After the break
| From a wat’ry grave |
June 28
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| I used to pride myself on providing high-quality sounds to the early adopters of the World Wide Web. Most recently, I chose to post some sounds from THE RUNNING MAN. What is important to note is that this hapened on 13-Sept 1997. That’s like the 3rd day of some year of college for me, and since then, nothing has been touched. Heading back in there (with a renewed interest in shell accounts, no less) showed me just how much nonsense is there and how much of it I really was interested in seeing again. The sounds, for example. Sourced at 11,025 kHz in stereo, and put up with a few flaws, the sounds now have degenerated into crackly, stretched insanity that are almost an embarassment, except that it’s curious that the so-called “perfect digital copy” that I made 4 years ago has gotten as bad as a worn tape over the time that UMBC has no doubt crashed, backed up, copied data to another drive, upgraded, and changed hardware. Granted, they weren’t perfect copies, but they have gotten worse over time. I wonder if this is happening to my cds. Here’s the page I put up (written in old-school pico for old times’ sake) so that there would at least be an index page on my UMBC homepage, which I’ve always assumed would be unceremoniously dumped someday. |
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| Shoot first, ask questions later. |
June 26
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 Sunday night, we began to roll camera around 10 PM. From then until 3:30 the three of us worked without a break to shoot 46 minutes and 44 seconds of footage and about 30 setups. SAG would not have approved (or else they would have made me pay a penalty). Andrea and Vincent were both amazing, overcoming no prep time, last-minute changes to the script and a rusty, out-of-practice director who was also doing the camerawork, lighting and catering of snacks when he wasn’t groping for associations and advice on character. The blue gels were wonderful (no wonder professionals use ’em!) and I learned about lighting night situations (and re-learned a lot, too). Next step, getting all of the footage dumped to a hard drive for editing.
In unrelated news, my sister is in London at the moment, on the first of seven stops through Europe and in about two weeks I’ll be meeting her in Prague. Yes, yes, call me a jet-setter if you wish, but I’m sick of always meeting in Philly–I think it’s about time to meet somewhere new, and the Czech Republic is as good as any, I always say. It’s burning hot here at work and with every keystroke I feel as if my fingers may just melt. I hear that in the civilized world they have a thing that makes indoor air cool and dry–New York City should invest in some R&D to see about this amazing development. |
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| Rooftop Project update |
June 22
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| The Rooftop Project website is up, and here’s the link. Tell me what you think, follow the updates (text will be here and on the film-411 boards and multimedia will be here), cross your fingers. Feedback, suggestions, and other kinds of help are always gladly welcomed. | |
| So it’s been awhile… |
June 19
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| The Rooftop Project is moving along nicely, and Kurt has finished half of his obligations to issue four of Venture (accounting for about 1/4 of the overall artwork). I have some lights and the camera seems to be working well enough, and everything, creatively, is generally going my way. So why am I so filled with the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament? Difficult to say. Perhaps it is because I don’t know jack about printing comic books. Maybe it is because I lack Blue gels and any idea how I’m going to get one or two of the shots that I want for my shoot this weekend. It could be the 40+ hours a week that I pass at work, wasting my potential and time fulfilling duties better left to monkeys. I’ll have to look into this further and see if I can find a cause. | |
| Webcams R Us |
June 15
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| Check me out. I’ll likely change the URL in the near future, but I like that I’m running a webcam entirely from home. I think I’ll have to put up an entire network of these things and see what happens. Interested parties, feel free to contact me. Of course, I’ll likely only be here once in a blue moon, what with work and spending money taking all my time. But we’ll see what happens. |
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| An insomniac’s love story |
June 13
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| Catchy title, huh? Totally original, too. It looks like the Rooftop Project has a cast at the moment, it’ll be Andrea (an aspiring actress whom we’ve come to know over more than a year going to Uno’s) and Vincent, 1/3 owner of the WriteClub venue, the Pantheon Theatre. As we progress, maybe just before shooting, I’ll post pictures of the cast and we’ll have a whole new thing going on here. As for the title of the post, it comes from my having gotten 3 hours of sleep 2 nights ago and some incident involving trains and misdirected attention. It’s not that exciting. Disney’s Atlantis tonight at the Ziegfeld. |
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| Movies in 2001 |
June 10
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| Here’s a list of the flicks that I’ve caught in 2001 thus far. I’m not sure that it’s complete, but for the time being, I’ll call it the Complete List of the Flicks I’ve Seen in 2001. Spurred by multiple threads on film-411 as of late, I created this list from information taken from my memory and from the internet. Do with that information what you will. | |
| Rooftop project |
June 07
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| Into the works officially goes a project to be shot on MiniDV on the roof of my apartment. Russ came to WriteClub with the screenplay for the first installment on Tuesday, and we’re going to go ahead with his draft. The story is about two close friends whose lives we view through their interactions on the roof of the apartment that they share. Casting is underway, but not close to complete, and I’m looking into all the options that I have available to me in terms of lighting and sound as well as camerawork and setups. Filming is tentatively set for the evening of the 23rd. We’ll see what happens. |
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| Just a small change |
June 05
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| I want to see if you can catch it. I will, however, offer you this clue. The harder you look for it, the less apparent it will be. I’ll leave it here for awhile, though, so maybe you’ll find it later if you don’t find it now. Nothing else amazing to report–I’ll be in Prague in one month. That’s pretty cool. | |
| No such thing as too much |
June 04
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| Proving once again that I have no self restraint was an all-too-easy venture for me this weekend.
Besides that, I was graced by visitors this weekend, KimRA, Beth and Emily met in the city and came down for a night of minor debaucheries Friday night. There was belated graduation congratulatory drinking, Emily getting a piggy back down third avenue and a bad-assed nest as well as dancing at the Salty Dog and some walking in the rain. Other than that and a phone call at 7am on Sunday, there’s not much to report about this weekend. Okay, there’s not much to report about the weekend that I’ll put here, anyway. A little mystery is important, anyway. |
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| Working from home |
June 01
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| Working from home has to be the best thing since sliced bread. No commute, no cubicle, same functionality and abilities. It’s a nice feeling to know that I can do work from here and still get up and wander around my house in my PJs. Sweet. Besides, I can go into my kitchen for lunch.
In other news, there will likely be Stoney Bank updates in a week or so–much needed updates to the site of the award-winning Stoney Bank Nurseries. |
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| Okay, now I’m being annoying. |
May 30
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| I’d apologize, but I kind of like it. Besides, it’s the only way to learn about things. I’ll try to remember to take this all down after a little while, though. Maybe I’ll replace it with something equally annoying, though, like the hamsterdance song.
Update, June 1: I took town the popup and the alerts, but I’m sure I’ll make it happen in a little while somewhere else. Thanks for putting up with me. |
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| VENTURE!!!! |
May 29
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| Issue2 and Issue3 have had master printing done! Now it’s off to get a half dozen copies of each made for final look before I decide where to print it for real. Kurt is here and motivated me to/helped me finish the last parts of issue2 that have been ready for edit for a week. Tonight is the initial printing… wish us luck. | |
| I’m the only one |
May 25
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| But I’m looking forward to Pearl Harbor. A lot. I won’t post a review, but I will tell you if I hate it. Have a great weekend of holiday. | |
| DivX Goodness |
May 22
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| navigate to the /docs directory and check divxlist (with the same extension that ALL my pages have) for an extant and relatively up-to-date list of DivX flicks that I’m holding and/or interested in. Hopefully, this list will be growing in the near future to relatively large proportions. We’ll see. | |
| Iori with a sword? |
May 21
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 I’m not the one to ask, really, but this looks eerily like Iori from KOF, only holding a sword. I wish I could make him bigger, but the idea is there. If you know who this is, you should let me know.
Also, Venture 4 stuff is up now. Go check it out and let me know what you think of things as they develop. Newcomer has got to get older, but that’s about it, so far. |
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| Monday, Bloody Monday |
May 21
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| I feel justified in saying that because I had a British visitor over the weekend. Between Megan getting a place to live and Jodi and Anna visiting, it turned out to be a pretty good weekend. Friday night was time for dancing and a drink or two near home with Russ and Megan. We met a misplaced raverboy and a couple of girls from Staten Island, too. More, perhaps, on them later.
I also got thumbs for issue4 today–can you believe it? I can hardly believe it my own self. Wow. I’ll post a scan or two on the Venture4 page this afternoon for you, should you want to see. |
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| What does it take? |
May 16
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| What does it take to start a production company? What *is* a production company? What about a production company that doesn’t just produce movies but comic books, scripts, web sites and more? These are some driving questions for my day. Who runs it? Who funds it? How does a creator hold his rights after making an opportunity for someone else to make money? Can it be done on a “build it as it goes” basis, or does the whole thing have to be built and then see if it works?
Lots of questions, no answers. |
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| Cars, trains, subways, feet |
May 14
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| It’s been a week. Whoops. Long weekend, long ride back here. Missed my Septa train by 45 seconds, that boded not well. NJT was express from Princeton Junction to Newark and right outside of Newark my train caught fire. Yeah, it burned. My car, in fact. That sucked. So it took a year and a day to get to Penn Station today and I didn’t manage to avoid rush hour. Damnit.I played VBall with Emily on Saturday, though, and that was cool. She has friends that were very good and that made for fun games. I think I should go home to play VBall every weekend. It’s almost worth the trouble of the 3 hours of train that I endured to do it. Well, not “almost,” but maybe “remotely close to.” VENTURE2 got all of its text last week (that is what i was doing instead of updating this page, anyway), so soon, I hope to have things together to print it. I have to write/draw the sound effects and do some digital editing of the page, so we’ll see what happens. |
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| Technological Wonder |
May 07
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| Over the course of the past few days, my new e-box has been coming closer and closer to being classifiable as an ‘ultimate gaming rig.’ This is not ultimate in the sense that it will run Quake faster than anyone else’s machine on the planet, but ultimate in the sense that, with a Sidewinder and boredom, you can play tons of Neo Geo games, Genesis games, NES games and Arcade games all on one box with stunning accuracy. Whether or not abandonware is legal is another question for another time, but since it’s fun, I partake. | |
| Andrew’s 21st |
May 05
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| I know that technically this got posted on the 6th, but I think it’s important that you know that Andrew turned 21 today. Wish him a happy belated birthday with an e-mail. | |
| E-Box |
May 03
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| Last night, i built from scratch my DVD box. I won’t get into the specifics, especially since they’re listed three updates down, but i’m psyched. The TV makes a terrible monitor, unfortunately, and although DVDs look pretty good and DivX flicks look fantastic (considering what they are) I probably won’t use it as much as I initially planned to. Of course, who uses 2 DVD players hooked up to the same television anyway? I’m not yet sure how games will look (and until i get a sidewinder I won’t be playing much anyway), and I know MP3s will play through the stereo. In fact, I’m going to burn some MP3s in a second to take home.
Also, I finished my script and polished up the first draft, finally. Now it’s time to get reactions. We’ll see what comes of those. I don’t know how extensive my second draft rewrite will be–a lot of that will depend on the feedback about what people think I should cut and what should stay, etc. At least now it’s done. Now only Venture2 remains that needs serious work. After that, I’ll be free to work on my movie ideas. |
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| A funny dream |
May 03
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Yesterday, I was too tired from dreaming to update this page, even though memories were fresher then. I had the strangest dream on Tuesday while I was out sick from work.I’ll tell it to you.
In my dream, I had gotten a call on Monday night from a production coordinator looking for some additional PAs for the TV show that my roommate works on. She asked me whether I cold come in the next day and I said yes, of course I could. Call was at 6:30 at 101 Sixth Avenue. I got there and stopped at the Honeywagon and got a headset. Oh, how i had missed the sound of production chatter! I never wanted to wake up, hearing people calling rolls and cuts, talking about where you’d be ‘on the day’ and saying ‘copy’ all the time. It was great fun. The leads were very down to earth and friendly – I actually got to spend some time talking to Brooke (pictured there on the right) about shooting the Replacements and something that was shot in Baltimore. We had a common thread – it was nice to be able to talk, like people, to the actors. The experience made me want to produce and direct even more. I watched with rapt interest the camera crew and the sound crew and was green with envy as the grips whipped arond C-Stands like they owned the place. It was all rather overwhelming for one day of shooting a TV show. In my dream, they also officially renamed the show ‘FLing’ in the morning, which seemed a little odd and prompted the 2nd AD to make a joke about faking the whole shoot for Florida. It was funny at the time, anyway. I think I fell in love with the stand-in for Brooke, too. Her name was Milla. Anyway, it was a fantastic dream and I didn’t want to wake up. It made me remember what I’m trying to do and where I want to be. I woke up and was tired from the intensity but psyched about the experience. Oh, then I dreamed that I went to WriteClub. |
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| By George, I think I’ve got it! |
Apr 26
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| A picnic, an old musical (to escape the torrent of rain that comes) and watching nighttime, rain-ridden NYC from the dry shelter of a gazebo in Chinatown. How’s that for a date? Now, it’s to me to write the darn thing. By next week, I vow completion of the script. Should I call it Oral Pleasures? | |
| DVD box |
Apr 25
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| In a frenzy of immaturity, I got the rest of the parts for my DVD box last Friday. That leaves me with an entertainment system with the following specs: Duron750, KT7, 128mb PC133, 3GB 7200rpm HDD, MSI GeForce2 MX w/TV out, SB Live! Value, SCSI 4x CD-R, AOpen 12x DVD, 3Com 10/100 NIC, Chicony Wireless Keyboard/Mouse combo, 300Watt, MidTower case/PS. What this all means is that there is going to be another late-generation processor driven system in my house (this one under the TV). It’ll surf the web, run videogames and play DVD, DivX, VCD, Quicktime, and all sorts of other movies, all on the 27″ TV. It’ll play all its sound (MP3, Gamesound, Moviesound) through my nonported 3 way stereo speakers (and the rest of my 5.1 setup). Can you say MP3 server heaven? Well, that’s that, anyway. |
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| Weekend Update |
Apr 16
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| My brother yelled at me because I didn’t update this thing often enough, and then here I go waiting six days. Ah well. My script is two scenes from finished (which is good) and I’m hoping to have it one scene from finished by WriteClub tomorrow night. Venture3 has all of its elements created, now it waits for me to put them together and print a test or two. This week, I hope. |
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| Of weddings and sleeping |
Apr 10
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| This weekend, I managed to prove to myself that it’s not only the insane and carefree college students who forego sleeping for reasons of partying. As an accessory at a wedding of two twenty-somethings that I didn’t know, I didn’t stir up any trouble, then as a willing third wheel at a club I managed to find my own trouble and stay amused, anyway. I also caught up with Steve this weekend, to whom I have owed time and conversation longer than I care to admit. We met up on Sunday night and now I owe him a chalice of LI Tea, too. We’re into the swing of looking for a corporate studio to move into here in New York somewhere.In VENTURE news, the scans are all complete and the tentative placement for the text is finished for Issue2. Issue3 wants for mere notes from the author and printing. it’s a beautiful thing. |
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| NEC MobilePro |
Apr 5
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| Yesterday, the most amazing thing happened. At my desk arrived a package marked NEC MobliePro. I was skeptical (last time a box arrived, it was a letterbomb from Kurt for bothering him about the comic), but opened it anyway. Lo and behold, there was indeed a MobliePro 880 in the box! I’ve set it up over here to sync with my PC and i tested it out for writing scripts and found it most handy. I probably got 2 pages written that I wasn’t expecting to write last night just because I have the thing, and now I won’t have to type stuff into my machine after I sloppily handwrite it on the subway. Cool, huh? Anyone with WinCE stuff is welcome to contact me with their recommendations for what I should put on it. I did download Doom for it, but without fullscreen controls, it’s not quite worth it. Ah well. | |
| Magic Fortune Teller! |
Mar 29
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| Recap |
Mar 26
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| So, none of my minor picks were on-target at the Oscars last night–it’s a good thing that I’m not a gambling sort of guy. I was right on with the major ones, though. I *did* hope for a Best adapted win for O Brother cause I liked it so much.
Issue3 is proofread and ready for final edits and Issue2 wants for attention pretty badly. My screenplay needs some work, too, so I should be busy with creative endeavors, with the intent of pulling myself up from the “downside of advantage.” |
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| VENTURE news, hot off the presses |
Mar 23
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| So VENTURE2 arrived last night, ready to be perused by my sweaty little hands. First impressions? Hot. I mean it. The introduced villains? Terrifying. Detective Andrew? Tough bastard. And Laura? Positively stunning. Now it’s up to me to get this thing under the knife and dissect it, only to put it back together with words, effects, and in a fashion to make the whole greater than the mere sum of its parts.In related news, Issue4 goes out the the artists today (and yes, that’s artists, plural) for initial layout. Check here and on the individual issues’ pages for more details and information. Looks like I’ll be adding yet another minibio to the ‘About Us’ page. Sweet. |
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| What’s on YOUR desktop? |
Mar 22
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 At a resolution of 1600×1200, my desktop here at work is a formidable force in my visual day.I try to make it interesting and fun (without naked women, cause I don’t want to get fired) and i even change it up some. Here’s what’s there currently. Got any good ideas for desktops? Send me a thumbnail and if I like it I’ll put it up here and maybe even make it available for download. Of course, I’m not k10k and wouldn’t try to be. |
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| Are you angry? |
Mar 20th
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I just thought it was kinda funny, is all. |
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| St. Patty’s Day Blondes |
Mar 19th
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| So Jared shows up in Brooklyn on Friday evening, along with his friend Shanti.
When he arrived, he had brown, almost black, hair. Sometime after Amanda showed up on Saturday and the time that the three of them left on Sunday night, Jared’s hair mysteriously mutated. Now, given that we were all on mind-altering drugs all weekend, I wouldn’t presume to know for sure how it happened, but I’m going to hazard a guess for the good of my peace of mind. Maybe it was the lightning experiment that we conducted from my roof (the part about *how* exactly Jared ended up on the ground on his back while we were all up on the roof looking down at him is still a little fuzzy). Maybe he really did see God in the toaster coils (and the resulting hair trauma was, like Charleton Heston’s, spirit-related), if so, we didn’t believe him and gave him a severe beating for nothing. My last theory is aliens. I’ve long felt that we were being watched–maybe this was their calling card. Whatever it was, when I awoke this morning, mysteriously standing amongst commuters on the B Train with a video tape as my only proof that Jared now has gold hair, I knew something had gone awry. I guess it was a good weekend. Lastly, today is KimRA’s birthday. Happy, happy Birthday, KimRA. |
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| Beautiful, sunny Florida! |
Mar 13th
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 Figured since it won’t be up on film-411.com forever, I would put it here and leave it for all to see.
It is, of course, Jesse and me, meeting for the first time. Well, we’d actually been hanging out for like 30 minutes by this time, and we’ve been working together for almost a year now. As this site progresses, I’m hoping to really beef up the picture content and stuff on the site to give you plenty to look at. |
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| New! New! New! |
Mar 13th
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| Welcome to clapboard.org! Newly hosted and ready for your perusal is the newest stuff that I can provide you. Clearly, this site will continue to grow and change as time goes on, but it’s good to have a home where those things can happen comfortably.
I’m planning to expand the Archives with old web stuff from way back in the day and some newer stuff that most have seen or read in some form or another. I’ve also decided to set up the Venture section a little differently, hopefully to better promote it in the months to come while I look for a publisher. Also planned (but yet to be implemented) is a section that showcases my work on the world-wide web in places other than here. Hop over to the board or just send me an e-mail to tell me what you think of the new site, and be sure to continue to check this place often for your regular dose of me. A lot of stuff from the past month has been lost in the transition, but it was all blathering nonsense anyway. I’ll be sure to fill this all up rapidly anyway until everyone is sick of me. |
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From here down is stuff from the Geocities Pages. You’re REALLY getting into history there. Happy Reading.
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| Hosting |
Feb 11th
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| Suddenly, it seems like hosting is going to happen afterall. Thank Jesse at webandvideodesign.com for his help and insight, and for his constant searching for a better deal on hosting. We’ll see if soon I can get clapboard.org running with the big dogs. There might be a time for a redesign somewhere here, what with the new site and the new images. We’ll see. | |
| You won’t believe it. |
Feb 8th
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| I didn’t. No Mindspring DSL. They couldn’t guarentee me anything in terms of speed and all they would promise is that after I cancelled my Telocity DSL I would have a month to wait before I got hooked up to a new connection. Maybe less. So Telocity, here I stay. Here with my static IP and my irritating connection speed. Well, my sometimes-irritating connection speed. |
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| VENTURE 4? Could it be? | Feb 7, 01 |
| So I hear this rumor yesterday, and i wanted to put it up so I could look at it in the archives in a month and consider the changes of fate. I hear that Krol is interested in doing VENTURE 4. But it’s not only Krol but Adam. Am I psyched about this prospect? Yes, indeed. Is VENTURE 2 finished yet? Not remotely. VENTURE 3 awaits only a few special effects and a little more editing, and we’ll be finished. | |
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| New DSL |
Jan 26, 01
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| I’m switching providers–Telocity, while replete with polite customer service couldn’t deliver the goods at 640/128. Now I’m going to try Earthlink and see what happens. They’re not promising anything, but they’re giving me potential service of 1.5 Mbps down the pipe. We’ll see what happens. I’m also looking to rehost Clapboard. *crosses fingers.* | |
| Small updates in the works |
Jan 24, 01
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| Always tinkering, I thinned out the page significantly, maybe too much. We’ll see. There’s a new Board and a slightly new look for it, too. My screenplay is coming more slowly than I would like to, but all the text is now in Venture3 and i’m awaiting time with my roommate to sit down and go over the book to put in sound and visual effects. Krol says that book2 will be finished, art-wise, by the end of February–I’m hoping he’s right. That would be too much to ask for, really, 2 books in a year.
I’ve also been thinking about filmmaking in general recently, and about how the dream changes and gets updated with the times. In fall 1998 I thought for sure I could head back to NYC after graduation and get a job on a movie set, no problem. We now know that’s not possible. It is, in fact, almost imposible, although I’m giving it a different-intensity go. It is interesting, however, to look into the past and see the different iterations of the dream and relate them to where I am now. |
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