the hard drive with my 71 new web clips on it. I'm rendering them to flash videos but it's taking hours. Below is a video that Angelos Hatzitolios shot of me around 1987 with a black and white security camera onto vhs tape. I digitized it without sound, only realizing later that it did have sound. However, the sound is uninteresting and foolish, detracting from the video. Silent, it remains mysterious.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

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Met with Chrystene today, Sisu is coming along well. She's shooting her pick-ups in a couple of weeks. Still lots of editing ahead. I wanted to remember the comment I made about a scene, that we see Tom through these other guys' eyes because we don't see Tom. Hmmm. Makes even less sense now. I captured more clips for my website today (about 50 more) so I think I have pretty much all the raw material I need to finish it. As with Chrystene's project, still lots of work ahead. i was getting ruthless in trimming the End of Life video, I cut section one down from about 20 minutes to 9. Six more sections to go and I'll have something concise and to the point.
William started swimming with his class today. He'll swim twice per week at school and once with lessons. When I walked down to pick him up from school, there were the usual cars idling. I noticed a disposible coffee cup on the road, obviously discarded by some parent. It seems evident that coffee is the new cigarrette. After school William got his hair cut. In the water it is looking quite long, which I'm not against, but it is getting in his eyes and so far he prefers it shorter. Rushing directly from school to haircut, William really wanted a snack, an ice tea and a peanut butter cup, so I stopped at a confectionery. They didn't have as much of a pop selection as I'd like since most of the cooler was taken up by specialized water. Water has become the new coffee. I barbequed some chicken tonight, the weather was great for it. Reminds me that going outside isn't just for smokers anymore. Cigarettes have become the new water.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

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I was locked out of the editing room today, my key card didn't work even though it worked on other doors (thus it hadn't expired). They system administrator, Kalyn's card didn't work either. I was meeting my assistant about the End of Life project but couldn't look at it. It ends up that the battery on the door was dead. I never considered that such doors would need batteries but it makes sense. After I finally got in, I did get a bit of work done, as well as collecting some clips of my films for the web site in the other Avid (love having two edit stations in one room).


There was a lunar eclipse tonight. We got William out of bed and into a coat to take a look (temperature has been rising, it's nigh -20!!!). The moon has a reddish glow.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

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Last night we watched Across the Universe (I bought it, keeping up my collection of Julie Taymor films). I loved it. It was solid eye candy, all the way through. I'm not always into that, except when it is done as well as this. Choreography was amazing. The use of the Beatles songs for nearly the entire soundtrack (not score, but actually all the dialog) worked for me. I grew up with all this music and she found a way to use the words not only to draw upon your memory and nostalgia but to give the words a new context and a new life. These songs were written to be seemingly general (all you need is love, etc) but every person listening to them and connecting with them brings their own specific meaning to them (that song that reminds me of...) . Taymor made every song very very specific, never general. This gave it real heart. To connect to people in general, you need to talk in specifics.

This morning I installed my new 500 gig drive, giving me a full Tb internal now. I don't know how I managed without it.

I helped Margaret set up a Flickr account and upload photos from the Ice and Fire Carnival from the weekend. Check it out here.

I also put about a quarter pound of hair product in and shot a video of myself for my self portrait section of my Warhol series. Here it is (about a minute long and silent).

Monday, February 18, 2008

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William got up today thinking about dragons. He wore a dragon shirt and a necklace Margaret assembled for him with a metal crescent shaped earing that could be a dragon tooth hanging on it. He drew a great dragon. Riding on that interest, I took William and Daniel (Leesa's son) to "Water Horse" today, as it is a provincial holiday (family day). Pretty good film. I'm glad the two boys were together, otherwise it might have seemed a bit intense at times. The previews don't indicate much about the WWII setting and the attempt to shoot Nessie with a huge anti-sub gun. Otherwise, it was light fun, well made, and worth my $3.

I uploaded my new "She Said" video. Margaret actually watched this one before it went out. She didn't watch "Make Up Sex" until it had over 600 hits (it just reached 1000 today!) and wonders why people aren't saying anything to her about them. Upon watching today's, it is quite apparent they are not about her. She asked me how I come up with this stuff and I had to name one of my ex's as an inspiration, I guess something good can come out of any situation (if you consider months of pain to be worth a few 45 second long videos on youtube...?)

Thanks Paul for leading me through the SATA issue, I found that it is compatible so I'll install it this week.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

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I got back to my Warhol videos today, did one with William in 7 colours with him showing off two cans of Campbell's soup that we were donating to the pyramid of soup at the MacKenzie a couple of weeks ago. We all went back to the park today to collect scarves and hats and wire sculptures left with the snowmen. It sure turned told over night. William got to climb a bit and I think appreciated some of the park more today, even though he got really cold, really fast. I bought a new hard drive because 500 gigabytes just isn't enough anymore. I've not installed it yet because I need to figure out if my new Dell computer takes SATA drives. We didn't do the crossword in bed this morning like we'd planned, so we going to do that now, so good night.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

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Ice and Fire Festival was today. Margaret worked really hard to get the kids area working, the weather was perfect and even warm enough for the snow to get sticky for snowmen. Chrystene Ells did a terrific snow bear. This evening William dressed as Darth Vader with glow sticks taped to his light saber and we all went out for the evening procession. My video played while Michele Sereda danced. From this vantage point, I shot so you can see the dance and animation, but due to the shape of the surface (a snow rock) the walrus animated character isn't as visible.

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I worked on my website for another few hours today, finally getting all of the descriptions for my films written with a page and maybe photos or a clip for each. The pages are there, although over half the clips are still missing (there will be a total of 80 or so films listed). Next I'll have to design the page to tie the films together. I told Margaret's dad what I've been working on and he asked what order the articles (and thus also the films) will be listed? I now have a quandary, do I list the films chronologically? By genre (drama, animation, experimental)? Alphabetically? I suppose I could offer all options with links to each, how long could that take?
That was my main obsession, then I got thinking about the Walrus and the Carpenter film that I just made a dvd of, the one I shot 10 years ago and that Michele Sereda wants to perform in front of tomorrow night. Well the dvd looks like crap, I think the transfer to video that I did was a bit soft and I'm deeply unhappy with it. It may be passable as most people won't be looking at the projection that much or that closely, but I feel I'd be letting them down. So this evening after watching the new superfriends dvd with William (Galactic Guardian: The Super Powers Team, 2dvd set, Adam West as Batman), I took the only image I have handy of the Walrus and the Carpenter (if I still have the original artwork, it must be at my office) and brought it into photoshop, cut the pieces apart and painted the gaps where the cuts appeared, and reanimated the scene in after effects. It will now be bright and sharp and 6 minutes long, rather than the original one.
Speaking of Batman, I started rereading the Frank Miller Dark Night comics from the 80s. They hold up so well, I'm amazed all over again. I have the originals up in the attic somewhere, but only the first series. He did a second series in 2001. The whole set is published in whappingly thick hardcover book that I just borrowed from the almighty library.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

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Happy Valentines Day!

Margaret worked all day doing workshops leading up to the Fire and Ice festival this weekend. The weather appears to be cooperating, it's supposed to warm up tonight and be about zero on Saturday.
I monkeyed around with my website most of the afternoon, getting a few obscure photos and film clips into place rather than the broad strokes I should have been doing. I need about 7 or 8 more film descriptions and I'll be done that part (other than clips, that will have to be later).

I 've mostly recovered from my ordeal yesterday. It hurts a bit but I'm certain it'll be gone tomorrow. Just a small hole and not even any bruises to show for it.

I made supper. Margaret and I both bought Belgium chocolates, so we can binge.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

228

First thing this morning I took a cab to the hospital for a twice rescheduled liver biopsy I needed to get done. It seems that my biliruben levels in my blood have been higher than average since at least 1990 (the first record my doctor had) and have been rising. He has been eliminating various problems one at a time and finally decided a physical test needed to be done. So what this meant was to first find the exact location of the liver using the CT scanner and capture a few images using that scanner (painless and easy) then with a local anesthetic applied (similar to the needle you'd get at the dentist) a one inch needle is inserted and a few more scans are done that give a bit more information (a bit painful, but mainly just from the initial anesthetic), and then the doctor takes two samples of the actual liver using a thick, four inch long needle tool that grabs a sample. The pieces are about a half inch long and a bit thinner than a standard pencil lead. This was not as painless. I then had to lie in the hospital for four hours to make sure they didn't hit something they shouldn't have (it's really close to the lung for example) and that the bleeding stops. Hurt for at least an hour. What hurt most was that the doctor wouldn't let me take pictures during the procedure, said he needed me to hold still. I imagine that is good, professional advice to prevent me from dying under his care, but who thinks about my professional mandate?



I'm supposed to take it easy for a couple of days. Sat down at the computer this afternoon when I got home to discover that my "Make Up Sex" video got 100 hits overnight. The other videos didn't see much action, so somehow this one got passed around. It is now my biggest seller, bringing my total hits for all my videos close to 1000.

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I spent about half my day working on my website. I finally have the hang of it, making really simple single pages for each of my films and linking them together and connecting photos and videos and other junk to them. I've got about 45 films written up (admittedly mostly cut and pasted from previous writing from the old website and from the dvd material I put together last year). I've got about 20 more films to write up and then get all the articles and curation statements put together. I did put the writing together, but the layout is a disaster so I need to fix it. It looks like I need to capture some more video clips, probably about 20, so that will put a delay in it all. I guess I don't have a deadline, perhaps summer, so I'm probably ahead.

This afternoon we went as a family to the park and looked at how the sculptures are coming along for the Ice and Fire fest this weekend. Margaret is working hard getting workshops and stuff together. I'll be replaying a film clip I made 10 years ago of the walrus and the carpenter for a new performance by Michele Sereda. Its about 30 seconds long. I ran past the office and managed to find a video copy I made from the 16mm, so half my work is done.

Watched "Rise: Blood Hunter", a vampire movie with Lucy Liu this evening. I rather enjoyed it. They never say "vampire" and it avoided clichés. What I liked was that pain was pain, people who were hurt or scared were quite overcome by it, so it seemed real and was never (very) gratuitous.

Monday, February 11, 2008

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The video I posted to Youtube yesterday was very successful. I also posted the link onto Facebook where I have over 100 friends, mostly filmmakers or film students, and I got over 200 hits within 10 hours. I thought I had posted a previous video a couple of weeks ago to Facebook but I think I messed it up somewhere. When I posted yesterday I got a question and some obvious results that I'd never seen before, so it seems apparent that I'd messed it up last time. I've been trying different things to get videos watched but most don't work well. One thing I did with my last one, "Madonna for Congress" was to post it as a response video to another video that I found. That video was a new clip that had been posted the same day of Madonna doing a speech about UNICEF. At the time I posted mine, the UNICEF video had 2000 hits (an obvious fast riser). A week later, with the link to my video displayed one inch below it, the UNICEF video has 8000 hits but mine still has only 40. While I still stand by this as a great strategy, in practice it must be flawed. Even if one in a hundred viewers clicked on mine, I would have seen 60 hits, but over half of that 40 was probably my regular viewers making the response level closer to 1 in 400. Considering that it took a half hour of my life to find that (seemingly) perfectly situated Madonna video, I think my only recourse is to get lots of mileage whining about my failure.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

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I just put up my new video for the week. William was at the dentist the other day and they had this mini camera attached to a dental tool that they were trying to look at his infected gum with. The switch to snap photos was disconnected (USB plug in the back of the computer was hard to reach since it was in a cabinet) but the video feed from the camera was on their computer screen. I shot some video with my still camera off of their screen and brought it into After Effects, cropped it and created a left/right kaleidescope sort of image (I was doing a lot of this in my early Modern videos) and then stretched it from 2 seconds to about 25.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

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Last night it got so cold the house was cracking. I'm not sure if I can find any of the cracks, but when I was awake in the middle of the night for a while, I could hear these really loud, sharp noises. One was at our window like someone bent the glass until it popped, and I was certain the window would have a huge break in it. The morning showed no evidence of it. There were other sounds emanating from other corners of the house.
Today William and I went to Paul's house. Paul took all his childhood Lego home from his parents the other day and had built most of it. There is a great train and a very cool rocket that is mounted on the back of a truck which has pivots so that it raises the rocket into launch position. The sets date mostly from the late 70s and early 80s, but he has some kits from later as well.

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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.

Friday, February 8, 2008

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William's new antibiotics in capsules are a bit easier on him but he's still been a bit sick (no more vomiting but problems out the other end instead) so he stayed home again today. He's getting well enough that he's less able to just stay in bed and rest, so he'll have to get back to school tomorrow. He's finally getting the hang of swallowing the capsules. The dentist suggested opeing the capsule and mixing the powder in with jam. This is like what I had to do when I was his age, except with apple sauce. The pharmacist suggested keeping the capsule whole and burying in into a spoonful of ice cream. This seemed like a good idea so we tried it but he just couldn't do it and ended up with the cap in his mouth and the ice cream all gone. Eventually he's got his mouth trained to do it and the last two went down on the first try, just with a mouthful of milk.
Watched 18 minutes of Sisu, it is coming along well. Some issues around different actors, some being better than others, that has limited the ways some scenes can be cut, but it all seems solvable.
We went to see poet/art star John Giorno at the MacKenzie Art Gallery tonight. He was the sleeper in Warhol's "Sleep". The presentation seemed very 1962, although with a 71 year old guy doing what yoú'd expect a 20 year old to be doing, sort of beat poetry stuff. Bold and often funny, it would have felt better with a haze of smoke in the air and at least three drinks in the belly.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

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.

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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.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

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Today is the 17th anniversary of Margaret's and my first date. In 1991, the brutal winter gave a reprieve on February 5 and the snow all started melting. We had a barbecue and went for a long walk in the water and ice, holding hands lest we slip, smoked some Black Cats, and ended up at my place looking at photo albums most of the night. If there is more to the story, I'm not telling it here.

We barbecued tonight, and we all looked at a photo album from three years ago. A nice evening but we don't have the ability to go through the night like we once did.

I'm frustrated with Youtube as I continue to wait for my new video to appear, but am finding out that the problem uploading is not a new one. It is discussed in one blog I ran accross.

Monday, February 4, 2008

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I spent much of the day putting together a video for my weekly videos. I just uploaded it for the second time to Youtube but I'm not sure it worked. Something is either wrong or very very slow on the Youtube side. I will wait another few hours for it to appear. I'll let you know about it tomorrow.
Got my paperwork/annual information forms in to the office, a few days late and not really proof read, but basically complete. I'll be reviewed for three years at this time next year, so it should be a hefty package. I did find while department head that I would do more and report on less. Before I was head, I made note of every extra meeting with a student and every hour that I spent in a meeting. Once I was drowning in it, I could no longer see the trees through the forest and I reported on almost nothing. The associate dean pointed this out to me, suggesting that peer reviewers wouldn't know what I was doing. I didn't really think that any of them imagined a head to be underworked, but I started making more notes, although never comprehensive.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

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I went to the Warhol show at the MacKenzie today. It was good, it hit all the icons and included some nice large pieces, but was not as creative of an approach as the AGO had a few years ago. I do appreciate the copies of his films running on a screen with lots of chairs available, but the cycle is three hours long with no way to select pieces. When I arrived there, "Eat" was just starting. It was the only one I'd seen before and it is 40 minutes long. As I was there with William and he was doing a short term craft during a tour, I was unable to see any films I'd not previously seen. Since it costs $12 to go in to the show, it is not something I'll be willing to pick up in bits and pieces. I did get tickets for the event they are hosting on Thursday, so I'll try to grab more of it then.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

217

Had breakfast with Mike and Paul at their parent's house. As always, the conversation turned to Lego. It seems that they built Lego as kids as well, so I suggested looking for the sets. Unlike my mom who wanted me to take all the stuff that was mine out of the house shortly after I moved out, Mike and Paul's mom seems happy to store their stuff, cleverly hidden so not even they can find it. So with her help, they uncovered three Lego sets from 1977. Paul is probably building them right now.I watched Cody Banks 2 with William, it was uninspired, then worked on my Carle Steel video (another Warhol styled "Modern"film). I put 4 frames of Warhol's "Empire" in as the background. I don't know how to get stuff off of Youtube, so I simply used the print screen command to grab whole screens of the image as it was in pause on Youtube, the copied them into photoshop, cropped them, then imported them into After Effects and created a loop of them. As I promised her, I have made her thinner (by about 1/3).

Friday, February 1, 2008

216

I was supposed to have some tests done at the hospital today but they had a computer problem yesterday so they postponed me for a couple of weeks. William had the day off school and I had booked it off from everything, and as it is still very cold out, we made it pajama day! The whole family spent the whole day in pjs. I worked on my videos (did two versions of my Felipe Diaz silkscreen portrait) but also did some significant tv watching (Spiderman 2 and some Reboot with William).