BlogDogIt

One of my cyber-pals has decided to take the leap and enter the "Twitterverse." It was not all that long ago that I threw caution to the wind and dove in myself. I was asked if there was any advice I could offer to help make some sense out of what - to the casual observer - might appear to be nothing but one more enormous "Time-Suck" coming at you from the interwebs.

Obviously Twitter is what you make of it. I am sure there are as many takes on how to best utilize the service as there are those involved with its usage. Here is my philosophy on why I am on Twitter and what I hope to possibly get out of it.

First of all I think it is important to ask yourself why are you there before you get too deep into your exploration of the Twitterverse; much like a trained undersea explorer, you are well advised to plan your dive and dive your plan, lest you find yourself without the air to safely return to the surface.

It is very obvious that - to many - Twitter is a numbers game. The more followers you have the better indication that you might be winning. I am sure this is true if your main goal in Tweeting is measurable statistics related to advertising views. There are likely countless theories as to how to get your numbers up but this aspect of Twitter holds very little interest for me since I really have nothing to sell.

Besides those out there because they obviously (or covertly) have something to sell, are those that have something to say. You can argue that many of those are there to "sell" an idea or philosophy - those I would categorize in the "Advertisers" ranks. A great many folks have interests within a narrowly defined subject or topic and gain followers by their apparent mastery or expertise in their chosen field.

A lot of Tweeters you come across are simply "hams" that have decided that the minutia of their existence may be of interest to both of their true followers and tend to use the service as an old-school bulletin board where anything or everything may be discussed.

Now I bill myself as a "cyber explorer of the web less traveled" and as such I try to conscientiously avoid any user with astronomical numbers. I have many varied interests and if I chose to follow all the leading experts in all those varied fields I would certainly find myself on the cutting edge of societal evolution but that is not necessarily where I want to be. Let's face it, from where I stand the minutia of the space program can be every bit as boring as what Billy Joe Bob has in the smoke house. I have found it much more advantageous therefore to find an avid follower of @NASA (for example) and trust that if there was anything truly interesting going on, the NASA enthusiast will re-tweet NASA news thereby squelching much of the noise coming out of that sector of the Twitterverse.

Finding the "right" folks to follow is a bit of a hit or miss proposition but you are advised to review the users posting habits before signing up as a follower. Many people will seemingly re-tweet nearly everything in their feed in an obvious effort to get their name "out there" so if you'd like a taste of what it must be like to follow 20K Tweeters follow a few of these full-time re-tweeters for awhile this might help you determine your preferred "pace" of involvement. Keep in mind that even the compulsive re-tweeter is performing a service to you by filtering a sea of information into a possibly manageable flow.

If I find myself following someone that is a bit too "active" I will see who among their followers might be more my speed and opt to follow them instead trusting that if "motor-mouth" has anything really interesting to say it will be re-tweeted by the replacement.

I guess for me it boils down to this: I am not looking to "know it all" I am much more interested in discovering the rare and precious human interactions that may be found when practicing a cautious, measured approach to internet explorations. I tend to think of my cyber-friends as friends indeed - not statistical rungs on a ladder to the next level. But that's just me.

It is often said that the Lord works in mysterious ways. His ability to have me create a video documenting the "Rockin' 4 God 2014" event is ample evidence supporting that old maxim.

I am no documentary filmmaker (by any stretch of the imagination) but I have been looking for ways to exercise my video making muscles and this opportunity just struck me as just too good to pass up. It was an opportunity to photograph a rock concert with an all access pass. A day long event featuring four bands, a clown act and a sermon thrown in for good measure. Just the sort of volunteer work that would appeal to this old-school hippie photog.

Going into it, I was not exactly sure how I would go about completing the project. My video camera is little more than a toy - 640 X 480 pixel resolution with a fixed focal length lens - but I resolved to view this as an artistic endeavor and give it my best shot - as it were. The name "Rockin' 4 God" suggested to me that the video should be "high energy" (whatever that means) so a tripod in the corner was out of the question. I was going to have to go at this with a hand held camera to get in on the action.

I think it is safe to say that I am certainly no DevinSupertramp - but what I couldn't do with a rig like his? Since a GlideCam exists only in my covetous mind I decided to visit my freelance hardware store (a.k.a. garage) and see what I could come up with in the way of constructing my own Stedi(ish)Cam device. The internet is chocked full of ideas on this subject but seeing that my garage was gimbal free, I opted to go for a weighted pendulum style device that many claim to be a step above a purely hand-held camera - and I will give them that. 

If you can scrounge-up 46-1/2 minutes you should check out
"Rockin' 4 God" The Video Project.

The actual job of recording the event presented many challenges but that is the name of the game and honestly what makes it so fun to do. I took along my Canon 5-MP rangefinder camera to - at least - get some quality stills and realized midway through the shoot that I would be combining stills and video clips for this video project. The little video camera uses SanDisk memory and I felt confident that the 4 Gigabyte chip would be ample for the day but took along two more 1 GB disks as a precaution - good thing too because for some odd reason the 4 GB disk refused to hold more than about 500 MB. It took every bit of those other 2 Gigs to get-r-done. When it became obvious that I should now use the video camera sparingly I started relying more and more on the still camera to document the event.

That was working fine until about two thirds of the way through the day when the Canon's battery went belly-up and I found myself regretting not tearing the house apart looking for the spare pack when I was gearing up for the day. Thankfully the video camera has the ability - as do most video cameras - to take still images. I finished the day bouncing back and forth between still and video modes adding one more layer of "what am I doing" to the task at hand.

Ever since the completion of the Recesky twin lens reflex camera kit I have been anxiously awaiting a bright sunny day to test it out but after waiting for 8 days I could not take the suspense a minute more. I decided to get the show on the road and loaded the new box with some 15 year old Plus-X "roll your own" and headed out into the mostly-cloudy afternoon world. I was hoping for plenty of sun mostly because of the severely out-dated film stock but I was also hoping to get some high contrast lighting for the sake of higher impact images. Perhaps the 'Stones said it best, "...you get what you need."

All in all - I must say - I am fairly pleased with the resulting pictures and can now hardly wait to try it out with some fresh film (and sunshine.) Using the Recesky feels a little debilitating with its single shutter speed and single f-stop* and peering onto a 35mm sized "ground glass" is a bit of a challenge with my reading glasses; next time out I am going to take along a loupe so as to focus a bit more critically. [*The Recesky does offer the ability to remove the aperture disk from behind the taking-lens for a larger f-stop (and reduced depth of field) but I would just as soon not mess with dismantling the taking-lens assembly.]

The best results from test roll number one are presented in the slide show above. Click on the image for a higher resolution example. There is a stray internal flare that shows consistently in the images. I need to determine if that is from a light leak or just shiny guts.

Have you ever had to install a two-sided banner outside, suspended between two posts? I had installed plenty of banners between already existing posts but this time required that I bring my own. The location is a high-traffic, wide open area that is subjected to some rather strong winds on occasion, so I was hoping to come up with something that might stand the test of the elements. Through strategic placement of scalloped vent holes, my own unique take on  bungee cord shock absorbers and rope work worthy of a former Boy Scout, I do believe this one has a fighting chance - Good Lord willing.

The following video slide presentation represents my first utilization of the YouTube Slideshow Creator. I was very pleased with its ease of use, wide selection of freely available music and fancy effects applied automatically.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then here is a book on how I hung this banner. Insert disclaimer about "don't take my word for it" here. [smiley:;)]

Visit: http://MtZionIndy.org

With a camera positioned overhead I put together a Recesky Twin Lens Reflex Camera from a kit. One hour and thirty-six minutes have been compressed into nine minutes. Ambient sounds have been replaced with Benefit_of_the_Boomerang-[null_void_manifesto] - "At The Words End."

The instructions were just about adequate and ultimately resulted in a perfectly usable piece of equipment. The proof of which will be forthcoming.

Made in China - Assembled in the U.S.A.

Thanks Bro' for the project!

Ralph Bakshi has nothing to fear.

Explanation: I have been sitting on several little video clips that I shot at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry a while back. I have converted this one into an animated GIF. As I reduced this video to its basic elements (frame-by-frame in Photoshop) I was reminded of some of the techniques used in the animation classic Wizards.

Today I built my first MEME candidate.

It is built upon one of my biggest internet related pet-peeves. Whenever I visit a website that immediately pops-up an invite for me to like them, share them, follow them, take a survey or any other maneuver that suggests that I am nothing more than a statistic to them I am out of there. I don't care if I can dismiss the prompt, I simply close the tab. You should always be careful what you click when surfing the net and if in doubt closing the tab is always the best option.

Now Fly My MEME... Be Free!

The phrase "speak with a forked tongue" means to deliberately say one thing and mean another. To "speak like a politician" is a much higher form of deception. It is the difference between being "lied to" and being "misled."

Our good mate Creaky over on Codgertation presents an article  that he calls "Nothing is as it seems." In that post he shares the following tale. Please take the time to read this little story and see if you can wrap your head around what I am calling "politicians logic." The next time a politician opens his/her mouth - even if you do not see the obvious forked tounge - beware: words mean things.

It is Summer Running Camp and the young up-start Brodyn is invited to run in his first 100M dash with the big kids. The results were anything but expected...

Note: Starting pistol fires mid-video, then look out...

Cruddy cell-phone video shot by his Grandmother.
We are so glad she did!

Well now, that was fun [smiley::D] . . .

If you have been following this blog during the last few days you have surely noticed I have been spamming (or should I say "hamming") up the place with my ongoing project to create sets of animated GIF image files for each of the 8 Big Biting Pig Productions movies.

This post is now presented as a "table of contents" for those articles. The image map below will allow you to go directly to the GIF set for the show of your choice. I hope you take the time to visit each of them...

Click the DVD Cover Above to See That Movies' GIF Set

This was actually a very enjoyable exercise in film editing (albeit on a micro scale.) It is my hope that these images will serve to promote the hard work done by all those associated with Big Biting Pig Productions. I encourage you to get to know these people and their projects This is independent film making at it's finest (and funnest!) [smiley:;)]