Tag: Peter Sachs

The Job My Computer Was Built For

editing-screen

Back in Connecticut my friend Peter Sachs has become infatuated with a utility quadcopter. It has an onboard camera. Really cool video (see below).

He’s in on the ground floor.

I though the video was a little shaky, so I asked him send it to me.

Here’s the power of the net. He sent me this high quality, full HD video in just a few minutes. That’s when my computer took over.

This PC was built specifically to edit video. It has a fast and powerful CPU with a video card chosen to make it even speedier.

I fired up Premier, Adobe’s video editor and dragged in Peter’s video. A couple of clicks later I’d installed a filter which dampened movement. Very math intensive. It worked in the background as I moved on.

On a separate channel I brought in the original video. Diagonal wipe. Font. Render. Lather. Rinse.

I sat back like the chief engineer on a large ship. My feet were up on the desk. On screen graphs showed my CPU working at 100% on all four cores. 11.5Gb of RAM, the max I allow for Premier, was fully in use.

You should be awed by this technology. I am awed by it. Video production has been democratized. Anyone who wants to make video can make video. The cost barrier has been shattered.

In the late 80s Channel 8 put in a room that could do most of what I’m doing today, but in standard def and on video tape. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This setup is a hundredth the price with the ability to render work at today’s professional standards.

It’s just crazy. My career in TV started as film was moving out. Tape beat film for ease, but today’s technology blows away everything that came before.

Don’t be confused. I can’t edit like a professional editor. I don’t have the chops. The equipment itself only takes you so far.

I’d like to get more involved with video production. I’m fully equipped.

My Blog’s Seventh Anniversary

I have pounded out 4,255 additional posts. You have commented 6,838 times! I’ve lost track on my pages read but it’s well over 3,000,000 now.

On July 4, 2003 this blog appeared for the first time. It was a disjointed seven sentence entry.

Since then I have pounded out 4,255 additional posts. You have commented 6,838 times! I’ve lost track on my pages read but it’s well over 3,000,000 now.

Though the home page gets the most action, with over four thousand entries in Google much of the blog’s traffic is from people stumbling upon things I wrote years ago. Yesterday I received two new comments on an entry about 60s comedian London Lee! The original post was written in 2006.

My friend Peter Sachs helped set up my blog on day one. It was run on MovableType which was considered the premiere blogging platform. Now it runs on WordPress today’s premiere blogging platform.

I haven’t yet moved to WP Version 3. I’m scared of breaking it! Blogs are more fragile than they should be.

I try and blog every day. The last time I missed was years ago when I was in Las Vegas and sick enough to have a doctor make a house call to my hotel room!

There have been days when my entry wasn’t posted until a few minutes before midnight. Maybe I shouldn’t write when the only reason I’m writing is because I said I would?

I always try and tell the truth, but this blog isn’t the whole truth. I sometimes leave out things like private family matters, work related issues and anything embarrassing about a friend or relative.

I write to be read. I genuinely appreciate the fact you’re reading this.

Thanks for stopping by.

The View From My Garage This Morning

They say the best camera is the one you have with you. That aside, the camera on the iPhone continues to impress.

Thanks to my friend Peter Sachs I have a pretty neat panorama app installed on the iPhone. It got a workout this morning. As I opened the garage door I snapped this wide angle pano looking toward the street.

They say the best camera is the one you have with you. That aside, the camera on the iPhone continues to impress. The lens is reasonably wide angle–much more so than any other little camera I’ve used. That’s a very functional feature for a camera often used at arm’s length.

Much of the state got 2-5″ of snow. It’s slushy now with temperatures above freezing and some rain which fell through nearly all the state.

garage pano view.jpg

Happy Anniversary To This

We are now 3604 entries, 5074 comments and nearly 2-million page reads later!

Six years ago today, July 4, 2003, this blog first appeared. With the help of Peter Sachs (oh, hell, Peter did it all) an early version of Movable Type was loaded on a Hostforweb server and off we went. This blog replaced my rather unstructured ‘last century’ website.

We are now 3604 entries, 5074 comments and nearly 2-million page reads later!

Those numbers are staggering to me. In the history of the world how many others have gotten the opportunity to make so many impressions? I appreciate every page read and every comment.

The last time I missed a day was a few years ago when I was on-the-road and really sick. I couldn’t lift my head much less write in the blog.

Writing this blog has made me a better writer. More importantly I’ve learned to enjoy writing–or more accurately enjoy rewriting. As I’ve said more than once, rewriting is where it all comes together. That was a major discovery.

The blog has forced me to be a disciplined writer. I force myself to write daily. As a mainly unstructured person that discipline might be the most surprising part of blogging.

As If I Knew What I Was Doing

I know my way around the backend of a webserver. Still, I think anyone could have installed this without too much trouble.

Back 25+ years ago while I was hosting PM Magazine/Buffalo I ran into a nice young girl woman producer. She made sure I hit my mark and properly intro’d Captain Carrot and Chef Tell.

Obviously she had her act together because her career has really done well and she’s been responsible for some pretty big TV hits and has some Emmy awards to prove it. Recently she and her business partner split and she decided to take me up on an offer I’d made many times over the years–put up a website for her.

I did a little work this weekend and more last night. The site’s not ready to unveil yet but it’s coming along.

This site is based on MovableType, free blogging software (though useful for more than blogging). I use MT because Peter Sachs who installed it also used it! He put in what he knew–and I’ll always be grateful. For my friend’s new site I decided to try WordPress. Again, this is free software, heavily supported by a very active community.

Wow!

The website installed in under five minutes. There was some information to fill into forms to get the program to properly speak with the server, but that was fairly painless. I’m not a neophyte. I know my way around the backend of a webserver. Still, I think anyone could have installed this without too much trouble.

What really impressed me with WordPress was the ease of modifying the look.

Hold on. Let me take a step back. What software like WordPress, MovableType, Joomla, Drupal and other do is separate content from look. I can change how this website looks without messing with my entries. Everything should fall right back into place. For web design that’s power.

I was able to take a template and modify it to fit the look I wanted in just a few minutes. I was astounded how easily I was able to accomplish my goal.

My friend’s website is hosted on a plan that costs her $9.99 a month, includes three domains (geofffox.com would be a domain), unlimited mail addresses and more storage space and bandwidth than she’ll ever use. And since I’m doing my part free, it’s quite a deal.

When I’m done, I’ll post the link. Right now I just want to put out the word, it’s easier than you think.

It’s The Googlemobile In Connecticut

Not to be confused with the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, this vehicle cruises America taking photos for Google Maps street level view.

google-streetview-I91.jpgMy friend Peter Sachs (who originally installed the software for this blog–five years ago) was driving westbound on I-95 near the Q-Bridge yesterday when he saw an odd looking vehicle. Since Peter spies for a living he had no choice but to speed up to get a better look. It was the Googlemobile!

Not to be confused with the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, this vehicle cruises America taking photos for Google Maps street level view. Unfortunately, I can’t embed a map with the street view turned on, but it looks like Google has been shooting and posting street view photos from much of the Hartford area and north.

Memo to Sergey and Larry: Is this how you want people to think of Google–as a company that sends out guys driving underpowered, bland Chevys?

The fun part will be going through the images frame-by-frame trying to see if Google was shooting Peter while Peter was shooting Google. That will be fun, right?

Blogger’s addendum: Peter has sent me the photo of his car taken from the Googlemobile. It’s not Earth shattering, but in the interest of completeness it’s posted here.

Publishing with Movabltype

I’m not so sure what was so difficult about it, but at 2:30 in the morning, whispering on the telephone to Peter Sachs, I got Movabletype configured on my server! Now, I can run a blog for me and a blog for the WTNH Weather Department. The same install will handle both separately. Best of all, it’s all free.

This program is very powerful with lots of customizations. Of course, I worry I’ll customize it into not working!

As it turns out, my original formatting, with photos two across, caused the blog to be out of format with a screen resolution of 1024×768 or less. It’s fixed now… I think.