Tuesday, April 26, 2005

The Last Time I Sit Master Control!

This may very well be the last time that I sit in Master Control babysitting Good Morning Emerson. I sure hope so. It's not that this is such a bad job, but I just don't want to do it anymore. No skill is involved and it's very thankless. I am complaining, yes, but I don't do it often.

But don't fear that because I am no longer bored out of my mind watching electronic equipment function as it was programmed to function that my posts will come any slower. (Or faster, I guess.) But seriously, once I've got snots of boredom come down from the tops of my eyes during the summer, I will probably be back to undating more regularly.

The irony of course, is that in the summer my life isn't quite as interesting as it is during the academic year. Such is life, guess.

I've communicated with Mr. Stratford at Harrisonburg High School about our new TV Studio! It's awesome, and I will be helping put it all together in just 3 weeks or so. They've got some sweet sweet stuff.

Anyway, I hope to see everybody when I get down to VA! If you don't already have my e-mail or cell phone number, IM me or comment and I'll e-mail it to you! There are some many people I can't wait to see.

Back to Emerson College though. I've got the Evvy Awards show coming up in just 18 days! I'm going to be a camera operator on the afternoon show, and probably a grip or something on the evening show.

I have a lot of short paragraphs.

Perhaps it shows how flitty I am becoming. Who knows.

But seriously, I am going to have a great time, mostly because I will have a lot of time before the rehearsals begin. Boston is just getting into bloom. It's beautiful and starting to get warm enough for t-shirts an shorts.

I've got an open book final examination in 40 minutes, so I think I am going to go and read through my notes before class, so I'll be more prepared. Hopefully I'll not be too busy and will be able to keep you guys up to date.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

He Who Hesitates is Lost.

I was online and I found a one-way ticket to Washington, D.C.'s Dulles for a total price of 54 dollars. INCREDIBLE. So I called and tried to make arrangements with the various people that I need to coordinate to get home safely, but the next day, the price had shot up to 72 dollars for the worst time, and 112 or so for the flight time I was trying to get.

It pisses me off so much. I should have just bought it. Argh.

Anyway, I'm in Master Control again, but I've got a "creative" project due on Wednesday that I haven't started, I've got to edit the Ladies Room Clip Reel, go hope teaching on Thursday, attend a ton of meetings, and finish the final draft of my 8 page (needs to be 12 page) research paper that is due friday. So I could be working on any number of those things right now, while sitting in Master Control, but instead I am updating here.

Seriously though, finding out that I am going to have to spend at least 100 dollars instead of 50 has ruined my day. I've got a class I don't want to go to, and then I'm going to go and sit EVVY office, and then I've got about 6 hours to create a project for tommorow. Wish me luck.

Monday, April 18, 2005

Marathon Monday!

Well, it's marathon Monday here in Boston. The day when thousands of people celebrate Patriots day by running--a lot of people. It's pretty insane. I'll try to get some pictures today if I can.

Anyway, I feel like I've been running a marathon recently. This weekend was insane, and the rest of this week is going to be pretty hectic, too. But I'm sure that you all feel the same way as your school year winds to a close. Granted, not evenyone is in school. But summer is coming, and that totally rocks.

During the film shoot I was on this weekend, I operated the Nagra 4.2, which is a two imput monaural reel-to-reel audio recording machine. And it worked pretty well the first day, even when the headphones stopped working right and we thought it was a problem with the mics.... that's fun, having to test every bit of your equipment in the middle of a shoot so that you can find out whats wrong.

So the Nagra got put away at room temperature over night, and the next day when we set it up, it would power on, show levels, rewind, fast forward--but not record or payback. In other words, it became useless. AND, the Film Equipment Distribution Center was closed on sundays. So how to we record our audio today? We have XLR mics, and camera and laptops have 1/8th inch mini plugs for mics, so those wouldn't work... but the PD150 Panasonic MiniDV camera has XLR inputs... and the Emerson Channel has one. So fortunately for me, I was able to access the emerson channel, steal (borrow) the camera, and record the audio onto MiniDV.

Needless to say, it was annoying, and editing is going to be more complicated now, but that's okay.

Oh, this is a special note for John Nevin: I was listening to my music while while writing this, and because WinAmp is on shuffle, it came up on Dolly Parton's and Kenny Rogers song "A Christmas To Remember". The lyric went like this

"Almost went to Aspen but something told me no
I considered Mammoth but there wasn't enough snow
And I even thought of Gatlinburg but that seemed so far to go
So I headed up to Tahoe for a Christmas on the slopes


Cool huh! GATLINBURG!

Anyway, I've got a lot to do today, and I've already wasted far too much of it. Later!

Sunday, April 10, 2005

NEW! CLASSIC! ORIGINAL! IMPROVED! Peek-A-Boo Comments!

Thanks to a helpful link from Thaddeus Lovejoy, I now have "peek-a-boo" comments on my blog. Now when you click on the comments link, it should show the comments directly below the post on that same page. Cool huh? If you'd like to do this to your blog, visit Blogger Help: Peek-A-Boo Comments and follow the (I think) easy step-by-step instructions.

Sunday Morning Radio... Not Happening.

So anyway, we went to campus movie night at emerson college, and it all turned out pretty well, even though we didn't place. We were in the top 14 and were screened, and the audience reactions were awesome. (We had lots of people approach us afterwards and tell us how great they thought it was) Also, we had almost constant laughter, in fact, it almost became a problem, because people couldn't hear all of the lines, since the movie didn't have enough time to breathe very well. If you'd like to so the movie, click here: Fattitude

So WECB, the radio (not really radio, more like TV radio, since no radio can pick up the stations ultra weak signal.) is not working. I checked out everything I could, but it isn't working. I don't know what's wrong, but I do know that it won't be fixed until monday, because the engineer won't be able to come in until then. So we came down to the station anyway to fool around and practice with the computer and maybe see if we could figure out the problem. When I came down we found what looked like the remenants of some catered food with a few cans of soda. The stuff looked really old, so I figured that I could take a drink, and just as I did, I got glared down by some girl who had walked out of the office. She accused me of stealing (which I really was, when you think about it) and I said I was sorry and that I thought they were for everbody. It turns out they were for people at WERS, the big, important station at Emerson who where working on the pledge drive to earn money for the station. So I offered to answer some phones for a while in order to appease her. Funny thing, guilt. So there are no people calling in because it's the middle of the night, and I decided to kill some time while making this long overdue post to my weblog.

So, to sum up: we didn't place 1-3 at CMF, no radio show this week, and I am a sucker about feeling guilty.

That works for me.

Dan brought up his friend from NYU named Susie (Suzie?) I dunno. Anyway, she seems pretty clued in and nice, though a little too much like Dan in personality to be really cool with for long periods of time. Thats all good though.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Fattitude

Hey guys, I made a movie for CampusMovieFest with a group of friends. Please check out our movie "Fattitude" and leave a comment with what you think.

Just as a note, we had to keep it under 5 minutes to be eligable to win. I'll know the winners by Saturday.

More later.