a looking-glass book

i've moved!

since i have, after a year, come back to video work online, ive decided to keep blogging about it all.

everything is living over on my personal site now: research.madeofglass.com.

wooha. update those bookmarks now.

patholog meet yahoo

yahoo news mapped onto yahoo maps

its not that we didnt see this coming. and its not that its quite to patholog yet.

but we are a step or two closer now.

iam updated

spent some time over the last week and a half tweaking code. i listened to the feedback offered at the show and managed to incorporate some of it into my project.

its nothing earth-shattering, but i wanted to take what i learned from having so many people use the system and try to improve it the best i could.

that said, here are the 3 major changes i have made:

1. the date of the currently viewed movie now appears in the blue stripe section. this way, you have feedback of what movie you are looking at. watching people use the system, they would skip the weekly timeline -- they wanted the calendar to pull up a movie. now, if i was ready to move towards a v2, i might try to do something cooler than i did before and allow that. (the reason for it not working like that is because many days have more than 1 movie and i wanted to display the relationship of a movie in terms of an entire day.)

2. on the timeline, the currently selected film is highlighted. this means when you select something, you get the visual feedback in this menu as well. when people were using the timeline and two movies were up against each other, you couldn't tell what piece you were viewing. this way, the selected movie is highlighted, making it easy to step through movies next to each other on the timeline.

3. finally, i added a javascript function that keeps track of where the quicktime movie is on the image timeline. the function is simple in theory - every 5 seconds, it checks where the movie is, rounds to the nearest minute and then highlights the correct image in the timeline. (in reality, it gets hairy and i had to cheat a little - i was already using the 'id' attribute, so i had to use the 'name' one for this. and name is not supposed to be a unique identifier. ah well, that was easier than making a pseudo-attribute. i wont tell if you wont.)
this is kinda cool, cause as you watch, scrub or skip around in the quicktime file, the outline of the image below will change. its a nice indicater that helps keep the relationship between the movie and images synced. plus its just fun to watch it move automagically as you play a movie.

like i said, none of these are earth-shattering, but it makes me feel like the project is more complete. there is always more to be done, but i feel glad to have taken the show and come out of it with constructive elements i could then use. i learned something and was able to make my project better as a result.

werd.

so there is a review of the new samsung camera in the nyt today. perhaps my favorite snippet from the article:

"This arrangement opens up a world of new recording possibilities, because you don't need two hands - or any hands at all - to hold the camera. Nor do you have to watch the viewfinder or screen; this camera looks wherever you're looking. In other words, this external-lens affair allows the camera operator, for the first time in consumer camcorders, to be a participant in the action instead of a spectator."

this means something. this is important.

and all random quotes aside -- this is big. people are starting to notice. even better, there is a consumer product out there now, that, even though it's (by all accounts) pretty shitty, is allowing people to realize first-hand all the things i discovered over the last year.

it really is a different way of capturing. of remembering.

here's to v2 of this camera.

a jog/bake-athon party

mailed this out, but thought id throw it up here as well:

nothing like waiting until the last minute.
actually, this is mostly due to the madness that was the thesis show opening (http://interactive.usc.edu/thesis2005)

kurt and i are throwing a jog/bake-athon tomorrow night at our apartment tomorrow night.

the theme (according to kurt) requires one of two things: a baked good or a jogging costume. and bonus points if you manage to collect signatures pledging for you to attend.

in reality, this is a graduation celebration, before everyone's families come into town and get too busy to relax (again).

let's say 8pm, our place.
if you need directions or more info, just track one of us down. and feel free to bring friends.

know it is short notice (and a work night for some of you), but we are only graduating once. so drop by, have a drink and help us celebrate 3 years of hard work.

ipodding

i hate hate hate double posting. but i threw this up on my personal blog and then thought id throw it up here, mainly cause this site has comments.

i am somewhat unusual. my ipod is much smaller than my music collection. my music collection is much larger than my main computer's hard drive. in fact, here is what my music collection resembles these days: an ipod, not synced to any computer; a pc with a firewire drive containing my music collection (organized in the filesystem by me, not iTunes); a PowerBook with a small subset of music on it for the times I am sans iPod.

I recognize i use music differently than most people. I am an outlyer.

but i mainly use my ipod to listen to music. i don't wipe it entirely; i usually delete several hundred megs at a time and rotate things through every few months.

because the ipod is my primary music device, i want to use it in ways it is incapable of handling.

i have three primary types of music on my drive: single songs by an artist, albums by an artist and mix cds by djs. i want to step through these in reverse order.

g4 appearance

big thanks to dave for commenting on the fact that my thesis was mentioned on g4 last night.

it airs next on sun, may 8 at 12am (est), 9pm (wt).

theres a nice blurb/recap here.

very exciting. and glad someone let me know about it; i would have totally missed it. (and he even blogged about it as well. god bless the internets.)