or something like that. Driving past the local Blockbuster today to pick up a sandwich at Subway, I noticed that in an effort to counterprogram Hollywood Video, they've also switched to 3 for $25. This, on the face of it is a boon to the consumer. I know that it will probably alter my buying pattern. I was done shopping at Blockbuster when it was two for twenty dollars, but I'm more likely to shop there now that it's a comparable 3 for $25. But how much more needs to happen before the used DVD market would become deflationary? At some point, in a war between two companies over the aforementioned DVD prices could cause used DVD prices to spiral, ruining the market. Why would I pay 3 for $25 for something when I know that it's only REALLY worth X? Do I hold off on buying until it reaches price point X? Do I see it at price point X and knowing the history of the market decide that I should wait until it reaches price point Y?
Obviously, this is a rather simplistic model, but one wonders if CD price fixing was fixed for anti-deflationary reasons. It just seems as though there's more volatibility in the used DVD market than their is in the used CD market... but then again, you couldn't ever really buy used CDs at a national chain that's as highly visible as the equivalent Blockbuster or Hollywood video. Thoughts?
Friday, May 28, 2004
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Yawn
NP: Over The Rhine's Show Me off of Ohio
Man, what a great song. The Ohio album was hit or miss for me, but Show Me is just one of those songs that fires on all cylinders. Over the Rhine has always been one of those bands that I enjoy shooting... camera NOT gun. Working as a staff photographer for the website at Cornerstone Festival the past few years has meant that at some point every year, I end up hanging off the side of the stage shooting photos of Linferd and Karen.
The song just ended and now something off the GlassByrd album is playing now. When I first heard Common Children back in 1995, I'd have never thought that they'd turn into a band I was actually really into. But Marc Byrd turned into a pretty great songwriter. If you've heard anything by him, you've probably heard "God of Wonders", but the rest of his body of work is as good or better.
I can't seem to get the sleep out of my eyes this morning. I suppose that's not completely abnormal, but normalyl I'm more awake than this, especially when I get 8 hours or so. Anyway, I'm working on labels for a little mini-series we're putting out around my bosses new book Lucifer's Flood It's out now through our website, but it'll be officially released this summer through Creation House Press. Enough blathering from me. Sometime today I'll post a picture of my cleaned up office space.
Man, what a great song. The Ohio album was hit or miss for me, but Show Me is just one of those songs that fires on all cylinders. Over the Rhine has always been one of those bands that I enjoy shooting... camera NOT gun. Working as a staff photographer for the website at Cornerstone Festival the past few years has meant that at some point every year, I end up hanging off the side of the stage shooting photos of Linferd and Karen.
The song just ended and now something off the GlassByrd album is playing now. When I first heard Common Children back in 1995, I'd have never thought that they'd turn into a band I was actually really into. But Marc Byrd turned into a pretty great songwriter. If you've heard anything by him, you've probably heard "God of Wonders", but the rest of his body of work is as good or better.
I can't seem to get the sleep out of my eyes this morning. I suppose that's not completely abnormal, but normalyl I'm more awake than this, especially when I get 8 hours or so. Anyway, I'm working on labels for a little mini-series we're putting out around my bosses new book Lucifer's Flood It's out now through our website, but it'll be officially released this summer through Creation House Press. Enough blathering from me. Sometime today I'll post a picture of my cleaned up office space.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Not that there's anyone reading this...
but if you haven't RSVPed for the Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash, DO IT! It's good for you! (or something like that)
I'm going to bed. The bosses come back tomorrow and I have to be my freshest and mintiest. Blah. But it will be good to see them... and since they're back, it'll be an excuse to cook the 6lb brisket on Saturday and roast some corn to act as a base for my butter with red pepper and fresh basil. MMMMMM. I shouldn't be making myself hungry before I go to bed. Oh well.
I'm going to bed. The bosses come back tomorrow and I have to be my freshest and mintiest. Blah. But it will be good to see them... and since they're back, it'll be an excuse to cook the 6lb brisket on Saturday and roast some corn to act as a base for my butter with red pepper and fresh basil. MMMMMM. I shouldn't be making myself hungry before I go to bed. Oh well.
This is kinda cool...
Ang and I have been using this program called DVDpedia to catalogue our DVDs. I just found out today that you can actually export the list to a HTML file, so if you want, here's a link to our current movie connection. :-)
Ah the joys of a clean office...
or at least, that's what I told myself today as I scrubbed my office from top to bottom in preparation of the bosses arriving. Winter is nice at work, since my immediate supervisor and the married couple at the top head to Florida to tape the teaching material that we edit the rest of the year. The pace of life slows down during these months, and while life at Lakeland isn't the most stressful existence in the world, these months from January to June are cherished.
So now, after working all day on cleaning my office, I have to say that things look pretty good. That's not to say that everything's perfect, but the extra papers have been thrown away, the dust has been vacuumed up and things have been put in as proper a place as they can be.
I set up a separate area in the office today to record voiceovers in. My Dual Gigahertz G4 is primarily a graphics box, and the Dual 1.25 is my editing machine, but I had a corner of my office that was being unused. It's not unused anymore. I took a cassette deck that didn't really have a place, and wired it up underneath a Mackie soundboard that didn't have a place, then ran a microphone to the mixing board and the output of the board to this MAudio MobilePre box that we bought for mobile audio production in January. I have to say that it actually works pretty slick. There's a 15 foot USB cable that spans from the audio area to the Dual 1Ghz which let's it be in it's own area. I like a clean workspace. Having everything bunched up doesn't really serve that very well.
I've still got to figure out what to do with our hard drives. When we originally bought our editing stations, we decided it was cheaper to buy firewire drives than build a RAID. It worked really well, but now we've got a collection of twenty or so firewire drives that are sitting on the other side of the office hooked up the Dual 1.25. I'd love to buy a couple of
THESE
I've got a nice rack that our AJA IO is sitting in along with a couple of old decks, and it would be nice to mount two of these into the rack. In a single swipe, I could wipe out twenty drives and have more space in two. Sounds nice.
Ang sent a Bass to a friend from one of the mailing lists she was on in exchange for postage that never seemed to come. We forgot about it, writing it off, and were pleasantly surprised the other day to see the $50 worth of postage show up. Since we've paid our bills this month, we decided to use it to check things off "our list". So, in a period of 30 minutes or so, we added the following to our DVD collection...
Capturing the Friedmans
X2
Vanilla Sky
Heist (which I'm anxious to see. I missed it in the theater, and I've always been a big fan of David Mamet)
Under the Tuscan Sun (Angela's mom is coming for the Memorial Day weekend, and since her parents are in the process of splitting up, we figured that Under the Tuscan Sun might appeal to her.) It's not a great movie, but Angela and I both enjoyed it when we paid a $1 to see it at the discount theatre. Can't beat .50 cent Tuesday.)
Lost In Translation - Angela's choice. I liked Lost In Translation, or more appropriately, I liked BILL MURRAY in Lost In Translation, but it's a nice little Tone Poem of a movie. It's a little movie, and sometimes that's a good thing. There doesn't need to be an explosion every five minutes, and sometimes being restrained can be as artful. Restraint is something I try and practice in my design. I have various levels of success in this. Most of the time, my exercise in restraint stays restrained, but within the restraint is quite a bit of complexity. Other times my restraint is a complete failure and it's a mash of everything.
I'm soaking in the cleanliness and quiet right now. Angela should be heading home from work, so I should leave too, but with a little bit of music on (right now it's from the Desperation CD by the worship team from The Mill at New Life) and my reorganized workstation I'm having a hard time getting off the Aeron. I wish there were a way to record atmosphere. Sure, you can record ambient sound and even shoot video of a scene, but it's hard to near impossible to capture the feeling inside that the atmosphere is creating.
Anyway, I'm blathering. It's more cleaning tonight as we prepare the apartment for Angela's mother's arrival. Life is good.
Bri
So now, after working all day on cleaning my office, I have to say that things look pretty good. That's not to say that everything's perfect, but the extra papers have been thrown away, the dust has been vacuumed up and things have been put in as proper a place as they can be.
I set up a separate area in the office today to record voiceovers in. My Dual Gigahertz G4 is primarily a graphics box, and the Dual 1.25 is my editing machine, but I had a corner of my office that was being unused. It's not unused anymore. I took a cassette deck that didn't really have a place, and wired it up underneath a Mackie soundboard that didn't have a place, then ran a microphone to the mixing board and the output of the board to this MAudio MobilePre box that we bought for mobile audio production in January. I have to say that it actually works pretty slick. There's a 15 foot USB cable that spans from the audio area to the Dual 1Ghz which let's it be in it's own area. I like a clean workspace. Having everything bunched up doesn't really serve that very well.
I've still got to figure out what to do with our hard drives. When we originally bought our editing stations, we decided it was cheaper to buy firewire drives than build a RAID. It worked really well, but now we've got a collection of twenty or so firewire drives that are sitting on the other side of the office hooked up the Dual 1.25. I'd love to buy a couple of
THESE
I've got a nice rack that our AJA IO is sitting in along with a couple of old decks, and it would be nice to mount two of these into the rack. In a single swipe, I could wipe out twenty drives and have more space in two. Sounds nice.
Ang sent a Bass to a friend from one of the mailing lists she was on in exchange for postage that never seemed to come. We forgot about it, writing it off, and were pleasantly surprised the other day to see the $50 worth of postage show up. Since we've paid our bills this month, we decided to use it to check things off "our list". So, in a period of 30 minutes or so, we added the following to our DVD collection...
Capturing the Friedmans
X2
Vanilla Sky
Heist (which I'm anxious to see. I missed it in the theater, and I've always been a big fan of David Mamet)
Under the Tuscan Sun (Angela's mom is coming for the Memorial Day weekend, and since her parents are in the process of splitting up, we figured that Under the Tuscan Sun might appeal to her.) It's not a great movie, but Angela and I both enjoyed it when we paid a $1 to see it at the discount theatre. Can't beat .50 cent Tuesday.)
Lost In Translation - Angela's choice. I liked Lost In Translation, or more appropriately, I liked BILL MURRAY in Lost In Translation, but it's a nice little Tone Poem of a movie. It's a little movie, and sometimes that's a good thing. There doesn't need to be an explosion every five minutes, and sometimes being restrained can be as artful. Restraint is something I try and practice in my design. I have various levels of success in this. Most of the time, my exercise in restraint stays restrained, but within the restraint is quite a bit of complexity. Other times my restraint is a complete failure and it's a mash of everything.
I'm soaking in the cleanliness and quiet right now. Angela should be heading home from work, so I should leave too, but with a little bit of music on (right now it's from the Desperation CD by the worship team from The Mill at New Life) and my reorganized workstation I'm having a hard time getting off the Aeron. I wish there were a way to record atmosphere. Sure, you can record ambient sound and even shoot video of a scene, but it's hard to near impossible to capture the feeling inside that the atmosphere is creating.
Anyway, I'm blathering. It's more cleaning tonight as we prepare the apartment for Angela's mother's arrival. Life is good.
Bri
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
No cycling, but lots of film...
I have an addiction. I'm not proud of it, and I don't know that there's any sort of 12 step program for it (though being a Minnesotan, I'm sure there's one back in the homeland) Unfortunately, my wife is into this addiction as much as I am. The addiction? The 3 for $25 DVDs at Hollywood Video. If the selection sucked, my pocketbook would be happy, but making a list of things we desired the other night, there are roughly 30 or so DVDs still at the store that we desire. Meanwhile, the number of DVDs in the library ticks upward. Current count? 342. I'm thinking of repackaging all of them in slimline DVD cases to save space, but I'm not sure. Anyone have any suggestions?
This week's purchases?
Open Range
Intolerable Cruelty
and
LoveActually
last week's purchases?
Levity (a surprising film with AMAZING cinematography from Roger Deacons, but then again, his cinematography is always wonderful)
The Singing Detective (which was good, but not as good as it could have been)
and
Dummy (which still might be my favorite romance of the year... any movie that has the character falling in love after learning to communicate through his ventriloquist dummy? MOVIE MAGIC. heh. It really was a decent flick. Though kind of on the quirky side. I mean, how many films feature not only a character that falls in love with his job counselor by speaking through his dummy, and Milla Jovovich as a punk rocker in a Klezmer band?)
anyway, the DVD march continues on.
Yesterday night was Colorado Springs Film Society, and though we had 12 people there, 5 of them were either related to (my wife) or the ressurectors (the other 4 of us) Hopefully we can find a way to get more people interested in coming. I need to work on marketing.
This week's purchases?
Open Range
Intolerable Cruelty
and
LoveActually
last week's purchases?
Levity (a surprising film with AMAZING cinematography from Roger Deacons, but then again, his cinematography is always wonderful)
The Singing Detective (which was good, but not as good as it could have been)
and
Dummy (which still might be my favorite romance of the year... any movie that has the character falling in love after learning to communicate through his ventriloquist dummy? MOVIE MAGIC. heh. It really was a decent flick. Though kind of on the quirky side. I mean, how many films feature not only a character that falls in love with his job counselor by speaking through his dummy, and Milla Jovovich as a punk rocker in a Klezmer band?)
anyway, the DVD march continues on.
Yesterday night was Colorado Springs Film Society, and though we had 12 people there, 5 of them were either related to (my wife) or the ressurectors (the other 4 of us) Hopefully we can find a way to get more people interested in coming. I need to work on marketing.
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