Monday, March 31, 2008

I Make Videos: Still Makin' Em

Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net recently posed a challenge to his readers to put together a video explaining why they blog. I decided to participate, and here's my entry:



If you want to read more about my video, check this post.

If you have any questions about how I accomplished anything, feel free to leave a comment and I'll be sure to reply. Or you can just shower me with praise :D

Here are my previous video posts:
I Make Videos, You Can Too!
My First Real Video

Lost - Midseason Break: Week 2

Read my brief re-cap of the first 8 episodes of Lost's 4th Season.

Hey there Lost fans. Well, we're heading into week 2 of the Midseason Break. As of this moment, there are now only 25 days till Lost returns. There's lots of things you could be doing right now to fill up your new found time (or should that be Lost time?).

You could be watching whatever show is filling that time slot in your area.

You could be playing Lost: Via Domus (DON'T! It's not worth the time or money).

Or you could be doing something awesome like re-watching Lost from Season 1 all the way through to Season 4 Episode 8: Meet Kevin Johnson, having scheduled it all out so that the second that Meet Kevin Johnson finishes Episode 9: The Shape of Things to Come starts!

If you're not awesome enough to do something like that (heck, even I'm not that awesome), then in the meantime you can drop us a comment and let us know one reason why you think Lost is the greatest show of all time. And you DO think Lost is the greatest show of all time... right?!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

I Make Computer Graphics, You Can Too!

I make many things. As the last post attests to, I make videos (occasionally), but I also make computer graphics. In fact, I mentioned a computer graphics program and a couple of processes in the previous post.

I started out tinkering with computer graphics and photo manipulation back when I was in high school with a version of Paintshop Pro 7 I downloaded off Kazaa (yes, I know, not exactly a moral thing to do, but I was a kid, I wanted something, and I couldn't pay for it). I don't know why I didn't go with Photoshop, but that's not the point. I learned the basics from that program, and I still miss its interface from time to time :D

Anyway, after playing with that for a good while, and learning of the dangers (and immorality :D) of filesharing, I decided I needed a change. I had read on a forum somewhere about this thing called the Gimp that was free (and opensource), and decided to check it out. I absolutely hated it at first. It was nothing like Jasc's PSP 7, and I couldn't do what I wanted to do with it. I decided to stick with it just because I couldn't afford anything else, and started to relearn how to do things in the Gimp that I used to do in PSP 7.

Fast forward a few years to now, and I can say I'm definitely satisfied with the Gimp. I don't use all the features available, but I can usually get the results I desire. I've also added Inkscape (another free and opensource graphics program) to my arsenal to handle vector graphics.

As for things I've created with these programs, all the images used in the design of this blog (and my other blogs) were created with the Gimp and Inkscape. This banner I used for my travel blog (that hasn't been updated in a while :D) was made from a bunch of images that I chopped up and mashed together. And I made the backwards New Zealand sign in Inkscape. Here it is without the text:


I recently designed a banner for Cmae's blog:


And although they haven't decided to use it, I designed a web 2.0 logo for ...shot then.com (my first real attempt at a web 2.0 style logo):
shotthenlogo

I made this for a friend:
Then there's my avatar:


And then this for another friend's avatar (that Cap'n text wasn't originally there):
Made this for another friend:


Another thing made for a friend:


I made this just for fun:


This one was for a friend (the guy actually in the image :D He doesn't look like that in real life :D):


Oh, and that image I made for Valentine's Day:
Spear Thru Heart (C) Fat Lazy Guy

All images Creative Commons License where applicable.

Haha, this turned into a gallery of sorts. I just wanted to show off some images I'm proud of.

So yeah. I make computer graphics, and you can too!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I Make Videos, You Can Too!

Yes I do. Well, I've only made two so far, this one I'm about to post, and one I posted about a while ago.

Technically, with this video and the previous one, all I've done is animation and video editing. I haven't actually shot any footage. The main reason for that is because I haven't got a video camera (video mode on my kodak easyshare doesn't count), and I haven't got any good video editing software (Windows Movie Maker, while handy, is crap). Plus my hardware isn't exactly top notch either.

So I would love to write, direct, produce, film and edit something, and maybe I will. Probably not in the recent future, though :D

But anyway, here's the video:



Cactus Freek asked me how I made it, so here's a brief tutorial:

First off, I took photos of everything and opened them up in the Gimp, cut around them to remove the background (a LONG process, by the way), and scaled them accordingly. That's basically all the prep.

Now comes the animation. With this I worked backwards. I started with the final image of everything unpacked by moving all the items to where I wanted them to be, and saved it as a jpeg. Then I continued working backwards, moving and rotating each item bit by bit towards the envelope, saving to a different image after each move (100, 099, 098, etc).

After the main animation was done, I just reopened the first and last frames, added some text, and that was it for the all the frames of the animation. In total, there were 59 frames.

It was then time to put all the frames together in Windows Media Maker. I know there are other tools better suited to this, but it was about 9 or 10 pm by this point, and I needed to get it done before the day was over. So I imported them, threw them in the storyboard, changed the length of time each frame is displayed, added some audio, and exported the wmv. Upped it to Youtube (which took ages because I exceeded my monthly bandwidth limit so it's shaped to 128k speeds), and what appeared above was the final product.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

More David Dallas

What can I say? Dude is just releasing crazy content right now, and you'd be a fool not to check it out. Right now over on his blog he's releasing some remixes of some Frontline stuff, and as usual it's mean as.

Just as a little taster, here's the first song from the remixes (peep the post for the d/l link):



So go ahead an check it out. I also believe you can subscribe to his podcast and get all the remixes and everything via that, so check the link over on the blog.

Lost - Midseason Break

Just thought I'd mention first to any New Zealanders reading this, it contains spoilers. If you follow along the American schedule, then you're all good.

Wow. What an action packed 8 episodes. I've hesitated to post anything about the episodes in here because I've been discussing the episodes indepth over here (It's a small forum with about 4-5 regular posters). But this month long break gives me a chance to recap some significant events.

Lets start with the obvious/easy stuff first. Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Aaron are the Oceanic 6. The producers have confirmed it (in so much as they confirmed the promos), and we've seen them all off the Island. They get off, but they have to keep a secret, supposedly what Jack said in court about Kate, though he stopped before he could finish, and we don't know if he's the cause of the lie, or if someone external force is the cause.

Kate is raising Aaron! Claire's Aaron. Wtf?

Michael is Ben's spy on the freighter. He DID make off the Island, but couldn't deal with what he did to achieve this, so tried to kill himself. All his attempts fail, and he's contacted by Tom on behalf of Ben. He jumps through some hoops, and right at this point he's standing in front of the captain of the freighter having been outed by Sayid.

Widmore is in fact the person behind the freighter! It seems both Penny and her father have been looking for Desmond. The big question at the moment is who is more evil, Ben or Widmore, and who needs to win in order for this whole thing to end?

The sub isn't required to get off the Island. However only a certain few are able to (according to Tom). Ben proves this in Sayid's flash-forward episode, where we learn Ben has recruited Sayid to kill a bunch of people to protect his friends (but from who? Ben or Widmore?). If only Sayid knew... he wouldn't have taken such drastic measures with Michael :D

These new people aren't there to save the Losties. They've made that very obvious, and given the last episode, it seems they're there to kill all the Losties instead. They were chosen for their specific skills or knowledge, and I hope we are privy to their studies/findings.

Desmond can travel in time, though only his conscious. It seems that Daniel can as well, and perhaps others. And it also seems like there is a bubble of timewarping goodness around the Island as well.

It is official, Ben is the best manipulator in the world. He manipulates people emotionally, mentally, and physically. He can get you to think you're hurting him when in fact you're just giving him what he wants. Ben is definitely the most interesting character in the show right now.

And Jin is going to die (or be left on the Island). Jin is one of my favourite characters, so that's a sad thing to know. I'm hoping he's just alive on the Island, and Sun and the rest just think he died.

That's about it for the significant stuff. Other things include Juliet was a ho (but an awesomely cool ho), Ben is obsessed with Juliet, Rousseau and Karl have been shot, Tom was gay (everyone knew that already, though), and, um... that's all I can think of right now. Suffice to say, Lost is the greatest show on t.v. right now.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

What To Do When Your Blog Is Dying

The FLG has never really caught on. It started out being my only blog, then I opened up The FLG's Log to handle all the weight loss blogging while trying to keep The FLG as my personal blog. The problem soon arose, however, that I had nothing to post in The FLG because blogging about weight loss is very personal. Everything just seemed to drift over to the Log, and The FLG died.

After closing The FLG I went on with things over at the Log, which had already gathered a few readers. It became my blog for everything I wanted to post, a jack-of-all-trades if you will. After a while I started to notice that it had become sort of bloated (pardon the pun), and I tried to scale things back as far as topics were concerned. This led to a stifling feeling, like I couldn't post anything I wanted, so I thought about it and eventually re-opened The FLG.

The FLG opened rather unceremoniously, and I once again had an outlet for whatever I wanted to post. And I did... at first. Then I got caught in the trap of creating a concept that I couldn't keep up with. I wanted to make The FLG great, and put a spin on the concept, making this a blog about things average Fat Lazy Guys are interested in. Y'know, music, gaming, tech, etc. But I'm no authority, nor do I have an opinion on everything that's coming out. And so that brings us to now.

What To Do When Your Blog Is Dying

There's a number of things you can do, and they're probably really obvious.

1. Close Your Blog - Sometimes you just have to count your losses and move on. This doesn't mean you have to stop blogging all together, just in this particular blog. Be sure to save any good content, though, as it's yours, and you're free to reproduce and republish as you see fit.

2. Reinvent Your Blog - You may have a great title, great blog design, but a poor concept. Think about things you're passionate about, and have lots of opinions about, and blog about them. You can try to be like everyone else, or you can just be yourself. It's much easier to be yourself.

3. Persevere - You may be doing everything right, and still just have no readers. In that case, I'd just keep going, and keep at it. Have a look at sites like ProBlogger, and find ways you can advertise your blog. If your blog is worth reading, it'll be read eventually.

4. Do Nothing - Similar to closing your blog, only with less effort. Just let the blog die :D

What am I planning to do? At the moment, #4. Then perhaps later, #2. We'll see :D

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Aotearoa Allstars - Think Twice *update - video*

*Update. P-money upped the vid, got it embedded below. The track is released, go buy it!*

Head on over to P-Money's myspace to check out the track.

It almost seems like it was a long time ago that 15-year-old Pihema Cameron was murdered by Bruce Emery, just a day after 22-year-old Saishwar Krishna Naidu was murdered by a 16-year-old. There was nearly a third murder that weekend as well, when a 36-year-old woman was stabbed by a 25-year-old. All in South Auckland, where I live, in the space of a few days.

All this death and violence, well, I guess it got to some people. DJ Sirvere got a whole bunch of people together and decided to do a little something to spread awareness about all this. What resulted is Think Twice by Aotearoa Allstars.

Scribe, Delani, Flowz, Awa, Che-Fu, Cyphanetik, Tek (of R.E.S.), Chong-Nee, PNC, Mareko and Savage all appear on the track and lend their vocal and lyrical abilities to help highlight this increasing problem in today's youth. P-Money and Evan Short (of Concord Dawn fame) lend their talents as producers.

There's a video on the way, and the single will apparently be available to buy March 10th. All proceeds are going to Youthline. For now, as I said, you can check the track out on P-Money's myspace.

Monday, March 10, 2008

My First Real Video

So after finally managing to find an .flv converter I put together a short little compilation of some of my replays from EA Skate. Took me maybe 30 minutes to an hour to put together the whole thing. I edited it all in Windows Movie Maker. Not the greatest of video tools, but it's all I have. The audio track is, of course, Get Out the Way by David Dallas. And yeah. Oh, and if you haven't played Skate, go do it. WAY better than the Tony Hawk games.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yep, another year older. The double-deuce, 22. Not really doing anything, got nothing planned, but we'll see how the day goes.

Friday, March 07, 2008

South Auckland Twisters!

Photo courtesy of TV3 and Michelle
I first heard about these from my mum, but I thought she was just kidding. Then I just had a look over on Stuff and they've got a little stab on them as well. TV3 even reported on it! I talked to my mum a bit more about them, and it turned out she actually saw them as she was coming back from her course. Well, the one in Manukau anyway. Craziness. We've had some mini-tornadoes before around here. One was actually just a few streets away and took off someone's roof. These ones apparently didn't do any damage, and it's possible they might not have actually touched down.

"When a scammer comes along, you must whip it!"

Ah, thank you Devo.

There's a great post on Deep Jive Interests about a new scam. You might remember the old post on here about scammers and phishers. Well this new scam is aimed at site owners/bloggers. Basically they ask to buy a link on your site, they send too much money via cheque, ask you to send back the amount they overpaid you, and then you find out later that the cheque never clears.
Link (via ProBlogger)

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Don't Die... Or Else!

I love the Oddly Enough section over at Reuters. This story is a doozy. A mayor of a village in southwest France has told his people not to die because the cemetery is full. I think this is a fantastic strategy. A fantastic strategy for zombies!

Say you're dead, you're buried, but you want to help out by giving someone else a turn at being dead. Well, all you have to do is get that satellite that the U.S. shot down (which supposedly had plutonium in it), give it a bit of a shake over your grave, and bam! You're now a flesh eating zombie! And, you're now able to rent out your grave to those who have recently departed, giving you a shot of income! And seeing as how in that area "eternal properties" are in such high demand, you could make quite a pretty penny!

You could also have the option of simply not dying and instead becoming undead, again easing congestion. You could probably qualify for the sickness benefit as well, seeing as most employers are quite anti-zombie these days. It's so horrible to witness such lifism.