Friday, 25th November, 2005

There Are Two Things Happening Today

One of them, involves me going to the hairdressers this afternoon, to have my streaks put back into my hair. I'm thinking perhaps purple this time. The other ... um, is, well. I forget. I'm sure I told someone I'd do something this morning. I'm pretty sure it was something important.

I discinctly remember thinking "Ah, that'll be OK, I can do it in the morning because my hair appointment is in the afternoon."

But nope, totally gone. Haven't a clue what it was. No doubt I'll get a ranty phonecall at some point near lunchtime with someone shouting at me because I didn't turn up.

Do you know what I need? I need some kind of collection of pieces of paper — perhaps bound together in some form of "book", with days and months written on them, in sequential order, that I could write things I need to do in.

A Formatting Conundrum

I've been wanting to be able to easily post videos to this weblog for, um, ages. You know, little snippets of film either from things I've seen, or things I've worked on. Now that Quicktime 7 is available all over the place, I figured I'd start to work on some code that would sort it all out for me. But I have a teensy design issue...

See, the size I want to do them, is 320 by 240 pixels — it's a nice enough size-vs-quality compromise, it's the right size for a video iPod, and it's handily the size of the "Broadband — Medium" export setting in Quicktime Pro — meaning I can quickly knock up a script to reformat emailed videos.

But this column isn't 320 pixels wide, it's 500. It's 500 specifically because that's the default size of photographs from Flickr — and also because it seems to be a rather nice text-column size.

So, what to do? Do I just stick them in aligned to the left? Do I centre them? Do I make some kind of little background/border for them? Do I rescale the movies in the browser?

And some of my work is widescreen — meaning that they're not 320 x 240, they're 430 x 240 (roughly). So what do I do with those?

If I can come to a decision later in the day, then I'll post some stuff that I've made over the years.

In the meantime, if you're at all interested in seeing non-narrative, experimental video work, can I recommend popping over to http://www.park.nl where some of my ex-students are currently being shown? I think I might be on there myself in a few days.

I know — want me to move it?

I was just about to actually, when you posted that second comment. So I can't now can I?

Anamorphicness

It took me a long time to get my head around the way that widescreen television works. Lots of research, lots of reading of BBC technical guides and the like. But I think I got there eventually.

Currently, in the UK anyway, a most new television is made in widescreen (16:9) format. The thing is though, it's not actually filmed as 16:9 — it's filmed as normal 4:3, but squished — and it's broadcast in exactly the same way. The only reason it looks wide on your television, is that your TV stretches it (or letterboxes it).

Squished film is known as Anamorphic, and in high-end technical productions, it's achieved using a special lens (an anamorphic lens, funnily enough).

HDTV, on the other hand (I think I'm right in saying), is actually 16:9 (or thereabouts).

All of my early work is widescreen format*. It's stored as 720 x 576 pixel DV-PAL QuickTime files in various places on my hard disks. But just there now, I was working with a 512 x 288 pixel version (because I couldn't be arsed to track down an original), and when I used the "iPod Video" preset in QuickTime Pro, instead of it squishing it to lovely anamorphic 320 x 240, it made it 320 x 180

Anyway, this isn't particularly earth-shattering, I realise. I just thought it was rather odd that the preset preserved the aspect-ratio, even though it said it wouldn't. Something to bear in mind when I write a script, I guess.

* My later stuff isn't widescreen — it's predominantly 4:3. Not because I don't like widescreen, just because I've been trying to use the full extent of a projector's imagable area. I don't think there's a true widescreen projector out there — not in my budget anyway.

But centring them would look a bit poo, I reckon. I think I know what I'm going to do though, but I've been busy with something else ever since I got back from having my hair dyed. (It's red again )

A Puzzle

^P^@^@^@^@^@^@^H^D^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@ ^@^@^@^@^@^?^B^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^A|1#^D"?E@k^?^AsvGgg^C#2eg`fcdg=3 c  6cCw-^?n::cx(r ^?^?^?07po'g^?qp^@^@^@^@ ^Ff%f+'/w^?^?^?^?^?'W_6u*Z*V}r.|/Ov&=']^?^?wt^? v}m|?M'^_O~^?^?^?
{_<7^?y~^?|_Go-+g ^_k^?w^?^?^Wx=^?}^?^?~^A^O^?wu^?o^?K^?_On

First person to tell me what that is, wins a t-shirt or maybe a mug.

Heh heh That would look even worse I reckon.

Hmm, sorta along the right lines. But nope

Nope — that would be this...

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GFA d---x s:-- a C+++$ UB+++ P++>$ L+ E--- W+++$ N+ o K !w--- !O- M++$
V-? PS++ PE- Y+ PGP- t+ !5- X R+ tv b+ DI D-- G e+++$ h r+ y++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

They are indeed ASCII codes...

...but I need more than that

LOL!

Tell yous what, I'll give you two clues. (1) If you know me, you'll know one of the things I'm most proud about. (2) The image on this page about ASCII might help.

And while yous're looking at that, I'll be the one running around my bedroom desperately trying to work out what to wear tomorrow night.

LOL! Well, normally I'd agree Zoe — but time is the one thing I have very little of tonight Which is probably my own fault for spending half the day typing in AsCII control codes isn't it?

...

OK, no-one's biting Maybe it's a bit obscure.

One more clue then: It's something on this weblog. I converted something here to 7bit ASCII text. Something I'm very proud of.

No, a bit further down

24

56 minutes to go until a full twenty four hours into the new licensing laws. Is anyone else still absolutely wankered?

Just me eh?

Yikes, no. Think little groupings of seven dots in a row.

What? That bit of Javascript?

Crap — I was really hoping you'd get it

^? is delete. It's 0000000

No, wait — it's 1111111

0000000 is ^@

...

Right. Fair enough. Too obscure.

I was looking through my archives earlier — as I'm prone to do. And it occurred to me that the little patterns that the pink calendars make looked rather like paper tape.

And it's a handy, already-made, 7-bit system — 7 bits in a charater, 7 days in a week.

So all that bollocks above — that collection of control characters and random glyphs. That's my archives. ASCII-alised.

So no-one wins the mug. Ya boo.

...

Just out of interest, I whoised myself earlier. Just to find out when I actually started this thing (I've never trusted my "January 1st, 2002" assertations, to be honest), and it turns out I've been at this since the 7th of February, 2002.

Party at mine in February then

Nothing is too esoteric hon

Ah, 3-2-1. I can see Ted Rogers now...

"My first is in Dusty, but not in bin."

"My second is in Bin, but not in Dusty"

"We think that's Dusty Bin, Ted"

"Well, yes, you would wouldn't you. But that's because you're both stupid brainless cunts who have just been dragged off a council estate in Grimshaw and have no real knowledge between the pair of you"

...is what he was thinking, as he showed them the delightful caravan that they just lost.