Susan expresses concern over your sister – rather high handedly

Dear Susan,
Do you really believe all that stuff about myspace? How do you know that your new dynamic friends are sincere? You’ve never even met them. I have a very interesting and fulfilling social life, thank you very much, what with the allotment and the various pressure groups I belong to, so please don’t worry about me.
I wish you wouldn’t keep about phoning Mum, every time I speak to her she asks about my “lovelife”, I mean, really, as if it’s any of her business. I do not need a man to look after me, please pass this information on next time you see her.
Don’t you dare ask Jonathan about his old laptop, I can manage perfectly well with this one; the constant upgrading of computers contributes enormously to landfill, as you well know, and I don’t want to add to it. Does you new Macbook play “Here comes the Bride?” I think not. Its just white, not bridal white…I think you and Mum are getting completely carried away with the wedding. Have you really, really considered it carefully, Susan, could you be marrying the wrong man? I saw Tim a few days ago and he asked after you again….he’s such a thoughtful person. He is looking forward to seeing you at the party.
What can I do to help? Shall I come over early and help you with the food? This time, Suze, could we make it all vegetarian, I felt so terribly sick last time when I ate a fish canape by mistake, it’s taken me ages to get over the guilt of eating something that was once a living creature. I’ve got a nice chickpea and nori dip I could make.
Do mention to Graham about the recent car thefts in the neighbourhood. Perhaps he will leave that ridiculous gas guzzler at home, he only lives a few streets away and it would do him good to walk.
Speak soon, love Irena x
ps. wormeries are actually the latest environmentally friendly thing, it will fit on the balcony, I measured last time I came round. You may have to bring it in if the temperature drops below zero, but it has wheels and you could just keep it in the corner of the lounge for the winter.

Susan’s reply:

Hi Renia,

you can’t go around in a strop all your life – for pete’s sake!  You have to move with the times.  Its so emnbarrassing for me towhen I see everyones elses sister emailing and Iming and all that and you’d prefer to use pigeon post – unless it was nasty to birds and obnly with recycled paper.  Imagine how hard that would be to read.  Mum and I only want the best for you but you have to make an effort to socailise more.  I was only trying to be helpful.  Maybe you’ll meet someone a the wedding – there are lots of really nice people coming.  As well as Justine, only joking.

Wouldn’t using Jonathan’s old laptop be recycling?  Jonathan adores me its just great when we’re together.  I have never flet like this before for so long.  I hope that once we get a chance to settle down we can spend loads more time together.  All these business trips should tail off as the American office shapes up.

Tim’s a sweet guy, but he’s so uptight and driven.  Jonathan’s much more laid back.  It will be nice to see tim at the party but don’t encourage him in any way pleeeeese!  I’ve got caters this time thanks Renia – they do loads of the catering for pop videos and stuff.  I’ve asked them to do some vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic, and kosher.  god know ahtat should please all the difficult people. If it work out well we might use them for the wedding.  Let me know what you think of their puddings.

Why are you so hard on Graham?  He quite likes you – god knows why when you’re so rude to him all the time.

I’m not keen on the wormery.  No way am I sharing the penthouse with worms.  I don’t have time for things that grow.  No one will be able to see flowers growing on the balcony from street level.  What would we do if we were skiing and the temp dropped in London?  Can you get worm sitters?  I might ask the concierge I suppose.  Can’t you just pick something from the wedding list like everyone else?

must dash, I’ve a dress fitting in half an hour,

love Su.
On 20 May 2007, at 19:10, Penny Grist wrote:

now cleared by google heres the comparison

This video was emcoded using a droplet set for the recommended settings. How does it compar with the others?

Well I’d say that theres very little in it. Youtube is quicker, google might be eaier if you are adding video often. It also has the advantage of being inside the Gmail suite – although I find the navigation around the suite to be clunky. The new google notebook seems quite useful working within the firefox window.

more tests with video on the web

I have created a compressor droplet in FCp and in order to compare googlevideo and YouTube here are the same flash development movies compressed as suggested and then up loaded. Youtube 1using the google settings


It made a 7MB file for uploading.

Youtube 2using the YouTube settings

It made a 15MB file! watched locally it looked worse than the file compressed using the Googlevideo settings. I imagine this is down to the use of H264 by google. Maybe.

Youtube uploading is simple and easy to use – Google video has a good trick with the uploading application. But there is a delay as the video is processed and once processed additioanl infromation is required before it goes live. So its a longer process. Watching both videos via the blog – they are about the same in terms of quality.

emails for the storyworld group project

Rena,

Its time that you embraced the new millennium – myspce is just so cool. Its a great way to meet people, it could be the start of a new direction fro you. You need to get yourself a much more positive and dynamic group of friends. Then you could get out more – it would be a weight off mum and my minds. Sorry to hear about your laptop, I think Jonathan has an old one he doesn’t use. Would you like me to ask for it for you? I have the latest Macbook – in bridal white! Its so cool. I really look the part at client meetings now. I don’t know why you’ve got such a downer on Graham. he’s really very nice, once you get to know him. Alot of his behavior hides a sensitive side. You are so superficial sometimes! I know he has a big car but he told me the other day that all his output was carbon neutral.

jj is on the states at the moment – there was some big showdown he just had to attend. You know ‘butt kicking’ as they say in the States. It has been abit difficult, with all the arrangements for the wedding and jj not around. Mum’s been great and his step mother has offered to help too – when they come back from Mustique.

Yes thats Justine, I’m not sure how jj knows her. He did tell me but its slipped my mind. I think she might be from the Office, she phones sometimes. I don’t like her much, she’s quite loud and a bit trashy in a sort of modern way. I asked her if she plays squash the other day and she looked quite confused!

Don’t worry about the wedding list – I’d rather you looked abit smarter at the wedding. You are going to at least try to fit in? It IS my big day Rena…

For god’s sake what’s a wormery? I asked JJ and he said he already works in one!

phone mum soon,

love Su

the imaginary story world

We are having a few teething problems with this project. penny has concerns about it, and I agree with her to a large extent. I have tried to map out the relationships of all the characters.

relationships.pdf

Kevin has changed the name of his character since I drew this – re naming him John. I think that this was a good idea bearing in mind that his character is slightly dodgy. I have been onto myspace and I can’t find anything from the others! Where are they posting? Perhaps they haven’t started. We need more time together to plan and kick this off.

emails for the storyworld group project

Thats not funny Rena,

they will look terrible in the balcony God. My colds better thanks, if Justine caught it, then its her fault for wearing such short skirts.

su

test flash movie

I have rehearsed the script, editing it slightly. Shoot direct into Mac and QuickTime Pro with my old Dv camera. I used the wse wide angle extender to distort the close up. There are problems with frame rate and have to expert from QuickTime to get to play in FCP. Use the opportunity to add further sharpening to help rotoscoping.

Try to add further wide angle distortion. Too much so drop the idea. The take is quite long already. Not the 10 seconds I was hoping for! In spite of doing the script in one take I have tightened it up in FCP and added a still frame at one point.

Now to export for flash. From FCP as image sequence with 8 frames a second as JPEGs with medium quality with no colour (greyscale). Repeated at 10 fps since QuickTime doesn’t work to 8 fps! Checked and looks fine will import to Flash.

I have imported al the jpegs and am adding each to a keyframe. Perhaps it might be simpler to import the mov to the stage? Trying that. Nope not with Flash 8. So loaded each still – over drew each 20th. Used shape tween between them. Added the audio. Difficulties exporting from Flash. Used google video droplet to prep for upload. Uploaded to Google video – you then have to wait a few hours for a while before it gets processed. It then requires additional infromationa about the video before it goes live.

I like the way that the lines flow and move but the animation is too fractured. Chosing regular frame intervals might noit have been a good idea. The flow is too regular. There need to be some other injected images to break up the faces.

Susan tries to get Irenia onto myspace – unsucessfully

Sunday 13th May 2007
Dear Susie,
Thank you for sending me an invite to join Myspace, but I don’t know why you bothered, if you thought for half a milisecond you would know how much I would hate it.  I mean, for a start, it’s packed with adverts trying to attract your attention, and you know how much I despise the commercial world.  (actually, one did say that I had won a laptop, do you think I should have followed it up?  This one has fallen off my bicycle so many times its held together with sticky tape.) Another reason not to join is privacy, I mean, I value mine, and as you know I’ve always been shyer than you; I really don’t want to put my credentials out there, even if it is a good place to find a man.  Talking of which, why you are inviting that creep Graham to the party, you know that all his investments are deeply suspect.  And no, I do not find him attractive, how could you even suggest it?  So where is Jonathan this time?  He seems to have spent your whole engagement clocking up massive air miles, his carbon footprint must be massive.  I did just have a little peek at the other ‘friends’ you have invited to the party.  Is Justine the girl I met when we bumped into each other at the Farmers’ Market?  The one with the unusual clothes sense and  fake jewellery?  She doesn’t quite seem your time Susie, even if she is good fun, as you say.  By the way, how did she meet Jonathan?  They seemed to know each other rather well.  So if you don’t mind, just email me in the usal way and I’ll give your little online club a miss.  Must go now, I’ve promised to help out on the communual allotment. Which reminds me, I will not be buying you two anything from your wedding list (for the 100th time, Sus, are you sure you want to marry him?)  I have ordered a recycled compost bin and wormery for you from the council.
Speak soon, Irena.
(ps. your typing is getting worse, you even spelt my name wrong!

more experiments in uploading video

This time I’m trying google video

finally I got it working. Reviewing how I did it – I have created a google video account – since I already have a gmial account. I have downloaded the GoogleVideoUploader. So it was quite easy to – the uploder especially worked easily. However Google video is quite picky about the format and frame size of the video. They suggest these for maximum quality

MPEG4 (mp3 or mp4 audio) at 2 mbps

– MPEG2 (mp3 or mp4 audio) at 5 mbps

– 30 frames per second

– 640×480 resolution

– 4:3 frame

– de-interlace

When I get a moment I might make a compressor droplet to streamline this requirement beofre using the uploader.

Avatar interface continued

I really like the comic effects that the application comiclife cancreat and so I tried to get the angle of the head and the speak bubble to break up the symmetry of the layout.

I added the drop shadows and roough edges around the circles and speech bubble tio try and things up.  Perfect circles didn’t look cartoon enough.

The F-F-F Final cut is a throw backl to Max Headroom .  (I remember the 80’s the first time around!)