Category: LaGuardia

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ePortfolio systems testing

Today the IT department piloted a new open source eportfolio system in one of my capstone classes. The team from LaGuardia’s Center for Teaching and Learning, who are main champions of the LaGuardia ePortfolio Initiative, were eager to test out the system in front of some real students. The proposed new system may someday replace the existing ePortfolio system in use today at LaGuardia. However prior to a switch being made, a new system will need to be throughly tested before it can be deployed in a production environment that must support up to 11,000 users. Since I had done much of the preliminary work in reviewing and selecting LaGuardia’s current eportfolio system, I was asked to review the new system which is being considered. Continue reading “ePortfolio systems testing”

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NYC Blender Conference

This weekend I attended the first NYC Blender conference at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn. The two day conference brought together some of the best Blender artists on the East Coast. For those that don’t know, Blender is free open source 3D animation program that can be used for everything from modeling and animating, to creating interactive 3D applications. Blender is available on all the major operating systems and is similar in scope and depth to other high-end 3D software such as Softimage|XSI, Cinema 4D, 3d Studio Max and Maya. Continue reading “NYC Blender Conference”

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The best part about my job!

picture with my students
One of the benefits of teaching at a large urban community college is that I get a chance to help a diverse group of young men and women chart the course of their professional lives. I am blessed to be able to watch them mature and grow as digital professionals. I bring this all up because today was graduation day and a number of my best students graduated today.

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Star Wars Fan Film: Scripting of Dark Vengeance

The script is shaping up pretty well. The dialog will be pretty sparse because I want this to be a heavily action and visual effects driven production. I want just enough dialog to keep the characters believable and push the story along. Also since many of the people I am probably will be looking at to play the Sith villain won’t be professional actors, it will be best to keep the spoken emotional ranges limited to the basics. The easy thing about the script is that for the most

I will start shooting as soon as I finish the script and nail down the final casting of actors and crew. The script is my main source of concern since all the special effect in the world won’t help a story if the plot really sucks. I have been using an excellent piece of open source software called Celtx to finish the script and coordinate the production. Celtx combines the best features of commercial software packages like Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter into a single interface. The best part about the software is that aside from being incredibly powerful and easy to use, it is totally free. And I mean legally free, not file sharing/bit torrent free.

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Copenhagen: Day One

Jonas and I at the Guiness Exhibit in DenmarkAfter getting settled in our hotel room the kids dragged us out to go see the city. We walked for awhile around downtown Copenhagen and did some shopping. I was determined not to go crazy shopping since the exchange rate of the dollar was so piss poor at this time. But I had to buy a new shaver because I forgot to switch the voltage adapter Continue reading “Copenhagen: Day One”

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The Second Annual LaGuardia New Media Conference

Speaking at the conference

The Second Annual LaGuardia Community College New Media Technology conference was held on May 16th 2007. The conference was big improvement over last year. That is not to say that last year was bad. Far from it. However this year we had alot more support from industry leading companies like Avid, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, and Prentis Hall. As a result the overall conference had much greater attendance. Plus the breakout sessions Continue reading “The Second Annual LaGuardia New Media Conference”

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Star Wars Fan film: Dark Vengeance Lightsaber test

This is an effects shot that I worked on to test some new software that we are using in New Media Technology program. I shot this test video on the roof of the LaGuardia computer building. I am planning on shooting a Sci-Fi fan film with some of the students in our program so I figured that I would try out my Jedi skills. I think the shot turned out pretty good for my first attempt.

The software I am using in this test shot is called EffectsLab Lite and it was developed by FXHome.com. The program is a visual effects tool that is in many ways very similar to After Effects, but with not as steep of a learning curve. The entry level package is pretty affordable at about 110 bucks. The more advanced versions, Effectslab Pro and Visionlab Studio, run from about 150 to 500 bucks.

My main problem with the software is that there is no current intel-mac version. As a result Winona, my Macbook Pro, runs Effectslab slowly. The company says an intel version is on the way but I think they won’t release a universal binary until the next full release. They software currently is available for Windows XP and Power PC based macs. I am not sure if a Windows Vista software version is ready. I haven’t paid much attention to that because if someone is using Vista chances are that they have more pressing issues.

FXhome