Well, Chris and I spent Friday afternoon messing around with video cameras in order to do some special effects editing. We even bothered to choreograph the stuff before we shot it. 
Anyway, here’s a still from a brief battle Chris undertakes with the forces of evil:
You’ll have to wait until the rest of the video is processed to see if he wins his fight or not!
And here’s me, defending against an attack from Darth Surawy…
I’d have a video clip of this up here, but Dr Divx has decided it won’t let me install it again. Grrr. It’s times like this that I really hate software activation! I paid for it! Let me reinstall it!
You may have heard about the fundamentalist Christians in the US attempting to remove evolution from the curriculum, or at least make sure that “Intelligent Design” and other Creationist theories are taught alongside it.
Some States now require a sticker inside any book that mentions evolution. The text of which is:
This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
Sheesh.
Naturally, there are a good number of right minded people who are up in arms about such ridiculous behaviour. So they’ve created their own set of Textbook disclaimer stickers.
Quite why people would want to change the law so that their children spend time at school being misinformed is beyond me. By all means teach Creationism, Intelligent Design, Christian Science (or whatever they’re calling it this week to avoid calling it God) in RE, but keep it out of science lessons!
Those stickers, and the commentary underneath them make all the points about this issue that I’d make, so I’ll let you go and read them yourself.
Richard wanted a picture of the stomp rocket in action. The camera on my phone is pretty poor (Motorola V600) so this is the best I can do for now…
That’s Andy standing up (providing the stomp power) and Ray aiming the rocket. They’re attempting to hit the bell we have mounted on the wall. (We ring the bell whenever we win a contract.) Hitting the bell with a rocket has proved surprisingly difficult so far!
I had an idea for using the rockets and special effects together… video the next stomp rocket battle, and turn them into lazers or photon torpedoes. 
Watch this space…
I promised Teech that I’d help him with a school project to show some of the kids at his school how to create simple special effects. Of course that means I’ve had to remind myself how to achieve a lot of these things again! To that end, I’ve dug out the footage I took a year or so back of me and my then housemate Martin with our lightsabers. No, that’s not a euphemism, don’t be so dirty.
I also wanted to try out Goauld-style glowing eyes (like the bad guys in Stargate SG1):
[youtube GIpk2fAeghw 320 240]
Also check out these clips for me with different Lightsabers, and Martin - who actually knows how to swing a sword!
[youtube fH_Mw47J1O8 320 240]
[youtube 0qbDi-ccYSY 320 240]
[youtube 3tXQ5aBf5m0 320 240]
[youtube KPNsuGVCq3Y 320 240]
More special effects as we film them!
How do you entertain a diverse group of adults, from business analyst to company director? Why, you buy three sets of Stomp Rockets of course!
These are brilliant!
Our office has an open area (we call it the trading floor) which is bracketed by two mezannine areas. After Gavin bought me the first rocket (cheers Gavin!) I bought two more to arm the other areas. Now I (on one mezannine) can shoot at the trading floor and across the barn (through the beams and wires) to the other mezannine. And they can shoot back!
We just had a frenzied battle with Lisa and I firing from the mezannine at Ray and Terry on the other side. Andy and Adam were firing up from the trading floor too. I’m not entirely sure who won though.
Oh, and they come with 6 rockets, not 3 as the packaging states. Also, attempting to sellotape three rockets together for heavy duty weaponry doesn’t work. (Sorry Andy!)
I’ve used CopyToDVD from VSO Software for as long as I’ve had a DVD writer. It’s lightweight, quick and easy and it had a free trial. (The reason I first installed it!). After a week or so of heavy use I bit the bullet and bought it - it’s the kind of shareware application I really don’t mind paying for.
[A digression: here's a list of the applications I've bought, or donated money to, because I liked them so much... Alcohol 120%, Audiograbber (although it's now free anyway!), CopyToDVD, DVD Shrink, Dr Divx, Shemes GrabIt, SoulSeek, Tag & Rename and Tivo TyTools). Leave comments with the apps you used enough or thought enough of to buy!]
They’ve just released a freebie sneak preview version of their new app: DivxToDVD. You don’t need me to explain what it does. Suffice to say, it performs admirably, converting a 7 minute file into a VOB for me in around 23 minutes. This included writing all the iFO files and headers to make it a valid DVD (ready to point CopyToDVD at). Genius! They’re promising a Pro version which will handle multiple files, menus, subtitles and other extras, but for now this is perfect for converting those DivX files to DVD.
Of course I actually have a device capable of playing Divx natively, but that’s never the point, is it?
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