I finally had the opportunity to share this movie with Dennis, who had never seen it before. It’s such a beautiful story of unconventional love.
Harold: I love you. I love you!
Maude: Oh, Harold… That’s wonderful. Go and love some more.
Jan 302009
Jan 282009
After many years of living in San Francisco, I finally had the chance to explore Japantown. One of the bookstores had a display of mystery toys. Each box contained 1 of a series of toys. The naked baby series was just too creepy to pass up.
I love Japanese tchotchke. Lately I’ve been collecting Re-ment food, but now I’m into the naked babies. I currently have 3. I guess that makes me creepy too.
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<~~~~ feed me, om nom nom
Jan 262009
I’m absolutely thrilled about the upcoming film Coraline. Watch the trailer here:
Coraline on Youtube in HD
I saw the preview when I went to see Bedtime Stories (don’t ask). The story seemed intriguing and the animation was beautiful, not to mention the fact that it’s a Focus Feature film (Milk, Traffic, Eternal Sunshine, Lost In Translation) <3<3<3.
When I searched for more information, I knew I HAD TO see this movie. It's based on a story by Neil Gaimen, who is kinda a big deal (in college I almost got addicted to comics thanks to The Sandman
I’m also incredibly excited about Who Killed Amanda Palmer, a photo storybook featuring one of my favorite performers (Amanda), and an amazing author (Neil).
Here’s a clip of Amanda performing “Trout Heart Replica” at Bimbo’s last month. She had been writing the song on tour, and finished it the day she was performing in San Francisco. It’s such a lovely, heartbreaking song.
Trout Heart Replica on youtube
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<~~~~ feed me, om nom nom
Jan 222009
Inspired by Arial Waldman‘s cupcakecamp (which was in turn, inspired by barcamp), I’m thinking of hosting baconcamp. I recently attended Baconfest, which was SO MUCH AWESOME. It would be fun to bring this celebration of all things bacony to this geek community. However, I’m not sure if there would be enough interest in it, so I made this little poll.
Technically, it’s 2 polls. A 2 question poll is considered a “survey” to polldaddy, and you can’t embed those things on a blog. They are popus. *shudder*
What you can do to make baconcamp a reality:
– pass this poll (these polls?) around. The more interest in it, the more likely I will execute.
– email me at karen[at]karenism[dot]com if you want to help organize
BTW, the above photo by Elsa is one of my favorite bacon photos ever.
Jan 202009
Words cannot properly describe the warm tingle in my heart, the sting in my eyes, the delicious ache of my frozen smile. Never before had I had such pride in my country. Welcome, President Barack Obama.
(If you haven’t already, obamicon yourself. Leave links to your obamafication photos!)
Jan 182009
I’m looking forward to checking out the The Disposable Film Festival at the end of this month. It’s a celebration of crappy video; the kind that’s produced by cell phones, point & shoots, webcams etc. Submissions are, unfortunately, closed. (Oops! I really should have written this sooner). I can’t wait to see what people have submitted.
One of the things that makes this kind of jerky, fuzzy, low quality video interesting is the editing and filtering. A few neat tricks, and a cool song can drastically change something from mundane to worthwhile. I often don’t know what to do with this kind of video since it’s only interesting to me or the few involved. I have a lot of footage of museum excursions and concerts. I also take lots of photos of random things I find on the ground. If I share it, it is off my hard drive, and we’re gathered around my computer. I believe there is a space for livejournal-like group filtering for video. Not everyone wants random strangers to view their videos; most just want to show their buddies the clip of when they lit their farts on fire (not that I’ve ever seen or shared such a clip…).
Here’s a video by the organizers of the festival that I particularly liked.
SCENE: San Francisco from Disposable Film Festival on Vimeo.
The brisk pace keeps it engaging, and they mitigated a lot of camera shake by slowing pieces down or speeding them up. Watching this was a bit of a game – How many places can you identify in the video?
Write yours down. No cheating! All the ones I saw after the cut.
Continue reading »
Jan 162009
Jan 162009
This was the best thing I saw at Macworld:
It’s the Canon HF20 and it comes out in February. I haven’t decided between the new Canon HF20 and the Canon HF10. The primary difference being the HF20 has a 32g flash drive, and the HF10 has a 16g flash drive. Both have slots for more cards. I tend to lean towards the newer and shinier thing, but at just $630 on Amazon
I want to bring my computer into a store and check what file format each camera outputs. For all its fancy features, compatibility with my computer is the most important thing.
A few years back our work group up the jvc mg555 because it was the ONLY consumer camera on the market that had an external mic jack. Oh boy was that a disaster. It saved video files in MOD format, which could not be read by my mac. That means converting every file before watching them. Video processing is confusing enough without an extra step. I think I made 3 or so movies with the camera, while my dinky old Canon ps700 has helped me create hundreds of short videos.
I’ve been shopping for a camera for a while. I was saving up for the Canon 5D Mark II, but I’ve decided that I won’t utilize such a fancy photo camera. I’ve never owned an SLR, and I feel like I should know how to use one in manual mode before dropping $3000+. There’s also the bulkiness factor.
I love the little flip cameras and I always have one with me, but I love the focus control I get with the PS700. I won’t drone on and on about cameras. There’s far too many camera review sites for that.
It’s amazing to experience how far the technology has come in a short few years.
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<~~~~ feed me, om nom nom
What to do with leftover candycanes on Youtube
Jumpcut has been going through some changes, and has recently shut off upload to the site. This is unfortunate, but at least you can still watch your movies…
Well, not all of them. Some of my movies are missing clips, so there’s black spaces between clips when watching. I recently looked back on one of my favorite videos, only to find it broken. I made the above video more than a year ago and used Jumpcut to add the title screens. I decided that this movie was worth my time to fix, and by “fix”, I mean “recreate”. I dug up the original clip, screen grabbed the titles, audio-hijacked the audio, and made the above video. The cracks and pops in the audio really bother me, but I can’t find the original song.
SnapZ Pro panel
Aside from recreating the video, which as an understandable pain, you can get your movies off of jumpcut from screen recording. This is inelegant, but effective. There will be some quality loss, but at least you get the video. On a mac I use SnapZPro. I got it as part of a bundle of mac software, so it didn’t cost me $69. The price seems a bit high for how I use it. I’m sure there are many features I have yet to discover. However, I have tried many free versions of video capture, and none of them worked very well. On a pc I’ve used Cam Studio, which is totally free and doesn’t crash. Before I got SnapZPro, I would turn on my old pc just to use Cam Studio.
Positioning the video capture window
You don’t want to do anything with your computer while it’s capturing, so as not to affect the playback. The video will likely be very big once it is captured. The file was about 2 gigs for this video. It’s worth re-encoding the video to make it significantly smaller before uploading it to another site.
Long live Jumpcut (in our hearts).
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<~~~~ feed me, om nom nom
Jan 092009
Macworld has been pretty fun, even though there weren’t many big announcements. I didn’t find anything that really excited me at the event. The little youtube booth had a computer and a soft light on the ceiling so I played a little song in the booth.
Turner (one of the guys from Smule) taught me a few notes.
Gonna make you work work, make you work!
I got to meet Lisa. She’s Canadian. I love Canadians, and their ketchup chips.
While hanging out with Justine I didn’t take too many photos. She had that lovely Nikon D90 that took such puuuurdy photos. It makes me want to get a dslr.
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