Bliss
January 18th, 2012
Keeping up with the Geoff Joneses
January 18th, 2012
Only people who are better skiers than me should really try shooting video while in motion, but it was a nice gentle slope!
However, I did have an interesting and rather embarrassing experience today. We stopped off for lunch at a favourite spot, after which Geoff , the star of the movie, picked up his board, and I my skis, and we set off for another happy afternoon on the slopes.
At the end of the day, Geoff wanted to get his board rewaxed, so we headed down to the rental shop. There was a man waiting outside, who pointed at me.
“Ah! You!”‘, he said. Confused, I tried to work out whether I knew him, or why he might otherwise be accosting me. He soon explained. “You have my skis!”
And I looked at the poles and skis he was holding, and sure enough, they were mine. At lunchtime, he must have placed them on the rack next to Geoff’s board, and yours truly had walked up and pinched both them and his poles (which were, I’m embarrassed to say, completely different from mine), clamped the skis onto my boots (which fit perfectly) and skied for the whole afternoon without noticing. I’m not sure whether the fact that I was so oblivious to my equipment means I’m a good or bad skier…
Anyway, the poor chap, a very nice Dutchman, had waited for about an hour for me to come back and then, having called ahead, had availed himself of my equipment to ski over to the rental shop marked on the skis, which was where we found him waiting. I wonder how long it would have taken us to notice if we hadn’t decided to drop in on the way back…
The moral of this story is probably that ski-hire places should always get the mobile number of the people who rent their equipment. Or that they shouldn’t lend them to people as foolish as me.
On the Internet, nobody knows…
January 15th, 2012
And so the silly season starts…
January 15th, 2012
I can’t really believe that the American public would be seriously concerned that Mitt Romney can speak French. If Newt Gingrich really picked this as a reason to lambast him, it should presumably disqualify Gingrich, not Romney, from office.
Now, I know little of either of them, but if you want to pick on Romney, I would have thought that his belief in – nay, his missionary zeal for – a man who gained inspiration from magic stones in the bottom of his hat at the start of the 19th century, would be a better target. Surely that’s even more worrying than being friendly with Frenchies?
But, of course, that’s religion, so it’s taboo…
The Owl and the…Puppy Dog
January 13th, 2012
Lady WoofWoof – Bark This Way
January 12th, 2012
I made a silly movie. Starring my dog. Yes, another one. My excuse is that it’s mostly for the benefit of distant friends and family.
Then, to compound my folly, I made a movie about how I’d made the movie, which is probably more interesting for most people!
Update: Thanks to Richard Morrison for pointing me at these instructions for making your own camera stabiliser – very nice!
Fotoshop, by Adobé
January 12th, 2012
Lady of the Rings
January 11th, 2012
A portrait of The Artist
January 10th, 2012
Well, my faith in cinema is gradually being restored. About three weeks ago we saw Hugo, one of the few 3D movies worth watching, and one of the even fewer that would still be a splendid film in 2D. Then last week we saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; not quite in the same league but still jolly good fun. And tonight it was The Artist, which is quite fabulous.
For those who’ve missed the publicity and the reports of the plentiful standing ovations at Cannes, The Artist is a story set around the time when silent movies are being replaced by talkies. That’s hardly novel: so was Singing in the Rain. But what makes this different is that it is itself a silent movie. It looks at the transition from the ‘before’ side rather than from the ‘after’, as it were. And when was the last time you went to the release of a new silent movie?
So the sheer novelty value is a large part of what gets the bums on the seats. But very few of those bums’ owners will be disappointed once they get there, I think. I was delighted even before the film began: as the adverts drew to a close, the curtains on either side of the screen moved inwards, because this is shot in traditional 4:3 ratio, not widescreen.
The genius of The Actor is partly down to the bravery of those who had the nerve to try such a thing, and partly down to the skill of the execution. But what struck me as we walked home is that it’s unique. Nobody will be able to do this again. So I think it has found a place in the cinematic history books from which it is unlikely ever to be displaced.
And it’s also a great night out.
Mounting phone costs…
January 3rd, 2012
…not very much!
I’ve just received one of my cheapest eBay purchases in a while and was pleasantly surprised.
It gives your iPhone or HTC a standard 1/4″ tripod mount socket. Not the most robust construction, but not as plasticky as I’d expected, either. It ships from Hong Kong, so takes a little while to arrive, but here’s why it’s worthwhile…
The price is about £1.40 (about $US 2.20). Including postage.
Portrait
January 1st, 2012
My brother, Simon.
iTunes Match getting stuck…
January 1st, 2012
Warning: geeky Mac post
I had a problem with the iTunes Match process on my Mac – it would get stuck sometimes at the stage of ‘Gathering information about your iTunes library…’. It turned out to be one or two dodgy tracks that were confusing it, but how to find out which they were?
I found the solution on tmksnyder’s post in this thread. He suggested using Activity Monitor, selecting the iTunes process, and clicking the ‘Inspect’ button, which I confess I’d never previously noticed. Here you can find a tab named ‘Open Files and Ports’, which tells you which files (& ports!) the app is currently using. Potentially useful for all sorts of things. (It’s roughly the inverse of the command-line ‘fuser’ utility, which tells which apps have a particular file or mount-point open.)
The window updates dynamically, so if you expand it to a good size and watch it carefully, you can see the filenames of tracks being opened and closed, and, in my case, a couple on which it hiccupped and kept trying to re-open. Deleting and re-downloading those sorted it out.
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