Technology hates me

Any and every piece of technology around me seems to be broken these days:

- my iPod either doesn't show up, freezes my machine, or hangs itself whenever I plug it into either my laptop or work machine.

- my video camera only updates half of the screen in a weird stripe pattern (no, not because of interlacing), and I don't know why

- my digital camera's batteries charge and say they will last 80 minutes, and then last approximately 5

- gdb was giving me fits, but it seems to be a little better

I think I must give off a special type of electromagnetic wave that causes all of this. If only I could make it stop...

iMovie rules!

Dealing with movie software ended up being easier than I expected. I plugged the camera in, started the application, and hit import. After it made all of my clips (it seemed to separate them by starts and stops in the original recording, which is pretty cool), I still wanted to separate one of my big clips, so it took me about a minute to find the "Split Video Clip at Playhead". I dragged my clips down into the timeline and rendered the video, and I was done!

It was one of the few times where I actually overestimated the amount of time a project would take. The whole thing took less than thirty minutes, and most of that was spent rendering the final movie. Kudos to the iMovie team!

I also just noticed that I only have iMovie 3 on this machine, so I was able to do this on something other than the latest-and-greatest version. Cool!

Another weekend, another competition

We were in Vallejo this time, and we had a much better show than last week. We (Fremont HS) got 3rd out of 5, but we were only .8 behind the first place group. Some of the changes we made in the past week helped, but we improved mainly because the kids performed their show MUCH better.

I also got to use my video camera for the first time, and now I need to get everything transferred onto my computer.

Cold

No, not the weather - it's actually really nice around here. The runny nose that I first attributed to allergies has been joined by a sore throat and a headache/dizziness/"general weird feeling", so it's time to call it what it is: a cold. Bah! This is no fun...

Camera time

I went out and picked up a video camera the other day - something I had been researching for a while. I was able to get all of the features I wanted in a low-end camera, so I spent less than I expected (which almost never happens with electronic equipment). Of course I forgot all about a camera bag, so I need to do a bit more shopping.

This is all so I can start recording more drum stuff - mostly practices and performances of the kids I teach so they can see what they are doing. I also want to record my own practice time so I can look at my technique and try to improve. And of course I can use this to record drum corps lines in the summer, which I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember.

One of the cool things I discovered in my quest - most cameras now have a "analog-to-digital passthru" feature, which allows you to take an analog input (VCR, Hi8, etc) and pass it into the computer as a DV source. This will be a great solution for all of my old drumline videos.

But the real time-sink is still to come - learning iMovie/FCE/FCP (whichever I end up using), and then actually working with footage. As I've found out with any piece of audio I've worked on, I tend to spend way to much time polishing things.

Good feedback

We had our first winter percussion competition on Friday, and I'm happy to report that we got first place for our division (never mind that each division had at most three groups... it was still good). We got feedback tapes from the judges (which is pretty standard for marching competitions), and it was good to hear that they liked a lot of what we are doing, and the improvements they suggested are things we already knew about and were planning to fix. It can be easy to fall into a "groupthink" trap where you lose sight of the big picture - luckily we seem to have avoided that.

Deep

"For best results, use daily" -- profound words from the makers of my deodorant.

Buying stuff

I went out to get some new drum equipment for the winter percussion group this weekend, and I was surprised that things were fairly inexpensive. It was the first time I shopped for equipment since high school (well, I got a MalletKat off eBay, but that doesn't really count). Spending $600 on a drumset was a ton of money back in the day, but these days it's not an unreasonable amount. In fact, I think it would be easier for me to spend money on drums, since I have a more emotional connection with them than say, some sort of computer equipment. At least with drums I don't have to deal with them going obsolete in less than a year...