My Final Cut Pro editing class is finally over. Not that I am excited that it is over, but now at least I am free from my project that I was slaving over. Here is the final version that I presented to the class (it's in Quicktime format). It was well received. I am always so surprised as to how differently the end result is perceived (even by me) when it is presented in front of an audience. I spend all this time putting all the details together and am so close to it that when it comes time to present the end results, suddenly the whole vantage point changes.

I had fun doing it - I learned a lot - but I think this is the last project I ever do by myself. I think it's time I assembled another team. The group I began to get involved with out here seems to have just kind of vanished. They shot their piece and I was supposed to edit it, but there was some problem with them getting the tapes from the camera guy, and that's the last I've heard from them. No messages posted to our group list in a while. Weird. Oh, well. I guess I'm free to move on.

OK, so even the best of us get bitten by an urban legend now and then. The picture I posted about the 1954 computer photo was actually the result of a Photoshop contest. Ah, well. That's what I get for trusting the people I trust who send me this stuff.

Interesting note about my Mac: It seems to have fixed itself. I haven't had a lock-up or hang in a long time. It seems it just needed a good burn-in period (like a month). There must have been some intermittent connection (perhaps on one address or data line on a stick of RAM or something) that is now making a solid connection. WHO KNOWS?! It sure is nice when a computer actually works! Now I don't have to shoot it.

If computers actually were built like this today, I might have better luck with them.


This was from Popular Mechanics magazine in 1954. How times have changed. What's that growing out of the top of the guy's head, anyway? And what's the deal with the dual steering wheels? Does the thing run on diesel?

What an ordeal. I was working hard to prepare for my first bout with my new combat robot, but the biggest problem I had was burning a DVD on the Macintosh. iDVD has some seriously annoying bugs. One of which - for SOME reason that it won't report - is its inability to burn my project on a DVD. It took me three days to finaggle it to the point where it would actually create the actual DVD. Then, afterward, I discovered the DVD was not correct. I had 7 or 8 selections in a "Special Features" section that - after any one of them finished playing - would just stop. The DVD would just stop playing. It wouldn't return to the menu - it would just stop.

Very ANNOYING!

Anyway, the DVD was delivered to its intended client, and he offered me some money for it. He said he didn't care that it stopped, but god I hate delivering sub-par products. That's just not my style - mostly because I don't like receiving sub-par products.

Enough of my rant. Oh! But wait! This is a Computer Circus blog! Never mind - rant on!!!