May 21
Okay so I was ticked when one of my two rockers was voted off of American Idol (Carly) but the other rocker, David Cook brought it home. Good for him 
May 16
Kim and I took in Iron Man last Friday night. It was a great way to kick off the summer blockbuster season. As mentioned before, I love going to movies and this summer looks like it has some good ones coming up.
Iron Man did a really good job of setting up the background of the story, the reason for the existence of the super hero. Let me just say that while men and women will enjoy this flick, it is definitely a man’s movie. It had just the right amount of humor, action, techno geek stuff and general coolness. The only part of the film that I wished we could have seen more of would be the final fight scene. It was cut kinda short and could have used just a bit more action. Overall, the billing didn’t disappoint. A- Up next, Narnia….or Indiana Jones
One big hint: Stay through the credits. There’s a scene at the end that sets up the next movie and will please most avid comic book readers. That’s all I’m saying.
Apr 28
I have a pretty eclectic taste in music although I do have some favorites and some not so favorites (cough, cough..country..cough). My favorite is rock/metal that would probably scare most small children When I’m designing, I like to get in a creative “world” so I throw on the headphones with some trance/progressive jam. Trance is a vein of techno/house music. Kinda atmospheric. Think very cool matrix like soundtrack without a whole lot of words being sung. Lately, I’ve been in trance kinda mood. Here’s a sampling of somethings on my playlist:
Apr 24
wow..you have got to check this video out. This is a must for leaders, minister, Christ-Followers..period.
Rick Warren Interview
Apr 20
Sitting here watching Star Wars Episode I on tv. I’m a big star wars fan. I remember one Christmas when I was a kid my older brother and I got just about every star wars figure conceivable. I was really excited when I first heard that they were filming the prequel and completing the saga. However, in retrospect, the original movies are still better than the newer ones.
Here’s why I see it that way:
1. In the original series of movies, Star Wars had excellent acting - Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, Mark Hamill (probably the weakest of the lot) and the voices of James Earl Jones and Frank Oz (yoda). They really sold it. You believed what they were saying and doing. It had a lot of layers and depth. With Portman, Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor, so much of their dialogue seemed forced and stiff. You just had a hard time believing them. The one exception was probably Liam Neeson, but his character was unfortunately killed in Episode I. McGregor had a few good moments, too. Still, overall the acting was flat. And don’t get me started on some of unforgettable animated characters like Jar Jar Binks. You know that George Lucas had to be shaking his head over that one. Which leads me to my second point.
2. Too much reliance on CG (Computer Graphics)
- I would be interested to know what percentage of sequences in the new Star Wars were completely CG…it has to be a bunch. Don’t get me wrong…I love good CG and some of the CG in Star Wars is UNBELIEVABLE. Still, I felt that too much of the movie relied on CG as a crutch for poor acting too much of the time.
That said, do I own all of the new Star Wars DVD’s? In the words of Yoda: “Own them all, I do!” It’s Star Wars after all
Apr 19
I’ve began to do something that I’ve been putting off for a while. I have finally taken the dive into After Effects for creating some motion graphics (that’s cool looking animations/video for the non-techies). I love Final Cut Pro for editing and assembling projects, but for those very cool backgrounds, bumpers, and text effects - After Effects is the standard. I will say this, though: it has a VERY steep learning curve. I’m seriously loving tutorials right now as they have been a big help
I want to continually sharpen my tools and learn more as I go. One thing that I heard Rick Warren say one time is that “Leaders are Learners”. It’s critical in ministry and life that we be continually learning and teachable. Okay, it is getting late on Saturday so I’m going to chill for a while….l8r!
Apr 16
found this site today that has some very cool vintage apple commercials and media. It’s called Vectronic’s Apple World. Check out the Gallery links. Of course, I think my favorite apple commercial of all time……1984:
Apr 12
If you are a web developer, designer or a website owner, you might be wondering how to personalize or create your own favicon. A favicon is that cool little graphic that shows up in most browsers in URL/Address bar just before the web address. Here is a website that I often use to do just that for my clients. It is called Favicon from Pics. It will create your favicon from a graphic, and there are even some tutorials to help you implement it on your site. Check it:
Mar 31
I setup a flickr account today for CCC. We have so many photos that we could share and flickr is an excellent way to do that. Here’s a slide show of some photos compliments of Bruce Hart.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Mar 30
Okay, for all the non-technical people out there, you may not want to read this post… I must warn you, boring tech talk ahead.
I edit in Final Cut Pro and often output to a Sorenson 3 Compression. Pretty common practice. I was editing one day here recent, went to export my project using quicktime conversion. Went to my options to chose Sorenson 3 and I about had a cow. My dearly loved Sorenson 3 compression setting was no where to be found. So were a few other settings. After digging around, I discovered the issue.
Apparently in one of updates for Quicktime, Apple thought it would be a good idea to not include some “older” compression settings in Quicktime. Apple is notorious for doing this time to time…I still love my macs :). Fortunately, they also included a solution if you need these archaic settings.
Solution: Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences. Chose QuickTime. Click on the Advanced tab. Check the checkbox “Show legacy encoders - Allows exporting using older codecs” and voila…..Sorenson is back baby!
