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Omegle

I just tried Omegle (chatting with strangers) for the first time.  I don’t think I’m the target audience.  This is the transcript of my first (and probably last) conversation on Omegle:

Connecting to server…
You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Stranger: Horny gurl? ;D
You: Hello
You: Ah, no, I’m not a horny girl.
Stranger: That’s a shame. : (
You: Sorry to disappoint
You: I’m not sure I get omegle
Stranger: Are you a girl?
You: No, I am neither horny nor a girl.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

I think I now get what Omegle is really for. 🙂

ZoomIt

ZoomIt
ZoomIt

ZoomIt is the best PC-desktop-screen-zoomer-inner-thingy I’ve ever seen – and it’s free!  Great for zooming in on presentations or during software demos – both of which I do at home and at the QSFT.  I wish I had found it earlier.  Here’s a quick video of me using it (be sure to select HD mode when viewing it).

I’ve been looking for a smooth screen-zooming tool ever since I saw uber geek Chris Prillo use one on his desktop when demonstrating software and websites during his YouTube videos. His PC is probably more powerful than mine, but I could see he wan’t using the standard Windows magnifier, which magnifies a screen area into a separate window – his zoomer was zooming the whole screen into itself.  ZoomIt seems to offer the same effect, and as well as being free, it’s also tiny – less than 300KB, allows you to draw and write on the zoomed in desktop, and on Vista the magnified desktop is “live”, rather than a freeze-frame.

And yes, Mac lovers, this desktop zoom effect is standard on recent Macs – I know, I know.

Star Wars Meets Dallas – “Dallas Wars”? “Stallas”?

It probably only works for people my age or older, but this YouTube video of the opening credits for Star Wars done in the style of the TV series Dallas made me smile.  I particularly like the way the creator used a shot of Tarkin turning around for his credit – Old School!  The whole thing was inspired by this Star Trek one.

Building an IKEA Studio

MavArt Sound Studio A ProgressI’m currently building a small recording booth in my study using mostly IKEA furniture, so this article on MusicRadar How to Build Your Own Studio in 11 Easy Steps was a well-timed read for me (even if not all of their eleven steps seem that easy to me!).  I like their idea of plonking a whole new pre-built building down and fitting it out from scratch, but that’s not an option for me right now, so I’m using one side of my study/granny flat, some large IKEA cupboards, and some padding from IKEA and Clarke Rubber.  I’ll post photos of my progress as I go.

It’s not designed for music production, with sound proofing strong enough to acoustically isolate a drum kit.  I just need the ability to record voice and Foley performances without the sound of my PC fan and hard drives chattering coming through onto the recordings.

It’s coming along, but it’s taking longer than I expected (of course) and the booth door is still going to be a challenge.

Squashed Head

Proposed Sculpture
Proposed Sculpture
Scaled Sculpture
Scaled Sculpture

Thanks to twitterer JamezRC, I saw this article about an oddly elongated, and slightly controversial,  sculpture being built in the UK, and as soon as I saw the picture of the proposed design (on left) I, it struck me that it was just a normal head that had been stretched in software before being created.

So by squashing the image by about 66%, I ended up with a normal looking head (on right) – I wonder if the face belongs to a real person?

The Wilhelm Scream

The Scream

Even as a kid, I knew there were sound effects out there that were being used over and over again in films.  Certain rock-falling sounds, certain gunshot sounds, certain horror sound effects.  Before I started to take a strong interest in post production I could tell that there were sound effects that “did the rounds” amongst sound mixers.

Tonight a student asked me about one of them and he reminded me that this one had a name – The Wilhelm Scream.  For a history of the scream (“screams plural actually) read this brief history from HollywoodLostAndFound.net, where you’ll also find a list of films that it has appeared in. To hear a few different takes of the scream in medium quality, check out this freesound page.  Anyone my age or younger who has watched (and rewatched) films edited and/or mixed by Ben Burtt will instantly recognise the scream(s), but I didn’t realise until tonight how far back its history went – all the way to 1951.

Now if I can just figure out a way to incorporate it into a future project, I’ll be happy.

I’m Not Dead Yet!

Despite appearances, this website is not dead.  Behind the scenes I use my web server all the time for sending files to fellow filmmakers and clients, but I haven’t updated the actual pages for years (only two updates in almost three years).  So today I loaded up a new theme (Atahualpa Theme by BytesForAll), tweaked it a bit with my own images, and added a Twitter widget to the side panels.

Time will tell if I update it regularly.

Back To Writing

I have not updated this website for over a year now, partly because I spend less time online than I used to, and partly because I’m writing a lot less than I used to. Despite no updates in over a year (and the website being offline for abour six months), my website still gets a healthy number of hits – proof of the power of Google.

But my very late (or very early) New Year’s resolution is to write every single day, even if it’s only a “blog post”. I have never considered myself a “blogger”, even though I’ve used blogging sytems to run the MavArt site for I think over six years (first Greymatter, then MovableType, now WordPress). I use these blogging systems because they allow me to change the look of the site without changing its content, and visaversa. But being a “blogger” implies a certain dedication to regular updates and posts – a dedication I’ve never had.

But, my New Year’s resolution is to write every day, so I’m going to write every day, even if it’s just a little blog post or review on my website – like this one.

This post, as well as qualifying as my writing for today, is also a test of the idea of using my Palm Treo 650 phone to type and upload blog posts. I’ve owned several Palm handheld computers and loved all of them, even the crappy plastic one that fell apart, but when I first got the Palm Treo I disliked the weeny little keyboard it had. I ‘d gotten quite good at the stylus-based Graffiti system for entering text on my other Palms, and clicking on the tiny little qwerty keyboard on the Treo seemed a lot slower.

But I recently discovered that I’d been pressing the keys the wrong way – using the tips of my index fingers, fingernails, or even the stylus pen in an effort to only press one key at a time. Now I realise that by pressing the keys with the end of my whole finger/thumbs, it may press more than one key, sometimes as many as four, but the PalmOS almost always guesses correctly which key I meant.

And if you’re reading this then I guess I figured out a way to upload it…

Spam Names

I get a lot of spam emails. A lot. Most of them I never see due to my spam filter, but recent email problems meant I had to sort through them by hand. During this dull process I noticed that, as always, spammers disguise their real names with phony ones. But I also noticed that some spammers are getting a bit more creative and apparently using some sort of random access to a database of names/words to make up an endless variety of fake names.

Some of the results are quite goofy and Goonish/Pythonesque. Some recent ones were:

  • Eight R. Straggles
  • Stratagem B. Shipyard
  • Fatalist H. Faraway
  • Grunt P. Foreclose
  • Beards T. Lively
  • Gamma F. Transfusion
  • Constance V. Barrage
  • Swooned H. Stimson
  • Resettle D. Outrigger
  • Dogcatchers G. Abbess
  • Checker G. Canards
  • Balminess Q. Crawl
  • Threatenings L. Chortle
  • Sandy L. Gasping
  • Flap C. Kerouac
  • Nonfiction H. Miraculously
  • Shrieking P. Delano
  • Superficial I. Incumbent
  • Dillydallied H. Yevtushenko
  • Heliport S. Persecuting
  • Handgun H. Deficient
  • Churlishness H. Folk
  • Striker M. Vistas
  • Denver G. Commonwealth
  • Discotheque H. Artificer
  • Appeasement E. Percolated
  • Injection V. Brenda
  • Projectile S. Scuzzier
  • Feting U. Deleterious
  • Stereo Q. Sectarianism
  • Infringement R. Swampiest
  • Hesiod A. Probationer

The ones in bold are the ones I like so much I’m going to try and use them in a script or even in conversation. Such as “Wasn’t that written by the poet Grunt P. Foreclose?”, or “Wasn’t he killed by the gangster Shrieking P. Delano?”.