Radified News for November, 2000
11.30.00 - Boxing fans should be aware that two undefeated fighters - Felix ('Tito') Trinidad (38-0, 31 KO's, from Puerto Rico) & Fernando ('Ferocious') Vargas (20-0, 18 KO's, from Oxnard, Ca.) - meet this Saturday night, Dec 2nd (at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas) for the Junior Middleweight unification title bout. Titled Forces of Destruction, it could be one of the all-time great fights. My money's on Trinidad, but Vargas will be no push-over. Trinidad won the coin toss & elected to enter the ring last. We pool our the pay-per-view monies and watch it at the person's house who has the biggest projection TV (mas linkage).
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11.24.00 - Checking in. Trust everybody had a happy Turkey day. We went to Mom & Sid's place .. where everybody had to craft a poem, and recited it after dinner (with pie) .. family tradition. Mom saves all the poems in a folder. Sometimes we (also) read poems of family members no longer with us .. but not this year. Wendy got it all on video.
Have not abandoned the site - just been busy. Even tho I haven't posted anything (here) lately, it doesn't mean I haven't been working on things. Have polished many features - like the SCSI guide (now 8 pages), & the CUSL2 User's guide - thx to other users sending helpful tips .. from all over the world.
Got my first taste of what it musta been like for Linus, back in the early days .. trading messages with people from around the planet .. on a daily basis .. Greece, Belgium, Australia, England .. kinda mind-blowing if you think about it. Certainly historic.
Anyway, I wanna groom what I (already) have, before adding new stuff. Quality before quantity. I try to do something that improves the site every day - it's my therapy: Zen & the Art of the Website. For example, today I trimmed the girth of pix in the bandwidth-hogging series (piggy-wiggy jpeg's go on a diet).
Originally posted them before realizing that not everybody has broadband - and that 200kb is a big image file for someone w/ dial-up. That series was the first thing I posted after getting the server space this past summer (350MB). It's where I cut my (web master's) teeth - back in the days of bigger must be better. Needs more work.
Have not (yet) submitted the site to any search engines. Would first like for it to look more professional. All traffic is (still) via word-of-mouth (links) - family, friends, fellow techies. This is the site I had in mind when I (originally) pictured mine (style/colors/format). I like Ars' design (from Boston?). Took a peek at their (HTML) code, to see what else I could emulate - way over my head.
Wendy finished shooting her first 16mm film (as Director of Photography) - used a (German) Arri-s (Nazi camera), provided by the school. Vintage WWII. Pretty dang cool looking. The final scene involved a (complicated) split-screen shot - where she blocked off the bottom half of the camera/lens, and shot a certain scene .. then rewound the film, and blocked off the top half, and shot a different scene.
Result is a separate scene on top, and a related/contrasting scene on the bottom. If done right, can be very cool. If you've seen (the movie) Run Lola Run, you know what I mean. Can also do left/right halves. The film she shot is Lisa's - titled The Love Manifesto.
All shooting is done. Students get (only) 1200 feet (12 x 100-foot rolls) - about 30 mins worth .. for a 5-min film. Have used all allotted film. All she has to do now is edit. Compared to editing digital video, film (16mm) is much more tedious. But editing is still where the magic happens - where it all comes together, where creative juices flow most freely. Editing is typically a filmmaker's favorite thing to do - after directing, of course.
Film is edited on a machine called a flatbed - made by either Moviola or Steenbeck. Wendy (originally) learned how to edit on a Moviola (from Lisa), but now that she's learned how to use a Steenbeck, she prefers them over the Moviola. Steenbecks are more complicated to use, but let you see two scenes at once, which is majorly helpful.
Moviolas used to be $30K machines. Can get them for few hundred bucks now. We considered buying one (suggested by profs), so she could edit at home. But we have no place to put it (big machines). Reason they're so cheap is that everybody's going digital. Next semester, she'll be using an Avid - the most respected name in editing.
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11 Nov - Posted Doc's FDISK guide.
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6 Nov - Posted origins of domain name here. Always interesting to hear how people come up with their names. Also updated CUSL2 User's guide with input from other user's - tho I still have more to add. Appreciate the encouragement. Still working on posting Doc's FDISK guide.
Linkage to -> News for August/September/October, 2000
Linkage to -> News for December, 2000