v3.5 – Now Smartphone/Mobile Device-Capable

After a long hiatus, I’m back. Work/travel has been hectic and prevented me from more timely updates. But I had an opportunity over the long weekend to pick up the video tools again. I needed that.

Flag

We had a fantastic fourth, and again, hung out with The Davis Family over in Hillsboro. It was food, fun, friends, and of course, fireworks.   The event started with a good ’0l fashioned water balloon fight.  I managed to not get nailed with the camera too badly, but I don’t believe there was a dry person afterwards.

Then it was food:  burgers, hot dogs, and way too many munchies.

Water Balloon Fight

Grillmaster

Goofy

Blue Eyes

More Goofy Faces

Reed, Bob, Randy

The Davis Family

This was also my first video with the new Final Cut X, Motion 5, and Compressor 4.  The tools retain many of the “isms” that made the tool great, altho, it’s a totally new codebase, and not everything is there in the first version of the rewrite.  Still it worked pretty well for me.   No major glitches, I’m happy to report.

Here are a couple of screen captures of Final Cut and Motion tools:

Motion 5

Final Cut X

There are some nice time-saving features built into this rev of the tool, and I’ll post more on my experience when I get a sec.

And of course, there’s video here!

Hope your holiday was great too!  Drop me a note and let me know how you’re doing!

Work has taken me all over the place, but this week was the first trip to India…specifically Bangalore.

India

It was a short two-day meeting, but the travel time to/from India makes the trip 5 days.  The shortest routing I could find was through Frankfurt. It’s a mere 21 hours of flight time, not including airport layovers.  Door-to-door, I think it’s about 28 hours minimum to get from Oregon to the hotel in Bangalore.

I left the house in Oregon shortly before 8am on Monday for the airport, and got to the hotel at about 4:30am Wednesday morning Bangalore time.  I napped for a couple of hours then went into the office for a full day of meetings.    I got about 5 hours of sleep Wednesday night, then it was back in the office early for another day of meetings on Thursday, then off to the airport to catch a flight home.

One thing I like a lot is that the flights out of India leave at around 2am.  It’s about an hour drive to the airport at night (when there isn’t a lot of traffic out), and the 2am flight time means there’s time to grab a decent dinner, pack and get to the airport.  Works out just about right.

Some initial thoughts:

• It was hot when compared to home
• The visible poverty is shocking, with shanties next to very nice buildings
• Friendly people
• Good food.  I love Indian food.  It was much spicier than the Americanized version, but I love that.
• Traffic is unbelievable.  No way I’d ever attempt to drive there

I’d done a little homework, and knew enough to stay away from uncooked things, and not to drink the water or even use it to brush teeth.  I didn’t have any issues there.

There wasn’t any downtime, and I was either at work or in meetings at the hotel so I didn’t get a chance to get out and see anything.

But, of course, I did manage to capture some video from my cell phone in the taxi to/from work. We had meetings in the taxi, so I had to replace all the audio from the videos, and this was done VERY quickly.  So you’ll miss all the horn-honking that happens on the street, and lots of video mistakes.

Bangalore is the silicon valley of India, so I was probably in the nicer/safer parts of the city.

Looks like I have another trip there coming up, so I’ll get some pix next time.

It only rained twice during spring break.  Once for 3 days, and the second time for 4 days.

I really need a break, and if I needed one, Becky needed one (and deserved one) more.  Been working non-stop since January, and the stress was getting to me.  So we took advantage of the week, and after birthdays, took off for the mountains.

We like Skamania Lodge for quick getaways.  It’s a mountain lodge on the edge of the Columbia River, just an hour east of Portland in the Gorge.

So we camped at Skamania, and went sledding during the day @ Little John.  Little John is our favorite sledding spot that is about 30 minutes south of Hood River, OR.

The music for this one just seemed to fit.  Feels like I’ve been gone for ages, and missed a lot.  Can’t tell you how many times I woke up in foreign hotel rooms missing my family.  Lotsa time lost on planes and in hotel rooms.  I hope Becky knows how much I appreciate her, and all her hard work.

• iPad/iPod Video
• Windows

Big # 9 was yesterday.  I put together a very quick video birthday card from me to them.

• iPod/iPad Ready
• MOV

Top 10 of 2010

It’s time once again for the annual Top 10 list.   As a reminder, this is my subjective opinion only, and based on discs I bought and listened to repeatedly over the course of the year.

The Annual Top 10 Video is here. The video contains clips, photos, video and a bit more on what I liked about each disc.

And the list:

10.  Sessions – Nick Vernier Band

09.  Museum Quality Capture – Seinking Ships

08.  Eureka – Rooney

07.  Lies and Fairy Tales – Secret Powers

06.  Grain and Grape – Taylor Locke and the Roughs

05.  Kevin Gilbert/Toy Matinee Live – Kevin Gilbert/Toy Matinee

04.  Louder than Usual – Francis Dunnery

03.  Four – Bleu

02.  All Quiet on the Noise Floor – Jason Falkner

01.  Amerikana & Oceanea EPs – Thomas Dolby

Other discs I liked a lot (in no particular order):

• Farrah – Farrah
• The Dark Leaves – Matt Pond PA
• Galaxyland – Maple Mars
• Oranjuly – Oranjuly
• Watercolor Day – Seth Swirsky
• The Eternal Struggle for Justice – Jackdaw4
• Sunrise Highway – Sunrise Highway
• Shadows – Teenage Fanclub

The band I probably spent the most time listening to outside of these discs (but no 2010 release):  Throwback Suburbia.  These Portland-based guys are amazing.

So that’s it for another year!

Dooblin!

I  spent 5 days in Dublin last week on business.  Despite facebook appearances, it was almost all work, but I had a few rare moments to see parts of the city.  I had meetings Sunday morning, but took Sunday afternoon off to see some of Dublin.

Among the interesting things I saw were:

• The Book of Kells – 8th century illustrated edition of the gospels.  Pictures aren’t allowed unfortunately
• St. Patrick’s Cathedral – 12th century cathedral that stands on the site where St. Patrick baptized converts in the late 5th, early 6th centuries.  In addition to the stone that covered St. Patrick’s well, Jonathan Swift, who authored Gulliver’s Travels, was buried there in 1745.
• Christ Church Cathedral – Protestant church.  Built sometime starting in the late 11th century (I think).
• National Treasures Museum – Very very cool (and free) museum that has Irish artifacts dating back to 2000 B.C.  No pictures there either
• Natural History Museum – lots of stuffed animals.  The Irish taxidermists have been busy.  I could have skipped this one.
• St. Stephens Green – public park that dates back to 1664.  Very pretty.
• Temple Bar – pub district.  Loved the Irish Music.
• Dublin Castle — only the outside.  This was my last stop of a 4 hour walking tour of city centre — all the time I had.
• Guinness Storehouse — meeting event held here.  6 stories of Guinness goodness.  I passed the pouring school with flying colors.  Lots of practice in college paid off here.  Passed on first try.

The conference I attended had a fun run early one morning.  A local running group took a group of 40-50 runners (including me) for a run out to the Irish coast at dawn.  Very beautiful.

Here is a short video of some of the things I saw.  Dublin is a very interesting city.  I hope to go back at some point and spend a little more time hitting all the other interesting places I missed.

• H.264
• Ipad/Ipod Touch

Tualatin Timberwolves

[Updated 11-02-2010:  with Randy's team party video]

Randy’s team (that’s him on lower left, #8) went undefeated this season, beating the Tigard Tigers 26-24 on a wet Saturday.  I put together a short end of year video that captures some of the fun.  That was a great group of kids/coaches.

Video is here (pick your format):

• Youtube
• ipad/ipod video
• H.264
• Windows Media

Team party video of Randy getting his dogtag is here

WWII

I had a few spare moments here/there over the past few days, and had a little fun with some video.  Most of what’s posted on this site are Hall Family Videos.   This really isn’t a “Hall Family” vid….more of a music video for a great tune by Eric Matthews.  The tune is called “And the World Will Go,” and it can be found on the excellent _Foundation Sounds_ CD.

As I said, this isn’t really a family video, but it does contain a few interesting family photos.  Randall, Billy (grandparents) and Aunt Helen can be seen in the video if you look closely, but one of the more interesting photos was taken by Randall when he was stationed in Europe in WWII.

While back in Kansas earlier this summer, we came across a photo of what’s either some sort of rally or a religious ceremony.  If you look closely, you can see a swastika at the event.  I ended up photoshopping out the swastika from the video because it didn’t really fit the context (and might be misinterpreted), but I’ve included the original photo here.

WWII

Judging from the apparent size of the mountains in the background, I would say that those are either the Alps or the Pyrenees.  I know Grandpa was in France so I’m guessing that’s where this is.  Interesting photo.

In any case, this was a fun video to put together so I’ll probably do a few more of these.  Here’s a link to the video, which is also posted on YouTube:

• YouTube
• H.264
• QuickTime

At the time of this writing, I’ve been on sabbatical for about 6 weeks.  That doesn’t mean we’ve been lounging around.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

Discovery Cove

Becky and the kids have put up with an inordinate amount of business travel, and I owe them a lot of time for simplifying things for me while work was so busy.  They put up with a lot of international travel, late-night meetings, countless hours of technical work so I owed them big-time.

With sabbatical, I have enjoyed over 2 months off, basically the entire summer.  We seized the opportunity, and Becky put together the be-all and end-all of vacations while busy managing kids.  It was an amazing, month-long trip.

Tower of Terror

We traveled with close friends, the Davis Family for most of the trip.  It was risky traveling with John, because our livers always seem to suffer when we’re together.  Despite, tropical settings, we managed to behave ourselves for the most part.  John has been on sabbatical too, so the timing couldn’t have been better for an extended vacation.  So on a cool, clear morning in Oregon, we loaded the bags up and hopped a plane for a big adventure.

Families

We told the kids we were going to Kansas, and they were excited.  It wasn’t until we reached Denver that we told them they’d be spending 3 weeks in Florida.  Stunned silence is the only way to explain their reaction.  They didn’t believe us until Becky actually boarded the plane to Orlando in Denver.  There is a sick pleasure in torturing your kids like this (as much as I hate to admit it).

The trip took us across the country, with 3 weeks in FL hanging out at the beach, visiting [too many] theme parks, and enjoying local cuisine, and then a week in Kansas.

The trip was loads-o-fun, but besides catching up with family, the highlight was definitely swimming with the dolphins at Discovery Cove.  One of the benefits of having a large family is that we effectively had our own private swims with dolphins and private tour of the park.  They treated us like rock stars.  Highly recommended if you ever get the chance.  The theme parks were fun, but very very crowded, and it was hot outside.

I have more to add on the trip, and will update this when I get a chance, but my favorite M-I-L is patiently awaiting a video .  Pictures and video follow….

• Pictures
• iPad/iPod/Mac/Win Video
• Windows Video