Radified News for June & July, 2000
July 27 - Continuing work on A Semester in the Life .. Dang, this is a lot more work than I thought it'd be. Almost done, only a few more to go.
July 20 - Posted first third of A day in the Life of a Film School Student. See here. This is a sequence of emails about Wendy's first semester at USC's acclaimed graduate Production Film school - arguably the finest Film school in the world. Have been transferring individual emails to web documents. Have about 100 pages worth. Currently about 1/4th complete. Trying to clean 'em up a little before posting. Feels like we're reliving the semester - flashback. Should be done soon. Maybe it'll help some future graduate Production student. We certainly learned a lot during the semester. Monster learning curve. If only we knew then what we know now ...
First semester graduate Production students at USC are using the (school-supplied) Sony TRV900, & editing video on Macs running Adobe Premiere. They were having probs with the batch capture process. We prefer the Canon GL1, & edit on the Wintel platform, also using Adobe Premiere. We edit using the real-time Matrox RT2000 - a card that's also available for the Mac. The Macs at USC do not edit in real-time. Once you go RT, you'll never go back. USC also has some (black IBM) PCs for running Adobe After Effects & CG, but these are for 'advanced' students, and get relatively little use.
July 18 - Dave Reeder came over this afternoon & recorded a few songs. We added a little reverb & encoded to .mp3. You can check out the songs here.
July 8 - Back from a week of sailing to Catalina island for the 4th of July holiday. Sailed over on the schooner Escape - Sidney's 45-ft, all-wood boat - built in '33, during the Great Depression. They don't make 'em like that any more. The sailing trip Catalina is a treasured family tradition; we go every year. You can see a 7-minute video about sailing on the Escape at Wendy's site here. Look for the Real video file titled 'Sailing'. Read about the trip HERE.
June 23 - Back from the desert & Two Bunch Palms, where temps hit 116 - hottest we've ever experienced. Know that feeling when you open the oven door on Thanksgiving to get a whiff of turkey? .. & that blast of hot air hits you in the face? That's how it was in the desert - without the turkey aroma. Read about the trip to the desert HERE.
June 11 - Site of the month: Two Bunch Palms, in secluded Desert Hot Springs was recently ranked 5th-best spa in the US. Al Capone made Two Bunch his hideout back when pinstripes ruled the underworld. Some day we want to stay in the 'Capone' room. Two Bunch is one of those places where you *can't* do anything .. 'cept lay around in the desert sun & soak your aching bones in toasty natural hot springs, eating yummy fresh fruit, while watching roadrunners motor down the sidewalks & the desert white owls hoot in the palms over the pool at midnight. American Indian legend holds the desert white owl sacred. Radified is sending its hard-working crew to Two Bunch for a little R&R, & of course, picking up the tab for them. =D
Two Bunch Palms was used in filming, 'The Player', a satire on Hollywood (Tim Robbins). We've had a copy of the movie & a bottle of Dom delivered to their rooms. Upon arrival our guests were informed that several 'big name stars' *might* be on the premises, & that discretion is appreciated. We hear that said stars are moving about incognito - tho barely so. Radified will have the inside scoop on who was there with who later this week.
June 8 - Wendy's site is up. See here. Took a couple days for the Net to update itself. We got jahmar.com for Jahmar, but he doesn't know yet. We told him that 'somebody else musta took it between yesterday & today'. =D Will work it for all it's worth, then give it to him. He wants to (scan &) put his pics on there.
Jan is back from the Cannes. She was busy we hear -> 'You mean there was a film festival there?'. I'm sure Frank has a few things he wants to 'tell her' =D She's been back for a couple days now & noone's heard anything yet .. let her up, Frank. =D
June 6 - Wendy signed up for web hosting service today. Should have her site up tomorrow, set up to stream some of her movies.
Course, now Jahmar wants his own domain. We checked & jahmar.com is available. May get that for him. How cool would it be to have your first name for your domain? His email could be jah@jahmar.com =D
I bought nucleargrade.com today. Think i could have a fun with. No plans to put it up yet, but would've been bummed if I waited & somebody snagged it. Communitech says they're setting up 300 virtual servers a day - actual web presence, not just reserving a domain name. And there are many Communitechs. Gives you an idea how many are setting up online.
June 5 - The reactor is critical, & we're up! Having your own web site is a blast.
Course, now Wendy's jealous, cuz I told her, "Behold your web master, woman." & she would have none of that. So she spent the morning typing in domain name after name - seeing if any were still available. Amazing how many domain names have been taken already. I mean, if you can *think* of it, some yah-hoo prolly registered it already. I read that Koreans, especially, were spending a good chunk of their pay checks, buying up American-ish domain names (cyber-squatting), hoping to sell them later at a handsome profit (US$10K). Also heard the person who sat on movie.com got a cool US$1M to get up off it.
But there *were* a few surprises. The biggest is that usccinema.com is still free .. lagunatix.com is also available (tho not the singular lagunatic.com or lagunagirl.com). But after much agonizing, she decided on lagunacinema.com (& .net, too), which she's stoked about. [You can check for & buy your own domain name here]
So we're jumping up and down, celebrating the new domain name, planning how we're gonna put her movies on there, & her friend's movies, and rule the world of digital cinema ... when up walks our friendly, neighborhood electric man from Southern California Edison, saying he's gonna turn off our electricity cuz we haven't paid the bill. Just moved here a couple weeks ago - still living out of boxes. The bills are staked on the kitchen table, behind the fruit bowl. She thought I was gonna pay them; I thought she was gonna take care of it.
Well, Mr. SCE put an end to our to visions of ruling the universe & about the time we started arguing whose fault it was -> boom! the music stopped, the PCs died & the house went quiet. Only thing we heard was Mr. SCE start his truck & drive away .. guess he didn't wanna stay & chat. Wendy was on the phone (remote) w/ Frank, telling him about the domain name (sorry about that, Frank).
He wouldn't take a check, or even ca$h -> 'Sorry, sir. Company policy.' She drove down & paid the bill in person, while I tried to figure out how to turn it back on. The guy was back within the hour to turn on. Bureaucracy at its best. So, moral of the story is -> 'if you wanna rule the digital universe, better pay your electric bill.' =D