Trunk Monkey

Firstly, I'd like to wish Google a happy 7th.
Secondly, I want a Trunk Monkey! (Watch the videos)
Thirdly, heres a really cool photoshop link: www.worth1000.com

Beautiful Today (9/22/05)

Beautiful Today. The title suggests a day comprised of wonderful happy things making the past 24 hours a beautiful occasion. While this is certainly true for certain aspects of today, it wasn’t the case for the entire length of it. I’ll spare you the gory details and get to the good stuff fairly soon, so stay with me.

This morning I had more trouble with what I call “the little curly dogs” that from time to time are outside (loose) at the same time I take Jax and Sadie out (leashed). This time they both were leashed but they were on one of those long retractable cable leashes which apparently the lady had no knowledge of how to work, so the things might as well have just been loose. After fighting the dogs back and holding mine with what little strength I had in the wee hours of the morn’ I scramble to get ready on time for work.

At work there’s a note in my box that I’ve been waiting for concerning a day I asked off for Lindsey birthday. I’ve used my vacation days up for this year and I have some over time that I’d like to get comp for so I decided to ask off accordingly. I read the note and was not surprised at the response I got back. “Sure you can go, but it will be unpaid since you don’t have any vacation time left. Any Questions see me.” You have to understand that when I started here I was excited about working. Every day since then the management has proven via actions (contrary to words) that they couldn’t care less about their employees. So obviously I am no longer that excited about this place and have realized that I just cannot accept that as being ok. So I went to see “me” right away. We had a heated discussion that I don’t need to get into for both your sake and mine. I will say that I did not hold back anything. And that felt real good. She wanted to talk more about it when the owner got back to which I agreed, so we let it go for the time being.

Back in my office I am trying to make 3 deadlines happen by tomorrow while calling in to Ruby Tuesday for Lindsey who’s sick today still sleeping at home. Oh how I wish. I confronted the manager on the phone of rumors passed to me about call-offs being fired. He assured me they were false and that Lindsey being a great worker was in no trouble. I then called a few doctors in the area trying to find a good one that was taking new patients. She has been under the weather for a few weeks now and it’s starting to worry us both because she doesn’t usually get sick.

Lunch Time. Just took my first bite of ramen when I hear “Josh, come to my office, Josh (click).” Yes, the boss was back and what do ya know, he wanted to see me right away. I knew what was going to go down and I knew that it had to happen or we both were going to either implode or explode, both of which suck relationally speaking. Our meeting lasted for about 45 minutes. He talked most of the time, mostly about things that I still can’t find how they relate to my situation. I told him what I felt and tried to say why and I think that once it all settles, we may be getting somewhere in this whole mess…finally. Still looks like they’ll screw me concerning the overtime issue. Well that’s over, for now. After that I wasn’t afraid of standing up to anything. I felt great letting him finally feel the weight of who I am. Professionally of course. I had to make one last nerving call then it should start calming down…logically. Pffft. Josh, when will you learn that life doesn’t follow the logical path? I dunno.

The day is over. Breathe. Dan and Jon will be over soon to play some Halo 2 and that will be such a great way to end the day. How late is the beer store open? In conversation on the way home Lindsey and I decided to pick up a pregnancy test just in case that is why she has been feeling so bad. All the way there we talked ourselves into why this and that thing makes sense if she is indeed pregnant and at this point we really start to wonder. This would be really nice. Are we ready? Is anyone ever ready?
We’re Home now. Lindsey’s doing the test while I put away groceries. I come back to her and her eyes are watery. “I did it twice” she says. My eyes fall on the 2 pink lines glowing almost as much as she is. “What does two lines mean?! What is TWO lines?!!” I’m about to explode because I don’t know squat about tests. She nods her head with a look of overwhelming emotion upon her face. “We are? WE ARE!!” She keeps nodding, revealing what she is unable to speak. Many hugs, kisses and prayers later we exit the bathroom and suddenly my view of the world has changed. Halo night is no longer that exciting, at least not tonight. “Sorry fella’s but I’ve gotta call it off tonight, how bout next week?” We spent the night together with the TV in the background, just holding each other and talking about how our lives have just drastically changed. I guess the word in the English language that would best describe how I feel today is overjoyed. This whole day was pretty nuts but the way it turned out couldn’t have been better. Wow. We’re having a baby…. Which means I’m a dad…What a beautiful thing.

Pay Per View

Hooray! As of last Saturday I have contacts again!
I'd like to thank my wife Lindsey so much for taking on the daunting task of waitressing in order for us to do things we normally could not. Thanks to her I'm back to my glasses-less self and once again paying to use my eyes as everyone else does completely free of charge. uh. Yeah. I'm just glad to get that metal off my face. Thanks babe! Love ya!

Worth 1,000

So I decided against writing about all Fred's trips. (See post: What The Fred) The reason is two-fold actually. 1: It would take most of my free time to accomplish (which I am most unwilling to surrender) and B: I know it's just not the best idea in the world. However, in light of recent circumstances I am going to post this screenshot as a wrapup to the whole ordeal. The producers have been helping me finish a project that *ahem* has made us miss two deadlines on thus far. Thank God it's an internal project. Anyway, my co-producers have been dropping render files on my desktop upon completing their sections and we're now nearing the final deadline. Today I saw this folder on my desktop. Click to enlarge if you can't read the title of it.

Insufficient Disk Space to Free Up Disk Space

It's been so busy around work that I've had no time to back up any recent projects off my Fantom Drive. Of course, when it was slow I didn't back up too much either. :-) Anyway, there is a ton of stuff from Marcos, the producer who had this computer before me, lingering on there taking up half the space, then there's mine on the other half. So yes, if you've done your math correctly that equals one whole. One whole Fantom Drive with a whole lotta projects that need to be backed up. It also equals an entire 2GB free on my Fantom! Joy. Now that I just finished a huge project, i can start solving the problem. I opened my first rather large project to back up and had to re-render it since I deleted the render files because I needed the space yesterday to render a DVD Project. So I "Option+R" to start the process to be laid to tape and I think, "wouldn't it be funny if I didn't even have enough disk space to render the file I'm trying to backup?" I stepped away from my computer for only a moment and when I came back my mind had changed. It wasn't funny. (Well it was, but it's also very not) I searched for anything I knew I could delete and trashed enough to re-re-render the project. It's laying to tape now and once I can delete this project the backup process should be well underway. Now if you'll excuse me, it looks like it's going to be a boring day.

Haha, What?

Link

I Heart My Identity Thief.

While standing in the Post Office today I caught glimpse of a poster advertising ways to protect yourself from identity theft. It wasn't to far into the list until I started wondering if anyone has ever had their bad credit identity stolen only to realize that their credit was being improved upon. Dan and I conversed about this modern day robin hood whose sole objective would be to find the people with bad credit, steal their identity and go around making credit card payments on time and correcting their financial mishaps. That put a smirk on my face. Just thought it might yours.

After Effects Plug-ins Every User Should Demo

Lets face it. All companies involved with any kind of post-production deal with the same problem. Given there are a few times in a producers life when one can play with effects for hours to get just the right look, feel and style, most of the time we’re forced to crank it out to be ready yesterday while still maintaining a graphical quality similar to the other high budget projects. At times, it’s enough to make a producer go crazy. Well thanks to the wonderful world of plug-ins life is a whole lot easier. This post is for fellow After Effects users looking for the right plug-in to either save time and/or make stuff look really really ridiculously good looking. So without further impedance here’s my personal list of the top After Effects Plug-ins I’ve been fortunate enough to use. (In no particular order)

• TRAPCODE PLUGS:

- PARTICULAR is a 3D particle system which you control via the built in or comp camera. To see examples visit their GALLERY.
- 3D SROKE is exactly what it sounds like. You’ve seen this on the WB as well as many other commercials. 3D Stroke allows you to animate organic lines based off the mask shape in a layer.
- SHINE is the overly used effect that clients will actually ask for by name. It emits rays of light from the layer applied. Word of caution on this one. Do not use the default Shine settings unless you want your project to look like the cookie cutter Shine logo animation that the world has seen over and over. In talking with Peter Norby (creator of Trapcode) he commented that Trapcode prides themselves in the fact that you can apply the raw effect and it looks great without any tweaking which I agree with 100% but the only problem is that it’s so good that everyone uses it’s default. Which I guess isn’t a problem for sales, but as far as being original well, you get my point. Please use tastefully for your own sake.
- STARGLOW creates a unique glow with angled rays. You can customize each rays length and color, nice.
- SOUND KEYS - Someone out there right now is looking for this plug-in. Sound Keys will save you hours animating an object to audio. With this plug-in you can set the level marker of your bass, mid, and treble and tell the object to animate somehow (scale, position, etc.) only whenever the audio hits that frequency. View the samples to get a real idea of what it can do.
- LUX – Ever needed for the light in After Effects to show the cone? Well now all you have to do is apply Lux. Yes, it’s that easy and that rocks.

• DIGITAL ANARCHY:

- SMOOTH TILER – Think of a kaleidoscope. It’s similar to that, in that this plug-in mirrors your image on different sides creating a very unusual outcome.
- DESIGNER BLUR is cool because it has preset shapes you can blur your image into (circle, square, star) and the thing I like best about this plug is that you can choose custom and import your own shape to blur. I think I may die from the overwhelming joy.
- NOISE COMPLEX makes some very nice noise, which will aid nicely when attempting to recreate the old time footage of a history portion of a video.
- PSUNAMI WATER – Holy crap, this is by far the best water I’ve ever seen created with After Effects. If you need water and you need it to be done in AE look no further. Try the demo!

• MAGIC BULLET SUITE:

- LETTERBOXER – Hmm, I wonder what this does? Yes it’s simple, but how often do you spend time creating a black solid and adding a mask to it to crop your video to letterbox? This effective plug allows you to manipulate the aspect ratio of the letter box quickly and easily.
- LOOK SUITE – And yes it certainly does! Polish off your finished video with a film look or apply a color tint to it, adjust the contrast, gamma, saturation and add diffusion all in one place! Gives video that extra something that so many others lack.
- MISFIRE – The MisFire is a complete set of effects that has anything to do with fire. Need the little pieces of ash flying up through the air, no problem. Heat waves above the flames warping the background? Done deal. It’s not just fire however, there are also effects such as “Basic (and Deep) Scratches” making video look like old film and “Vignette” which I used to create from scratch using another black layer and a feathered mask. This is way easier and faster. You’ll be seeing me use this one in the future.

• OBVIOUS FX:

- ERODILATION – Hooray for free-ness! Seems to blur the image in box form creating a nice stylized look when applied in moderation.

• ZAXWERKS:

- 3D INVIGORATOR – After picking my jaw up off the floor, this plug-in allowed me to produce the most professional-looking 3D text in After Effects I have ever seen! Zaxwerks will save you tons of time by adding z-depth to text or any Illustrator 8 file. Very clean and effective. They also have a stand-alone program called Pro Animator if you’re not so AE friendly.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I have. Learn to use them tastefully behind a strong creative idea and you’re on your way to creating award-winning motion graphics!

Gala Recap

Have you ever done something then realized that what you just did was (and made you look) really stupid? That happens to me all the time. As long as you can laugh at yourself, it does make life more enjoyable.

Last nights' Gala was fun. I never heard the final head count, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say there were around 300 that came through for a look see. The owners of JPL came in (uninvited) possibly returning Jacqlyn's favor (showing up to their party uninvited) or just peeking in to see what the competition has going. Seb and Jacqlyn took it as a compliment and held their heads high the rest of the night knowing that they must be making some kind of lasting impression upon their company. They tried getting inside information on a rather large project Triscari is positioning for but no one would talk. Haha, one of the guys took a Triscari Crew shirt from the prize table before exiting out the rear of the tent. I can't imagine why, but it sure does make me respect their company. sheesh.
Anyway, yes the beer and food was great. I got to show my wife through the building again after all the renovations we've completed. Other than that we just sat around talking, eating and drinking. Oh, and I was told by a client that I was "workin that tux."

Now. I just downloaded a plethora very appealing After Effects Plug-in demos so if you'll excuse me. I'll be posting my favorite plug's in a few so keep an eye out.

And for those wondering if I will ever tie in the opening paragraph - no.

Tonight's The Night

So tonight's the night. Triscari has invited clients and prospects alike to join us in the celebration of our Grand Re-Opening (a.k.a. sales pitch). Out of the 1,000 invitations they ordered so far approx 150 people have R.S.V.P.'d. The place is looking nicer than ever and the red carpet out front does the place up real nice. The telly's are on display, people are getting changed into their tuxs and suits, and it's just about show time. I'll let you know how the evening goes down mañana. As for me, I'm going for the free food and beer. Oh yeah, and because I don't want to be fired.

What The Fred?!

There is a particular individual among us at work that makes our jobs much tougher and more painful. For his sake I'll just call him Fred. And from what I can gather, he seems to be completely unemployable. I could easily fill a page with posts of examples of his blunders and quirks that annoy the hell out of the producers. For example. Right now he's standing outside my doorway in the hallway with a blank stare, looking at the floor. I know what he's thinking, we all do. Absolutely nothing. And even Fred himself doesn't know why he's there at this moment. The way I live my life I assume everyone is intelligent, capable human beings with a conscience and other basic traits that I myself was raised with, unless they prove otherwise. I don't assume they will fail me in anyway, I give them a clean slate to start out on just as I hope they would do for me. Well Fred is one of those people that will prove otherwise every single day. So I've decided, for both therapeutic and humorous reasons, that I will try my best to describe Fred's actions from this day forth in my blog. As my beautiful wife so adequately put, "This should be interesting".

Labor Day 2005

This labor day was great. Well actually the combination of the events occurring on the surrounding days in conjunction with the actual day itself was great. Er, yeah. The long weekend rocked! I think Linz and I went to about four different parties! Here's a breakdown for my own memories and for anyone else who cares to read on.

We arrived late Friday night after fighting traffic to get back to good ol' Delaware. No parties tonight just tension about where to put our unappreciated dogs. Saturday was much better. We went to an old friends' dads' house to celebrate his 50th birthday. The quote of the party came from my Grandfather: "It's sad that you were only born in 1955, I have neckties older than that." That night we went to Irish Eyes, a Restaurant / Bar on the water in Lewes to hear a band called "The Funsters" play. Contrary to their name (and website), their music is good and they create a nice live atmosphere.

Sunday was another family gathering up-state. Lindsey's Aunt & Uncle have big parties whenever they can find a reason and it really is a lot of fun. I remember going to these events when we first started dating. It was very foreign to me then but now I feel right at home. We got to bring the dogs and they had a blast running around and meeting people. We're trying to let them get out and be more social, or as social as dogs can be anyway. The rest of the day was spent chill-axin' by the pool.

Monday. Yay! It's 9:00 and I'm getting up and refusing to even think about work. I always thought that they should have called it "Labor Not Day" because Labor Day just sounds like...well...a day full of labor, and no one wants celebrate that day in any country anywhere. Today we partook of more chill-axin' and for lunch dad took the two of us out to a coffee shop where I got to try a smoked salmon club sandwich. Very interesting, it was tasty but I think I'll try something different next time. Too much fish for one sitting. Around 5:00 we headed over to our last party of the weekend. They had their ATV's and Dirtbikes out and I was invited to go riding with my brother-in-law and father-in-law. This was my first time really riding a 4-wheeler on any kind of trail through the woods or at a speed that makes my eyes water. For lack of a better word, it was awesome. Whenever Lindsey and I move back down we will have ATV's. We just have to. You only live once right?

In conclusion, this Labor Day was the best ever. Of course, I don't really remember the other Labor Day's that I've lived through, but i did after all live through them, so that in and of itself is good...uh...yeah. **In Rocky the squirrel's voice (from Rocky and Bullwinkle)** "And now for something we hope you'll really like!."
Happy Labor Day!

Life's To Do List

Here's something interesting.

Things I will do before I die:

1. Buy a house
2. Own a Harley-Davidson
3. Own a Larrivee Acoustic guitar with "Emily" headstock inlay
4. Raise Children
5. Get out of debt
6. Vacation in Italy
7. Vacation in Ireland
8. Get a tattoo
9. Be well read with an overall better understanding of the English Language.
10. Write inspirational songs with that knowledge.
11. Pass any knowledge and wisdom I gain on to those who need it

I'd like to see some comments on what things other people want to accomplish or do before they die. Please comment if you have time!

Duct Tape

Duct Tape has always been a secret weapon. Long before the movie Red Green dubbed it the “Handyman’s Secret Weapon,” duct tape was used as a tear-by-hand mending material to keep moisture out of World War II ammunition boxes. Duct tape got its official name in the 1950s when it was commonly used to secure duct work for forced furnaces. Since then, its versatility and the worlds creativity has made it the cure-all for lots of everyday problems. But this? This is just freakin' incredible. Or insane. I haven't really determined which. But probably insane. Crazy Canadians. :-)

Last.fm

This is pretty cool.

Last.fm is the flagship product from the team that designed the Audioscrobbler system, a music engine based on a massive collection of Music Profiles. Each music profile belongs to one person, and describes their taste in music. Last.fm uses these music profiles to make personalized recommendations, match you up with people who like similar music, and generate custom radio stations for each person.

After picking a username and signing up, you would typically install an Audioscrobbler Plugin for your media player (iTunes, Winamp etc..) which sends the name of every song you play on your computer to Last.fm. Over time, this list of songs grows larger and larger - you can see your personal listening charts on your userpage. Last.fm automatically finds people with a similar taste, and generates music recommendations for you.

If you have a broadband internet connection, you should grab the Last.fm Player. This is a small application that plays you Last.fm radio - where each listener gets different songs, all picked automatically depending on your music taste.

There are dozens of other entertaining and useful aspects of Last.fm, but you'll have to sign up and explore them for yourself :)

It's also a good way to find other bands similar to the ones you listen to. Networking rocks! :: view mine ::

A Deserving Link(s)

Since Katrina's attack on New Orleans, we've seen the effects here, hundreds of miles away, in gas prices among other things. While I am mostly grateful for the service and convenience gas stations provide, I often find myself fuming at the rocketing prices I am forced to pay. Well today I came across something that made me laugh it all off. Apparently this guy made a blog dedicated to bashing gas stations' websites. (I wasn't even aware gas stations had websites) I can appreciate this being a designer myself but I think I mostly enjoy it because I feel that at least someone is giving retribution to the matter. Gas stations have even contacted him and asked him to stop making fun of their websites. It reminds me of another favorite link of mine where Maddox rates little kids' artwork. Haha, goofy Maddox. So whether you need retribution like me or just would like a quick good laugh. Be sure to check these links out.

3 Cotton Balls

Tonight I had Dan and Jon over to have a sort of mini Halo 2 tournament, going through every map (including the new ones off xbox live). About half way through them Jon goes to the bathroom. No biggie, we kill him and start the next level. We come close to finishing that level and ask ourselves "What's he doing in there?" So we yell "Hey Jon, ya need any help in there? Hahaha" and he mumbles something that we can't hear over the blasting and blazing of the game. Well come to find out, there was no more TP and he was trying to tell us that he needed some. So Dan hesitantly asks, "well, what did you do?"

Jon: Well I found some cotton balls.
Josh & Dan: HAHAHA, really?!
Dan: The big kind or the small kind?
Jon: The small kind, I only used three!
Josh: How is that even possible?
Everyone: *laughter*
Everyone: *plays halo 2*

After they left I went into the bathroom and the funny thing is that there was toilet paper! It was behind the hanging towel directly in front of the toilet, which I think is a strange place to put it in the first place. Well, thanks for the laugh Jon!

Nice Mac RSS Aggregator

Ever since Dan started writing about cool things in his blog and inspired me to start my own) I've been half-looking for a good stand-alone RSS Aggregator to view his among other blogs and news feeds. Well last week we buckled down and finaly found one. NetNewsWire. To quote the website: It's an easy-to-use RSS and Atom newsreader for Mac OS X. It has a familiar three-paned interface (similar to Apple Mail) which can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs, making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news. I love it because you don't have to launch a browser and hit all the different blogs or news sites. Many news sources send out RSS feeds in shorter headline only forms which is nice for short-attention-spanned people such as myself. A downside to NetNewsWire is that you cannot view comments on blogs without clicking the article link which opens the actual URL in a built-in browser type window. Nonetheless, It still has my seal of pretty-good-ness.

Useful & Free

Today I cam across something I wish I had about 4 months ago when I really needed it. If I had a dollar for every time that happened...I'd have one dollar. I needed to capture a website for use in a TV commercial but the screenshot I took only got the part of the site that was viewable in the browser. I needed the whole thing. So what I did was just scroll down and take another couple screenshots and then Photoshoped them together. Well that sucks you say? Yes, it DID until I found "Paparazzi!" a free program for Mac OS X that allows you to capture an entire page no matter how long (height) the site is. The only problem with this program, however, is that when you need to capture a flash site, Paparazzi! takes a screenshot too fast and gets the page with a large blank spot in the middle where the .swf should be.
Try it out yourself here.