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Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

untoward

9:35p part of Overqualified online You can read the first third of Overqualified here: http://www.shortcovers.com/mixes/Overqualified/book-buH3VXBquUCmH6lc7vTOpw/page1.html It's formatted pretty terribly on the site, to be honest, but you can get a sense of how the novel differs from the original letters that are online, and the new material. This first section is mostly about my brother Adrian. Anyway, I hope you like it!

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canon5d [ anasha_ ]

10:19p Canon EOS 5D, купим Приветствую! Есть вопрос - нужно купить Canon EOS 5D ( полноматричный ) в Киеве, Украине или удобно по пересылке, например. Желательно б.у или белой сборки ( из-за цены). Жду ваших предложений. Пишите комменты или на мейл- nastysenka собака gmail.com

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rwx	11:50a song parody best song parody ever: http://pterodactyl.me/

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chasejarvis

5:50p $100,000 in 140 Seconds http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChaseJarvis/~3/hQB000oE5vk/100000-in-140-seconds.html I can't help but think that somebody forgot to dot an i or cross a t somewhere, because yours truly has just been asked to give away $100,000 of somebody else's money. Yep you read that correctly. 100. LARGE. That somebody is Nikon, and I'm not alone in this endeavor. I've got some accomplices: Rainn Wilson (from 'The Office') and Justine Ezarik (iJustine). The three of us have been charged with choosing one winner in the Nikon Festival: a short form video contest that was the impetus for my creating the short film above - check it out! Love your feedback... But I'm not entered in the contest - that's YOUR job. Create a 140 second video that simply shows a day through your lens. Details about the contest, when you can pickup your 100 grand, more about my film, and a debut of Rainn Wilson's short film after the jump... [click the 'continue reading' link below] -- My Film: First of all, it was a blast making this little shortie. I hope you enjoyed. I never really named it, although the working title is Dancing with Bachzi. And it chronicles my day collaborating with 3 close friends: the amazing prodigy cellist, Joshua Roman; the slickest DJ producer I know, Sabzi, of Blue Scholars and Common Market; and the most elegant and arresting dancer I know, Ellie Sandstrom. We had a blast with this--I'll show some behind the scenes stuff in a future post. The Contest: I'm psyched that Nikon has stepped up like this and is legitimately backing us creatives! Props to them. They're letting Rainn, Justine and me choose one filmmaker to hand 100 grand cash AND letting you pick a second winner who will receive $25,000--the people's choice award. And both winners also get a Nikon camera kit. What would you do with the winnings? Whatever you want, of course. Wouldn't it be killer if the winner of either prize (but especially the biggie) would take a year off and do something creative with the money, something that they loved? The basic guidelines for the contest are simple. Between now and December 15th you create and submit a 140 second film. Starting on December 16th, us judges begin sorting through all the submissions and announce a winner in January. I shot my little flick on the Nikon D300s, but you can use ANY camera. That's right. Nikon is cool enough to recognize that not everyone uses Nikon. In truth, it's one of the reasons I'm psyched about this contest. Nikon has created an environment that supports ALL photographers and filmmakers, regardless of equipment or format. The thought of getting to drop a huge pile of cash into the lap of someone from this community has me beside myself. I'll be keeping tabs on the submissions and stuff through the course of the festival. You can do so via the contest site, @nikonfestival, or via it's Facebook page. In the meantime get out there at build a movie around YOUR DAY. Be it serious, funny, emotional or otherwise, just go for it. As a parting nod, I just had to embed my fellow judge funnyman Rainn Wilson's vid. It's simultaneously hysterical, bizarre and smart. -- Get my every move: Follow Chase Jarvis on Twitter Get exclusive content: Become a Fan on Facebook

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Monday, November 9th, 2009

lara7

9:35p the Shawshank moving Plan If you saw The Shawshank Redeption (and really, you've had 15 years to do so, so what's the delay if you haven't?), you'll remember the "get rid of a little tunnel dust every day for 20 years" scheme. I am intending to do the same with our move. To wit: We close on the house in 5-6 weeks. we live on the 3rd floor. moving up here was a pain in the butt, and while moving downstairs will be less awful then the reverse was, we're still talking about a LOT of trips up and down the stairs. So my plan is to move something into my car every time I go down the stairs, and then offload that into my office every workday. with 22 workdays before the move, I think I should be able to move the equivalent of 2 copy paper boxes each days. I have a fair amount of storage space in my cubby, so I think I can probably fit 44 copy paper boxes worth of stuff in their before re-offloading it to the new place. so today I moved my CDs A-Bi. tomorrow is CDs Bowie thru dim stars and some art supplies. consider this post a log to see how much stuff I can move in advance before my co-workers notice what I'm up to.

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imp_of_satan

5:58p ( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

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gapey

5:18p E-P1 First Look I received the E-P1 on Oct 28th and have had about a week to get familiar with it. There are a few features I have yet to try like the art filters and video. I have a feeling I won't be using the art filters all that much but I will check them out at some point. I planned to take it out for the first time that evening to a Seattle/Tacoma PUG meeting. I had a little less than 2 hours to get the battery charged before I had to leave, which was not very likely. I charged it as much as I could before I left the house and plugged it into my car. I was afraid after going from charging inside to the car that it would start the charging process all over again but I was pleasantly surprised when the charge was completed about 20 minutes after I left the house. I ordered a Lumix 20mm F1.7 pancake lens a few days prior but it wasn't due to deliver until the following day so the only lens I had to use was the 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 kit zoom lens that came with the camera. Also on order were adapters so I can use my digital four thirds lenses and OM film lenses as well as an extra battery. Before going to the meeting we stopped at a couple of wine stores. First stop was the Wine Outlet in SODO. My first shot with the Olympus E-3 was also taken at a wine store. Probably just a coincidence. :) I hadn't been to the Wine Outlet before, it was smaller than I thought it would be but they had some good wine specials and the layout and decor of the store was unique. Even without racks of wine there was no question it was a wine store and the manager working was friendly and helpful. We ended up purchasing 8 bottles to help fill up a wine rack we are building which may be another blog post when finished. We also made a stop at Esquin and got a couple more bottles to bring to the PUG meeting. I took a few shots at the store in aperature priority using auto ISO and color balance and from the lcd it looked like I was getting some pretty good results. I didn't know at the time what ISO it was shooting at. It was only after I got home to process the photos that I noticed it was shooting at ISO 1600. I was beyond impressed at the minimal noise in the photos. Even my E-3 has quite a bit at that level. Some of the photos were taken as slow as 1/15 of a second and even at that rate the photos were sharp so the image stabilization must be doing a good job. The color of the photos was also spot on. Here are a few of the results taken at the wide end of the zoom lens. ( Click here for the rest of my review and a few of my first shots. )

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softerworldfeed

5:05p A Softer World: 498 http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=498 back buy this print digg facebook reddit stumbleupon next

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thisisfurious

8:08p A Softer World enumerates its regrets a new comic a new comic A NEW COMIC THE NEWEST COMIC

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chasejarvis

12:04p My "Trade Secrets" http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ChaseJarvis/~3/v8g6mElY1DM/my-trade-secrets.html I love it when people--especially members of this community--take ideas and run with them. This one is no exception... A couple months ago, I was approached by blog reader and founder of a company called Trade Secret Cards, Zeke Kamm. He had a business proposition: He'd come to Seattle, pick my brain about various different pictures in my portfolio and then he'd put together a pack of 22 glossy, high-end cards that illustrate "how to" re-create each picture. Soup to nuts. Diagrams, equipment used, what I was thinking, etc. He sells 'em and gives us cut. We agreed to his proposal and for about $20 you can--starting today--buy these illustrative card packs here at www.tradesecretcards.com or at national photo retailers like Midwest Photo. Cool idea on Zeke's part - 100% his thingie. And, fwiw, what's with our 10%? I'm giving it away. Here's the fun twist. I'm putting 100% of our cut back into the photo community. Zeke has printed 5,000 sets of cards. They go for roughly $20 each. So if my math is correct, we'll give every dime of $10,000 bucks back into photo community if Zeke sells all his cards. How shall I put this money back into the community? You tell me. I'm all ears. Let's not put the cart before the horse, of course, we've got to help Zeke sell these cards, but I'd love to get your ideas in the comments below about how you'd like to see the money spent back into the community. My 10% is actually your 10%. Another card example and link to other cards after the jump. Click the 'continue reading' link below. -- And lastly, if you like the Trade Secrets concept, Zeke has also done a set with my good friend David over at the Strobist community. Buy those too, also available at the Trade Secret Card site. -- Get my every move: Follow Chase Jarvis on Twitter Get exclusive content: Become a Fan on Facebook

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pennyarcaderss

12:00a Comic: At The Midnight Hour http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/YBfW-Jiy144/ New Comic: At The Midnight Hour

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lara7

8:22a Doing my part for the economy. YOU'RE WELCOME. Paul and I made an offer on a house this weekend, which was accepted. And we're not even eligible for the tax credit! We started looking casually a few weeks ago, and found THE ONE, so figured we'd better snag it. Here's to 30 years of debt!

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untoward

8:56a Dragon Age: Origins Dragon Age: Origins is a game I've been excited about for more than a year. I loved Baldur's Gate II, and its expansion, and I lost more time to Neverwinter Nights than I ought to admit. So a new single player fantasy RPG by this company, billed as the "spiritual heir to baldur's gate" (spiritual because this new one is their own IP, and not a D&D game - though the mechanics are very similar) got me all giddy with anticipation! And it's great. I've been having a really good time playing it. It isn't without it's flaws, but the overall experience is good enough that I've been all too happy to overlook the frustrating bugs. The onion AV Club gave it an A though, which I'm not sure I agree with entirely. I wrote a big comment on that AV Club review. And here it is! The bugs in this game are frustrating. The two big ones are: - Quests that don't register their completion can leave you running around an area in frustration after fighting, say, the hordes of bad guys in the Redcliffe castle mission, wondering what small thing you haven't yet done. Only looking on the internet led me to the conclusion that something had gone wrong on their end. Reloaded a save game, fought the battle again, and CLICK - cut scene. Also, it didn't help that while I was trying to figure out what was going on, the aggravating fight scene music kept playing! It's great and cinematic when actually fighting, but while running around in empty areas trying to figure out what to do, it sure adds to the frustration! - cut scenes sometimes screw up, and you'll go through a cut scene, make one of the games (actually pretty interesting) moral choices, and then suddenly be watching the cut scene again. I chose a different choice the second time, and was then moved forward in the game as though I'd only chosen the first. Later, other characters alternated between acting as though I'd chosen A or B. It sort of took the wind out of that choice. This happened to me in the Redcliffe section, as well. That said, The game has some very good things in its favour, too: - the moral choices themselves feel more satisfying. I really like the game's system of having the choices affect the world itself, rather than some arbitrary slider of how good or evil you are. You make a choice, and your companions approve or disapprove, sure, but also you'll find that your future options in the game world have changed, too. It really adds to a sense of immersion. - The combat's good. Not too simple, but not ridiculously complex either, and the tactics reward the learning curve that comes with understanding how they're interpreted by the game. After playing with the tactic programming for a while, I found my party members acting just how I needed, which was useful for adapting to harder fights and made the combat feel genuinely tactical rather than like a mashfest. - Some of the characterization is great - Morrigan and Shale are both fun and interesting, and I like the way they fit into the game world, and the major events of the game, rather than just having discreet stories of their own. Some of the characterization is sort of lame, too though. (The voice acting also runs from very very good to characters who seem to change voice actors mid-dialogue, again, in the Redcliffe quest, which led me to have most of my doubts about the game. Maybe the people in charge of the Redcliffe quest - The skill trees feel well balanced, and it's fun to play as a warrior or mage or rogue (except for some rogue dex issues that they've acknowledged and which are being fixed in an upcoming patch) and for the most part the specializations really give a different feel to your class when you get to that stage. And a couple of the specializations are tied to the game world in a fun way. In a lot of these games, specializations just add a couple generic skills. Extra damage, and such. In this, they add skills that tie into the story sometimes. "Blood magic" being a big one, and that sort of detail really adds to the feel that you're a part of the game. - The game gets its title from a system where you can choose your "origin" - each of which is a different way to start the game. The origins are a couple hours, before merging with the main storyline, but which will affect the game further down the line, too. Every character has to go to the dawrven city to seek aid, for instance, but that visit has a very different tone if you are a dwarf noble who was falsely accused of killing her brother the heir to the throne and then exiled. I would give it a B, or a B- (with it moving to an A after a bug patch or two for sure.) A lot of care and love went into the game, and despite the couple frustrating bugs above, I've put in a couple dozen hours since it's release and haven't lost interest yet! Penny Arcade had a pretty funny comic about how they do downloadable content. There are characters you come across IN-GAME, who describe the DLC for you, and the dialogue options say "downloadable content" right on them, which takes you out of the game a bit. ( I have, of course, downloaded them ) Have you played it? What do you think?

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