The Revenge of the Terminal

Terminals RISE!

Thanks to bold new moves in technology by companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google, we may be returning to late the late 1970’s model of computing. Back then, it made sense … now I don’t know.

Back in the day, computers ran off of one central mainframe and a network of terminals that allowed users to access programs, files and data. The monitor and keyboard sitting on your desk would have no “brain” of its own … no stand alone functional capacity. It had to be connected to the network and the mainframe to do anything. Break the connection and the computer is dead.

Memory and processors became cheap and it became possible to give each terminal its own mind. The personal computer came into being as a revolution in nature of computers. My first real home computer was an Atari 800xl. That thing ruled. I remember my step dad would come home with disks filled with games that he had found on some “telephone computer network” called CompuServe.

We all know the internet came along and changed things again. Most people could hardly imagine life without it. Here comes the funny part. If I turn off the internet, I can still write a paper, make a movie, record a song … blah blah blah. My computer still has a mind of its own.

The Macbook Air is a step back towards the “terminal” model of computing. It has no optical drive. It is implicit in its design that you connect to a network to install or update anything. It can still function off the network … but a few generations down the road????

With internet connections getting faster everyday, it won’t be long before many or most software companies only offer their products online. This shift has already taken place in Microsoft and Google. Their core applications are offered as online alternatives to owning software and running it off of your computer. They store the application on a server located … uh … ? They manage the applications you use (Google docs, Microsoft Office …) and update and change it when they please. What happens if you don’t like the new interface? What if your docs get F^ed up when they decide to roll out Google Apps Xtreeme?

Software companies are switching to a subscription based model and I’m not sure it’s good for the consumer. I’m perfectly happy running Microsoft Word 2002. It bugs me that the Hotmail interface has to change every year and I have no control over it. If this starts happening to all my applications &*#$@! the next version of Windows (Windows 7) is rumored to be subscription based.

I was sitting in class listening to a teacher talk about this same thing, but in an optimistic way. He loved that when he corresponded through Gmail, the little ads on the side would offer him products that were relevant to the content of his emails. How could that be a good thing? Has anyone ever clicked on one of those? If I write a paper online using Google Docs, are they going to scan it too and send me junk mail or show me ads that pertain to the content of my paper? Yuck!

All of these companies are working to cover the Earth with wireless connectivity to unify the global network. In theory, you will be able to access your files and software from anywhere, anytime (if the network doesn’t crash - then we’re all hosed). There have been no long term studies that examine how wireless networks affect our health. Lord knows the cell phone companies have been paying out the nose to suppress any negative health related press about their networks. I guess we’ll have to wait until we start sprouting tentacles for anyone to admit there might be a problem. I’m slipping off the topic ….

This is all coming from a paranoid person that lived in a chicken coop.

Just a thought.

Cutting to the beat….

More time lapse & macro fun!

This time I had Liz find some small stuff around the house so I could test my new camera scripts. I wrote one that advances the zoom a specific amount so I can shoot stuff that “jump zooms” to the beat of a song.

Here is a little movie to demonstrate this effect. I wrote the song at 120 beats per minute and the footage plays at 24 frames per second. Easy to subdivide the measures and make everything come out even. Every cut is on the beat. There are other scripts in the film, but the one that “jump zooms” is the one I wrote today.

The A640 only has 9 zoom positions so it’s pretty limited. I want to use its choppy goodness to my advantage.

I will be using these effects and this style in the video for “Combat” along with the other scripts I’ve been working on and a top secret motion control device - OOOOOOOOOOO - top secret! I need to get me some tank models and some mini remote control helicopters.

Here is the 30 second experiment in time - “Jumpy”

~9mb

Double click to play:

Ancillary Celery - Outlaw character sketches

I blasted out a couple of 5 minute sketches today. I’m not known for my skills with a pencil, but I do enjoy drawing the occasional strange creature.

Gideon proposed that the secondary or background characters in the music video for “Outlaw” be jellybeans and sent me some sketches. He drew them on his DS with a program called colors.
I have responded with celery.

I’m not sure how we will animate these characters yet, but we both feel it should be very minimal. It will take some work to get our styles … well ok … Gideon’s style and my lack of style … to work togther.

Can’t wait to see them come alive.

NightLapse

We had a beautiful warm weekend in Portland but it’s back to being cold at night.

I decided to shoot some timelapse outside my house. It was dark … with an orange sky.

The shutter was open anywhere from 6 to 15 seconds per frame. I used another timelapse script and set it to shoot 24 shots. I was standing beside the road freezing my butt off. Batteries ran out … memory card filled up … I only ended up with 60 or so frames. I wanted the footage to playback at 24 frames per second, but I only had so many frames so its 6 fps.

Stitched it together in After Effects and made a droning sound in Sonar for a soundtrack.

NightLapse

~3mb

Portland Japanese Gardens + Scripting Language

Liz and I went up to the Japanese gardens today. It was over 80 degrees up there! Whew!!!

I finished a new script in uBasic for my Canon A640. This one shoots a number of pictures, moves the focus in a specified increment (shooting a picture at each step), and then shoots another round of pictures at a second (more distant) focus. It allows for focus control while shooting time lapse.

UBASIC CANON A640 FOCUS A TO B SCRIPT
(not in proper script format)

@title Focus Shift (Set Focus Manual)
@param a Hold On Initial (frames)
@default a 24
@param b Focus Shift (mm)
@default b 1
@param c Hold On Final (frames)
@default c 24
@param d Focus Frames
@default d 48

if a<1 then let a=1
if b<1 then let b=1
if c<1 then let c=1
if d<1 then let d=1

q=a+c+d

get_focus f

for s= 1 to a
print "Pic", s, "of", q, "Focus", f; "mm"
shoot
next s

g=f

for s= 1 to d
if g<62 then let g=62
if g>65535 then let g=65535
g=g+b
print “Pic”, a+s, “of”, q,”Focus”, g; “mm”
set_focus g
shoot

next s

for s= 1 to c
print “Pic”, a+d+s, “of”, q, “Focus”, g; “mm”
shoot
next s

end

I also shot quite a bit with my HV20 so the video below is mostly live action video, not scripted time lapse.

There are four scripted time lapse shots. The first shot is one of them. Maybe yall can pick out the other three.

I wrote the little song this afternoon.

Japanese Gardens

~ 18mb

Double click to play:

Micro Dolly or “Surfin’ with the Alligator”

I made my first attempt at a micro dolly today. I want to use it to shoot miniatures for the “Combat” video. I started with HO scale which ended up being way to small and unstable. The camera wanted to fly off the track. I took it all back to the hobby store and supersized it up to O scale. It ended up looking like this:

I have a Canon A640 that has hacked firmware. I wrote a script to control the focus and the shot interval based on code I found here. As of now, I can control the number of frames before the focus pull, and the amount of change in focus (in mm) between shots.

UNDERSTANDING TIMELAPSE

For this shoot, the camera took about 1 picture every second. I wanted it to play at 24 frames per second (the standard movie rate). The movie is around 9 seconds long so:

9 seconds * 24 fps = 216 frames

Another way to look at time lapse is to think about how long the even is that you are shooting. Let’s say you want to shoot the daylight hours of one day and you want your movie to be 30 seconds long. How may frames do you need?

30 seconds * 24 fps = 720 frames

If you are going to capture the whole day, how often should the camera shoot a frame?

12 hour * 60 minutes * 60 seconds = 43200 seconds / 720 frames = 1 frame every 60 seconds

END INTERVAL LESSON

This was a test with my still camera to see if I could have it control a shift in focus at a given interval. I sat in my yard and pushed the camera down the track and it took a picture every second. I pushed the camera REALLY SLOWLY. I stitched the frames together in After Effects at 24 fps. It worked pretty well in the first and last shots. The middle shot was a test of the interval timer.

Here is “Surfin’ with the Alligator” - 9 seconds of joy!

~3.5mb

Double click to play

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Combat update …

I worked on the lyrics for “Combat” today. It’s almost done! This is (99%) likely to be the first song on “Bits”. It is inspired by the Atari 2600 game that shipped with every Atari in the early 80’s. It was the quintessential two player game. The game had two modes:

Tanks

Planes

I am working on a video for this song that involves making miniature military models and macro shooting. Tomorrow, I’m going to the hobby store to check out some HO scale model railroad track and see about building a micro dolly.

In 1998, I built a scale model set in Jason McGerr and Dave’s house. I covered a huge table with sand and draped the horizon with blue cloth. I was making a video for the song “Escalations” that involved WWII military vehicles and pyramids. I have about 2 rolls of test footage that I’ll upload sometime. If I can find the original models I used, I might reuse them for this shoot.