thursday reportzzz
Apr. 28th, 2016 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davemerrillWhat HAVE I been up to? Went out to the local comic book show last Sunday and bought some comic books. The show was in what appears to be the local version of the Castlegate - an overused hotel not well kept up, full of locals using it for Herbalife meetings and cheap weddings and whatevers. Got to see guys hollering at each other over the luggage carts (comic book dealers, spend $20 on a hand truck from Home Depot already). None of the people we bought comics from had merchandise/shopping bags of any kind, not even used grocery or Wal Mart bags. Come on guys. Anyway we found some good stuff for cheap. Later we went walking in a park up on the Humber River and we saw this snake.
That's, like, the second snake I've seen my whole time up here. I mean, I know we live in the city and everything, but we try to get out into some nature when we can, and I still don't see that many snakes.
Saturday we did a little hinterland antique malling that resulted in Not Much. Some of the smaller stores in the smaller towns are starting to close, Pfefferlaw's store (the one in the old elementary school) closed, and the one in Lindsay closed as well.
Friday was Passover so I put on my tie and we were good and early to Shain's aunt's place, where a goose is nesting in the back yard and will give you the stinkeye if you so much as walk out the back door. There's a new baby in the family so things started earlier than usual and wrapped up earlier than usual. Here's my tie:
Most of my free time has been getting the new PC going, transferring files from the old PC, installing what programs I need to do what I need to do, etc. Anime North is in 30 days so that's going to take up pretty much all my time, getting ready for that thing. Most of my time is going to be taken up re-editing the opening and the America vs Japan segment, everything else is pretty much good to go. I was going to try to do it all via laptop and Zoom Media Player but I don't have time to get thru the learning curve. Ditto Adobe Premiere; I need a good chunk of time to just play around with it and learn stuff and that's what I don't have.
Work's been busy, we hired a bunch of new folks and have a new client and have been ticking right along since the beginning of the month. The endgame is that sometime in the summer I should be working a daytime shift instead of an afternoon shift and that's where I want to be! In the sunlight for a bit!
That's, like, the second snake I've seen my whole time up here. I mean, I know we live in the city and everything, but we try to get out into some nature when we can, and I still don't see that many snakes.
Saturday we did a little hinterland antique malling that resulted in Not Much. Some of the smaller stores in the smaller towns are starting to close, Pfefferlaw's store (the one in the old elementary school) closed, and the one in Lindsay closed as well.
Friday was Passover so I put on my tie and we were good and early to Shain's aunt's place, where a goose is nesting in the back yard and will give you the stinkeye if you so much as walk out the back door. There's a new baby in the family so things started earlier than usual and wrapped up earlier than usual. Here's my tie:
Most of my free time has been getting the new PC going, transferring files from the old PC, installing what programs I need to do what I need to do, etc. Anime North is in 30 days so that's going to take up pretty much all my time, getting ready for that thing. Most of my time is going to be taken up re-editing the opening and the America vs Japan segment, everything else is pretty much good to go. I was going to try to do it all via laptop and Zoom Media Player but I don't have time to get thru the learning curve. Ditto Adobe Premiere; I need a good chunk of time to just play around with it and learn stuff and that's what I don't have.
Work's been busy, we hired a bunch of new folks and have a new client and have been ticking right along since the beginning of the month. The endgame is that sometime in the summer I should be working a daytime shift instead of an afternoon shift and that's where I want to be! In the sunlight for a bit!
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no subject
Date: 2016-04-29 03:41 am (UTC)I would caution you on what you're trying to do with Hell there. I know it's tempting to throw everything into some kind of playing system, but be mindful of all the horror stories you've heard about, read about and seen first hand.
Because if you're not 100% fully organic (that is, everything, EVERYTHING is yours-laptop, projector, blah blah blah) you're cruisin' for a bruisin', brother.
The player will crash. The player won't be compatible. It won't play the version of your files you saved as. The laptop will Blue Screen of Death on you. The codics won't mux right. The HD will lock up.
And, if you were to mix Hell down to a completely self contained entertainment unit, push and play, why bother doing it? Isn't part of the fun YOU have being the video DJ, steering the show where your inebriation level and crowd reaction demands?
I would hate to have the image of you slapping at a keyboard like some SyFy Movie faux computer operator trying to get 'Flintstones cigarette ad' running, right?
no subject
Date: 2016-04-29 03:31 pm (UTC)I've seen plenty of anime con panel mishaps involving laptops over the years, and at this point the tech is at the point where as long as you have HDMI out you're good to go. Unless you show up to the con without your laptop, or decided to upgrade your drivers using the lobby wi-fi, et cetera. Neither of which have happened to me, but I've seen it.
Personally I've had *more* issues making sure the DVD players provided by the convention will play home-burned DVDs, which some will not, namely Sony.
I've never been "one hundred percent fully organic" - I don't ( & have never) own a sound system or a projector. The projectors used at AWA wouldn't fit in my car, they're huge theater-quality video projectors. AN uses 4 big projectors.
The laptop is mine, though, and it has HDMI outs, and its signal-out abilities have been tested, and its media playing abilities have been tested. What hasn't been tested is my live video DJ ability, at least not since the VHS days, and I am drinking a LOT less than I was drinking then so I'm pretty confident.
Anyway, the discussion is academic because my AN show is going to be off of DVD as usual.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-29 08:24 pm (UTC)I would suggest making sure you've got not only your own HDMI cable (with your name on it and everything!) but find whatever dongles are out there for that ONE TIME you're plugging into something that a. already has its HDMI port taken up b. The HDMI port is screwed up c. "what's an HDMI port?" (come on, you KNOW that can happen!)
Is there a way to go from HDMI to RCA jacks? I would have to assume that would need to be a little box of some kind but maybe there's a way to make it so it's just cable with a goiter on one end...
Yes, my bad old days of running video at cons rears its horrid head. :)
You know, I've see digital turntables that DJs use (what a weird concept, 'scratching' a MP3), could that sort of thing be used for video? I could see you leaning over the turntables, cuing up each item, 'throwing' the turntable to start it off.
Maybe we should try and find you a '70s video mixing board and call you 'Gerry Todd' :)
no subject
Date: 2016-04-29 08:59 pm (UTC)the RCA to HDMI box was causing us issues at AWA year before last. Or maybe it was VGA to HDMI, I forget. All I know is there were issues. It was our first year in the convention center hall with all-new broadcast quality gear, as opposed to the serviceable but long-in-the-tooth stuff we were using in the Waverly (what you saw when you were there).
I don't really do Anime Hell anywhere but AWA and Anime North, so travelling isn't that much of an issue. The Boston show was a one-off; I'm sure Toole will be back behind the table next time. I enjoyed doing it, but travelling to cons takes so much of my free time that it dents all the other projects I have going on pretty seriously.
I can either attend a lot of conventions or get creative work done; I can't really do both. Getting Anime Hell ready for 2 cons a year takes up a lot of free time that I could be using to write Let's Anime columns or Mister Kitty stuff or drawing comic books, and every other anime convention panel means more prep time hacked out of my Dave time.
I know there are people who manage to both attend a lot of shows AND get creative work done, but I am not one of those people.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-29 10:32 pm (UTC)And I'm sure you don't want to be forever 'that guy with the clips' when you do have art to do, and writing to do, and of course have a life with Shain and the kitty and be able to just sit on your ass in the grass and watch some damn clouds go by.
But what do I know? New channel 'Comet' keeps running 'Voyage into Space' and I keep getting sucked into that goofy Johnny Socko stuff. That's my life.