I've posted another prospective intro. See how you all like PPS Short - Black Exploding Cube.
I was able to download a trial copy of Sony Vegas, which I'm experimenting with. The cool thing here is that this software will allow you to make 1-frame per picture animations, unlike Movie Maker which is limited to 1/8th of a second durations on each picture. So if your video is something like 30 frames/second, you can get 30 pictures down into that second! The video will be extremely fast, yes, but also extremely smooth despite the size of your jumps, which is the attraction here.
Merry Christmas!
It's Christmastime...again. Such a cliche statement. Anyway, here's a little thing I put together for ya'll.
Open video in a new window.
Open video in a new window.
Short Intros
Here are a couple more intro shorts for you to choose from. I'll update the poll to reflect them:
Again, comments and suggestions are welcome.
Again, comments and suggestions are welcome.
PPSStudios Intro Video
Take a look at my three new videos..actually, I'll make it four.
Comment on these and pick your favorite. I'm trying to put together some kind of intro video for my Youtube uploads and would appreciate any feedback. Also feel free to make suggestions on improvements and effects and the like.
Here's my goal: something that's short, but really neat looking. I don't want it to be as long as the Long Intro video. 30-40 seconds for an intro is just too long. If it could be under ten seconds, that'd be ideal (that's 80 pictures or less at top MovieMaker speed). Something that says "PPSStudios" or "A PPSStudios Production", and possibly "Classic" for the older videos which are still in the process of being ripped.
Maybe I'll put up a poll just so we can get a real tally system. BTW, the short intros are quite small (600KB or so each), so it shouldn't take too long to buffer them and view them in full.
Comment on these and pick your favorite. I'm trying to put together some kind of intro video for my Youtube uploads and would appreciate any feedback. Also feel free to make suggestions on improvements and effects and the like.
Here's my goal: something that's short, but really neat looking. I don't want it to be as long as the Long Intro video. 30-40 seconds for an intro is just too long. If it could be under ten seconds, that'd be ideal (that's 80 pictures or less at top MovieMaker speed). Something that says "PPSStudios" or "A PPSStudios Production", and possibly "Classic" for the older videos which are still in the process of being ripped.
Maybe I'll put up a poll just so we can get a real tally system. BTW, the short intros are quite small (600KB or so each), so it shouldn't take too long to buffer them and view them in full.
Classic Animation
I just completed uploading two preview videos for the all new Youtube playlist: Classic Animation featuring my very own animations from twelve years ago! And you will HATE them!!
And a quick update on the actual animations themselves: four videos have been successfully converted and are being edited for uploading. Two are fairly long and two are moderately long, so they will be actually uploaded when I get to a faster connection, tomorrow or Tuesday.
Also, with a bit of cyberstalking or whatever..I've found the original writer and creator of Holy Living Man. I'll be uploading a few of these videos in time, once I get them credited correctly with his username (lipsynchORswim).
A quick side note..I sound like I'm speaking to the masses of fans I have, but I don't have that many fans. I should advertise or something..I hear if you get enough views on your videos, you can qualify for promoting which is like $2.50 per 1000 views or something. I dream of that day.
And a quick update on the actual animations themselves: four videos have been successfully converted and are being edited for uploading. Two are fairly long and two are moderately long, so they will be actually uploaded when I get to a faster connection, tomorrow or Tuesday.
Also, with a bit of cyberstalking or whatever..I've found the original writer and creator of Holy Living Man. I'll be uploading a few of these videos in time, once I get them credited correctly with his username (lipsynchORswim).
A quick side note..I sound like I'm speaking to the masses of fans I have, but I don't have that many fans. I should advertise or something..I hear if you get enough views on your videos, you can qualify for promoting which is like $2.50 per 1000 views or something. I dream of that day.
VHS
A few days ago, Mom and I splurged on a DVD recorder! Yes, that's right. We went to Best Buy and bought a Toshiba DR430 DVD recorder for $128. The sole purpose of this, at least for now, is to convert all of our old VHS tapes to something more modern. Like DVD! If you have a DVD, you can easily convert it to pretty much anything else that's modern.
The first thing that came to mind, which really brought this idea into a serious light was my recent activity on Lego animation, all of which I've been posting on Youtube. Of course, I actually started animating back in 1999 or a little before, from what I've seen with all of the conversions I've been making this weekend. This includes working with media such as Lego, clay and Andrea's stuffed animals.
Almost all of the videos we made were low quality (because we were using an old, worn out camcorder with a broken focus on the lens. I had figured out that the camcorder always backed up approximately 1.5 seconds after you stopped recording, just to ensure that there wasn't any static or blank tape when you started the next bit. With this knowledge, I was able to make one to half-second durations of video and pretty much simulate stop-action animation. These videos I am converting now ARE my VERY FIRST ATTEMPTS at this! Well, almost. The very first attempt I made didn't work because I was still discovering the 1.5 second thing, so that one is lost. But I redid that same exact video, which worked, and which I am now titling Horses in the Mountains.
I should remember that. I didn't give it a good title when I converted it yesterday..I called it something like "Lego - Collapsing Mountain and Horses."
Another bit of nostalgia. Shortly after I discovered my newfound ability with the camcorder, I had two of my best friends from Jr. High, Ben Weilert and Max Moe, over for an overnighter. Ben had created this comic strip in school which he called "Holy Living Man" and his head was a block of cheese. Just goes to show you how weird Ben was. Well anyway, we had them over for an overnighter and we created a video using clay (Plastacine), and a white board to caption the characters, and used Ben's storyline from his comic strip.
Well, yesterday I finally converted that whole video, along with an entire 2-hour tape's worth of other videos onto a DVD.
Therefore: I am going to now work on converting these DVDs to something like MP4, WMV...something and upload at least the animations to Youtube. Most of them are poor quality, most of them have stupid outtakes and really stupid story lines. But all of them are my originals and besides, I can do anything I want with my own stuff on Youtube, can't I?
So enjoy!
I'm going to be posting quickie intro and credits videos I made up this morning as a sort of preview to whet the appetite of my thousands of subscribers..or maybe more like five.
The first thing that came to mind, which really brought this idea into a serious light was my recent activity on Lego animation, all of which I've been posting on Youtube. Of course, I actually started animating back in 1999 or a little before, from what I've seen with all of the conversions I've been making this weekend. This includes working with media such as Lego, clay and Andrea's stuffed animals.
Almost all of the videos we made were low quality (because we were using an old, worn out camcorder with a broken focus on the lens. I had figured out that the camcorder always backed up approximately 1.5 seconds after you stopped recording, just to ensure that there wasn't any static or blank tape when you started the next bit. With this knowledge, I was able to make one to half-second durations of video and pretty much simulate stop-action animation. These videos I am converting now ARE my VERY FIRST ATTEMPTS at this! Well, almost. The very first attempt I made didn't work because I was still discovering the 1.5 second thing, so that one is lost. But I redid that same exact video, which worked, and which I am now titling Horses in the Mountains.
I should remember that. I didn't give it a good title when I converted it yesterday..I called it something like "Lego - Collapsing Mountain and Horses."
Another bit of nostalgia. Shortly after I discovered my newfound ability with the camcorder, I had two of my best friends from Jr. High, Ben Weilert and Max Moe, over for an overnighter. Ben had created this comic strip in school which he called "Holy Living Man" and his head was a block of cheese. Just goes to show you how weird Ben was. Well anyway, we had them over for an overnighter and we created a video using clay (Plastacine), and a white board to caption the characters, and used Ben's storyline from his comic strip.
Well, yesterday I finally converted that whole video, along with an entire 2-hour tape's worth of other videos onto a DVD.
Therefore: I am going to now work on converting these DVDs to something like MP4, WMV...something and upload at least the animations to Youtube. Most of them are poor quality, most of them have stupid outtakes and really stupid story lines. But all of them are my originals and besides, I can do anything I want with my own stuff on Youtube, can't I?
So enjoy!
I'm going to be posting quickie intro and credits videos I made up this morning as a sort of preview to whet the appetite of my thousands of subscribers..or maybe more like five.
Even more Youtube
Here are a few more Youtube videos. I've edited the newest ten playlist to reflect all of them. And good news! I'm done for the day!! I have no more that I need to upload.
New Youtube
I spent a huge portion of the weekend (like three hours) taking photos for ELEVEN new lego animations. Check them out at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=49D922322B602454.
Here is a list of the new ones:
Here is a list of the new ones:
Lego Animation
Just a quick note: be sure and check out the newest animation I did yesterday at http://youtu.be/byEaPd00_Ws?a.
It's probably my best super-short yet, being up to ten seconds long and having more than just one movement out of one character. At least, Mom and Dad thought it was good.
It's probably my best super-short yet, being up to ten seconds long and having more than just one movement out of one character. At least, Mom and Dad thought it was good.
Soundcards and Shoutcast
Yesterday I received an Amazon order in the mail. It was my first ever ExpressCard device!
A few years ago, I burned out the left channel on my laptop headphone jack, so if I wanted to listen to anything with a pair of headphones at the library or something, I couldn't without putting up with just one side of the stereo mix. So last week, I went on Amazon and found a Creative (Soundblaster) ExpressCard sound card. Just yesterday, it came in the mail and I got it up and running! And I have to say it has excellent quality.
Anyway, now I'm all into it. In the last couple weeks I've been attempting to download the Shoutcast tools from Nullsoft. And just today I finally got everything I wanted downloaded! I installed it on my big dimension, and am right now listening to a LAN stream of Christmas music. Of course, the setup at the moment is pretty pointless. My laptop is right here, and the audio server is also right here. But it WORKS! And that's what really matters. Now all I need is a broadband connection so YOU all can listen also ;).
Anyway, as of right now my setup is as follows:
- PPS-DIMENSION is the main server computer on my LAN. It does NOT have a webserver yet, although I'm working on that right now.
- The Dimension DOES have a few audio services that I've integrated with Winamp.
- Winamp itself - My big 500GB hard drive has approximately 81.5 days of audio (music, podcasts, sermons, radio programs, etc) which I access primarily from that computer.
- A Kensington transmitter - My main audio output on the sound card is running directly into this short range FM transmitter which pipes the music to the entire house fairly effectively. I have had some EMI issues with walls and the like, but it's tolerable if I position the transmitter just so.
- BrowseAmp 3 - A simple plugin for Winamp creates a web server which allows any client on the network to control Winamp via the browser. It has a flash client which I think is really quite clean.
- Shoutcast Server - This bit of standalone software and integration plugin for Winamp dumps the actual audio output from Winamp directly onto a TCP/IP port, allowing anyone with a web-ready media player to open the proper URL and play the currently playing music on their own computer.
- I've also got the main webserver on my laptop...but it's a laptop, so it's not as nice as I'd like it to be.
- I also have a small proxy server from AnalogX on my laptop, which allows me to make very low-quality internet connections from the Dimension, which does not have a decent modem to connect itself.
- I also run Last.FM on both laptop and Dimension to update my account with what I play. Of course, this service only works when I'm connected to the internet and program they call the "Scroggler" is running. And I still don't have the service down, so I don't know exactly what any of that accomplishes, especially when I'm on a slow dialup connection. Oh, I should mention that having this new sound card WILL allow me to listen to music at the library, and therefore, Last.FM (or Pandora, which I'm planning on switching to in a couple days) will be much more worthwhile to even have.
Therefore, with all these upgrades, my own little two-computer + router is coming together quite nicely and I'm making so much work for me!
Quote the Kid
What is this kid saying?
Comment to add your own caption, and we'll put up a poll in a few weeks maybe to see which one's the best.
Youtube:Newest Ten
I've just created a "newest ten" playlist in my Youtube channel. This is because my more recent videos aren't really getting viewed all that much. I post links to them here and there, but not many people read what I have to say. Therefore, I'm going to see what I can do about promoting them here. After all, isn't that what Youtube is really for? Getting people to view your videos more than everybody else?
I was so happy when the Galactic Conflicts series got 100 hits or so each. But then I look at the REALLY popular stuff and it's like 2 million hits in a single week or something insane. It's crazy! I need to step it up.
Anyway, here we are:
Edit: I just checked....in all, the cumulative views on my Youtube stuff is:
Videos: 19792
Channel: 1467
I should seriously check my sources before I go complaining.
I was so happy when the Galactic Conflicts series got 100 hits or so each. But then I look at the REALLY popular stuff and it's like 2 million hits in a single week or something insane. It's crazy! I need to step it up.
Anyway, here we are:
Edit: I just checked....in all, the cumulative views on my Youtube stuff is:
Videos: 19792
Channel: 1467
I should seriously check my sources before I go complaining.
Jazz Hands needs to OWN the Newsboys "Way Beyond Myself Remix"
Let's get WayFM's TotalAxxess remix of Way Beyond Myself (Newsboys) on the top.
Head to: http://newsboys.heroku.com/107 and click the Vote! link. Whoever wins the Newsboys Remix contest gets to have that cut on the newest collection release (which Newsboys has way too many of), AND they get a year of some free service...I don't know what that is, but having your mix on the official CD would be awesome! Especially Wally's Jazz Hands mix.
Aristotle in Star Trek?
Last semester I took a public speaking class and learned the basics of writing a good, convincing and even persuasive essay. Earlier today I was thinking about these basics and the thought came to mind, "Maybe this is why Star Trek is so good; so engaging; so believable. Of course, my opinion of it being believable is pretty far out, but you must admit, Roddenberry did an awesome job of portraying human nature even in a futuristic world.
So what are these basics that I speak of? They are those elements of writing which Aristotle came up with: Ethos, Logos and Pathos (ethics, logic and emotion). Ethos describes how trustworthy a statement is, while logos explains how logical it is to proven fact. Pathos appeals to the emotions, even if the content is an assumption or completely falsified.
The statement, "We are miracles of God," is not necessarily a statement with strong ethos, simply because there is no basis for the statement. However, you could reword it and say, "According to the living word of God, we are His miracles." Now the statement has some origin which skeptics could reference your statement to to see if what you were saying had any basis.
Now I feel like I'm rambling. So I'll get to the point of this post: Star Trek. What made Star Trek so engaging and why does it still have a huge fan-base? I think it is partly because Gene Roddenberry heavily utilized these three tools in every single one of the episodes. He even personified them into certain characters throughout the multiple series that were created.
Example: Spock is obviously the persona of logic, or logos. Every statement he made was based off of a believable scientific or statistical fact. Kirk was the example of ethos. He could not have become captain of a starship without a good trustworthy background. And his crew followed him into every scenario even when at first glance, the decision seemed crazy, because they knew he could be trusted. And McCoy was a good example of pathos. Everything he did seemed to contrast to Spock, because he was a very emotional person. He based many of his decisions on how he felt at the time.
Of course, Next Generation equivalents would have been Data, Picard and Troi, respectively.
Now Roddenberry could not have created hundreds of episodes by making sure logos, ethos and pathos were present in every single one. No. In fact, I believe he intentionally reversed them in many cases. Recall the sadistic parallel-universe Kirk, or the time Picard was taken over by the electrical alien, making his crew extremely suspicious of his actions and even sparking mutinous feelings. In these cases, these leaders had lost their ethical credibility! So even a reversal in ethos, pathos and logos were used to create and add even more variety and interest to the world of Star Trek.
So what are these basics that I speak of? They are those elements of writing which Aristotle came up with: Ethos, Logos and Pathos (ethics, logic and emotion). Ethos describes how trustworthy a statement is, while logos explains how logical it is to proven fact. Pathos appeals to the emotions, even if the content is an assumption or completely falsified.
The statement, "We are miracles of God," is not necessarily a statement with strong ethos, simply because there is no basis for the statement. However, you could reword it and say, "According to the living word of God, we are His miracles." Now the statement has some origin which skeptics could reference your statement to to see if what you were saying had any basis.
Now I feel like I'm rambling. So I'll get to the point of this post: Star Trek. What made Star Trek so engaging and why does it still have a huge fan-base? I think it is partly because Gene Roddenberry heavily utilized these three tools in every single one of the episodes. He even personified them into certain characters throughout the multiple series that were created.
Example: Spock is obviously the persona of logic, or logos. Every statement he made was based off of a believable scientific or statistical fact. Kirk was the example of ethos. He could not have become captain of a starship without a good trustworthy background. And his crew followed him into every scenario even when at first glance, the decision seemed crazy, because they knew he could be trusted. And McCoy was a good example of pathos. Everything he did seemed to contrast to Spock, because he was a very emotional person. He based many of his decisions on how he felt at the time.
Of course, Next Generation equivalents would have been Data, Picard and Troi, respectively.
Now Roddenberry could not have created hundreds of episodes by making sure logos, ethos and pathos were present in every single one. No. In fact, I believe he intentionally reversed them in many cases. Recall the sadistic parallel-universe Kirk, or the time Picard was taken over by the electrical alien, making his crew extremely suspicious of his actions and even sparking mutinous feelings. In these cases, these leaders had lost their ethical credibility! So even a reversal in ethos, pathos and logos were used to create and add even more variety and interest to the world of Star Trek.
Comments.....
As much as I like comments, I really don't like them..here.
A few days ago I decided to change my comments display settings to show below the post, which involved activating post pages and changing a dumb little setting. And it caused all of my comments to disappear! What's up with that?
So anyway, I don't know if I want to complain or something. They say that for some cases, like when you move to a custom domain, the comments are still there, but they're not being displayed and it has to be fixed.. But nobody mentioned when you change display settings for comments.
A few days ago I decided to change my comments display settings to show below the post, which involved activating post pages and changing a dumb little setting. And it caused all of my comments to disappear! What's up with that?
So anyway, I don't know if I want to complain or something. They say that for some cases, like when you move to a custom domain, the comments are still there, but they're not being displayed and it has to be fixed.. But nobody mentioned when you change display settings for comments.
5-3-10
Two new MAJOR developments in my life of social networking and/or online accounts:
1) I discovered a Christian guy named Steve McGranahan who calls himself "The world's strongest redneck." He's got all his videos and beliefs up at http://www.stevemcgranahan.com.
2) Also, even more recently (by a couple hours) I registered with Wikipedia as an editor. I don't think I'll do much there, but I like to try to keep modern stuff updated properly, since I had a good excuse today which didn't pan out after all. Simple profile page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Depwl9992
That's all for now!
1) I discovered a Christian guy named Steve McGranahan who calls himself "The world's strongest redneck." He's got all his videos and beliefs up at http://www.stevemcgranahan.com.
2) Also, even more recently (by a couple hours) I registered with Wikipedia as an editor. I don't think I'll do much there, but I like to try to keep modern stuff updated properly, since I had a good excuse today which didn't pan out after all. Simple profile page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Depwl9992
That's all for now!
New Animations
I've just put up some five-second lego animations. They're a parody on Batman and the "BOY WONDERRRRR" except I wondered what it would be like if Boy Wonder (Robin) were a total fop.
The Boy Failure 01 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCiu7-EOJEc
The Boy Failure 02 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoMYWEaEawQ
The Boy Failure 03 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK_W0gp4qTo
The Boy Failure 01 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCiu7-EOJEc
The Boy Failure 02 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoMYWEaEawQ
The Boy Failure 03 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK_W0gp4qTo
Commenting...
So since Andrea made HER blog, I gained a few people who were interested in MY blog. But now nobody comments!! I might go and pout or sulk or something.
PLEASE go comment? I really like REAL comments. All I get now-days are junk email-like comments advertising things. Or some foreigner who can't speak a lick of proper English telling me about a school assignment? Now THAT'S a confusing one...no name, no sense in the comment at all, but it isn't junk advertising either, so I don't know what to make of it.
All in all, I don't get worthwhile commenting at all! And I really want to hear what you have to say.
Done!
Bye.
Shepherd vs. shepherd
The flock: we can either have a shepherd who tends his flock and keeps them happy, well fed, healthy and safe. But a shepherd can also train his flock with strength. Life isn't going to be all safety and rest. It will have hardship as well. We, as a flock can also be trained in strength, defense and even combat. At least this is what I could see as a potential goal of the body of Christ. A pastor could baby his flock along, exerting all the fruits of the spirit, but skirting problems that arrise to avoid conflict, or he could train that group of people to take the bad situations head-on and grow strong from them. Just a thought...
Why do we believe what we believe?
So I just had a thought brought up by someone. I won't get into details why, but pretty much it's a questioning of my beliefs about stuff. Stuff like, "why is playing with 'supposed' demonic things dangerous?" and "why do I believe that following Jesus the best way for the non-eternal portion of our lives as well as for the ONLY way for the eternal?"
Truly, I have no intention of recanting ANY of my beliefs on these things EVER, but my answer to those questions is really only a very weak "because it's what I've always believed." There is no valid why, really. And I really want there to be.
Thoughts? Not that I won't stop believing this way, but in all sincerity, why should I keep on believing this way?
Until Jesus returns exactly how he said he would and proves himself to every agnostic, atheist, Christian and other, we'll just have to take him and his word by faith. Is that all we have to go on then? Faith?
I just had a thought..and a prayer. Only one person truly knows what I'm thinking. Probably even more-so than I do. I don't even know what I'm thinking, but he sure does. And the prayer is that he would show me exactly how to approach people who make me question my beliefs with his own power enough to convince them that he truly is the way. And that would be HIS power, because if it were my own..well then we couldn't give him credit for any of it.
More to think on I guess.
Here's a quick idea to get perspective: I'm thinking of these questions while looking in from the viewpoint of a non-Christian. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I am not a Christian. I'm saying that I'm looking at the issue AS IF I was not. Basically, how does the other guy think? Why doesn't he believe me?
Truly, I have no intention of recanting ANY of my beliefs on these things EVER, but my answer to those questions is really only a very weak "because it's what I've always believed." There is no valid why, really. And I really want there to be.
Thoughts? Not that I won't stop believing this way, but in all sincerity, why should I keep on believing this way?
Until Jesus returns exactly how he said he would and proves himself to every agnostic, atheist, Christian and other, we'll just have to take him and his word by faith. Is that all we have to go on then? Faith?
I just had a thought..and a prayer. Only one person truly knows what I'm thinking. Probably even more-so than I do. I don't even know what I'm thinking, but he sure does. And the prayer is that he would show me exactly how to approach people who make me question my beliefs with his own power enough to convince them that he truly is the way. And that would be HIS power, because if it were my own..well then we couldn't give him credit for any of it.
More to think on I guess.
Here's a quick idea to get perspective: I'm thinking of these questions while looking in from the viewpoint of a non-Christian. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I am not a Christian. I'm saying that I'm looking at the issue AS IF I was not. Basically, how does the other guy think? Why doesn't he believe me?
Can new technology go too far?
Seriously, Blu-ray is just a way to create a 40GB DVD. And of course, if the technology is popular with a big company like Disney or Universal, well, they'll do everything possible to get sales including remastering these old videos into high quality digital video with replacement 3D renders and adding hours of 'extras' which are a waste of time.
Personally, I say if you want Blu-ray to take off, stop advertising so much in the way of "hours of special bonus features!" Instead, why don't you pack hours of actual MOVIE onto the disc. Why not put Toy Story 1 at 2 (and now 3 in June) onto one side of one disc and say, "Get all three Toy Stories on one single-layer Blu-ray disc!"
Well, really it seems as though they invested in this great technology and now they don't exactly know what to do with it. It's like getting a one-million dollar check in the mail and...now what?
Back to old videos though: sometimes the mistakes and cheap look that the old videos had can be appreciated MORE than a remaster of them to make them look cooler. Star Trek for example was COOL when it was cheap! Of course, it's kind of cool now, but not as much.
More on Skype and overhead setups
Well, last night at men's 6:33 we had our Skype call from Argentina. And it worked...kind of. However, the connection they had down there was extremely poor and our own LAN wasn't doing so hot for external connections either. However, we did like we had done for when they went to India. We bypassed audio transmission and sent only video through Skype. Then we plugged someone's Blackberry into the sound board via headphone jack and were able to get audio that way. So Skype for video and Blackberry for audio. It worked fairly well and we were able to get a decent show up on the screen.
However, WE of course, were stressing out the entire time and we had leadership up in the sound booth bugging us as to why we weren't getting this feature to work or why they couldn't hear us or why why why...
And of course, we didn't know because we hadn't anticipated the Blackberry/cell-phone idea one bit. They just handed us the cell phone and said, "This is how we did it this morning!" But neither of us were there "this morning," so we had to figure out what they were talking about. Anyway, the same leadership person that was pretty much instigating all the stress also said afterward that we should just come up with a standard. He said, "Skype team," but I assume that to mean that we just need to write up a whitepaper or standard on how to make Skype work for missions trips that we want to bring in during a service. And I've come up with a few ideas.
The first idea is to codify the setup we had last night. Have a headphone plugin going to a cell phone from the board for audio and Skype the video in and combine them successfully. However, Skype, I noticed, is pretty horrible with video, especially when the camera is low resolution. Besides that, we only have a framerate of maybe 2 frames/sec if the connection is good and less if the connection is bad or flaky. In fact, there were times where we had 1 frame/2 minutes last night.
So maybe we should scrap the Skype idea and go for something a bit more reasonable like UStream. UStream is like an online video recorder that will also stream your recording live as you record it. Of course, I've no idea what the quality of the transmission would be if they were on a slow connection, so this might require a bit of thought.
As for audio, working with everybody else's cell phone was just horrible. The first one we got was a flip-phone that required security unlocks due to the international connection and it kept disconnecting on us. The second was a Blackberry and we got audio okay, but had a bit of trouble sending audio back. Besides that, the guy was up in the sound booth yelling at his phone the whole time. Thus I've come up with a solution. Perhaps the best idea would be to create/research a box which would replace the telephone handset. We DO have a landline in the sound booth which we can probably more easily call and get a reasonable connection (cell phones either way increase chances of dropped calls). My idea is to somehow vandalize or 'decompile' the telephone handset which is on a PBX network and replace it with a plain old RCA I/O. This would require a bit of impedance matching and possibly some audio amplifiers to interface the phone earpiece/mic with a regular audio input/output. This is probably the best solution that I can think of. Of course, the store-bought one costs somewhere around $400, so that's out. I can't imagine a church paying that much money for a once-a-year occurrence. Besides, I think I can make my own, with my dad's help.
So those are my ideas and reflections. I didn't think last night was at all efficient, and standardizing it will make things a whole bunch better.
However, WE of course, were stressing out the entire time and we had leadership up in the sound booth bugging us as to why we weren't getting this feature to work or why they couldn't hear us or why why why...
And of course, we didn't know because we hadn't anticipated the Blackberry/cell-phone idea one bit. They just handed us the cell phone and said, "This is how we did it this morning!" But neither of us were there "this morning," so we had to figure out what they were talking about. Anyway, the same leadership person that was pretty much instigating all the stress also said afterward that we should just come up with a standard. He said, "Skype team," but I assume that to mean that we just need to write up a whitepaper or standard on how to make Skype work for missions trips that we want to bring in during a service. And I've come up with a few ideas.
The first idea is to codify the setup we had last night. Have a headphone plugin going to a cell phone from the board for audio and Skype the video in and combine them successfully. However, Skype, I noticed, is pretty horrible with video, especially when the camera is low resolution. Besides that, we only have a framerate of maybe 2 frames/sec if the connection is good and less if the connection is bad or flaky. In fact, there were times where we had 1 frame/2 minutes last night.
So maybe we should scrap the Skype idea and go for something a bit more reasonable like UStream. UStream is like an online video recorder that will also stream your recording live as you record it. Of course, I've no idea what the quality of the transmission would be if they were on a slow connection, so this might require a bit of thought.
As for audio, working with everybody else's cell phone was just horrible. The first one we got was a flip-phone that required security unlocks due to the international connection and it kept disconnecting on us. The second was a Blackberry and we got audio okay, but had a bit of trouble sending audio back. Besides that, the guy was up in the sound booth yelling at his phone the whole time. Thus I've come up with a solution. Perhaps the best idea would be to create/research a box which would replace the telephone handset. We DO have a landline in the sound booth which we can probably more easily call and get a reasonable connection (cell phones either way increase chances of dropped calls). My idea is to somehow vandalize or 'decompile' the telephone handset which is on a PBX network and replace it with a plain old RCA I/O. This would require a bit of impedance matching and possibly some audio amplifiers to interface the phone earpiece/mic with a regular audio input/output. This is probably the best solution that I can think of. Of course, the store-bought one costs somewhere around $400, so that's out. I can't imagine a church paying that much money for a once-a-year occurrence. Besides, I think I can make my own, with my dad's help.
So those are my ideas and reflections. I didn't think last night was at all efficient, and standardizing it will make things a whole bunch better.
Idea for new computer
So we're having this BIG thing at church where a group of probably seven to ten guys are going down to Argentina in about a month or so. They're trying to set it up so that the Tuesday when we're meeting and they are gone, they'll Skype us during service and we'll be able to put it up and talk with them live. I think this is pretty cool. However, we were running into a few security bugs last week when we tested (security locked me out of being able to open Skype up). We'll be testing it again tomorrow night, and I think the IT guy at church fixed it. Anyway, he said he'd look into it this last week.
This all got me to thinking: what would be the ultimate media computer? I thought, everybody goes for Mac as a media computer, but what if I were to just completely create my own? I thought I'd probably use Windows as an operating system, since I know that one best. However, the very basic distribution has SO many background processes to keep everything running it's almost annoying. But I think I'd go for Windows in spight of everything.
Actually, my idea was this: what kind of computer could I build that would be the ultimate in speed, capacity and technology while being affordable? And what kind of cool peripherals could I put on it to make it completely media and Internet-based? I thought, maybe I'd create a whitebox (custom desktop) computer with all the latest video/audio hardware. I'd have a nice big GEForce or NVidia video card plus maybe a 6-channel audio card. Of course, I'd also have the option to mix everything down into 2-channel stereo, but 6 channel would be nice to have just in case. On top of that, I might try to set it up with three monitors. Yes, two is cool but three is cooler!
Then I thought maybe I'd get a permanent webcam and possibly attach it with a Third Hand sort of mechanical device. Maybe ball joints or something. I also thought that maybe I could manage a good quality scan converter so I could pipe one of the monitor outputs to a composite video feed.
Of course, I also considered making it portable. Maybe a nicely carved wooden box or a steel crate with air vents would be sufficient to cart it around. Or I could go for one of those official media boxes with the twist-clamps. Also, a box would mean casters, because with all this stuff I'd add to it, it would become quite heavy.
Let me go back to audio. I'd also want a fairly decent audio mixer so that I could control volume of the output audio. And probably I'd want another for inputs.
I'm probably going crazy here and have racked up around $3000 worth of stuff...but I'll keep brainstorming.
Of course, I'd have a high-quality (everything is high-quality) network module or two..wireless and wired. And maybe a dialup modem, since we're still on a phone line at home.
Actually I should put this all in perspective. This was an attempt at making the ultimate Skype experience. Webcam, audio input and output and a video output for the overhead projector setup we have at church.
I seem to be rambling. But of course, I'm into it! This is what I'd do if I could. Of course, at the moment I can't but if I COULD...yeah.
Then I have to think about weight. So far, I've really really enjoyed having a laptop to cart around everywhere. It's VERY portable. I couldn't imagine taking this giant box to the library every day for school..of course, who says this is a school computer? I don't want to store EVERYTHING I ever have had on this thing. That would clog it up and it's primary purpose would be bogged down. No. It's only for media broadcasting and stuff.
I just had another brainstorm: video inputs? Maybe. Maybe not. That's a tossup. All of the video stuff I've seen so far is HUGE and that'd detract from the good speed I'd be getting. This is going to take some thought, but I definitely want to look into it.
Okay. I am probably done rambling. Have fun reading!!
This all got me to thinking: what would be the ultimate media computer? I thought, everybody goes for Mac as a media computer, but what if I were to just completely create my own? I thought I'd probably use Windows as an operating system, since I know that one best. However, the very basic distribution has SO many background processes to keep everything running it's almost annoying. But I think I'd go for Windows in spight of everything.
Actually, my idea was this: what kind of computer could I build that would be the ultimate in speed, capacity and technology while being affordable? And what kind of cool peripherals could I put on it to make it completely media and Internet-based? I thought, maybe I'd create a whitebox (custom desktop) computer with all the latest video/audio hardware. I'd have a nice big GEForce or NVidia video card plus maybe a 6-channel audio card. Of course, I'd also have the option to mix everything down into 2-channel stereo, but 6 channel would be nice to have just in case. On top of that, I might try to set it up with three monitors. Yes, two is cool but three is cooler!
Then I thought maybe I'd get a permanent webcam and possibly attach it with a Third Hand sort of mechanical device. Maybe ball joints or something. I also thought that maybe I could manage a good quality scan converter so I could pipe one of the monitor outputs to a composite video feed.
Of course, I also considered making it portable. Maybe a nicely carved wooden box or a steel crate with air vents would be sufficient to cart it around. Or I could go for one of those official media boxes with the twist-clamps. Also, a box would mean casters, because with all this stuff I'd add to it, it would become quite heavy.
Let me go back to audio. I'd also want a fairly decent audio mixer so that I could control volume of the output audio. And probably I'd want another for inputs.
I'm probably going crazy here and have racked up around $3000 worth of stuff...but I'll keep brainstorming.
Of course, I'd have a high-quality (everything is high-quality) network module or two..wireless and wired. And maybe a dialup modem, since we're still on a phone line at home.
Actually I should put this all in perspective. This was an attempt at making the ultimate Skype experience. Webcam, audio input and output and a video output for the overhead projector setup we have at church.
I seem to be rambling. But of course, I'm into it! This is what I'd do if I could. Of course, at the moment I can't but if I COULD...yeah.
Then I have to think about weight. So far, I've really really enjoyed having a laptop to cart around everywhere. It's VERY portable. I couldn't imagine taking this giant box to the library every day for school..of course, who says this is a school computer? I don't want to store EVERYTHING I ever have had on this thing. That would clog it up and it's primary purpose would be bogged down. No. It's only for media broadcasting and stuff.
I just had another brainstorm: video inputs? Maybe. Maybe not. That's a tossup. All of the video stuff I've seen so far is HUGE and that'd detract from the good speed I'd be getting. This is going to take some thought, but I definitely want to look into it.
Okay. I am probably done rambling. Have fun reading!!
Radio DJs
So I just finished a little research on some of my favorite radio DJ's from or piped into WayFM.
- Wally - TotalAxxess
I did some research and FOUND his Youtube channel HERE! - Brant Hansen and the rest
Lack of Lyrics
Ha! This Tuesday we had a great time at the Men's meeting at church. However, due to a real good worship time, we had to come up with a few songs on the fly. This was a bit difficult, due to the fact that the two we were given ahead of time were put into the overheads software ProPresenter.
ProPresenter is REALLY cool, not because it's Mac only (I don't like Mac that well), but because it can do EVERYTHING without using another program. You can import video files, audio files, images and text files. The idea of this program is to pipe this stuff to a full-screen window on a second monitor which would be piped into an overhead projector feed. Thus you can get lyrics for songs up. Of course, you probably wonder, why the video and audio and images if the program is for putting lyrics up on an overhead projector? Well, modern media technology is trending toward an animated background beneath your words, which really enhances the experience.
Of course, this is not degrading the music itself, or the purpose of the music, which is to worship God. Instead, think of it this way: a moving background can enhance the music a great deal. I mean, if music is a tool for worship, then video can be too. And I've found that I get a huge connection to God if I put up a really sweet animated background that totally fits the current song. I don't know if anyone else can relate to it, but there was one case last year...I'll explain that later maybe.
So ProPresenter can put up an animation below the words on the overhead projector feed. But of course, ProPresenter is not just for lyrics in worship services. You can also run slideshows, video presentations and even music. The idea is that the entire synthetic part of the church media presentation (excluding the live video and audio mix) can be consolidated right down into this ONE program.
On Tuesday night's during the Men's meeting, we have a short 10 to 15 minute worship time in which a sound man (that's usually Steve Engel) a video person (that's me) will run either a DVD or an audio file. If it IS a DVD, we usually put it in a seperate DVD player which we can key the words from ProPresenter over, or if possible, just turn on the DVD subtitles. However, if we run audio only, I usually try and do a 100% ProPresenter consolidation. This means that I can import the MP3 file into the program, load an animated background, load the lyrics which are seperated by verse and play the audio from the program, plus switch verses live as the song progresses.
Oh, and if I WANTED to and had enough time, I could actually automate the verse-switching using some scripting built into ProPresenter, but that's fairly complicated and takes time, which I don't usually have any of before the meeting.
But anyway...back to this last Tuesday. We had a huge worship time, and so the two songs that we were given by the leadership just weren't long enough for what we needed to do. So on the fly, we came up with a few more, those being run from a DVD. We didn't put the video up, but we did run the audio through to the soundboard and put a plain words/background up for video. However, the lyrics for these songs hadn't been imported into ProPresenter, so I had to go online and search for them myself. These lyrics were from Bethel Live's CD "Here is Love." Well, I couldn't find anything at all online and the song was playing as I was looking, but nobody knew the words, so nobody was singing along. And the leadership was getting pretty miffed by it. So we had to resort back to the older Jesus Culture album "We Cry Out," which was really cool. But still, we weren't able to put words up for that last song and I was really disappointed that I couldn't find them online.
Getting to the point: HERE ARE THE WORDS! I have the audio files at home, so I was able to listen and type them out as I listened. And these are accurate to a point, except that Brian Johnson can't sing clearly, so it's really hard to understand him. Point being: next Tuesday, I can load up this blog post at church and copy them into the program! HA! Anyhow, enjoy. And right now, these only entail approximately four songs.
Lyrics From: Bethel Live - "Here is Love"
'LET HEAVEN SHOUT'
I surrender all to You my God
I will give You all I have
Oh You took my filthiness and made me clean
I love You, Lord
Your praises I will sing
Let Heaven shout
For I have been redeemed
I lay down my life my plans my rights
For I'm captured by Your love
And though I lose this world I will know You
Nothing compares
Nothing compares
Nothing compares
Nothing compares
'WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE'
What does it sound like
When you sing Heaven's song
What does it feel like
When Heaven comes down
What does it look like
When God is all around
Let it come
This is what it sounds like
When you sing Heaven's song
This is what it feels like
When Heaven comes down
This is what it looks like
When God is all around
Let it come
'WORTHY IS THE LAMB'
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain
For me (For me)
For me (For me)
He gave it all
For me
Hallelujah
King forever
Hallelujah
Give praise to our God
Hallelujah
King and Savior
We will sing
'HERE IS LOVE' (Dashed-words/lines are unclear and inaccurate)
Here is Love
Vast as the ocean
Loving-kindness as a flood
When the Prince of life I ransom
Shed for us His precious blood
Who is Love
Will not remember
Who can cease to see His praise
He will never be forgotten
Throughout Heaven's eternal -reign-
Oh the mount of Crucifiction
Fountains opened deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God's mercies
For a vast and gracious -prize-
Grace and Love like mighty rivers
Pouring -sense and- from above
Heaven's peace and perfect justice
---blah---blah---blah---------------
No Love is higher
No Love is wider
No Love is deeper
No Love is truer
-So let me -
That love accepting
Love forever all my days
Let me see Thy kingdom -wholy-
And my life be to Thy praise
That my all shall be Thy glory
Nothing in this world I seek
Thou hast cleansed and sanctified me
now Thy son has set me free
---and---maybe---some---more---
--------below--------
ProPresenter is REALLY cool, not because it's Mac only (I don't like Mac that well), but because it can do EVERYTHING without using another program. You can import video files, audio files, images and text files. The idea of this program is to pipe this stuff to a full-screen window on a second monitor which would be piped into an overhead projector feed. Thus you can get lyrics for songs up. Of course, you probably wonder, why the video and audio and images if the program is for putting lyrics up on an overhead projector? Well, modern media technology is trending toward an animated background beneath your words, which really enhances the experience.
Of course, this is not degrading the music itself, or the purpose of the music, which is to worship God. Instead, think of it this way: a moving background can enhance the music a great deal. I mean, if music is a tool for worship, then video can be too. And I've found that I get a huge connection to God if I put up a really sweet animated background that totally fits the current song. I don't know if anyone else can relate to it, but there was one case last year...I'll explain that later maybe.
So ProPresenter can put up an animation below the words on the overhead projector feed. But of course, ProPresenter is not just for lyrics in worship services. You can also run slideshows, video presentations and even music. The idea is that the entire synthetic part of the church media presentation (excluding the live video and audio mix) can be consolidated right down into this ONE program.
On Tuesday night's during the Men's meeting, we have a short 10 to 15 minute worship time in which a sound man (that's usually Steve Engel) a video person (that's me) will run either a DVD or an audio file. If it IS a DVD, we usually put it in a seperate DVD player which we can key the words from ProPresenter over, or if possible, just turn on the DVD subtitles. However, if we run audio only, I usually try and do a 100% ProPresenter consolidation. This means that I can import the MP3 file into the program, load an animated background, load the lyrics which are seperated by verse and play the audio from the program, plus switch verses live as the song progresses.
Oh, and if I WANTED to and had enough time, I could actually automate the verse-switching using some scripting built into ProPresenter, but that's fairly complicated and takes time, which I don't usually have any of before the meeting.
But anyway...back to this last Tuesday. We had a huge worship time, and so the two songs that we were given by the leadership just weren't long enough for what we needed to do. So on the fly, we came up with a few more, those being run from a DVD. We didn't put the video up, but we did run the audio through to the soundboard and put a plain words/background up for video. However, the lyrics for these songs hadn't been imported into ProPresenter, so I had to go online and search for them myself. These lyrics were from Bethel Live's CD "Here is Love." Well, I couldn't find anything at all online and the song was playing as I was looking, but nobody knew the words, so nobody was singing along. And the leadership was getting pretty miffed by it. So we had to resort back to the older Jesus Culture album "We Cry Out," which was really cool. But still, we weren't able to put words up for that last song and I was really disappointed that I couldn't find them online.
Getting to the point: HERE ARE THE WORDS! I have the audio files at home, so I was able to listen and type them out as I listened. And these are accurate to a point, except that Brian Johnson can't sing clearly, so it's really hard to understand him. Point being: next Tuesday, I can load up this blog post at church and copy them into the program! HA! Anyhow, enjoy. And right now, these only entail approximately four songs.
Lyrics From: Bethel Live - "Here is Love"
'LET HEAVEN SHOUT'
I surrender all to You my God
I will give You all I have
Oh You took my filthiness and made me clean
I love You, Lord
Your praises I will sing
Let Heaven shout
For I have been redeemed
I lay down my life my plans my rights
For I'm captured by Your love
And though I lose this world I will know You
Nothing compares
Nothing compares
Nothing compares
Nothing compares
'WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE'
What does it sound like
When you sing Heaven's song
What does it feel like
When Heaven comes down
What does it look like
When God is all around
Let it come
This is what it sounds like
When you sing Heaven's song
This is what it feels like
When Heaven comes down
This is what it looks like
When God is all around
Let it come
'WORTHY IS THE LAMB'
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain
For me (For me)
For me (For me)
He gave it all
For me
Hallelujah
King forever
Hallelujah
Give praise to our God
Hallelujah
King and Savior
We will sing
'HERE IS LOVE' (Dashed-words/lines are unclear and inaccurate)
Here is Love
Vast as the ocean
Loving-kindness as a flood
When the Prince of life I ransom
Shed for us His precious blood
Who is Love
Will not remember
Who can cease to see His praise
He will never be forgotten
Throughout Heaven's eternal -reign-
Oh the mount of Crucifiction
Fountains opened deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God's mercies
For a vast and gracious -prize-
Grace and Love like mighty rivers
Pouring -sense and- from above
Heaven's peace and perfect justice
---blah---blah---blah---------------
No Love is higher
No Love is wider
No Love is deeper
No Love is truer
-So let me -
That love accepting
Love forever all my days
Let me see Thy kingdom -wholy-
And my life be to Thy praise
That my all shall be Thy glory
Nothing in this world I seek
Thou hast cleansed and sanctified me
now Thy son has set me free
---and---maybe---some---more---
--------below--------
On Speaking
Wow. That was a 'profound' title. However, I just got out of speech class so my blood pressure is spiked..or it was about ten minutes ago and it's been slowly decompressing. Today we got in what they call 'impromptu speeches.' Here was the format: Think of a one-sentence topic that matches the following sentence of "If you could ________." Then hand your idea in and then grab a different one from the bag.
That's about as impromptu as I could think of. When I walked in, I thought, "Huh, I'm going to do something like 'If you could do any extreme sport, what would it be,' and my answer would be 'I would go in a hot-air balloon' and then tell them of how I turned my dad down when he offered to get me on the Remax balloon when I was four." But then she said we were going to trade topics so I really stressed out. Turns out my question was "If you could buy anything what would it be?"
Now I don't want to get religious on materialism, but I chose an Alienware computer. Did I mention those here a few years ago? I don't know. Of course, a house would be my FIRST choice, but what's there to talk on on buying a house that will take up three minutes worth of talking? So I talked about the Alienware computer and why I wanted to buy it.
Okay. Rant. I am not one to get up in front of people and talk or to jump up and say, "Now everybody pay attention to me because it's my turn to talk." I hate the spotlight and I'd rather disappear into a corner and enjoy listening to everybody else. So speech class is a big bleh thing. But I have to do it in order to get my piece of paper.
Anyhow...that reminds me. I wanted to research the Alienware and see what was the norm for super-fast computers. I know the standard is probably superfast compared to what I'm working on right now, but I'm sure Alienware is developing way beyond that like they do, so I want to see what that is.
M11x Desktop starting at $1200....ouch. That's a big fat no right off the bat.
But I'll go for the top-end M11x at $4000:
Intel Core I7 960 - 3.2GHz, 8MB Cache - This is the microprocessor....and that is pretty fast.
Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon HD 5870 CrossfireX - Video Card...None of this makes any sense except for the 1GB VRAM. And I'm not sure how much better that is than everything else.
6GB DDR3 1600MHz (3x 2GB) - This is -regular- RAM. 6GB is pretty big. About....12 times bigger than what I'm running.
1.2TB Raid - Hard Drive. Raid is SUPER cool but if you use the Raid technology (with backup), you only actually USE part of what's there, so this would be more like 1TB worth of usable space, which is still really good, especially for a primary hard drive
24X CD/+-DVDRW Burner - Fairly standard..okay.
That's about as impromptu as I could think of. When I walked in, I thought, "Huh, I'm going to do something like 'If you could do any extreme sport, what would it be,' and my answer would be 'I would go in a hot-air balloon' and then tell them of how I turned my dad down when he offered to get me on the Remax balloon when I was four." But then she said we were going to trade topics so I really stressed out. Turns out my question was "If you could buy anything what would it be?"
Now I don't want to get religious on materialism, but I chose an Alienware computer. Did I mention those here a few years ago? I don't know. Of course, a house would be my FIRST choice, but what's there to talk on on buying a house that will take up three minutes worth of talking? So I talked about the Alienware computer and why I wanted to buy it.
Okay. Rant. I am not one to get up in front of people and talk or to jump up and say, "Now everybody pay attention to me because it's my turn to talk." I hate the spotlight and I'd rather disappear into a corner and enjoy listening to everybody else. So speech class is a big bleh thing. But I have to do it in order to get my piece of paper.
Anyhow...that reminds me. I wanted to research the Alienware and see what was the norm for super-fast computers. I know the standard is probably superfast compared to what I'm working on right now, but I'm sure Alienware is developing way beyond that like they do, so I want to see what that is.
M11x Desktop starting at $1200....ouch. That's a big fat no right off the bat.
But I'll go for the top-end M11x at $4000:
Intel Core I7 960 - 3.2GHz, 8MB Cache - This is the microprocessor....and that is pretty fast.
Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon HD 5870 CrossfireX - Video Card...None of this makes any sense except for the 1GB VRAM. And I'm not sure how much better that is than everything else.
6GB DDR3 1600MHz (3x 2GB) - This is -regular- RAM. 6GB is pretty big. About....12 times bigger than what I'm running.
1.2TB Raid - Hard Drive. Raid is SUPER cool but if you use the Raid technology (with backup), you only actually USE part of what's there, so this would be more like 1TB worth of usable space, which is still really good, especially for a primary hard drive
24X CD/+-DVDRW Burner - Fairly standard..okay.
Videos
It's time now for another edition of 'Make My Videos Popular,' the only blog which promotes depwl9992 and all of his (my) lego animations. As of now, I've uploaded around four new videos, all less than 30 seconds in length. They are SlaveDriver, Spaceman, Riding the Horse and JohnWayneMount. I'm going to go there in a sec and open it up to anonymous comments and things (they'll all still be censored, but I'm looking for feedback from those who don't have their own channels).
So check them out and see if you like 'em!
Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Depwl9992
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