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Con Respite...

7/26/2016

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 So due to exciting circumnstances I have the opportunity to go to Anglicon in Seattle in a few weeks. I am really excited about getting away from home for a few days. Most days I don't leave the house, because I don't have a reason to. I can do my job search from my computer. Most places I am applying to have online resume systems in place. I don't need a ton of groceries, so once a week shopping is sufficient. Last week, I did not leave my house from Tuesday till Sunday. That seems pathetic. Well, I did go into the yard to take pictures. The bees were busy in the mint flowers, so I took the opportunity to practice using the telephoto lens. It is a Canon 75mm-300mm. Not the most expensive, but not bad. It is taking me a while to get used to it, and remember all the settings. My goal is to eventually try to get good pictures of the moon with it. That will have to be somewhere other than at home though, as usually I can't see the moon from my house due to trees and/or houses. But still, I didn't really leave my yard to take the pics. I posted my pictures up on Flickr. I also took the camera with me to the Fair on Sunday. I didn't get a whole lot of good ones, though. I need to learn how to change the settings correctly to get indoor flourescent and outdoor shots. If you want to take a look they are all posted HERE. I made an album of the fair pics. They are all so mushy. I need to figure out why so I can fix it. So many of my pictures are mushy. I may need to invest in a photoshop class.

Anyway, my point was that now I get to take a train up to Seattle and hang out with my fellow nerds for a few days. I am taking my camera and my uke, though I don't expect there to be any music there, per se. I have social anxiety, and I find it easier to deal with constructively if I have the uke in my hand. It grounds me....reminds me I am not stuck where I am, and if I need to I can step outside and noodle until I am calm again. And Anglicon is British fandom themed, so my Who songs and Red Dwarf will be totally appropriate. So now I am getting ready for con. What will I wear? Will I try cosplaying? I have been contemplating painting my cane with space scenes and Tardis's. I don't know if I will do that. I may try. I am not exactly sure how one would accomplish that. I am not an artist. Am thinking maybe paint it solid black and flick white paint on it to represent stars. Maybe use a sponge and some dark blue on it. Then I have to try to freehand Tardis. Hmm....There may be an easier way. I will have to think about it some more. I am putting puppet building on hold for the week. I need to get away from the heavy glue smell anyway. I did get some more tubing, so I may try assembling more bodies. Though a lot of my time will be taken up getting ready for the con. I wish I was able to do these when I was in high school. I think I would have been a lot better off knowing I have options. That I am not a loner wierdo. That there are others who think like me. What I did after high school may have changed a bit.

Anyway, there is a long rambly update. I really am excited to get out and away. I am excited to be with fellow nerds. I am excited to destress for a bit.
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RL-RPG. Huh. I need to roll a 20 right now.

4/11/2012

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Wow. Setting up the RL-RPG is not as easy as I thought it would be. I know what I want, but the goals I have are not conducive to the format presented. I have spent the last couple of days trying to figure it out. I mainly just need to figure a way to word it so that I can attach mini-goals so I can set up an XP system. Par example, one of my goals is to become gainfully employed. How exactly does one create steps that are measurable? All I can do is what I have been doing, namely throwing my resume and applications around until someone decides to call me back. Despite what they tell you, contacting companies you want to work for even if they don't have any jobs posted is totally not ok. I have temped in many HR offices. It bugs the shit out of them. They don't have time to do their normal jobs AND answer 400 calls from people begging to be employed. It is right up there with applying for a job you are obviously not even close to being qualified to do. And if you happen to catch them on a bad day, they might just remember your name and the irritation you caused and it might effect employment possibilities with them in the future.

But I ramble. :)

I haven't done much to forward the progress of the next video. The past couple of days has been consumed by the RL-RPG and trying to find a job. I walked to the grocery store and got some much needed fresh vegetables. I feel a lot better and less hungry now.

OK, before I go back to job hunting, just a reminder that there are ONLY 4 DAYS LEFT IN THE Douglas Adams Video Tribute Contest. Yup, this thing is almost over. And now there are 11 videos up there, so it is even more important to throw a few more votes my way. Then I will stop bugging everyone around me. Unless I win (or heaven forbid place 2nd or 3rd). Then I will be saying "Hey everybody! This video won a contest!!" And I'll be shoving the actual video in people's faces instead of the link to the contest. But I promise not to be mean about it.
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Pop filters and other various sundries

3/26/2012

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So yesterday I didn't feel up to recording anything. My allergies are getting the better of me, and I also managed to hit myself in the face TWICE and make my lip wound bleed. It was painful. So I did a lot of sleeping, and I also managed to create this:
Picture
In case you are confused, it is a positionable mount for my pop filter. Yeah, it sounds fancy. It is a clothes pin I painted black and a dark blue 16 gauge wire tied to the pop filter. I managed to make a hole in the pop filter, though, so eventually I will have to recover it. Ok, it is a canning ring with black nylons sewn over it. It'll be easy to sew another one on. But it does what it is meant to do...soften the plosives and protect the condenser in the mic from moisture. I should have done it a long time ago. I just hadn't put any brain power into deciding how to make it work.

Today I start my last week at my contract job. My contract is up March 31. I am sad. I will miss working there. I will still volunteer, but as soon as I find a paying gig I will be gone. They are all so nice, and it is fun working there. It is rare to find a workplace that is so free from drama and kattiness. Where really there are no office politics. If there are, I didn't see them. It is easy to get my work done, because I can concentrate on what needs to be done instead of worrying about who is saying what to whom, and whether I will have to defend myself against false accusations. Or, as was the case at one place I worked, have to defend my working habits because someone else doesn't understand what my job is and keeps reporting me for not doing my job. Or worry if someone else in the office is going to decide to make my job harder because they have decided they don't like me. It is nice to have a working environment that is professional and friendly and non judgemental. I hope I can find that again.

Ok. Now that i have that out, I need to get ready to head out. I will probably work more on the audio when I get home. I need to record and to cut the existing audio into spidgettes.

Also, if you haven't one so already, you can still head over to the Douglas Adams Video Contest and vote for mine. Only a few weeks left. :)
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Bits and stuff

2/2/2012

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It has been over a week since I last posted. I have been so good, too. A lot has happened in my personal life to delay the video and posting. After several bullshit things that happened at my part time temp job I quit. I told the temp agency I wanted to move on and they asked me for 10 days. So I have been scrambling to try and see if I can get myself a permanent position to replace that income. Hopefully the temp agency will find me something else, but I am not going to count on it. I am currently in a part time contract with a non profit, which does not pay enough to stand alone but necessitates replacement job also be part time. I have several plans in the works, so we shall see what shakes out at the end.

And....today is my birthday. Which puts me one more year over 35 and another year closer to 40. Today I am going to watch Groundhog Day, laze in bed, go do my non profit contract job for a few hours then wallow in cake with friends at a local dessert shop. I used to love birthdays, but as I get older I realize the things I wanted to do with my life most likely aren't going to happen. Every new birthday that passes becomes a reminder of what I will never be. Maybe this year I will change that and celebrate what I might possibly do. Or not.

Tomorrow I don't work anywhere, so I plan on working on video again. This part is the second and third sentence. I have a new scene for about every other sentence. As it changes subject quickly, that makes it about right for 4 to 5 second scenes. The sentence is "Early attempts were dogged by hardware problems. The hardware was rock based, which meant that it was heavy, cumbersome and above all very hard." Remember the title of the audio is Getting The Book Invented Properly. I have made a rocky background so it will look like they are in a cave. I have made a grey table and found several flatt-ish rocks for them to carry in and get buried under. Getting this to work properly shall be a challenge but one I am up for.

Tomorrow.

Now...Groundhog day. :) Happy bloody birthday to me.
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AAAND We're back

7/13/2011

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Now home from housesitting, all scheduled interviews done, now I can get back to work. Well, more likely tomorrow. The plan is to build sets tomorrow and finish planning all the scenes for One Tiny Thing. I think I can get a good finished product if I just get in some more practice. I am obsessed with getting stop motion to work for me now. I really want to get a good finished video. And the only way to do that is to do it over and over again till I get it. I can feel myself getting better with each project I do, which is encouraging. My ideas are getting more solid and I understand timing better each time I do it. Now that I have mostly figured out After Effects I can finish more. Get more out there.

I think the tank top will not get done. I may pick it up here and there, but everytime I do I feel like I should be doing stop mo. This is usually the way my creative process works. I get an idea into my head and I obsess over it and obsess over it and it won't go away till I spend most of my waking hours working on it. Kind of like the manic phase of bipolar. Not as bad as Charlie Sheen.....but still, obsessive. It is like the idea sprouts it's own legs and it's own brain, and it won't run away until I have created a body for it to leap into. I know that sounds crazy. But that is kind of the way it works for me.
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Woo hoo interview!

7/7/2011

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Just got a call from Symantec. I have a tech interview on Monday. yeay! This is actually the 5th tech interview I have had with them. Maybe 5th time's a charm. :) So this weekend I will be reviewing firewalls and security stuffs. Yeay! I think this is a group I have already interviewed with. That's ok. I am just glad they called.

Which means that my One Tiny video will be pushed back a little. I will still work on planning it, but I won't really do anything substantial until the interview is over. I have been looking at it, and as it is a music video and it doesn't really follow the lyrics I don't think it is as essential that I have the timing and frames exactly worked out. Maybe some things, but not everything.

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Projects and Job Hunting

6/19/2011

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PBPBPBTTHTHBHTH.

Job hunting, in and of itself, is a flawed institution. No matter how good your resume looks, no matter how much or little experience you have, no matter how charming you are whether or not you get the all important call back boils down to the personal prejudices of the person reading your resume. You are competing with 400 other people who are just as desperate as you are to earn a regular paycheck and support themselves and/or their families. In that type of situation nothing you can do will really make you stand out. Everyone is jumping through hoops to try to be "unique". It is all about who you know, how you know them, and how well they like you personally. It is hard to look at this situation and have any hope at all. For someone like me who has been in school and unemployed for 3 years, who has no real contacts and no friends in the industry yet, it feels like trying to break into Fort Knox with a tooth pick. Maybe if I was McGyver it would be possible, but as myself looks damn near impossible. Does this sound a bit pessimistic? You bet your ass. Is it realistic? Absolutely. So the next problem to tackle is how to restore faith in my ability to get a paying job against all these odds. I think I would have more chance of succeeding relying on the Lottery Fairy to bail me out. :P

OK....rant done. Now time for the other crap. This weekend I really haven't produced much. I have been planning on my next stop motion, and researched free stop motion renderers online. I am surprised at how few actually allow you to import pictures rather than managing your camera.

My camera is a Cannon AS590IS Powershot. Not exactly an expensive or fancy camera. Being a student I really haven't had money for fancy equipment. The reason I got this camera is it gave me the most control options for the amount of dollars I was spending. However, I cannot control my camera from my PC. I have to be able to import my pictures into the movie application in order to make my stop motion work.

Yes, being the computer geek that I am I did try to download stuff that was supposed to make my camera work that way. Nope. Apparently none of them support my particular camera. And the ones that support models close to mine don't actually work with mine.

When I had Vista (ptui, ptui) I used to use Windows Movie Maker. It worked great. But then they started modifying it, so now it isn't so good for making stop mo anymore. I can't control it as much. And it assumes I am adding video instead of pictures, so it doesn't allow me do to some of the things it used to. Settings that used to be there are gone.

I tried MonkeyJam. This would be a great and handy program....if it worked. My old laptop didn't have the RAM or the processing power to allow it to work correctly. My new laptop does, but it seems they have stopped developing it or something because it doesn't play well with  Windows 7. I can download it, I can import a maximum of 100 images into it. And that is about it. It doesn't even get as far as allowing me to do a preview. Then it closes itself down because it can't handle what I am asking it to do.

Several site suggest VideoDub. I downloaded it, but I cannot get it to import images. It only wants to capture and can't find a capturing device (duh, I don't have one). And it won't advance until it detects one. My guess is that the paid version has that feature but the free one doesn't.

And that is where my swear words started to outnumber my regular words, so i wisely put that project away and went to get cake. Cause cake makes everything better. Just saying.

I did start a crochet project. I found a spool of green colored yarn in my stache, and as it is getting warmer here (we are finally in the upper 60's. woo hoo) I decided to try my hand at crocheting a tank top for myself. I have never been one for constructing anything. I can make hats, socks, scarves and blankets. that is about the extent of it. Although I have been crocheting since I was 6 years old, I have for some reason never mastered the art of reading and following a pattern. Which might not be so much a surprise if you knew that it took me 20 years to finally be able to bake a decent loaf of bread.

So...here is that project:

Picture











Yeah. I have no idea how to construct this thing, so I have decided to crochet a big giant rectangle, sew the ends together and add straps at the top. I am 4 rows in. It took me 5 hours. I have majorly slowed down. Well, that and this is really a fine yarn. It isn't like the thick worsted you get from you regular craft store. It is the thickness of your average dental floss, so it might take me a while. Hopefully it will be done before the cold snap sets in. It will be my TV project for the next few weeks. Hopefully. :P Yeah, like adding that word will make it go any faster.

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    Author

    Eleanor...nerd, musician, stop motion animator, techy, crafty. But not in the crafty crafty way...I just like making things. You can find me on Twitch & Twitter @TeaWeaselStopMO & Tiktok.

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