Another month has gone by. I suppose it is time to update this.

I have been working on audio, but I have a limited amount of time I can work on it, and I don't yet have anything I am willing to post. I will probably work some more on it tonight.

One of my favorite geek bands, Debs & Errol, were in the running for the CBC Searchlight. Errol wanted to do something with the #Votegeek hashtag, and called for fans to send him pictures of themselves with it. So I dusted off Wade and ran around town taking pictures. I also decided to take this as an excuse to actually build him a set. He needed furniture, big time. Everything I have is simply Liliputian compared to him. Here is one of the pics I took at Dutch Brothers. They are so awesome there.

Anyway...

So, anyway, I took a few days a built Wade a sofa and an end table and a coffee table. I sewed a cushion and crocheted a blanket to go on the back of the sofa. I painted a background. So now that I had all these things, of course I had to play around with them. The resulting videos are not great, but the set looks awesome. Needs more detail, like pictures, a window, a book shelf, etc.  Otherwise I am happy with it. Here is the mess I call a video...

So, there ya go. This month hasn't been completely uneventful. As I play with Wade and what he can do I hope to have more test videos to post.

Well, yes, I have been working on my video. The one I am making completely (well, mostly) on my iPad. I have gotten some people to collaborate and help record voiceovers. I tried to do both voices myself and it sounded like the same person for both characters. I really need to learn how to do voices. Anyway, so now I have all the audio I need. Well, mostly. I may have to rewrite the script a bit, as I am having a hard time finding a particular soundbite that is integral to the plot. But anyway, I probably would be shooting today, but I got distracted. I have been dividing my time between this and a new project. Yesterday someone at work brought in a bunch of stuff she had cleaned out of her son's room. This was included in the bunch:

It is a little bitty baby guitar. At first I was going to just restring it as a guitar, as 2 of the strings were broken and I had my doubts about the remaining ones. Then I went to the uke store for strings for my soprano uke and the guy suggested I string it as a concert uke. It is exactly the same size and shape. The biggest differences being the part at the end that holds the strings and more tuning pegs. So, while I have been working on my video stuff, I turned that ugly orange thing into this:

It is kind of hard to see. The light also makes it look lighter than it is. But I painted it green with silver trim, and painted the bridge black with silver trim. I also had to glue a piece of wood under the metal string holder. I found out the hard way that the metal eats through nylon strings quickly. Like, within minutes of stringing it and while trying to tune it. If I didn't have my glasses on at the time I would have put my eye out. I have strung it like a concert uke, and with a low G instead of a high G. It is interesting to listen to. Definitely changes how my chords sound. The strings are still acclimating. It will take a bit before they stop stretching and settle in.

But yeah, I would paint a bit, then work on video while the paint was drying, then paint some more. I probably would be farther along on the video if I could just leave this thing alone. But I can't. It's my new toy.

Tonight I am tired of doing stuff, but tomorrow I will get to shooting and editing. My plan is to have it completely done by sundown tomorrow. That is the plan. We shall see what actually happens. :)

So, I fully intended to have a completed video. You know what they say about the road to hell? I can totally see that. I did have some issues though that were beyond my control.

Well, not beyond my control, more like beyond my coping capabilities, so I decided to walk away until I was less frustrated and come back and problem solve.Only I never came back. I am going to tell you about my week, because I think it may be cathartic, and maybe someone reading this can offer me some advice. Or a one way ticket to the looney bin, either one. :)

So I'll start with the issues I was having with the video. I was hoping that I could do everything on the iPad. One of the issues I have had with this thing since I got it is my inability to transfer music or sounds to my iPad from my PC. I can transfer music I have purchased in iTunes with iTunes, but nothing else. iCloud is the same way. I can move stuff to my PC that way, but it doesn't work for moving stuff to the iPad. In order to time the animation correctly I need to record the audio so I have at least a basic idea how long to make it. I need to be able to use the audio I timed. I found one free awesome audio recording app for the iPad. The big issue is I can't import it into Pinnacle. There is an option but it doesn't work. I am guessing there may be a paid version of this app, though I haven't been able to find it. And I wouldn't spend money on something that may not suit my needs. I can record audio in Pinnacle, but only to do voice over for current video. I also can't record audio then export it into a different project. I tried that. So that is issue number 1 that I am trying to get over. And that is about where it ends.

Then I had issues at work. Those were not fun to deal with. I won't give specifics here, but I was pretty much at the end of my rope. Then something happened that took me to the end of that rope and made me feel like I was being hung with it.

Wednesday was payday. I decided that since it had been such a shitty week I was going to treat myself to lunch at Wendy's and a movie. I felt I deserved the emotional break. So I head over to Wendy's, which is just down the street from my work, and I order my food. At this point I was really hungry, as working on issues had made me miss breakfast and lunch. My card was declined. My card was declined three times. Insert your own religious joke here. This has happened before. From time to time my bank just glitches and usually getting online and clicking a box makes it all better. I was hungry and extremely annoyed, but not panicked. So I went to the library to use the wifi and do the thing with the thing on my iPad. That is when I lost it. My bank account was empty. Completely empty. My paycheck was just direct deposited. Not to mention what was left that I was saving from my last paycheck. All the charges were at physical brick-and-morter places in Louisburg, NC WAY THE HELL on the other side of the country. To my credit, I did not yell or scream at the customer service people on the phone who kept transferring me cause it "isn't my department". I was shaking, as my blood sugar was extremely low and I was pissed off, but I didn't yell. I didn't even yell and swear when the bank's fraud person told me I would not get my money back. I did cry in her ear though. Loudly. But I got the card number cancelled, and I had a new one sent to me. Then I went home and yelled and cried for a long, long time. I would like to commend the guy who answered the phone at the Eugene Police non-emergency line. He was very sweet. Though his first words were "Are you sure it's not an emergency?" By the time I got someone from Fraud on the line I was a bit calmer. I learned from that officer that it is actually illegal for my bank to not give me my money back. Once I prove fraud, they have to give me my money back. And Oregon state law says a police report is enough to prove fraud. Then I went and opened up a bank account at a different bank, where I was told that the law also states that while I am waiting for my bank to clear their paperwork for the fraud they have to provide me with a 45 day provisional credit in the amount of the fraudulent charges. Which was damn near everything I had. I had $3 in cash in my pocket, so I guess they didn't clean me out completely. Ha ha. I have made sure they got all the paperwork, and yet I still have not seen anything of the provisional credit they are supposed to give me. This is a bank that was recently taken to court for skimming off student's financial aid. They would place a charge, real or not, then not notify the student for months, letting their late charges and penalties pile up until the next financial aid check came. Then they would just take that money out of it. Court has ruled they were wrong and have to pay it back. However they don't have to pay while they go through the appeals process, so it may be years before any of us get our money back. Money that was from student loans that I am still paying on. My point in that long digressive ramble was that I expect to have to fight to get both provisional credit and my actual money back. I plan to touch base with them again Monday, but I don't expect them to be helpful. All that took me the rest of Wednesday, Thursday and part of Friday.

Now it's Saturday. Most of my energy had gone into dealing with all that. Today I spent most of the day either sleeping or curled up with my iPad watching a show on Hulu called Who's Been Sleeping In My House? It's not what you think. This guy in Australia goes around to different houses in the country at the request of the owners and researches the history of the house. Kind of like Who Do You Think You Are and History Detectives all wrapped up in one awesome show. And I watched Doctor Who, of course. The Doctor makes everything feel better. :) Tomorrow I have to go back to work and try to get the fricken phone system to accept my programming for another line as it will be needed Monday, but after that I intend to try to problem solve the video issues.

So, it would reduce my stress greatly if any of you have a suggestion on how to solve my audio problem. And don't say "Buy a Mac". I didn't have money for that BEFORE the big clean out.

And as I feel the need to amuse myself with a non sequitur now, here is a spider that got into my water pitcher today. This water pitcher has a filter in the top and a hinged lid that has a fairly stiff hinge. I have no clue how the bugger got in there.

So today was supposed to be all about polishing stories for my foray into storytelling. And, like a good little procrastinator, I watched Doctor Who and played on my iPad instead. Which in this case is good, because I discovered something awesome. Remember a while back when I compared free stop mo iPad apps? Well, there is another one.

This one I mentioned before. It used to be called Avid, but now it is called Pinnacle Studio. It is usually $5, but until the 18th of September it is FREE!!!! So guess what I did, and guess what I have been playing with? Yup....the new app. Technically Pinnacle is just a video editing app, but it also does stop mo if you set it right. Almost in the same way windows Movie Maker does stop mo if you set it right (or used to). Seems to be more full featured than most of what I have seen for free. I can even set the pictures to hold for a number of frames, rather than fractions of a second like WM does. It also allows for audio to be added and edited in 3 tracks, you can make several clips then edit them together and add 3 more sound tracks. I just played with photos and audio I have currently on my iPad, which are not really stop mo related. it seems to have more freedom than WM had, and more editing capabilities. I like this. I do have to take pictures outside the app, though, as it isn't strictly a stop mo app.

SO....

Tonight, after I have had dinner and a short nap, my plan is to write, shoot, record and edit a short stop mo with my iPad. Just my iPad. I have a recording app. Not sure if it converts to Mp3 though. Or I can record audio actually inside the app. So by tomorrow afternoon my goal is to have a 30-60 second short done all in my apps. This shall be fun.

Hehe, I am like a raven. See something shiney, and I am diverted from my original task. Well, at least there will still be time to get those stories done. I have the basic structure done, I just want to polish them up. They are all a bit rambley. But this will be fun.

And, well....STOP MO.