An Evaluation.

Well-well-well, in writing this final blog post, I find myself nearing the end of my very first session at CSU. I’d like to report back in coming through this experience that a lot has changed – frankly not much has – and that I am a better, more intelligent person – that has changed, but more on that later.

I do remember making mention in one of my prior blogs that it is an amazingly open platform to have ideas in. Infact, there be no perceivable limitation as to what you can put here – with the Internet being the way that it is these days, there really is no limitation – but I find it ironic that my blog even after multiple jabs in the arm, I could not find within me the thread to continue writing.

Oh, wait, this was supposed to be about my experience in MPI104, and not me in general. Oops. Okay, let’s start:

Blogger

My blogger page consists of a semi-transparent grey fill, with cyan and orange highlights, set in a classic three-pane design, with content running down the middle and two other sides to the left and right of the content for additional information/links. 

Flickr

My Flickr contains a wide variety of imagery from 2005 and 2006 to the present day, with a large majority of those images coming from this year. The photography was that good that I even have my good friend Willis stealing some of my images for his P3 website. (Fully credited, of course.)

Delicious

I do kinda wish I had of used Delicious more, but when you’re a monotonous uni student studying monotonous (for the most part, except come assessment time) subjects, you don’t really encounter anything on the web that’s worth sharing. That’s probably why I only have 18 favourites. I really don’t view that much exciting nothingness-ness on teh Interwebz.

HTML

Did we really do that with hand-coding HTML in class? Except for a few examples, there’s nothing really to show here (that I’ve coded personally) ‘sides from a few counters and whatnot.

CSS

I haven’t experimented with CSS on my blog, but do know how to pull some tricks with it. Like Z-depth for instance. Look it up, children.

iWeb

Have looked, never really experimented with iWeb prior to this course. What can I say? It works well for what it needs to do, and if I weren’t such a code monkey in other means, I’d probably be using it more. But I am, so ner.

FTP

Taking said sugary-goodness from iWeb, I’ve used FTP to upload to our own webspaces on CSUAP.

RSS

I do actually have an extensive set of feeds that I read on a fairly regular basis on my own (read: non-MPI104) Google account. No surprises here.

What have I Learnt?

In retrospect, nothing covered in these workshops was particularly new to me. Not that this should be considered offensive to our lecturer Matt – experience does things to you that attending classes generally can’t replace. I was expecting more of a focus on applications used to create content for the web, and not the delivery of the subject being focused entirely on the web – something that I will be making note of in the subject evaluation – but again, this isn’t Matt’s fault. He delivers and teaches the syllabus as defined by higher powers that be, and at the end of the day there is very little he can do about changing that.

VPA110 - Assessment #2

RSS

RSS or 'Really Simple Syndication' - God, who thought of THAT name? - is a means of restoring newsfeed-esque stylez to the masses. Constructed using a special XML file, (and some pretty sophisticated back-end software, might I add) all one needs to do is link their RSS reader of choice to a service that supports RSS feeding, and as if it were always meant to be, receive whatever the owner of said website (or podcast or blog or whatever) decides to share via RSS.

I like to think of it as a newspaper that I can tailor to my own interests, whatever they might be.

Sapping Energies.

Okay, I admit. I'm hardly the most creative person when it comes to certain things, but… I'd like to think that one could at least come to some sort of arrangement when it comes to an idea.

Seriously. This VPA104 assessment is kicking me down. Hard. And for the life of me I just can't figure out what to do about it.

The TVP105 Files: CCUs

Not quite thinking I'd fully ever recover from last week's experience in sound, this week I was on CCUs. After confirming all the cameras were cabled up, asking Bruce whether he was happy with the lighting, getting someone from staging to bring the whiteboard out, and lining the cameras up, I went into tapes to switch all cameras on and proceeded to white balance.

My intention was to have a consistent as possible image across all three cameras - so I rapidly switched between them, and observed the tally lights to know which camera not to adjust.

An issue that I wasn't expecting was that our newsreader Ethan was wearing black, standing infront of a black curtain and, well, he's black skinned, so that camera required its blacks to be raised slightly. Not a problem, only that the levels would need to be returned to normal when the camera had changed shots. Normally you can see where the blacks lie on the waveform monitor; I encountered some kind of feedback in the signal, and so I couldn't actually see where 0% was. So I 'capped' the camera by closing the iris and manipulated the black balance to return the levels to normal - what I didn't consider is that I had also effectively blinded the camera operator. Oops.

Otherwise, the vibe in the control room was great - some roles had been previously been filled, so experience was showing - and from what I saw of the floor through my tiny porthole, things were running smoothly. Aesthetically, my shots looked great. Bruce was very happy, and so was I. :)

I've learnt from this experience that a slight modification in my workflow when dealing with otherwise unusual situations is needed - though in my defence without comms, I was unable to notify anyone, and didn't want to run my request through the DA, when she had other more important things to be concerning herself with. Had the comms been working, I would have notified the cameras that I was closing their irises down first, before going ahead and doing it, or figured out a way to look past the noise in the waveform monitor and adjust the levels that way.

All comes with experience, I guess.

Assessment 2: iWeb-created Website

My second assessment submission is a website that focuses on the content that I have created for my two other elective subjects, namely VPA104 (Introduction to Digital Image) and VPA106 (Introduction to Sound Production).

My submission includes a few sets of photographs from an extracurricular side project I am working on, my first VPA104 assessment submissions, and my first VPA106 assessment submission.

I haven’t gone out of my way to alter the provided iWeb templates, because I have focussed on the creation of content. (That and our course is meant to be focussing on the creation of multimedia, not websites) Multimedia entails both the creation of and the linking together of text, images, video and sound (among others) which is what I have submitted using this website.

Crazy.

What you're looking at it craziness. Sheer-sheer craziness.

The TVP105 Files: Sound Manager

My first assessable role for 'Hello, Riverina!' and the only thing I can say with any certainty was that I was completely off my game. What was most concerning was that this was my second go at audio - I had previously come off the floor as an observer and was dunked into Friday's second workshop just prior to the Easter break. Things were shaky that time too, but after three rehearsals, I was able to deliver something worthy to record.

This time around was a different story – we had made the mistake of miking talent before getting the desk ready; scripts still needed to be marked up. Cues needed to be agreed on and set. Matt was talking in one ear and Pat the other. Everything that happened prior to the rehearsal would’ve been okay if what was to follow was excusable, but it wasn’t. Levels were all over the place and way above -18dB, cues were missing left, right and centre, and, well, simply put it all went pretty badly.

Michael, my sound assist was right on the ball from the beginning. He cued everything on time, played it when required, and assisted me when he could. I would definitely mix with him again.

I take away from this experience that audio is something I need to work on - as Pat had mentioned during the debrief at the end of the workshop 'you appear to be missing out on some of the basics; practice will help you no doubt, what's concerning is that you were making the same mistakes from beginning to end.' All I really can do is practice, so I will.

FTP

Oh FTP. You dog, you. There was once a time that I'd use you for uploading things to a webspace, but those days are long gone, and have been replaced by your much newer (and more secure, might I add) brother sFTP - the S stands for 'sassy' or is that 'sexy' or even 'secure'? I don't know.

FTP would have to be one of the oldest protocols for doing things on the Internet (yes, you need to go back that far when describing it; things like the actual serving platform of the Internet [WWW or WorldWideWeb] are called protocols, email has its own protocols) and is for the most part still in active use.

But, I can safely say that sFTP is so much better. S. Sssss. Ssssssss!

iWeb

On the surface, this somewhat downtrodden application (at least speaking of those people that didn't regard it that highly in my class) looks a little dorky. But as Apple is somehow magically capable of doing, underneath the perceived dorkiness is something which has amazing power for those that are able to appreciate it.

iWeb isn't designed for the web designer with a degree in computer science to have their own presence online - such person could probably even make their own variant of iWeb - but for the purposes of normal people (and not enthusiasts) it does its job perfectly.

I don't see why there's so much hate about this piece of software when it does what it needs to do!

VPA110 - Assessment #1

HTML. Buttery goodness.

Hyper Text Markup Language. It sounds ugly, but is really quite pretty. It be the primary layout-building language of the Interwebz.

I've actually previously coded my own websites for, well, for lack of a better term boredom before - I think it was back in 2003 when I had a means of doing so; there was this band I was contracted to do some work for, they figured I'd be smart enough to code something up for them, the quality certainly wasn't very high, but the experience in doing so was great.

Needless to say it's been a few years since then, but I still remember most of the tags to use. Although with HTML5 on the horizon, I figure that I'll need to know a few hundred more.

Ugh.

Assessment #1

I know, I know, I might've left this a little late, but I do have a fairly decent excuse: I was in the TV studio tonight, and probably having a bit too much fun pushing peds around. Television is in my blood, it would seem, and there's no way that I'm going to start wringing it out, despite what academic consequences it might have on me.

Nevertheless:

Blogger
This will be my 9th post on my blog. The actual design I've chosen is a cross between a stock template, colours that I chose that seem to work well together, and a few other bits and pieces thrown in for good measure. I have also managed to pick some Gadgets and elegantly lay them either side of my main content. I haven't actually blogged in several years, so it's a good feeling to be doing something that's actually academically worth it in the long run.

Delicious
I love Delicious - it's a great place to see where the hype in the world lies, with regards to trending topics and whatnot. It's also a great repository of ideas/tutorials/general mischievousness.

Flickr
Flickr and I go way back - back in the days of 2005 when all I had was a crummy EOS 20D and a crazy-bad kit lens. You'll actually see a few images that I dug out of the archives from that very camera and have managed to breathe new life into and upload onto the Internet for you to see. :) There's also plenty of iPhone photography, along with my newest love, the Canon 60D.

Back in the Game

It has been a long time in passing since I last visited this somewhat neglected blog. The usual excuses come to mind: being too busy, lacking enough focus, not being motivated enough to post more often, etc. And while I’m not going to deny any of the above, when you have as amazing a creative outlet as a blog, you should express yourself more often.

The TVP105 Files: House Lights Can be Deadly!

Walking into the studio from the outside, I encounter a dimly-lit studio - Bruce and David are milling over towards one side, a few members of the class are sitting down. The rest of the class hadn't entered yet. Knowing where the house light switches are, I decided to innocently walk into the prop bay and turn them on. This was a big mistake, as I'd eventually discover:

*hearing Bruce walking towards the prop bay door*
Bruce: 'What'd you do that for?!'
Jonathan: 'It's dark, I couldn't see anything, so I turned on the house lights.'
Bruce: 'Uh... Why?'
Jonathan: '...Without lights, you can't see; the camera cables are in the way of the door, they're a trip hazard.'
*David interjects*
David: 'Bruce is assuming role of floor manager - you can't turn the house lights on unless he asks for them.'
Bruce: 'You know full-well that the conditions inside of the studio are going to be different from those outside, including lighting; have you not considered that I wanted the house lights to be off?!'
Jonathan: 'Sorry, Bruce.'
While trying to retain a shred of dignity, I scurry away and plop myself down on a stack of seats at the back of the studio - meanwhile half the class that hasn't entered the studio is in the airlock.

'It's dark!'
'I can't see ANYTHING!'
'Oh! There's a cable there! I nearly tripped!'
--

Today we were introduced to resident TV Land B-list celebrity, Mr. Fugly, while practicing camera moves to music. Our rockstar was obviously Mr. Fugly. 'twas an interesting experience for all involved, especially for me at the beginning.

Enter: Quicksilver

I write these words on a computer whose already 17″ freakishly massive display has a pixel density of an Apple 24″ LED Cinema Display. Yes, the machine is huge. But it’s going to be put through its paces, very much so.

The keyboard feels amazing. It’s soft, understated, and very, very, very quiet. It also sports fibre-optic backlighting. The thumbscoop on the front is the result of hundreds of prototypes, each one being examined underneath an electron microscope and tested multiple times in usability studies before the final one on the front of each Unibodied machine was chosen.

The trackpad is wear-resistant etched glass, with no button; the entire surface is the button. Its tactility feels super natural, as is intended, and one doesn’t miss the presence of the button, as the thumb naturally falls into place and feels comfortable when making the click. The physical surface of the machine is hard to describe. The bead-blasting is something I haven’t ever experienced in a notebook before. Not even on my Powerbook G4. It’s just more refined, and totally gorgeous.

As for the body of the machine, it’s. CNC-machined aluminum. Very rigid. No flex in the body. Rounded corners, It’s hard to describe, unless you see it in person.

And did I mention the quality of the display?! This is no longer a notebook. I don’t think it even classifies as a laptop. It’s a freaking desktop-class machine in one’s lap.

Delicious (formerly del.icio.us)

Delicious is a social-bookmarking service originally founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003, and was later bought out by Yahoo! in 2005.

Much controversy was generated when the service was 'sundowned' by Yahoo! earlier this year. Throughout the Internet, this was considered by many to be considered the 'end' of Delicious, but as it turns out, Yahoo! is simply looking for a buyer. (Although considering Yahoo!'s current state/market share, I'd rather be holding onto good, strong, capable developers, and not losing them.)

Regardless of who owns Delicious, one thing is true: it's a fantastic service, and is well and truly worth the effort to make a collection of bookmarks on.

You can find my profile here:

Mmm... Donu- I mean, Delicious!

Flickr.

This isn't my first experience with Flickr - I've used it for many years prior, and it's always been an amazing community to intermingle, learn and show off your awesomesauce photography. What's more is that it is a community-focussed effort, with squillions of subject-centric groups that you are free to join and share your photography with those that have a penchant for what you do.

I'm intending on using this particular account for photography taken in other subjects whilst studying at CSU. Once my self-imposed embargo on VPA104 is lifted (once my assessment has been submitted) you can look forward to seeing those images uploaded to Flickr soon.

However, if you just can't wait/are curious as to what I do shoot, then you can find my Flickr profile right here:

Flickry-goodness

I've also linked some favourite images of mine to this post, for you to have a squiz at:
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

Can Your Wind0ze-based PC Do THIS?! (#2)

For those of us that use a notebook, not holding a bar of soap and mousing around is something that few people get used to, especially if said notebook resides permanently at one’s desk. It’s like that innate need for a gundog (labrador, daschund, etc.) to always have something in its mouth.

But what if you have to wing-it with just your humble trackpad? How do you accomplish things like scrolling? On the PC side of things, an implementation has arisen by assigning the far-right hand corner of the surface to always scroll. Apple later came up with the idea of using two fingers to accomplish the same thing. Why? If you’ve used a PC’s trackpad for any length of time, you’ll encounter the scroll-area when simply dragging stuff across the surface of the ‘pad. Very bad UE. Apple solved this problem by forcing you to let the trackpad know you want to scroll. Simple, effective, and it works. Insanely great.

“But your Mac doesn’t even have a second mouse button!”

That’s true. But since when did Apple ever include something that wasn’t needed in its designs? You don’t need the RMB, because you can tell your computer to interpret a tap with two fingers as a RMB-click.

Still waiting for Windows to implement the same thing. (Guess we’ll see some sort improvement to scrolling when Windows 7 comes around, although considering prior experience with Vista, Windows 7 won’t be here for another 3 years. Give or take. Maybe even 5.)

The TVP105 Files: Sandbags and Chairs and Swingings, Oh My!

'Give it a good swing; make the poor bastard that's behind the camera have to HUNT for the sandbag!'
- Overheard on the studio floor
--

The studio felt awfully like a gym today - three cameras arranged behind various exercises designed to highlight abilities we need to practice. Known as 'Bruce's Bootcamp', activities such as tracking a sandbag attached to a rope that has been tied to the lighting grid and being swung, practicing panning, tilting and zooming all at the same time on an object, (it was actually meant to be Mr. Fugly) and manuvering a camera (and cablebasher) through an obstacle course of sorts, made out of a ladder and chairs that need to be negotiated around, whilst tracking Tigger - but that's not all - people that hit aforementioned chairs and ladder owe Bruce a golf ball.

In retrospect, I remember Bruce telling me that I owe him at least a baker's dozen, after taking a rather non-compliant ladder for a short walk.

Can Your Wind0ze-based PC Do THIS?! (#1)

Okay. Enough’s enough. I’ve lived on both sides of the tracks. Mac and PC. Started out with computers back in 1995, switched partially over in 2001, committing to the Mac full-time in 2004.

Welcome to a new mini-series on my blog that’ll hopefully put some of these issues of performance/myths to rest between the Mac and Windows-based PC platforms, once and for all. (Not for a moment did I say PCs in general; I’m all for open-source and whatnot.)

This first post is just such an example.

Look at that uptime. Keep in mind that while not a production machine, Anthracite has been used a lot heavier since he’s my only machine currently, and is also a laptop. Therefore, getting put to sleep and woken up upwards of 10-20 times a day is a reality for him.

But it’s okay! Really. I don’t envy those Windows users amongst us who have to deal with such issues as not being able to wake from sleep. You know, when you’ve got open documents that you’ve been working that may or may not have been saved. And that whole dialog box that asks you to disable sleep because ‘This is the second time that your computer has not responded while entering sleep. Do you want to disable it?” is such a glowing merit for owning a Windows-based laptop.

Read it and weep!

Arduino.

There are plenty of things that can be said for small, green and black objects with white silkscreen and not much else. Normal people would shun these sorts of things off as being 'uncool' or 'uninteresting', but beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, and when you don't look very interesting, that's easily something to overlook. Of course, if you're prepared to look beyond certain things, you'll often find beauty within.

And that's what makes the Arduino so special. The image above proves just how unassuming this piece of physical computing hardware is. But of course, it's what it can DO when you start to learn, understand, and start programming, that the real magic begins.

Here are some examples of what the Arduino can do:

Xmas Website Hit Counter

EL wire being driven by an Arduino

Charlieplexed LED cube

My First Post

Hi everybody! This is my first blog post on blogspot.com. It's swell.

We are robot sheep that follow Matt's words of wisdom.

The TVP105 Files: Technique-building is Character Building.

"A transformative experience unlike any other - your senses are heightened;
your pulse quickens;
your brain ticks over faster than you can think;
and you're in the middle of all of this wondering what the hell just happened.
It's not because you're jacked up on coffee,
running late,
or questioning the 'paracetamol' some guy gave you the night before,
It's because you've just walked in through the gates...
And into TV Land."
- Me
--

An enjoyable (non-production) workshop in the studio today, focussing on setup procedure for the cameras, driving the peds around, and tearing everything down. Of course, repetition is the mother of skill, and so many-many-many more hours will be need to be spent here before we can do it with our eyes closed. That and working on individual techniques.

The TVP105 Files: Our First Time. Honestly.

"One cannot expect to be perfect the first time they try something; if on the off-chance that they do manage to pull something off flawlessly, for the first time – ever, then they should be taken aside and be kindly reminded what they have performed is an impossibility, and that swarms of angry people spanning across the millennia of ages past, present, and future will be after their blood."
- Me
--

Being armed with a modicum of experience goes a long way in this industry, but by no means can anything prepare you for the delight (though some may beg to differ) that was ''A' you're adorable'. Simply put, it is a complete immersion, deep-dive sort of exercise that gets your feet soaking wet, and in the flurry of it all makes you appreciate just how the production of TV works - not existing as a single entity, but as a living breathing organism that requires each and every part to work harmoniously together.

Hits:
- Getting praised by Matt because I used 'ready camera x', 'focus camera x' in addition to asking the VM to take the shot
- Instructing the control room to briefly switch to camera 1 so that we could check focus on the monitor (don't forget your glasses, Krystal. ;))
- Being quick to respond on the intercom
- Keeping time on the VM when my director slipped up accidentally.
Misses:
- Calling out the names of the letters, instead of the number of the camera!
- Saying nothing to my VM Liam for 4 letters, and being kindly reminded by Matt
- Having the audio a little soft at the beginning of the song and not really riding the levels until partway through
- (Whilst on camera 1) Totally missing the letter 'C' without realising that one must reframe each letter - though in my defence, from that point on I did manage to zoom out, zoom back in, pull focus and keep the letters at a consistent size - not something everyone did, mind you!)
- Not flipping to the final card at the very end of the sequence infront of camera 1.
With all that said, for our first go, I don't think we did too badly!