12.25.04
Posted in General
at 10 pm
Go Cedric, Go!
“In Tribute” from The Oregonian, Friday, December 24, 2004
Four cover bands paid homage to acts that VH1’s “Where Are They Now?” has yet to exploit. Portland’s own The Xploding Boys hit select spots from The Cure’s history, conveying the spirit of the band. Lead vocalist and keyboardist Cedric Justice’s notes carefully traced the happy-sad aches of Robert Smith, the sincerity of Justice’s appreciation of his lipstick-smudged idol coming across even more after his set.
“The Cure’s always been my favorite band,” Justice said downstairs, in the glow of about 16 bar candles. “The first album I ever owned was ‘Disintegration.’ And I saw the ‘Fascination Street’ video when I was little, and I just remember I loved it, instantly.”
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12.23.04
Posted in General
at 12 am
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Holidays (The Red and the Mondegreen)
For the longest time, I thought there was a color called “parce”.
“In the meadow we can build a snowman;
Then pretend that he is parse and brown.”
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Posted in General
at 12 am
From a PopSci article we finally get some good analysis on the so-called Hydrogen Economy:
“These experts are confident that the hydrogen economy will arrive—someday. But first, they say, we have to overcome daunting technological, financial and political roadblocks. Herewith, our checklist of misconceptions and doubts about hydrogen and the exalted fuel cell.”
1. Hydrogen is an abundant fuel
2. Hydrogen fuel cells will end global warming
3. The Hydrogen Economy can run on renewable energy
4. Hydrogen gas leaks are nothing to worry about
5. Cars are the natural first application for hydrogen fuel cells
6. The U.S. is committed to hydrogen, pouring billions into R&D
7. If Iceland can do it, so can we
8. Mass production will make hydrogen cars affordable
9. Fuel cell cars can drive hundreds of miles on a single tank of hydrogen
All of the above are either refuted or brought down to Earth dramatically
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12.12.04
Posted in General
at 11 am
So I finally got the video edited together and posted to the OEVA site. I posted the following comment to the EVDL discussion list:
======================
Hi all. I cut and spliced and pasted a 6 minute highlights video from the Woodburn event with a great soundtrack. Take a look at the video here:
http://www.oeva.org/events/woodburn2004/
The video is available in three sizes: 5mb, 10mb and 30mb, so pick your poison and start watching. PS, There’s a White Zombie burnout in there by special request…
===================
Here were the comments that I got back:
“VERY cool! Thank you. I am gonna pass the link on to some dinosaur burners I know.”
“That was like a Mad Max video (without the thugs trying to steal the gas).”
“Very nice job, Ross”
“Great video ! It is great to be able to show people my truck at the strip.”
“Totally great job! Those are nice edits – must have been hours on the strip. I like the sceen after sceen of take offs.”
“I like it. Good job Ross.”
“Ross, thanks for the great footage you’ve provided for all to enjoy. I know it must have taken you hours of editing. See Ya….John Wayland”
“Excellent, many thanks.”
=====================
It’s nice to get some kudos for something that I worked on, I’m not getting much positive feedback from my job, so this is a nice esteem boost for me. The video itself is a bit too long for non-EVer’s, but if you’re into electric vehicles, it’s a really fun piece.
Oh yeah, specs. Camera: Canon ZR-85 (handheld and tripod, normal and wideangle lens), Editor: Apple iMovie, B&W G3, pure firewire play.
The movie itself was rough cut just by getting the stuff I wanted to keep and was originally split into two parts: The Pits, then The Races. It became clear that the most interesting part of the racing was the launches, so nearly everything was trimed down to the 2 to 5 seconds after the take off. But even then I was getting seasick watching all of these launches together, so I took the morning runs and put them ahead of the pit footage. That gave me a couple of nice segue points to latch the soundtrack onto.
Almost all of the pit footage is run at double speed, which worked out realy well, particularly around the kid’s bike where I pan around it. The handheld shake is in full effect (even dampened by the camera’s filters), and the 2x speed brings it out even more, in a good way. (The Small movie version is slightly different from the other two. The soundtrack fits better as there’s a reference in the lyrics to the “Devil” just as the skull shifter from the “Going Postal” van is on screen followed by a reference to “child” just as the scooter is getting panned around.)
The music is all Spiritualized. I had wanted to use “Electricity” from the start, and added “She Kissed Me (It felt like a hit)” when I needed to keep the pacing up. The cut of Electricity was actually captured from the DVD Video Single for that track, and it ended up bringing in a really nice ending with a few extra sound effects. (The album cut fades into the next track too easily and all of the remixes I have are too long).
It was a lot of fun putting it together. I’m glad I got this camera last year to do this sort of thing.
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11.24.04
Posted in General
at 4 pm
Perhaps it’s a bit early to trumpet the dawning of the LiveJournal Electoral Force: Psymonetta Did Not Win.
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11.22.04
Posted in General
at 8 am
| Energy storage, |
|
peak energy |
| watthours/pound |
technology |
watts/pound |
| ————— |
———————– |
———– |
| worst |
dry film capacitor |
best |
|
oil-impregnated film capacitor |
| | |
electrolytic capacitor |
/| |
| | |
super- or ultra-capacitor |
| |
| | |
sealed battery |
| |
| |/ |
flooded battery |
| |
|
electroplating cell |
| best |
fuel cell |
worst |
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11.15.04
Posted in General
at 8 pm
Take a look at Darrel’s area-balanced Oregon map of 2004 votes. It’s very cool!
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11.11.04
Posted in General
at 1 pm
I’ve got 39 days of uptime and just noticed that when I hit my Mute key, the little trasparent window would come up and flash the volume meter showing that there were no bars showing, but then bump back up to one bar, leaving the speaker on, but set to just one bar.
So I logged out and logged back in and my mute button works just fine. Logging out of the Finder and then back in is an easy alternative to rebooting the whole machine.
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11.10.04
Posted in General
at 10 pm
So I came across this article recently:
Microsoft’s Sparkle is more than vaporware
Might I meta-cite:
I never really thought much about this until today, but the “Flash aesthetic” has been pretty tired for a while now. Ross Olson first coined the term in his article of the same name, published back in 2001. (The Flash Aesthetic.)
I understand that the concept of the FA may be passe, but nonetheless, I still see it on a regular basis. It’s taken over virtually all popular animation design at the least.
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11.07.04
Posted in General
at 8 pm
Speaking of votes by Counties, I thought this was an interesting map:
usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/
You can pretty much pick out the major cities and college towns in the US, but you’ve still got a few blue areas in odd areas of Montana and the Dakotas.
Here’s another map, this time a 3D one where each county is given a height that I think is based on the number of votes by which the candidate won (but there’s no legend, so I’m not completely sure).
3d map of US county votes, 2004
Take a look at Chicago!
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