Well, it looks like tomorrow night I’ll be finished with erasing these spare hard drives. I’ve decided that I’m going to donate the 10 GB, the three 40 GB, and the 80 GB drives to work. We have plenty of computers that are constantly dying on us, usually because of hard drive failures, so these will be nice to have around. I’m burning a DVD for Millard right now, and after that I’ll start installing LightWave. I need to jump back in the job for Eman. I want to knock it out of the ballpark. In the meantime, I’ll work on the Suncoast Studios Publishing site. Shauna and I watched Lost (Season 3, Disc 3) last night. I sent all the NetFlix discs back today, so we may have more episodes to watch this weekend. Assuming I’m not working, which will likely be the case. It’s gotten cold here in...
Author: Chewbode
Hot dogs!
Oraganizing and Updating
I’ve been busy at work here in the studio. I’m not really doing any SCS work, per se, but I’m getting things organized, cleaned, fixed, etc. I’ve been shredding a bunch of old paperwork that means nothing to anyone anymore. That, along with organizing the paperwork on my desk, should put me in a much better mood today. I hate clutter, especially in my work area. I reorganized the closet in the studio and got all of the 1K lights back in there that I leant to work while our new office was being built. Other than being a bit dusty and having a little paint on them, they’re all still in great order. I’ll find time at some point to clean them up; most likely by the time I have a new production about to be shot. After years of using the application, I finally purchased DVD Profiler today....
Crazy Buffet
Shauna and I went out today and made our way over to Crazy Buffet, which is a really great oriental buffet not far from our place. I ate a ton of food, as did Shauna, and she’s declared that that place is the best buffet she’s ever been to. I think I’ll have to agree. I had some seaweed along with other oriental buffet stapes pepper steak, steamed vegetables, and teriyaki chicken. Since CompUSA is going out of business in the next couple of days, we headed over there and I picked up a Netgear FS116 16-port network switch. This is mainly in preparation for building the render farm. I still have three more ports open on my Netgear FVS318 firewall, so I won’t use this switch immediately, but I want to start building the farm anyway. I’m in the process of hunting down old PCs and either taking them...
Year In Review
As 2007 comes to an end, I have to say that I’m both happy and disappointed with my progress in life. Good things have happened to me and my family. Not many “bad” things happened, but ultimately my frustration comes from my lack of making good headway both personally and for Suncoast Studios. I started the year by getting a new job, one in which my professional limits could stretch and be utilized properly in an environment that needed them. I’ve worked pretty damned hard this year, putting in a ton of hours, but I can say that there’s been a lot of great benefit from it. I’ve put together a great staff and overcome some difficult tribulations. I think I’ve offered a very good service overall. Of this, I’m proud. On the home front I think things could have gone better – it’s been tough. Financially, Shauna and I...
Sick and Weak Week
I’ve been battling a cold for the past week. It hit me the night before Thanksgiving, and got progressively worst through Monday night. Even though I took the day off from work Monday, Tuesday I felt well enough to head back into the office. Unfortunately, the aching, soar throat and congestion caught back up with me today. So, in general, Thanksgiving went off well. I went and picked my mom, sister and brother-in-law up and they stayed up at our place for the entire day. I dropped them back off later that night. We had the usual turkey, stuffing, pashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole and rutabagas. There was delicious pumpkin and apple pies for dessert. On Black Friday, I took the day off, partly because I needed a break from work, partly because I was sick (I still did work from home most of the day). I ventured...
Abstract Thought
Sickly sweet Pepsi. Acrid black coffee. Almost empty water bottle. Belly hunger gone for now, cashews helping. Upgrading suncoaststudios.com. Backing up data. Will upload DNN package. FTP. Book done. Render almost done. Increase farm. Moved websites. SQL Server started. Need to run cabling. Who buys the fax machine? Hank helping later today. Network switches are loud. Got spare mouse. Yelled at end-user. Tested video cards. Ordered power supply. Waiting on hard drives. Move coming soon. Need desks. Condition battery. Keys in the top drawer. DLL today. New voicemail! Stacking cables. Where’s VoIP? Tired. Sick Thought of the Day: Undigested mucous plug in the base of the throat. Gargle phlegm.
Inspired By Robots
I went out yesterday to run some errands and ended up buying Transformers on DVD. I haven’t watched the movie yet (I saw it in the theater), but I watched the behind-the-scenes bonus disc. I have to say that it was very inspiring to see all that. They went over the rendering process and how the shots were blocked for the special effects which, in my opinion, are the most fun of all – to see how a director or visual effects supervisor figures out all that stuff. So, now I feel like shooting a movie. But, I’ve got so many things going on that I don’t have the time. I really need to look at all my projects today and figure out some sense of order and start banging them out. Here’s what I need to do today: Clean and organize my desk. I’ve let it turn into a...
Send In The Renders
Ah, the weekend. I am ever so glad it's here. It's a time to wash away the stresses of the week and turn your energies inward, hopefully accomplishing some housework, finishing some projects, or just being entertained. I'm about to lay out my master plan for the next two days... Here we go... I'm currently outputting the final 35mm render for Tangible Entertainment. Some interesting specs on the project: 467 frames of animation 24 frames per second 19.45 seconds of footage Final output resolution: 4,096 x 1,968 pixels 1.85:1 aspect ratio (Flat/Academy Aperture) Current total render time (approximated): 6 days I've been contacted by another filmmaker out in L.A., who wants me to do a title animation for him as well. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag yet, but he's pretty well-known in certain internet circles, and I'm sure people in Hollywood know him. We're...
Fun, Then Not So Fun
Late Thursday afternoon I was invited to go to the Lightning hockey game. The owner of my company had an extra ticket, and a bunch of the executives and administrative people were going too. They had tickets to the AFS club, which is this nice area of the Forum where you get in, sit in comfy leather chairs (think along the lines of airline first class) and have unlimited food and beer at your disposal – no shit. So, I went home and changed clothes, got ready, and jumped in the car to meet everyone at one of the executive vice-president’s house. I got there a few minutes after 6:00pm. People started to slowly show up there for the next 45 minutes, and when all were accounted for, we jumped into a couple of vehicles (we only had two parking passes, so we had to cram in), and headed off...
Lights. Camera. Action?
I went to a lighting shop in town today and got four new 250 Watt, 3200K tungsten floods for Suncoast Studios. I also picked up another aluminum case and tear-apart cube packing and have built out the carrying case for all of the bulbs I have. I also tested them all to make sure that they're working fine. These bulbs are great lights, but only last 20 hours each and the color temperature starts to change after only three hours. I'm currently sitting in the studio sipping a Diet Coke blogging, taking a break from working on the Tangible Entertainment project. I think I'll have a 95% correct version by the end of the night. After I ship the low res animatic off to them and get approval, I'll render it out at full 2K film resolution. I may be doing a shoot all next week. I'm not 100% sure...
