I wanted to listen to a playlist thrown together using Spotify one evening that I couldn’t fall asleep (read, stole half of from a very popular list I was sure none of my friends had heard of, and then retitled after adding a few personal selections) and decided to take full advantage of the monthly subscription fee I had been paying. Instead, I’ve chosen to listen to the tried and true Pandora channel that has been working brilliantly for over 3 years; long enough that its username has survived 3 of my self-inflicted “rebrandings” but luckily had a familiar password.

Ok. I’ve been distracted beyond what I had originally aimed to explain to you when I wrote the original sentence about being distracted. I had an idea (my todo list told me) to make it a point to put something in this blog that served as some kind of “update” (apologies for assuming you’d like any kind of update) on the goings on that has kept me busy since the last time we met together in this small corner of a website. It’s not much, but it’s home. I now realize that I’ve spent a good portion of three paragraphs doing everything but, and in doing so only explaining nothing.

I’ve been working. I hate that sentence. When friends say hello on whichever iteration of text-based messaging service (usually anything but old school text messages) and the initial four lines of expected greetings and salutations are over,  the inevitable “what have you been up to?” (that I can always see happening because most of these text-based messaging services have a feature where you can actually SEE them typing back) pops up on screen, knocking the first four and incredibly mundane lines a space at a time away from cursor that I then have to replace with my own words. By this point in the conversation I am nervous, longing for (what seemed at the time mundane) the rudimentary exchange of hellos with a friend that I have unfortunately lost touch with. If I’ve lost you, think of the time you were sitting nearest to a fireplace or bonfire, (something that produces heat for comfort) and in that moment it began to feel uncomfortable, making you step away, but then realizing only moments later that there was a kind of happy balance between the temperatures that if given the chance, you would welcome back thankfully. The response given is nothing of any substance, usually two to four words (“just working, having fun” or “I’ve been working”) that are incredibly vague and again hold little value.

I don’t mean to be vague. The exchange afterward is usually cheery and almost positively never considered beyond the nanosecond it took to read. I’ve come to the conclusion (slowly) that I am probably the only one that has had an issue with these kinds of short replies. Surely most welcome it, with the trend of information exchanges growing tinier and tiner? I have a mortal fear of disappointing others with the particulars of my everyday life, and the sometimes great possibility of the coversation turning to a one-sided session of professing one’s sadness for not quite finding the spark in life that performs like an overbrewed cup of coffee every morning. So, “I’ve been working” it is.

I spent a good amount of the Summer working with a group of artists that will undoubtedly never realize how easy they made it to work many consecutive hours on dull mountains of pre-production paperwork. The superhero fights in tunnels and car chase scenes in the middle of one of the country’s busiest shopping avenues weren’t shabby either. After that, a fireplace took me to Hogsmeade Village where I spent another consecutive summer (almost like going back to school) with some of my best friends making magic in easily the most magical place on Earth. I’m still working, and have been working, and will continue to spend waking to sleeping (falling asleep to shows I’ve meant to catch up on) building things I hope others grab a few smiles from.

My fingers are trembling. Technically, I’m wearing three layers. I can’t be certain because I’m not sure if others usually count the shirt they are wearing, or if they only count jackets and sweaters. The lights are off time, but still devastatingly beautiful.

When the news broke, Twitter was on fire. I have never seen such a staggering number of people communicating and discussing the same message and topic. We truly lived and were party of history vs. simply sitting idly and hearing from cut and copied news resources.

This is not a surprise to me, of course. But it was very cool/interesting to see a subject be spread so incredibly fast and retain such a high level of activity for so long.

This post will not be any kind of rhetoric or reflection on the subject. I promise.

I began to see news of a massive gathering of people in the city which I am currently residing. For a moment I hesitated — I can’t be certain why, but I immediately threw a fresh battery into my camera and headed to the scene.

The University of Missouri was on fire. Not in a literal sense (if it was, I would have definitely been there without hesitation) but in a humans-driving-around-and-shouting-like-mad-sense.

As a normal person, I am still and will always be blown away by large numbers of people gathering and losing any sort of individuality. Mob psychology is an incredibly interesting subject, and awesome to see in person.

I was lucky enough to photograph some of the madness as well as shoot this video.

The video was shot in extremely low light conditions, with an f1,4 lens and the new Technicolor CineStyle profile.

I doubt this video will set twitter ablaze as well, but I hope you enjoy.

This specific glass of water is from the tap just a few feet behind me. Two people (a doorman, Rob—also a maintenance man whose name I didn’t catch) that work in this building have informed me that the pipes and water pump interfaces have been changed and retrofitted with new technology that will make the building operate more efficiently. As a direct cause, the water has been injected with some kind of particle composition that gives it the distinct smell of sulfur and particle board. This specific glass of water shares the same fate. I won’t comment on the taste.

The two paragraphs above were filled with useless information, much like the rest of this blog. I opened the post with the date and time in relation to SXSW. This is because I had full intention on covering several different things from my time in Austin and producing it on this blog. During my travel away from Austin, I realized that the 12 or so gigabytes of information (video, photo) on my iPhone probably shouldn’t be released to the public, let alone on my blog. I’m still not sure there is a demographic that would care much to see SXSW from my perspective. Following my tweets and reading my blog isn’t enough of a submission for me to put you through that kind of instance.

As per usual (and echoed in my post just before the festival), I’ve come back with a renewed focus and refreshed work drive that I am happy to say has still been holding up these handful of days I’ve been BBQ free. Now what that means, I’m not sure. Can never be sure.

I’m now kind of disinterested in this post. I had planned on putting in a few photographs from SXSW to add a little color to my corner of the internet. I think you’ll be ok. If you want to see some of the photos from my time in Austin this year, shoot me a tweet. I disabled comments on this blog because they were becoming too difficult to keep up with. Also, we can carry decent conversations over twitter…and no one else will be forced to read them either.

I put limes in the water and it tastes better. Tastes old, though.

Around 10 or more times a year, I give guest lectures in the college world (mostly in journalism courses) where I talk about the internet and business. I talk about ideas, how to execute them, and why you would even want to do something like that. One of my main talking points, no matter what the aspiration of the questioner/listener…you must push product.

By this I mean…do something. Simply put. Whether your dream is to write about amazing food, inappropriately dressed people in walmart, or creating a series of photographs illustrating your newfound love of tigerblood—-just do something.

This post is pre-sxsw, and I always feel a little more motivated to do things when I know I’m going to be face to face with many of friends I get to see only once a year. I guess in a way it makes me get my act together? This should not be the case. This is a perfect time to tell you all about some new things that I plan on ‘pushing’ soon.

For the past month, I have been in the pre-planning and pre-production stages of launching a new audio show with two of my great friends in Chicago. I’ve been creating content for the internet/tv for a few years now, and I have never dipped into this realm of entertainment. I’ve been asked by a few different people why this hasn’t happened yet…which makes it the perfect time to start. Very excited to have this begin soon.

As far as other things go. Some of my secrets were spoiled in the latest Enterprise Cometh article in which I was featured in. I’ve never been warholized before–it was very interesting to see. I won’t/can’t say too much, but the two projects listed toward the end of the news roundup (regarding me) have me very excited to wake up every morning/consume caffeinated beverages.

This is the beginning of my attempt to create content at a more normal pace on this blog. I’m currently in the middle of a full GroupMe (group texting) pre-sxsw chat fest with a few of my friends (sarah, khayyam, etc). Maybe people of the like can keep me motivated to push something interesting.

Yesterday, my Apple TV was finally delivered. Being a quasi apple fanboy, I obviously wanted it the second it was announced. It’s safe to say I was just as excited for the first model of the Apple TV that was unveiled ages ago, but I never purchased it. In this case, it wasn’t the price that kept me from purchasing…I just always felt that the tech wasn’t quite there. It wasn’t the right fit for me.

The first version had a dedicated HD, whereas this new model doesn’t. I’ve actually had a few friends argue that this fact makes the newer one a step backward for the Apple TV. To me, that doesn’t make any sense.

The Apple TV is a device meant to connect your existing iTunes media with your television. Within that, it houses applications that can be utilized on entertainment systems, etc. That is basically it, in a nutshell. As I said before, the first iteration had memory on the actual device connected to your television. The function of that memory was to ‘sync’ the data from the iTunes library on your computer to your television. This means that any changes to the iTunes library on your computer would be reflected on the device. For some, this wouldn’t be an issue. At the time, I was using a MacBook Pro as my primary work/rec computer, and keeping all of that data on my local HD seemed like a terrible plan. I needed the extra free space for work media, applications, etc. I do realize that this wasn’t the case for all, but for me, it made more sense to house TV shows and movies that I was finished with watching on a separate external HD. This is not the case with everyone. A large market of Apple TV users (and what the device was really meant for) purchased/rented TV shows and movies directly from the device from their couches. Extremely useful and easy. In my opinion, the extra premium you pay for the ease of access to the media is completely justified. The fact still remains that I’d rather not rent or buy digital downloads from iTunes, even though it is the best way to get the media. So essentially, I would have paid 300+ for a device that saves me around 2 minutes to watch something on my TV. Even with my lust for tech nonsense, it seemed pretty ignorant.

When you aren’t paying Apple to have the content pushed to your TV automagically, there are consequences. Fortunately, those consequences are few and only consist of a few extra steps to have the media play on your TV. Instead of using the Apple TV, I used my Xbox 360.

The process isn’t difficult at all. Let’s say I’m really wanting to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I download the content, drag it into an external HD attached to my computer, hook that HD into the front slot of the 360, and navigate to it on the xbox dashboard. Pretty easy. But wait…It’s the wrong format. The Xbox is limited, obviously. Fortunately the xbox can play a fairly broad range of video files. If it plays, awesome. If not, it’s just another step. These steps can turn impatient people away from watching downloads on their TV. I mean, at the end of the day, you could just stream everything you want to watch from SideReel. The final step is finding an application that converts video files. I like VisualHub (although it’s out of production). It’s light, simple, and quick. By a rule of thumb, I usually convert files to AVI for xbox play.

I just read back through the above paragraph. ugh. Doing that over and over is annoying. Annoying. Getting settled and realizing you didn’t transfer the 3rd season of Mad Men, or that Pulp Fiction is still an mkv quickly becomes the worst moment of one’s life. Which fast forwards me to where we are now.

Now I have an office and a work computer in my apartment. It’s the iMac system that I blogged about before, and it is always on. When I watched Steve’s keynote over the new Apple TV, I was pumped. Again, the previous model didn’t make much sense to me. Why would I want to sync my data to the Apple TV and not just store things I don’t want on my computer there? Before I start rambling again, here is an overview of the functions of the new Apple TV.

-no dedicated HD, streams content via wifi
-Flickr
-Netflix instant
-Internet Radio
-Youtube
-MobileMe
-Full access to iTunes Podcasts

Upon learning that the new Apple TV has no HD, I questioned how they were going to sell shows from the television. Boom. They took that away. From your tv, you can only rent media. To me, that is such a huge step forward. Personally, if I want to watch something, I’m not thinking ahead and planning to have 4gb of my system taken by something that would probably not be watched again. Netflix instant has been a model that proves this ideology successful. People want to watch things. It’s not about hoarding content. If someone wants to buy a digital copy, it’s fairly simple to do from the computer. Keeping the device light and quick was such an incredible move. Again, I myself will not be renting much from the Apple TV, but man it makes watching/listening to podcasts incredibly simple. Navigate to the podcasts section, search, and boom. Streaming in high definition instantly with no weight or downloading. Very simple. Now keep in mind, you can achieve that sexiness with everything that they offer in the marketplace, but with a barrier of entry consisting of spending your hard earned cash.

The Apple TV didn’t completely blow me away, though. I would be blown away if I was able to access any folder on my computer and stream video files. The Apple TV limits your streaming to whatever is inside your iTunes library. When you are downloading media, it is almost always not compatible with iTunes. So like before with the xbox, there is another consequence of not buying from Apple. It is another step of inconvenience in order to save a few dollars. This was a huge disappointment to me, and almost kept me from buying the device. After a bit of research, I came to the conclusion that this small step was far less annoying than using the xbox…so I figured out a workflow and pressed the purchase button. Now I have all of my once unorganized vast amount of TV shows/movies organized within iTunes with complete metadata and album artwork. It was an extra afternoon of work, but it is definitely nice having everything organized and now completely accessible to my television at the click of a remote. I will be writing a small guide to help anyone who is transitioning into using the new Apple TV.

I am absolutely loving the new Apple TV. The ease of netflix (which has an awesome UI that I have been able to use to discover a lot of things I wouldn’t have watched before) and podcasts alone have made it worth the low cost of $99. I haven’t had a cable subscription for several years, so the one time price to interface my free content to my television is completely justifiable. I use the Sonos system in my apartment for music. I’m totally cool with the Apple TV just being for video in my case, but I’m sure many many people can grab some value from its music streaming capabilities. When you add the ability to stream your entire library of television shows and movies (not to mention its existing internet applications and now jailbroken applications) — I’m just completely sold and cannot endorse it enough. If you aren’t paying for cable and want to watch things on your TV, buy the Apple TV.

At the end of the day, watching TV/movies should be break from your busy life. Relax. The Apple TV is simple. Press a button, enjoy a clean interface, devour content.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with the ancient piece of technology. I began by dusting away what appeared to be months of lying without use. Then, I did what many would have done. I took a drill bit to it and carved it into a useful iPad dock.

It would have been more aesthetically pleasing (and easier) if I would have used a dremel head rather than a drill bit, but I was using one at the time for building my dining table..so why not?

All of the tech is in working order, even the audio out function.

I feel like there is an amount of charm with it being so beat up vs. the usual cookie cutter sleekness with apple products.

Again, not very pretty, but functional. Took around ten minutes. Enjoy.

That being said…I was very underwhelmed after the announcement and demo of the iPad.

On release day, so many of my friends waited in line to get theirs as soon as possible. I was underwhelmed, yes, but I totally saw a use for the product and understood those who wanted it…I was just sure it wasn’t for me. Simply put, people were raving about the device.

I lasted a few days. I made the decision during a meeting with the student casting crew for a film class I’m instructing. I was having a hard time paying attention to scheduling of details, and did some browsing on my iPhone. I’m not sure why I made the decision so abruptly.

Either way, I looked to my co-instructor Brian and said, “dude I’m buying the iPad.” His reply was an excited, “dude, you should.” So after finishing, we tromped over to the Apple store on campus and I bought one.

I decided on the 16gb. The wifi model is the only available, but I will probably upgrade to the 3g when it is available. The size was a choice that I don’t feel like I will regret. I’ve had an iPhone since 07, and I’ve never had over 8gb of media on it at a time. The truth is, I stream most of my content. I looked at this product as a replacement for my kindle, which I was able to sell an hour after I bought the iPad (sold it over twitter, very quickly).

I’m absolutely in love with it. The iBooks application alone has made it worth the purchase. It destroys the kindle. The immediate options for brightness control and text size are extremely useful. No need for a book light with this, unlike the kindle. I like to read before sleeping, and it’s super functional to have a backlit device. The click to get back into your table of contents with direct click navigation to bookmarks and chapters in the book is awesome.

My bookshelf here is filled with free books I’ve gotten from the store, and with converted pdf books I transferred over in like…5 minutes. Awesome.

The twitter application I’m using is Twitteriffic. So far, it’s the best designed and most functional. I think they did an awesome job, and kudos to the iconfactory team for having it available on launch.

To comment on the wifi or 3g + wifi debate, I will have to say that the wifi model has been all that I need. Oddly enough, it has turned out that any circumstances where I’ve been able (and it has made sense) to use the iPad, there has always been wifi. Situations where wifi is unavailable will probably be only iPhone appropriate. If you think about it, it makes sense. But, with the no contract agreement for 3g, I will probably be picking up the 3g model. A month with travel and airports alone make it worth the purchase (so you can get around paying $9.99 a day for wifi access).

Like I said before, I was one of the “haters” of the iPad, initially. I’m very happy I gave it a chance. I am constantly on the go, both in work, school, teaching, etc…and has been amazingly useful. I haven’t touched my laptop since the day I bought it. It’s the kind of product that you need to see and FEEL before you make any kind of decision. A friend of mine, Dan, was very vocal about his hate for the iPad. After playing with mine for about 3 minutes, he had changed his mind. I do really feel like this is the beginning of a movement into a new kind of computing. The iPad has made the simple, non media work things I do on a computer possible on a beautiful completely touch interface. The convenience of having a battery that virtually never dies is such a game changer for me. The iPhone comes nowhere near the functionality of the iPad. I for one, know users like my Mother for example, will use this and only this once they have it. When you are directly involved with your browsing and not using something like a mouse and a keyboard separating you…it’s just…easier. I find it really hard to describe.

It’s only been out a week. I’m excited to see what innovation applications and uses come forth for the iPad in the near future. When 4.0 becomes available, it’s going to make the iPad even more useful for many, many people.

Oh, and the screen looks amazing.

I’ve finally got around to listing out my resolutions for 2010. I said it, twenty-ten. After several long-winded discussions with my colleagues and peers, I decided to tweet about my dismay over how to actually say the year we are now living in. Just as expected, twitter fired back with a snarky reply coupled with a direct link to an article that would teach me the correct pronunciation. To all of you who haven’t yet been so informed…twenty ten.

I have big plans for this year. Not necessarily professionally, but personally. I’m never the type of person to get incredibly personal on any sort of blog post situation. My theory on the subject is: although we are internet friends/etc, you probably aren’t interested.

My friends have been inspiring me with their awesome lists of resolutions, so here is mine.

Take my vitamins
Triple my physical therapy/more strength training
Create a log of all new food/drink I try
Finish the screenplays I have in the works
Guest host /filmcast
Subscribe to more magazines
“If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”
Execute web projects in the works
Compliment often
Random acts of kindness
Learn to run/ride a bike again
Perfect my 4 shot consistent
Help others when I know I have the means to
Finally watch “Best Worst Movie”
Read more books
Undertake more creative film projects other than work
Design/build more furniture
Reply to every email/tweet

If you haven’t watched the video, the song is played over a story depicting a young man that, instead of giving his lady the obligatory ring in a box, gives her a key. This key (we discover after the video progresses) happens to be the key to a brand new house he is building her. The band is playing inside of that same house skeleton the whole video.

Again, I had a good time with this shoot. It was actually spread out from one light evening/late night and an afternoon some weeks later. The afternoon shoot was fresh after another late night shoot (blackout) which I’ll be writing about soon.

I have a ton of technical questions thrown my way from fellow filmmakers here online, so here are some tech specs:

-Canon 7d
-24p, 30p
-(differing frame rates + 125%, 250%, and 100% speed shooting + overcranking)
-Canon 35mm F1,4L
-Cinema shouldermount steady rig
-An array of lighting (as you can see)
-Final Cut Suite (Pro, Color)

I could go on and on about the tech side, but if you have any direct questions, just leave them in the comments.

Cold winter nights often bring issues with the equipment, as well as yourself. Be sure to stock up on Nivea hand creme. It saves the focus pulling hand.

The band was awesome enough to supply everyone with water and a late late late clutch coffee run. Both, are also very important.

After weighing the pros and cons (aka listening to gq/men’s health), I settle on a purchase. I had been hearing great things about the Aquafresh Iso-Active toothpaste. I could write on and on about its foaming technology that goes beyond the normal realms of ordinary toothpaste, but who wants to read that? Go on, get your google on.

The toothpaste itself worked fine. I’ve been ok with that…although I’ve fostered a very primal hatred toward its packaging.

After dispensing the amount desired, I put the can back into my mirror. There should be some kind of writing on the label warning about its tendency to leap out of perfect stable shelving, but I digress. When grabbing the can out for your next brushing situation, you will notice that the can leaks extra paste out over time…that paste in turn becomes crusty and consistently creates an unwanted mess.

Needless to say I won’t be buying this product again. I’ll be sure to post my newfound (hopeful) upgrade sometime in the future. After proper testing, of course.