Monthly Archives: February 2003

Some thoughts; Feb 20th

Almost fifteen years ago I took part in Shad Valley's Createch program, a “summer camp” where I think twenty students out of ten thousand applicants were chosen to spend a week fine-tuning their technology and entrepreneurial skills. It was hosted at the University of Calgary, which is located in the dry middle of Canada's prairies.

One of the other people who made it was a girl from Halifax, a city on the Atlantic Ocean in Nova Scotia. The first day there she was fine, but by the time she awoke on the second day she'd totally lost her voice on account of the sudden and dramatic drop in humidity, and she didn't start to get it back until the end of that week when her throat had mostly acclimatized.

I woke up this morning with a horribly dry throat; I mean, really unpleasant. I can only assume that I've undergone the same stress after having spent a week in the extremely humid environment of England.


While I was gone, someone had a freakout saying that because I was “independently wealthy”, IAM should be free. I'd like to briefly comment on that.

First of all, I'm far from independently wealthy. While my parents' families have five hundred plus years of aristocratic wealth behid them, I'm effectively disowned from that. They so despise the nature of the work I do that while I suspect they'd support me if I fell on hard times, they'd never drop a dime into my businesses. I haven't gotten any support from them since I left school to work ten years ago. So every piece of gold I have is earned by long hours of work on my part.

Second, and more importantly, the core statement doesn't make sense. Let's assume for a moment that I was wealthy, which is definitely not the truth. How does that make me responsible for paying the bills of someone who's chosen to slag me? Let's look at musicians. When a band becomes wealthy, do they have to play all their concerts for free, and give away a CD every few months to every fan (because that's the equivalent of what's being asked)? The concept is plain silly.

Of course, the person went on to say that it would be OK if I was a “big corporation” since it's only “selling out” to charge if you're an individual. WTF? When I heard that I admit I just laughed and wrote the whole thing off as sourcing from total lunacy and gave it no more consideration.


Now, time to go check out the news I think.

I've got about an hour and a half to kill before I can get to work on the image update (still doing some rendering on the main power box), so I imagine I'll get a chance to do some writing. I've really missed keeping on top of what's going on in the world. Outside of the obvious, that's what I missed most.

Avebury

A few photos from an afternoon excursion to see stone circles and curse ourselves with 1000 years of damnation for climbing on them. I'm being careful not to post the best stuff though; have to save some of it for the movie!



Driving across the English countryside on very narrow roads.

An explanation from Stuart as to the electromagnetic properties of the stone placement.

Taking our souvenier photos in front of one of the larger stones.

…and then scaling it.

Time for a history lesson

I've realized that one of my must-get items before the next round of filming is some better micing… A couple of the shots are going to have to be overdubbed because of wind noise and other issues, but it's not a big deal since I think there's only one outdoor shot that has essential audio. I've got a few nice body mics, I'll do future interviews using those for sure.

Now, something else that I need is a PAL DV Camcorder. I should be able to find one for under four hundred pounds (we'd found one as low as 309 pounds) new and online, but I'd rather buy one from an IAM member if anyone has one. 220 volt is fine — all I need is something that will play the PAL DV tapes that I get from European correspondents both for the movie and for BMEvideo. If you are looking to sell one in that price range, drop me an IM.

Let the picflood begin

Thought I'd briefly post some pictures from the Steve-O interview. Honestly, he's one of the nicest most genuine “stars” I've met… Very easy to talk to, very down to earth, and extremely funny and charismatic. He really came off well in person, and I hope his tour continues to do well. It was absolutely packed! Anyway, pics:



The Cambridge Corn Exchange where the show was held (and sold out).

Starting the interview in St. John's pub.

Show and tell: World's Largest Self-Portrait Tattoo

Moving the interview upstairs to the green room where it's quieter.

IAM supplied. Thank you to (you know who you are).

Yeah, dude.

They were disappointed that two rings didn't come out at once.

You'll have to wait about two weeks before you can find out what was said.

If it was me, I'd have come on stage, and said, “Sorry, I'm going to have to go lie down now.” Steve-O definitely has energy.

Is it just me, or does Ryan Dunn have his hands down his pants?

They went through quite a few of those big cans before the show.

Erik lights Marty's cigarette with a small fireball.

Marty's just glad he didn't burn anything; earlier that day he'd burned off his left eye's lashes.

West Chester PA pride!

This girl that was with Brandon Dicamillo (I think) was totally grossed out by stretched piercings… so it's no surprise what Erik did!

Yeah, pretty much all my videos (a la the BBQs) end with Marty whipping it out!

Finally

Ah, home sweet home! I'm finally back at my own computer. First let me thank Erik, Marty, and Jill for helping on the shooting (you guys were all great, and I can't thank you enough for having come), Patrick for being an amazing host (yet another in the long list of reasons that I owe Patrick big favors), and Rachel for letting it happen at all. I couldn't have done it without all of your help.

My plan for today, with Don's help of course (who I'll add is supercool in person and I was really glad to be able to meet in Birmingham), is to quickly post an experience update (image update tomorrow, but that's a bit much for me today). After that I'm going to go through the fifteen or so DV tapes that we shot and label everything and start capturing the raw footage so I can first send off three DVDs of Steve-O interview to Danielle so we can get it transcribed and on the site, and then start putting together a trailer.

Badur (also part of the core film crew) has my VX2000 and lenses right now (we all went out for teppanyaki last night after the plane landed), so if you're at the Rites of Passage SusCon this weekend, we'd love to film you for the DVD if you don't mind — make sure you sign a model release if you'd like to be included in that.

Anyway, I'm going to get to work on that experience update, and while that's going, I'll fire up the other computer and use it to start chewing through my IM backlogs (oh no)… Oh, and as I capture video I'll be posting some still images, probably starting later this afternoon.

Finally, a big thank you as well to m0xie and sykospark for things I'll thank them for more in private, and a belated congratulations that I'd missed saying to Brian and Lili on the birth of their daughter, Rheannan and Adam on the birth of their son, Caryn on the birth of her daughter, Amanda and Dan on the birth of their son, and Kristin on the birth of her son — sorry I didn't get a chance to congratulate all of you before I left! So many babies!!! (And of course thank you to Monica for running a great pregnancy forum).