Marwencol

I can't wait to see Marwencol. Ever since watching Ira Glass' portrait of the world of Mark Hogancamp I've wanted to know more about him and see more of his pictures. Looks like I'll be able to do just that, eventually (and I hope soon).

A bit of back story: Mark was jumped outside a bar one night by five men and left for dead. He recovered, albeit with some brain damage that makes him rather timid, yet he often fills with rage when amongst "outsiders". So now he lives in a remote area where he has built the village of Marwincol in near perfect 1/6 human proportions and he photographs his 1/6 soldiers fighting the SS in the Battle of Marwencol. Mark shows up as a character in the village as does his brother and ex-wife along with many others.

If, like me, you want to be notified when this movie will be played send an e-mail to info@marwencol.com.

Millennium

I just restarted watching this show again and it's pretty darn good. Nice and dark. Solid writing, excellent acting. Good stuff all the way around.

my mac mini is showing it's age

Assuming we get a bonus early next year I think a portion of that is going to go towards a new Mac. My 1.5 Ghz G4 Mac Mini is really showing it's age. It's still a nice machine, don't get me wrong, but the lack of IO is really a limiting factor when doing anything fun (read Final Cut and Photoshop). In addition it does not support 802.11n which is nice to have as the machine is in a room without access to wired Ethernet.

When the time goes to upgrade, and I'm stuck between wants of a 24" iMac and a Mac Pro, I'll probably turn this machine into a Linux machine without any graphical interface and I'll then replace the Pentium III machine at work with the mini. I'd like to sneak it into the data center and plug it directly into the server farm switches but I'm not going to be that bold (or stupid). Or maybe I'll leave OS X on the box and migrate all my perl/expect scripts to OS X (which really isn't much of a 'migration' in the first place).

For some reason I'm still leaning towards Linux though. Perpahs it's time to investigate and see what's out there. Last time I loaded Linux on a PowerPC mac I used Yellow Dog with great success. Perhaps I'll go that route again.

A song about insomnia.

I was going to write a song about insomnia last night around 3 am but then I remembered that one has already been written and performed by The Beatles on The White Album. There's no way I could top that so here it is, I'm So Tired by The Beatles:

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink
I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No,no,no.

I'm so tired I don't know what to do
I'm so tired my mind is set on you
I wonder should I call you but I know what you would do

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind

I'm so tired, I'm feeling so upset
Although I'm so tired I'll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid git.

You'd say I'm putting you on
But it's no joke, it's doing me harm
You know I can't sleep, I can't stop my brain
You know it's three weeks, I'm going insane
You know I'd give you everything I've got
for a little peace of mind
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind
(mumbling)

Final Cut: I really don't know what I'm doing

I decided to arrange some of my video clips into a short movie complete with voice over narraition last night on the Mac. I did not get very far at all. Turns our Final Cut is not what I'd describe as "intuitive" out of the box if you've never used it before. So I'll be watching a few training clips as time allows.

By the way, anyone know someone who teaches piano lessons?

shot some good video last night

Last night I got a touch bored so I headed out into Durham with the Canon Rebel T1i and the tripod. I got some good video clips around Durham but not of anything terribly exciting. The purpose was to shoot some background shots and to master zoom and focus when shooting video (on the Rebel video is shot quite differently from photos and it's quite easy to shoot a blurry few seconds of video by accident).

Next up - load some of the video into Final Cut Express and learn the art of editing.

My how time flies!

Is it April 1st already? I would have though so reading this article. I LOL'ed.