Radified News for March, 2001
30mar01 - Updated my Ghost guide .. full update .. included the latest info from Ghost 2001. See here.
23mar01 - Wendy posted a copy of the frame she selected from her film, Liliana .. to use as a label for the "reel" (industry lingo) she submitted for a directing position. Nice shot of Zarena, see here.
20mar01 - Every so often I stumble upon an especially interesting site. Today I came across such a site: Searchlores - Advanced Internet search strategies. Never seen a site like this. First thing to get my attention was on the Welcome page here, where he says, you won't find any advertisements whatsoever on this site.
Very unusual, especially in this day of pop-up banners. In fact, he has a whole section, devoted to taking a position against advertisements, with details on how to remove them here, which I found most interesting. For some of these links, you have to hit the Refresh button.
Next thing get my attention was here, where that he includes the years 1952-2032 .. indicating that he expects (hopes?) to live to be 80 years old. Obviously an intelligent man, as he has notes from a lecture at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris (last month) and another in Milan (last October). Site organization is not the best, altho not too bad. I had some problems navigating, and getting back to certain pages. I kept getting sucked in deeper, cuz there's so much interesting material to read.
For example, there's a photo and mini bio here .. a more detailed bio here. Intro to searching here. A page about the web browser Opera here (which I've since downloaded and installed). He talks about Microsoft spying on you here. An impressive collection of praise here.
The site makes use of Latin verbiage & sparse but interesting graphics. Check out this page, where he discusses search engines. One of the most immediately useful pages is is this one, where he offers 16 quick tips to improve your searches (which I added to my links below). Other stuff is here .. including whole sections on Anonymity and Stalking. And for sure, don't miss this piece on Zen Stalking. (If you figure out what it's talking about, lemme know.)
Prolly the most eye-opening are the pages on cracking .. and the Academy of Reverse Engineering here. The page on Reality cracking is most interesting, too. Could easily spend a week at this site .. seems like a whole sub-culture unto itself.
17mar01 - Happy St, Patty's day. Erin go bra (means drink green beer).
Installed Adobe Premiere version 6.0 today. Did not uninstall v5.1 .. just in case we have probs with v6. I also made an image .. just in case I have probs getting back. We've been using v5.1 for a few years now. Been looking forward to an upgrade for a while now.
So far, we've merely test-captured a few clips (using timecode), edited them together, and outputted-to-tape a short piece .. to make sure things work correctly. Had to re-install Matrox Video Tools before we could get P6 to recognize the RT2000. We'll do more sophisticated editing later, testing all real-time features & capabilities.
First thing we noticed is that P6 has a scalable preview/video window, whereas P5's was fixed (small). This alone is a big improvement. With a dual-monitor config, you could move the preview/video window to a separate monitor (big picture). P6 comes with some neat encoding tools, like an EZ version of Cleaner 5, and (some version of) Real Producer.
P6 also has a option for single-track editing .. like the professional editing suites, such as Avid. Wendy has been editing on an Avid at school, so she selected the single-track option. We like what little we've seen so far, and may throw together a P6 guide after getting familiar with it.
16mar01 - Added table of contents to the tops of all multi-page Radified Guides - Ghost, DV, SCSI, CUSL2 & Streaming. Check out the SCSI guide for an example. It has the most pages. Should make it easier to navigate.
Wendy drove to Joshua Tree yesterday to shoot a 3-person scene, adapted from the novel The Alchemist, by Paolo Coelho .. for her Intermediate Directing class. Zarena, Mathew & Jaime went along to do the acting. Jaime read the book in Portuguese - the native language of the author.
She left before 5AM; didn't return until almost midnight. We just watched the footage - came out great. Some shots were spectacular. Joshua Tree has a magical look to it that compliments the story well. Can't wait to see what she does with the editing. Maybe she'll post a Real video version on her site.
Big fiasco about intercepted ICQ files .. between an Internet company (eFront) CEO and his top executives. This is somewhat of a first. I read about this at another site. The files show eFront discussing how they were planning to screw over web masters. They obviously had no idea the world would be reading their messages. eFront execs claim the files were tampered with. [that's what I would say, too. =) ] Can read more here .. and here.
I think the lesson to be learned is that, if somebody really wants something on your computer, they can get it. I don't have jack on my PC that anybody would want.
14mar01 - PC World reviewed Pioneer's DVD burner here .. (it also burns CDs). Price is finally below US$1K. Seems like just yesterday it cost $4,500. We have an NLE card capable of editing MPEG-2 (DVDs use MPEG-2). A lite version of DVDit! by Sonic came with the card. If we got a DVD burner, we could make our own DVD movies. Takes 28 mins to burn a full 4.7GB DVD-R disc. Much hoopla surrounds DVD burners' copy-protection issues. We heard that MPEG-2 is the next big thing (TNBT) in video editing.
13mar01 - Windows XP is the next big thing in operating systems from Microsoft. Originally code-named Whistler, after the mountain in British Columbia - not far from the Seattle area, near where MS is located (Redmond), it's Microsoft's attempt to (finally) merge the DOS-compatible (consumer) Win98/ME and NT-based (professional) Win2000 operating systems. MS has long been talking about doing this.
Interesting that MS would use the name of a ski mountain for their OS. Cuz when I try to describe to someone the difference in feel between Win98 & Win2000, I use skiing as the basis of my analogy. I compare W98 to skiing recklessly, where you feel like you' could fall (crash) at any moment. Win2000 I liken to skiing in control - maybe not quite as fast, but with a secure, stable feeling.
Windows XP is a moniker for the "Windows eXPerience". It's scheduled to debut in Sept, and will be offered in both home (consumer) and business (professional/power user) versions. The Pro version will support dual processors; home version will not.
I currently have an early version of WinXP installed (build 2296), and have been playing with it the last few months. It has the look and feel of Win2K, which shouldn't be surprising, cuz the code is based on Win2K. yesterday I downloaded build 2446 (~500MB), and will install it soon.
Everyone is waiting anxiously for beta2, which is scheduled for release on March 21. Beta2 is supposed to be close to final code .. meaning that if you have beta2, you (pretty much) have WinXP. You can read more about WinXP here (FAQs), at Paul Thurrott's WinSupersite. Lotsa controversy surrounds the new Windows Product Activation to be included in WinXP.
12mar01 - Received complaints that some people are having problems seeing the links in my guides. I originally made them (a subtly different) dark blue so they wouldn't distract from the (black) text .. but have changed them to a (much) more noticeable shade of blue.
So far I've modified the CUSL2 User's guide, and the Ghost guide, which uses a brighter version of blue than the one used in the CUSL2 guide. I tend to think the brighter blue links are distracting .. no?
11mar01 - Here are results of my Shields Up! scans .. for comparison.
10mar01 - Posted several pics from New Years eve here .. sunset at Crystal Cove state park .. a stone's throw from the house where the movie Beaches (Bette Midler) was filmed.
09mar01 - Shields Up is a site that tests your PC's vulnerability to attacks from bad people. See here .. scroll down about half-way & click on the pink buttons that say: Test My Shields! .. and .. Probe My Ports! [I know, but it only sounds bad =) ]. If you fare poorly, you may wanna read this.
08mar01 - Check out this 12-min movie, Warriors of the Net .. here. Pretty cool. I watched the high-quality, 148MB version. It streamed fine. Click on *clips*.
06mar01 - Made a little progress on the Coming Soon piece, guide to programs. Much work remains.
What about the shootings by that 15-year-old? Dang. With Columbine, that's twice in a short period of time. Santee is about a hour south of here. You think anybody asked the boy if he plays video games?
04mar01 - Sonic Foundry has released its long-awaited (much delayed) version 5.0 of Sound Forge .. the Windows standard in audio-editing. Version 5.0 includes all three XFX packages (~20 effects) that cost extra with v4.5 .. and a few other goodies. I like the way (Wisconsin-based) Sonic Foundry keeps adding value to their products .. while dropping prices.
Ten years ago, it would've cost ~US$30K to do the things that you can do today with SF5 .. for ~$300. Sound Forge is the Photoshop of Windows-based audio editing. We've also used the much-touted, Mac-based, Pro-Tools, and prefer Sound Forge (and Vegas). Combined with a quality sound card, like the CardDeluxe, and a decent mixer .. and there's not much SF5 & Vegas can't do with audio.
03mar01 - Added point values (totaling 100) to items listed in the Digital Warrior's Arsenal .. after receiving several suggestions. Also added a rating hierarchy. Fun stuff. See here.
01mar01 - Posted the Radified Digital Warrior's Arsenal here.
Linkage to -> News for February, 2001
Linkage to -> News for April, 2001