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Used Macs: eBay to da’ rescue

Tita's emac

Since we got back from overseas the kids have been bugging me to get them new computers for their rooms. They still were using an old eMachines PC that I had given them back when they shared a room together. That unit had seen better days and the kids had recently taken to co-opting my desktop for their gaming and homework. I felt that I had to assert myself and put a stop to that practice since it was starting to seriously cut into my World of Warcraft time.

The kids had fallen in love with my MacBook Pro laptop, Winona, over the summer and kept hinting at me to get them Apples. Because they now had separate rooms, they of course wanted separate machines. Since the new iMacs and Macbooks start at about 1100 dollars, I decided that I was going to have to search around and buy them used or refurbished if the kids were gonna get their wish. Continue reading “Used Macs: eBay to da’ rescue”

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Halo 3 mania! WTF?

Halo 3 Launch

I was out riding my bike yesterday and rode past a Game Stop store on the night that Halo 3 was set to launch. I was out at about 9pm and was amazed at the number of people that were lined up at this little out of the way store. The line as down the block at 9pm. It was a good 3 hours before the game was set to go on sale and people were damn near around the block. There probably wasn’t a single person on the line under 25. Continue reading “Halo 3 mania! WTF?”

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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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There can be only one!

As I was shopping with the kids to pick out their Halloween costumes I came across some props that were perfect for the Highlander fan film that I have been planning for years. For all of the non-geeks reading this, Highlander is the story of a race of immortal beings that are forced to face off against one another in sword battles to the death until only one of them remains. The problem with shooting a Highlander fan film is that you have to use swords.

While finding real samurai swords is a fairly simple process in NYC, you are extremely likely to maim or kill your actors if you aren’t careful. That is why I got positively giddy about finding a set of realistic looking plastic swords that should look good on film.

Samurai sword Duel Swords Broadsword Duel Half moon blades

Continue reading “There can be only one!”

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Star Wars Fan Film: Jedi costuming pre-production

Jonas Xavier: Jedi Knight

In order to combat my post European vacation and 9/11 anniversary blues, I figured that I should move straight ahead and start the preparation for filming my Star Wars fan film, Dark Vengeance. The film takes place during the time before the events in Episode I (The Phantom Menace) and tells the story of a Jedi Knight by the name of Jonas Xavier. I won’t go into all the details now. Suffice it to say that the story is a basic “Jedi meets Sith and they battle to the death” type of story. Continue reading “Star Wars Fan Film: Jedi costuming pre-production”

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Memories of 9/11:

The Towers

I can’t front. I haven’t felt right in my own city since that day. It is six years afterward and I still feel uneasy. I have lived in NYC for about 90% of my life. I lived in Harlem during the crack explosion of the 80’s. I was here in the early 90’s when we were averaging nearly 3000 murders per year. And despite that, I can’t remember EVER being tense walking around my city.

Have the terrorists really won or am I just in need of therapy? I am not really sure. I know that NYC, and America in general, feels radically different to me. I don’t like crowds anymore. I don’t like riding the trains or buses either. I know that being stuck in traffic on a bridge makes my heartbeat race.

Continue reading “Memories of 9/11:”

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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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Returning home

NYC

So, I am finally back home after nearly ten weeks overseas in Norway. Needless to say, it has been very rough getting back into the swing of things. I definitely could get use to the European way of living. I find that as I am getting older and more set in my ways, NYC is not as appealing as it was in my youth. Continue reading “Returning home”

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No, thank you. Fifteen is my limit on schnitzengruben!

Chillin' at the Sony Center in Berlin

Ski and I have just returned from a three day trip to Berlin. Ski’s brother, Svein, had taken his wife to Berlin earlier in the year and since then he had been raving about how Berlin was the European equivalent of New York. I guess he wanted us to see what the fuss was about so he booked us on a short jaunt to the land of beer and sausages. I didn’t want to mention that to him that Germany wasn’t high on my list of places to visit for various reasons. Continue reading “No, thank you. Fifteen is my limit on schnitzengruben!”