Wayne D's Blog

I was lying on my couch Sunday afternoon, EEEPC perched on my chest, living vicariously through the tweets of other, trying to not hack my lungs out as I suffered from a late spring cold, when a tweet went by from Amber MacArthur about an awesome entry in the CommandN-Mesh contest. How was that for a run on sentence? After whining about there not being enough camps and conferences in Toronto I find that the Mesh conference is less than two weeks away. I watch the entry Amber is tweeting about and figure there is no way that I can put something together in one day to compete with the mad scientist. But wait, this guy is in Vancouver, Air Canada has just added another surcharge to their fares. If he hasn't booked yet it's going to cost him a fortune to fly to Toronto on short notice. There is hope, now I just have to put together a concept, record it and get it in by midnight. I come up with a minimalist concept inspired by the Cali Lewis style of broadcasting, jam as many words as possible into as short a time as possible. Luckily I have a facility for fast talking. I write my script on the EEEPC, turn on the webcam and shoot. Problem, for some reason the file the EEEPC produces an .ogg movie doesn't seem to play properly on anything I have including the EEEPC. The other problem is that my 30 second video runs about a minute ten. I forgot to add that it's Mother's day and we are supposed to go out for dinner. Off to dinner we go.

While at dinner I rework my original concept into something that has a modicum of entertainment value. When we return I head downstairs and try to install VLC so I can capture the video. I struggle with dependencies for a while, get it installed and realize I don't know how to use it. The clock is ticking, I have to do something quick so off I go to ustream. I am pruning and paring my script, finally getting it down to 170 words. I don't have any video editing software installed and besides I don't have time to learn how to use it. I'm going to have to do it straight, without editing. Lacking a teleprompter I put my webcam on six pack CD magazine to put it at the right height and drop a box into the centre of my script page so the text flows around the camera. I carefully arrange the windows so I can click record and then move the mouse to centre my script on the page.

Take 1, I start and flub the line. Take 2 I pause for too long and screw that one up. Maybe I should learn how to edit video. Take after take, lines are flubbed, awkward pauses get in. Ok, let's rewrite that line so it flows better. Cali makes this fast talking look so easy. Next time I'm going to do this long enough in advance that I can memorize the script. Damn, another line flubbed. This take is no good because I closed my eyes before stopping the recording. Finally I get one done that isn't too heinous. Then I lay another one down, that one seems a bit better. I'll keep that one. I play it back , crap the sound is going but there is no motion in the video. I download the .flv and try it with mplayer. Even worse, It plays back at 60 fps and the sound is completely hosed. I cross my fingers and submit it for conversion to .mov. I wait a tense few minutes download it, whew, it plays fine. Damn it has that goofy white dot noise at the bottom I have never bothered troubleshooting. Almost 10 p.m., no time to fix it, must send it off. Maybe someone will get a laugh out of it. The next morning I get a short email "That is awesome!!!! Thank you! Seriously, great work...". Hmmm, maybe I'm not such a hack. I decide I'm tough enough to take the ridicule, I'll post it to my blog and see what happens. So here it is, please don't be too harsh.

Here is a link for the Flash impaired meshcontest.mov

I figured that when I didn't win the contest I could see if I could get the two days off and buy my way into Mesh. Today I see on their blog that the conference is sold out. Sigh, maybe next year.

I tried to find the Geekbrief episode where Cali Lewis explains her fast talking but was unsuccessful. If someone knows the link please post it in a comment. My estimate of my words per minute count is 242.