Tuesday, January 31, 2006

I totally just finished my first DVD, menu and all, AND IT ROCKS YOUR BALLS OFF, SONNY!

The shadows do seem a bit dark in spots, not sure if that's the TV or the conversion from DV to mpeg that the DVD authoring program did. hmmmm....

Anyway, that doesn't detract anything, it's just frusterating to me since I want total 100% control over how everything looks. I spend 3 hours perfecting all the contrast and brightness on a billion little clips, I don't like it when that randomly changes. ANYWAY, IT STILL ROCKS YOUR BALLS OFF.

The shorts/extras will be up on UFP soon and possibly a trailer in later days. If you want a copy of the DVD let me know and I'll mail you one. If postage gets prohibitive you may be paying to get it to you, but that's probably not an issue. I'd put the whole thing up on UFP but it's a 28 minute vid and even at 1000kb DIVX (any lower quality and it's bleh) that's still 250 megs and that quality isn't nearly as good as what you get on the DVD. I could cut that down with multipass encoding but not by much. (I think, I'm still learning multipass) SNOTS WORTH IT!

Oh, yea, the DVD is of ISUUC's trip to Moab over thanksgiving.

Posted by Seager @ 07:11 AM CST Link |

Monday, January 30, 2006

I'm making a 30 minutes DVD of our Moab trip. It was almost done... until... ATTACK OF THE INTERLACED VIDEO!!

It took me about an hour on google to teach myself this. I'm going to condense my learning here for future googlers.

What I knew already (from shopping for digivid cameras)
There are two types of video. Interlaced and Progressive. Progressive is like film (24fps) and is simply a serious of pictures. 24fps is WAY too the fuck slow for standard CRT televisions, however, so God invented interlaced video back in the 50's or something. Interlaced video is 60fps (NTSC) or 50fps (PAL). Crazy europeans use PAL and war mongering Americans use NTSC.

What interlaced video does is interlace the frames together to make a smooth looking video. It tracks motion way better because of the higher frame rate but sucks if you want to stop the film and take a vidcap. Since every frame is interlaced there are no single non-blurry frames like in film or progressive video. This is why film and video look so very different. Examples Go NOW!

What I didn't know
Interlaced video, while liking TV screens, HATES computer monitors. Computer monitors, not being retarded, can view progressive video just fine because of their high refresh rates but eat a huge dick when confronted with interlaced video. Interlaced video when viewed on a monitor get a "combed" effect whenever there is motion (see the example page above). This really frusterated me until I figured out what was happening.

The DV camera we used at moab creates interlaced video (as do most sub $1500 cameras). I want to make a DVD out of this raw footage. I want the footage to look good on computer screens AND tv monitors. What do I do? Do I deinterlace the video so it looks good on my computer screen? No, then it won't play on a TV. Do I leave it interlaced? No, then it won't play on my monitor. How come I can view normal DVD's on both screens? ... I did more research.

DVD players and software already have all this shit figured out. DVDs are generally interlaced for your TV. Some DVDs are not, but the better players have a built in interlacer (converting from progressive to interlaced is tough since 24 doesn't go into 60 very well, but they can do it.) Progressive Scan DVD players can output and read both (I think), which is good because HDTVs are progressive scan (like a computer monitor.)

DVD software for your computer has a built in deinterlacer kind of like HDTV's have and progessive scan DVD players have. This means a DVD made either interlaced or progressive SHOULD play fine on both TV and Computer as long as they are ran through a DVD player or DVD software. HOWEVER, interlaced is the better format for a DVD is you want backward compatibily with all DVD players.

I'm also assuming my TV out on my voodoo3000 card has a built in interlacer since it put my other progressive scan videos (everything I've made so far was progessive scan off my canon a95) on my TV screen just fine.

So, clips I put up on UFP need to be deinterlaced or converted to progressive scan since those are played with WMP, Winamp, or whatever commie bullcrap you linux people use. DVDs need to be interlaced. Got it. What a pain in the ass.

Anyone with more knowledge on this subject or with corrections PLEASE comment so I can get a better understanding of this crazy crapped up world.

Posted by Seager @ 04:49 AM CST Link |

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Another look into my job: Manager and Delivery driver...

Tonight I managed to get the entire resteruant (and customers) to sing along to "What's up" by the four non-blonds. This is normal for weekend (the bar crowd always sings with me) but not so much for 9:30pm on a wednesday. I was proud. The best part about this job is when the entire resteruant starts singing along with me.

I delivered to some punk in Friley the other night. The order was $12.00. He had a ten dollar bill, a one dollar bill, and two dollars in quarters in his hand. I he gave me the 10 and the quarters and put the dollar bill back in his pocket. No tip... WTFUCK? Dorms are the worst tippers ever. Dirty bastards. Don't order food if you can't tip.

The same night I delivered to a hottie wearing only panties and a tight shirt that was way too small. She gave me a 5 dollar tip so I guess it all evens out.

I drove 78 miles last night on delivery and managed to hit both highway 30 and interstate 35 during the night. Having a town flanked by highways makes it easier to get from one side of town to the other in a hurry.

We still have a problem with people stealing money out of the tip jar to pay for their burritos during the weekend bar rush.

We had to axe a 16 year old for smoking pot outback of the store yesterday. You have to be really stupid about pot to get fired from my job for smoking it.

I had to pay Iowa 60 bucks this year for taxes. So much for that return, fuckers.

the end.

so, did you like the madfest video?

Posted by Seager @ 04:59 AM CST Link |

Monday, January 23, 2006

AHAHAHAH, SUCKER!

And yet we claim we've never killed an innocent man. Riiiiiiiiiiight...

Posted by Seager @ 03:18 PM CST Link |

Sunday, January 22, 2006

I just finished a video I started 5 years ago. STOP MOTION KEYBOARD SEX!

and I quote from the Unexpected Failure website.

----------------------
In February 2001 the esteemed men of the Original Chegg (Josh, Mark, and Seager) created a stop motion animated gif with the intentions of turning it into a video, sound and all. This ground breaking project depicted the courting and later carnal relations between Penis Monkey Crap and Squeal Like a Piggy - two love struck keyboards out for a triple-X thrown down.

Unfortunately tragedy struck. The animated gif was 50 megs, and they realized that they didn`t have the technology or expertise to add a soundtrack. UNTIL NOW!

Unexpected Failure Productions presents:
Penis Monkey Crap Gets Layed

(Yes, we know we spelled `layed` wrong)
----------------------------

Penis Monkey Crap Gets Layed - direct download, 1:45min/13.8megs/DIVX on the fast server.

Also check out the gravity works promo video recently posted the UFP site.

Posted by Seager @ 07:37 PM CST Link |

Saturday, January 21, 2006

I finished the Madfest 2006 video. It's 7min/60min/DIVX and is up at Unexpected Failure. Or you can download the video directly. It's on a fast server so it won't be too bad.

It's got the US Pizza team and some of the best juggling and balancing I've caught on tape yet. It's also got me passing 7 on my unicycle, a first for me.

I got me external HD finally so I can start work on the MOAB video. YAY!

This video is JAWSOME!

Posted by Seager @ 10:44 PM CST Link |

Thursday, January 19, 2006

I have been very busy. We went to the Madfest Juggling Festival last weekend where I took video. I plan on making another video like the Mondo video last year. I also am getting an external enclosure for a spare hard drive I have to I can have a 130gig jump drive and get the raw footage from MOAB and recent unicycling escapades captured on Kai's digivid camera. Videos in the works include Madfest, Moab, and recent trials.

I also just finished UnexpectedFailure.com, a publishing website for all the videos I've been making recently. It's my first CSS website and also my first website to ever validate! YEA! Please let me know if the fonts work for you guys, I had a bitch getting them to work. It should be Haechemsomethingorother followed by impact if you don't have the first one followed by some others. I'm not sure how widespread these fonts are though so please let me know.

It's varieties time again. We won last year. (one day I'll get the footage of that so I can make a video of it as well) Unfortunately the finals this year are during the Mondo Jugglefest, so I'm not sure how that will all work out. We start practice tomorrow night.

Oh, and Mike and I passed 7 clubs at madfest with both of us on Unicycles. I'm pretty psyched about that.

Posted by Seager @ 05:12 AM CST Link |

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

I'm going to have more time this next semester than I thought. Many of you know that I was going to take EMT-B classes this spring. I went to my first class and had a chat with my instructer during one of the breaks (it's a 4 hour class) and it came up that I was moving to Portland. She informed me that I was wasting my time because getting certified in Iowa apparently won't do me any good in Oregon. .. - Makes sense I guess. So much for that. I can get a refund for the class but not the books. Oh well, what's $150, really? (300 cajun brats, that's what!)

This leaves me to continue my horizontal spiral through the lucrative world of food service. There is only so far Garbage B-Sides can get you before your screwed up urges start seeming less screwed up and more neccisary. I am of course refering to my overwhelming desire to fill the ice machine at work with frozen chicken cubes, and my always present but usually controlled desire to start pretty much everthing I see on fire (yes, even you.)

If you bother to check this then you should bother to click the more button and read the rest of the entry.

Posted by Seager @ 06:03 AM CST Link |

Friday, January 6, 2006

Tonight was fun - I was reminded why I still work night shift. Our shift is the fun one, where we sing and dance the entire night. No, really, we do.

Tonight I was asked to dance by a teenage customer during the bar crowd so I grabbed her and galloped up and down the store swinging her around. We had a customer singing dance party in the dining room for awhile. It was a good time. It was comprised of one of those crazy SKOCKY girls (I forget the name of which one it was), Wally, Hannah (homeless roomate, who I've ran back in to and now work with), random girl that danced with me, and a few others.

The Duck (sleeping Qehn) also called and left me a voice message. She's awesome.

Posted by Seager @ 04:33 AM CST Link |

Wednesday, January 4, 2006

So, the powers that be apparently didn't listen to my plea.

Whatever. I won't post my thoughts on that just yet.

So, who all made it over here?

Posted by Seager @ 05:15 PM CST Link |

Monday, January 2, 2006

SITE MOVING PERMANANTLY!

heytisthatguypeeing.com be the new home of plasticpenis (soon to also be renamed). There will NOT be a forwarding site not any thing here at all as soon as the DNS resolves due to the new management that Chegg is under. If you don't get this notice within the next day or so you will never get it. If you are an old college buddy is someone trying to get back in touch me with, or you just check this once a week, you are out of luck. Sorry.

That is, unless, the people who are making this decision want to let me put up a text message saying, simply, "this page has nothing to do with Chegg. It has been moved to http://www.heyisthatguypeeing.com " . That would be awful nice of them, especially since I gave them the name Chegg for free.

I put many many hours into Cheggpost. I then gave it away asking nothing in return but a simple forwarding page. People stand to make a lot of money off the foundation that I helped to build and I have been nothing but generous to them.

Please let me put up the message (if only for a few days), that was part of the deal when I gave you Chegg. You would not be able to do anything that you are doing right now if not for my generosity, please show me some in return. I know you are reasonable people and will grant me this parting wish.

Good luck with your business, I'll continue to promote it as Iastate like I always have.

Posted by Seager @ 05:52 PM CST Link |