iPrompt for the iPhone

Today I got my hands on the iPhone application iPrompt. I have been using VideoCue to use as my teleprompter when I do the videos and I am talking into the camera. Video Cue works pretty well but sometimes when I want to stop it and then restart I can’t go back a bit to where I want to continue talking. I have to start again from the start of the text. That is the problem I need to address.

If I am using the iSight camera in my Mac it is OK because I can have the computer right in front of me and use the up and down arrow keys to slow down the text in Video Cue and speed it up again so that It does what I want. But I prefer to use my Canon Vixia to record the video because of better quality and when I use the green screen I need to have some distances just right to make the chromakeying work better. So then I lose control of the text. My arms are just not long enough…

Seeing as I am always fluffing my words then I do need to be able to have this controlling function – so enter iPrompt. I have not used iPrompt in anger yet but I have tested it and it looks like it will do what I want – I think….
The only thing is the control of it again. I would like to put the iphone into a box thing that I will make that is like the proper teleprompter when the camera is pointed through a hole in back a box and there is a piece of glass at an angle inside the box. The front is open and what you look into – seeing only the scrolling text

The iPhone will go at the bottom of the box pointing up at the glass and with the glass angled the presenter is able to see the text scrolling right where the lens of the camera is pointing out . Of course the scrolling text in iPrompt has to be mirrored so that it is the right way for reading in the teleprompter. The way that I do it now the text is slightly below the lens on my MacBookPro and you can sometimes see that I am having to look just below the lens to the scrolling text from time to time. I could see that this iPrompt solution could work even better if I had a distance controller – there is something that allows wireless or wired control so that I could speed up the text or slow it down or just pause it and restart it when I am ready to move on. I have to find out more about what controllers I can use with this function of iPrompt. I think I will need that distance controller though if I – can – put it in a box as I have outlined already because the iPhone will be more difficult to get at – when it is set up inside the box

EverNote

I have just upgraded to the latest version of Evernote and I like the changes – It looks better and it also has a thing called trunk – It is the Elephant reference again.

Trunk is there to show what other applications will work with or integrate with Evernote – like
Egretlist
A to-do manager that seamlessly syncs content with your Evernote account.

Seems like a good idea from Ever note – but then
Had a bit more of a look through and it seems it is a way for Evernote to make some affiliate cash by directing you to paid for apps on on the iTunes Store. Nothing wrong with that ….

Evernote have to get paid for what they do also.

iTunes

Talking about iTunes – I updated to the latest version and it went really easy no problems and seems that it was just mainly bug fixes.

Just bought another set of earbuds for my iPhone – could be 4th set or perhaps 3rd but I had been using some without the mic that is a switch also and I really missed the ability to turn off the podcast I was listening to quickly while I am at work. Getting through that many sets of earbuds I suppose it is not too bad when taking into account the amount of time I use the iPHone in that way.

While I am at the campsite this year working – I am spending more time outside working rather than in the reception which is great seeing as there is no air conditioning in there and it is fresher outside and I get to chat more with people
another benefit is that I don’t have to be annoyed so much by using Windows computers. When I do go in there I am so busy I don’t have time to think about it either.

Only another 3 or four weeks to do at the camp site and then I can get back to the learning programming. I still find time for the odd video from Lynda.com for the PHP and MYSQL and I see that the guy that did the course for the iPhone programming has put up another course for iPad programming. I will be looking at that next I think.

One thing though I have noticed while I have been following tutorials on web development since I first started learning html many years ago = is that things have got so much more complicated. On first look at some of the examples in the tutorials it looks like the javascript, XML, XML DOM, PHP, MySQL, HTML5 and the rest – are ways of doing something simple in the most difficult way possible – It looks like masochism at times. You know what I mean ….. 20 lines of code to write one line of text on a web page.

I wonder sometimes if I will ever be able to think like a programmer.

From what I have seen of HTML 5 it may well be an attempt to bring some of these ways of working together in an easier way of working.

I will get to the bottom of this…. I Promise

Finding a good idea for a project for iPhone or iPad is a little difficult as much seems to have been done already
and they only way forward will be in the vertical market or specialist arena. What would you like to see as an iDevice application? Maybe a special mix or combination if a couple of solutions to problems already out there would make that killer app?

Using Time Machine

I bought an external hard drive for my wife to use as a Time Machine back up. It is a 1TB drive I paid 66 pounds for and the shipping was free the case is a bit plastic compared to the Iomega drives I have bought before but when I got it fired up I was pleased to find it is really quiet in operation. I will also get another drive for her later so that we can do a Super Duper back up once a week also. Belt and braces it the way to go when backing up your data. We are also using Mozy to back up some files and I will also go for the $5 a month back up plan there too. Thats a really good price that Mozy

Delete key on a Mac

I was just delighted to learn a new thing on the Mac
My wife was complaining about the forward delete not being available on her MacBook Pro
I had wondered about it a few times on mine too but never bothered to find out for sure how to do it
So the backspace key is used the Fn key modifier it will delete going forwards. Isn’t that easy and very useful to know.

I found that out by looking in Mac Help for Windows Keys on a Mac keyboard and there were a couple of other explanations in there too.

ScreenFlow

You have noticed that I promote ScreenFlow on the podcast too. I have interviewed the people at Telestream that make the application and I was pleased to see that one of the guests on the MacBreak Weekly last week gave it very high praise when choosing as a pick of the week. use the link I have on answer20q.com to find out more about ScreenFlow and you will be helping out Mac20Q if you buy it after you have tried it.

Academy & Emmy nominated Frederick Marx is either clever or lucky or both because he is able to follow his life’s passion and is able to live it every day. His mission as a filmmaker is “Bearing Witness, Creating Change.” Human change, human transformation – one story at a time.

There is ‘Hoop Dreams’ One of the most acclaimed and successful documentaries ever, HOOP DREAMS tells the story of Arthur Agee, William Gates, and their families over a four and a half year period, covering the boys’ entire high school careers as they pursue the elusive dream of professional basketball success. It is a three hour documentary following two teenage inner city Afro-American lads to play basketball professionally.

Frederick gives back to the film making community to with workshops and talks Speaking topics include:

• Buddhism and Film
• What young filmmakers need to know
• Living a life of mission
• The role of documentary in social justice
• The changing landscape of independent film production and distribution – a 40 year perspective
• Journey From Zanskar and educating your own children
• Take the Zanskar vow – become a social change agent
• The necessity of rites of passage and mentorship for youth

The ‘Journey from Zanskar’ was a topic in the interview that Frederick spoke about in more detail. talking about the ordeals of travelling and shooting film out on the trail. He tells us about what cameras he was using and how he had to make do with other cameras when the main camera no longer was available to him. He got inside the lives of the people that were the subjects of the movie as should happen in a good documentary. The monks were able to tell their story to the world with the help of Frederick, who is clearly a talented and intelligent independent film maker.

I have to admit I learned a lot listening to Frederick and you will not be disappointed in hearing the podcast

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Recorded the one hundred episode yesterday and today. I was pleased that Chris Marshall came on the show to talk about his experiences with his Macs and his new iPad and how it fits in with what he is doing with his writing. Chris writes articles for a newspaper here in Spain and also makes an appearance on the radio talking about things to do with tech and living in Spain.

Chris still has his Harley thing going and him and his wife are keen to save abandoned animals mostly cats. Last time he was telling me that the animals get shipped to northern countries like Germany to get a good home.

The iPad is giving Chris the freedom to do some of his work away from the computer, things like checking emails, looking at the RSS feeds for the news that is of interest to the radio show. Seems like a perfect complement to a workflow that he has perfected using his Mac Pro.

I talk about using Scrivener compared to using Bean or Pages from iWork. I like the corkboard metaphor in Scrivener. Bean is a bit simple and pages has everything to be able to do Desk Top Publishing

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I listen to quite a few Mac podcasts and at this moment in time I am sick of them because all they talk about is the iPhone4. I will not be getting one as I don’t want to sell my soul to Telefonica again and I have been trying to get away from the gits unsuccessfully anyway. I am not even envious or jealous at all.

Well maybe a smidgeon

But if I hear one more thing about the stupid antenna problem I may just spit. Seems that because it has hit the fan in the normal outside of the Mac fan base news – that all the Mac Podcasters have to comment on it – more like apologise for it really. As if it will make any difference to the people out there in the throws of buying a phone and deciding whether to get an iPhone 4 or go for the Android.

Well I suppose it may make a difference if Leo Laporte says don’t buy the iPhone seeing as he has so many followers. He is actually quite negative about the device and prefers to use the Nexus one I think. Andy Inatkho does balance what Leo says – although he recommends waiting a few months for the first revision or for things to settle down. He says that on balance despite the faults the new model is worth getting because of everything else it offers. He is probably right – him being an intelligent soul and definitely worth listening too. What about you?

Do you do the knee jerk thing and buy the newest from apple because it is shiny and sparkles in the limelight or do you look long and hard to see if it fills a need for you. Or are you like me in that you have to do the hard look because of extraneous influences. For example I have less work this year in the summer to bump up my finances and I don’t want to be struggling to find the monthly money for the noose around the neck contract for the next 2 years.

Also my thinking is that what ever I spend on an iPhone four right now – will remove money from a fund I want to build to buy a more professional video camera which could potentially make me money rather than than just be a drain on the cash flow. In these economic times you have to do what is financially sound – although I do see that some don’t care and just live for the moment. I even saw on Twitter that a self confessed bankrupt just bought a new iPhone despite being in the hole to the tune of many thousands of pounds. It beggars belief it really does.

I could recommend the books by Robert Kiosaki – the Rich Dad Poor dad series, The idea is simple and he drums it in over and over. He does make some good points about wealth though. It is a bit of an antidote to the consumerist lifestyle that it is so easy to get sucked into. I like the bit about aquiring assets and what are assets. For example a car is not an asset unless in gives you positive cash flow. My son has a video camera that cost 6k and that is an asset because it makes him money. The loan he got to buy it is paid off and all the money coming in from it now is the icing on the cake – with a cherry on top.
How is an iPhone 4 going to make money for you?

As for the really crazy people that spent any time standing in a queue, however much you try and tell yourself you were there for the camaraderie and for the fun of it, I suggest you book yourself an appointment for a check from the neck up.
I really hate standing in a queue. In the supermarket I have to talk myself into a calm mode and give myself rules about not changing queue because it is kismet as to how long I will be standing there and changing into a different line will probably make me wait longer anyway.

Do I sound as mad as the people that subject themselves to a queue willingly with that last statement. Maybe….
We have a new Mac in the house with my wife getting the MacBook. I do still see her open the old Windows computer at times – I will have to give her a slap or something. Just kidding honest.

She has complained about the keyboard on the MacBook being a little stiff compared to the crappy one she was using. It is a HP long travel KB that makes a clatter type sound while being typed on and really is horrible but she got used to it. It is the old muscle memory thing.

We still have to move her iTunes library across. I had better do that soon and make sure that any other docs are also shifted although I have got her using DropBox and that has moved all the important stuff to the MacBook.
You have to love Drop Box
I have also set up a Mozy account and I may even pay for an upgrade from the 2GB with that, the pricing is better with Mozy past the 2GB free than it is with drop box although DropBox does have better sharing features.
Also on the back up front we still have to set up a disk for time machine and one more to use with super duper. Thought about cannibalising the Hard disks out of the old machine for that but I think it could be safer to buy 2 new external disks. The old disks are getting a bit long in the tooth.

I paid for a copy of textexpander for her and showed her the basics of how it works. I should probably have another tech session of making sure that she has a workflow to best suit what she does. I want to get her using Mac apps for the word processing stuff and I gave her Bean which she thinks is a bit too simple in terms of facilities. and she also has Pages to use for the tricky stuff. Bean doesn’t do the wrapping text around images unless you use tables to do that. Not ideal by any means.
She does need something that will output files that Windows – Office users can read and send back to her. Bean when you save a file – defaults to the .rtfd format – rich text with graphics and will do the job with simple documents nicely. As opposed to pages in which you have to export to doc formats, which she would then have to remember to do and which in the process will create 2 files.

That is not too bad but she would have to have firmly in the brain that the pages version is the master version and any of the doc files would be best not relied upon as being the version to deal with.
Suppose she sends a rtf or doc file out of Pages to a work colleague – the colleague makes some changes and sends it back, here the file would have to be opened in Pages and then with a file SAVE AS be saved over the top of the master to be the new master of that document.

Or it would have to be saved with a version number of the same document that would have to be kept track of, so that the latest and most correct version is used. It could get complicated and we don’t want complicated. I think a system of that uses SAVE rather than have to mess with SAVE AS would work better but then the problem could arise where a file goes out as a rtfd and come back as a .docx file – although I think Bean can open those types of files too.

Probably have to try out the way of working for real and assess what actually happens so that we can get the best solution. I suspect though that Bean will work the best and with Pages if we need something that is more DTP type of work.
Then again Scrivener is another way to go forward – I am using it to write this script and I love the way I was able to set up sections of the script as a text documents – then I can click on edit scrivenings to be able to see the whole piece. I am also using it as an outlining tool. There is also the cork board metaphor in there to let me see each section as an index card on a cork board and I can move them around as I see fit.

Scrivener doesn’t do images either though as it is really centred around text, although you can put images into the research area to view alongside your writing.

Here is a passage from the Scrivener Help about the philosophy behind it.

The overriding philosophy behind Scrivener was in part inspired by a passage written by the author Hilary Mantel, in a collection of essays by writers on the process of writing entitled The Agony and the Ego. Hilary Mantel described a process of “growing a book, rather than writing one,” which can be summed up as follows:

1.During the first stage of writing, you might jot ideas down on index cards – phrases, character names, scene ideas; any insight or glimpse.

2.When you have gathered a few index cards, you might pin them to a corkboard. Other ideas build around them, and you might even write out a few paragraphs and pin them behind the index card with which they are associated. At this stage, the index cards have no particular order.

3.Eventually, you may begin to see an order emerging and repin the index cards accordingly.

4.After you have gathered enough material, you might take all of your index cards, sheets of paper and jottings and place them into a ring-binder. You are still free to move everything around, but now you have a good idea of how much work you have done and how much more work you have to do.

Scrivener is thus a nonlinear writing tool that provides the writer with all of the features found in any text editor, along with the functionality for “growing” your work organically within the program itself.

That is a good description and I certainly don’t think in a linear fashion. My thoughts and ideas like to bounce around like Tigger in WInnie the Pooh. We know a song about that don’t we children.

I dare say there will more in this series about setting up a MacBookPro for a new Mac User.

The thing with Scrivener thoughts that when you want to export it all out as a complete document you have to use – Compile Draft in the file menu. But when you do you get a huge load of options for which bits to include and how to set it up – content, text options and formatting and lots of file types including html, markdown, Doc files screenplay standards final Draft and manuscript formats.

You can even save all the options to use as a template for the next time you are sending document to that person or entity. I keep learning new things about it.

Love to hear from you any suggestions that you might have for the new Mac User, What sort of problems did you run into when you did a task like this? Was there anything that you thought might be difficult but ended up as easy as pie?

One thing that amuses me at the moment is hearing my wife come out with comments about Apple when she sees an advert for a new LG phone with Android on the TV or when there are those short commercials from Microsoft. The comments usually go along the lines of ‘They didn’t think of it first though – They are just copying Apple”
So Victoria has obviously been influenced by what she has seen on my Macs and probably what is in the news about Apple and the commitment to innovation that Apple has. Still makes me smile though.

It is a shame that it took so long for the old computer to get creaky enough that it had to be replaced. We could have had an all Mac household sooner.

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Also the lack of new podcasts has been due to working hard to learn more programming I found a good tutorial on Lynda.com for learning PHP and MySQL. For learning things like the basic concepts of loops and thinking like a programmer it has been good. I expect that the ability to hook into MySQL databases will be very useful too.

My wife has her MacBookPro and at this moment is using her crappy WIndows computer to do so form filling on a web site. Having to type quite a lot of words she has bot got used to the keyboard on the MacBookPro. The old HP keyboard is plain horrible but she is used to it. Have to give her more time on that one. I have been hoping to spend more time with her showing her some trick with the Mac but I have not been able to do that much either.

We have set up TextExpander for her. I got it for her yesterday and also Skitch – both applications are very useful and I know she will particularly love Textexpander when we have it set up more.

I have been enjoying watching the second half of a few of the World Cup games, mercifully I was working during the last England game. I did have to suffer a bit though with the bar at the camp site being full of cheering german youths.

I talk with Paul Scott about what he does with his Mac. We discuss the compatibility possible when you have to use some Windows apps on your Mac. I tell him about a friend that was using an older CRT iMac that had problems with file sharing and that now with the way things are we don’t have those problems. There are some PC users that can’t open some Windows files like the problem with some doc files.

Paul uses his computer to transcode audio files from one format to another. He has a MacBookPro and it is fairly new due to getting an older one replaced with AppleCare. Great the way that Apple looks after its Apple care customers like that. I have not used Apple Care yet myself – What about you do you use AppleCare.

Paul has a blog The Mac Guy in which he answers people questions about hardware and software, seeing as he has a wealth of knowledge about Macs. He uses BlogPress and loves the application MacJournal. While on a plane recently he was showing off his iPad in between being able to use it to make a blog post. The only difficulty was the fact he could not rotate a screenshot image. Did you know that you can get a screen shot by pressing the Home and Lock keys. Paul uses the iPad to VPN into his work computers.

Like myself Paul is learning Objective C and wants to work from home and have his dog as his office manager. He has the book Aaron Hillegas which I have also and he has the Objective C for Dummies book. He would like to go and have a week at the Big Nerd Ranch where you can go and spend a week just learning programming. They do those here in Germany too. I am using a book by Stephen Kochan about Objective C. Become and Xcoder at cocoalabs and cocoadevcentral are both useful sites to learn more. We lamented that we will perhaps to buy new books when Xcode 4 comes out fully and everything is changed

He uses the app Notebook as he can record audio during lectures and I tell him about Soundpaper that you can do the same thing on an iPad. He best free application is Twitterific. I inform paul about Ping.fm which is a useful site to post to numerous social networks and blogs in one foul swoop.

We talk about SEO and how I used it with the Amazing iPad site and also about where Paul gets his web traffic from. He gets it mostly from Google of course as Bing is still a bit new. We talk about SquareSpace the place where you can host blogs. I reckon it is too expensive there for what you get. With using GoDaddy I have unlimited domains and unlimited bandwidth and it is either cheaper or the same price as on SquareSpace where you can only use one domain.

Safari 5 is with us now and it has given us some new features like the Reader which works a bit like Instapaper. basically it strips out the crud from the web page and shows just the main information.

Paul wouldn’t mind doing a Mac Podcast but is wondering what area of Macs to concentrate on. He may perhaps go for something for new switchers. He listens to a few podcasts like MacGeekGab and MacBreak Weekly.

A Macuser group would be a good idea in your area and Paul is the Vice President of the Las Vegas Mac User Group and the members get the camaraderie of being the the group and they have group discussions and presentations about software and Apple went to the group to present the iPad to them. Apple even took in a couple of demo units to pass around, for the iPad demo there were 40 or 50 people present.

In the picture paul is there at the Mac Store with a T Shirt saying I visited the mothership. He is willing to stand in line at the Apple Store events and has taken his mother with him there and they stood there for eight and a half hours to get an iPhone. he says it was a bit of a party. They did it again for the iPad because it is such a party atmosphere.

Paul dislike AT & T just as much I dislike Telefonica, he is not happy about the no tethering on AT&T and the new cap on the iPhone plans. It is a bit silly that you have to have a plan for the iPhone and another one for the iPad.

Why is it not possible to get the cable that makes it possible to output to a projector or a TV perhaps so that they can demonstrate to the special interest group they are setting up to focus more on the iOS and the devices that run it.

I mention a photographer in the interview called Dave Hill. He does some amazing pictures and I recommend you have a look at davehillphoto.com . I also mention Photomatix the HDR photography application and for some excellent examples you could do a search in Flickr for the guy that goes by the name of ‘Stuck in Customs’ I have a few good HDR photos in Flickr too. I used the tutorial put up by SIC to guide me when I worked on the picture that I took in Dublin by the canal of the ambulance rushing past. And also with the photos of the shack in the French Vineyard. It was late evening when I took those photos and the light was great although I had to hurry to get the shots.

Part of getting a good HDR image is to choose a subject and lighting that suits HDR. YOu want something that there is a large dynamic range there with some dark area and also places that will be washed out if you expose for the darker areas in a normal photo.

As I say in the podcast I like the more extreme images – I am not concerned too much with lifelike as I am keen to get an exciting looking finished image.
I had lifelike while I was there taking the picture, the artist in me wants something extra and I like bold and colourful. I really love the HDR.

Seems that I am spending lots more time lately with shooting video more so than with than taking photos and with my guest in this interview it is the same with that.

The latest cameras with the video capabilities are pushing many photographers in the direction of video too. Canon 5D and the 7D are excellent for video to the point that there is a huge buzz amongst indie film makers due to the quality of the images that you can get from these new DSLR’s. Canon also now have the T2i a lower priced version and even more photographers will be getting on the video bandwagon.

Using the Canon 5D to shoot House

There was a big thing made out of the fact that the last episode of House was shot with the Canon 5D.
One of the things that is so good about video on the DSLR is the depth of field you can get especially with the prime lenses. There are all sorts of extras you can buy to make the DSLR camera more suited to shooting video as well as the variety of quality lenses available.

http://media.techpodcasts.com/mac20q/media.blubrry.com/mac20q/traffic.libsyn.com/spondicious/098_DarrenHull.mp3

@FIlmutopia and the Lone Gun Manifesto

Clive otherwise known as @Filmutopia is a fan of the DSLR because of how easy it is to shoot video in guerilla fashion. You can go to a location and have your actors turn up on scene and do what they have to do in a more improvised way and be done before you know it. Clive has a Lone Gun Manifesto which recommends this way of filming. The idea is that you can film something and have it more natural and real. Out on the street you could be filming something and passers by might not notice.

I expect cost has something to do with this also, even though you could certainly still spend as much on the DSLR way as you would with using standard video cameras but you will save money on the setting up of locations.

Here are the headlines of Clive’s manifesto

1) One DSLR camera, One person, One microphone (The lone gun shoots alone)

2) Strip movie making down to the basics – a camera, a great story and some actors

3) A lone gun never asks for permission to shoot at a location

4) Put something original and honest in front of the camera

5) Think like a photographer, not like a film-maker

6) Money is for food, transport and a dedicated hard-drive for each project and nothing else

7) Natural light only
Everyone who works on a movie, has the right to distribute that movie for free or for profit

9) No credits before the title ever, regardless of how famous someone is.

10) The end product must be cinema quality (capable of projection to cinema sizes without falling apart)

11) A creative common license for the movie (how open you go is up to you, but people must be able to share and alter it for free)

OK. In practical terms this means that you are shooting in public places,but never in such a way that anyone is aware you are shooting. That’s why it is done best with a standard DSLR camera.

What kit to buy to be a Lone Gun Shooter

This leads to kit – what to use to make films like this
Here’s the list of kit I use (feel free to improvise better solutions):
1) A good DSLR camera

2) A portable digital audio recorder – I have a Zoom H2

3) A microphone (not the kind you’re thinking about.. The one I use cost $40) he uses a binaural mic

4) Something to use as a mini clapperboard – he uses a lighter

5) A small beanbag

6) A computer with some professional editing software on it

7) Some actors
A pocket sized notebook – I suggest an iPad

9) A brilliant idea for a movie

10) A script

11) A dedicated hard drive

12) An idea about how you’re going to build an audience

One thing with the DSLR though is the poor audio but there are ways to get around that. The sound can be recorded into something separate like the Sound Devices 702T or you could get the sound in via a pre amp like the Beachtek or Juiced link devices. I have been thinking of getting my hands on a Juiced link pre amp to use with a shotgun mic and my Canon Vixia. This is because when I record sound now using the SM58 which is a good mic anyway I end up with a lot of hiss that I have to get rid of so that I can use it.

What do you think of the Lone Gun Manifesto – Could you work like that?

Are you planning to go down the DSLR route?

Send me an email to mac20q@gmail.com or leave me a comment below.

Looking forward to hearing from you

My wife wants a computer to do stuff in school, she is a teacher. For a long time she has been drooling over the MacBook Air – mainly because of it being light in weight. Many people have told me – that having owned one they think it to be underpowered and short of ports. I recommended the MacBookPro for her but she is not keen – as it weighs just over 2kg compared to the iPad at less than half that.

So Enter the iPad – Also low powered and fewer ports – but has the advantages over the Air by being lighter and much cheaper to buy. Another good point for the iPad is that when you switch it on it is instantly ready to do some work. We took a trip to Girona the other day to check out the iPad. There they had iPads to view but none to sell. I was delighted to get playing with one – trying out the on screen keyboard in the notepad application.

Predictive Text on the iPad

I would need time to get used to the predictive text ability because it was putting in words I didn’t want
You would think I would be OK with that after being an iPhone user, I was typing in English though and the iPad was dealing with Spanish – so that didn’t help. Looked at the Bento on the iPad and was not that impressed with its usability compared to the desktop version which I have – although perhaps I would need more time to research it . i have Bento on the iPhone too. I just expected more from the iPad version.

Loved playing with the photo app and thought that Safari on the iPad was OK – much better than on the iPhone. If they had, had an iPad in the shop we would have gone home with one for sure. Despite some reservations I have about how it fits in with what she wants to do computing wise. I just know that it won’t be long before I am getting kicked off my computers so she can do some video editing or to make a Keynote presentation which is undoubtedly going to be better on a more powerful machine with the full OSX operating system.

Already it has happened that my wife has been using ScreenFlow on my iMac to edit some movies – ScreenFlow is much easier than iMovie and when I have time I will show her FinalCut Express.
Blimey I will never get to use my iMac again…..

I suppose I should be grateful that I am getting her away from her Windows machine that is driving her nuts at the moment – The school where she works has only Windows computers too – and it is dreadful for the virus problems. I don’t think they have much in the way of a sys admin looking after them either.

OK back to the iPad testing in the shop

My wife wanted to see how the bluetooth keyboard would work with the iPad but the guy in the shop couldn’t get the one he had there – to pair with the iPad demo machine for some strange reason. He tried many times with more than one iPad.
but probably due to other bluetooth conflicts within the shop. – No Joy

Have any of you had problems getting a BT KB paired up with an iPad. Talking of the keyboard thing she imagines that she would want to use the iPad on the sofa and use the BT KB there. I suppose the iPad could be propped up on the table in front of the sofa and the KB be on her lap. I wonder if the iPad would be too far away then to be able to read well while typing. I can’t imagine how you might have the keyboard and the iPad together on the lap unless you have a specialised holder for the 2 items – and even then it could be awkward.

I would give her my MacBook Pro but it has an English keyboard on it and she would need the Spanish Keyboard for the accents. A bit too much messing to swap the keys for Spanish ones also. Have to see how this conundrum runs. The best solution would be an iMac on her desk – or a Mac Mini and an iPad to go with it. for taking to school. Don’t expect the funds to run to that though seeing as all public service workers here in Spain have just had a pay cut of 5%. The banks that created the financial mess should be paying to put the economy right not the people at grass roots level just working to put food on the table a a roof over the head. – Oooh don’t get me started…..

Wizardgold Betfair Trading videos

This week I have been creating video for my Wizardgold business extolling the delights of trading on Betfair, so I have been stuck into FinalCut Express and enjoying doing the editing work. I get in a bit of income from the advertising on that site and the software sales so it needs some effort from time to time. I have one video on YouTube explaining this particular technique under 2.5 goals trading – which has been downloaded 37 thousand times – It would be nice to get those sort of numbers for the Mac stuff I do – I had better take some lessons from the talented iJustine – learn to dance in the Apple Stores – do spoofs of songs and wear silly wigs then post the resulting videos. I reckon I could manage some Dad dancing no problem. I am not averse to looking silly if it brings in a bit of cash.

Other news here is that I have reverted to the telephone line bringing in my internet service – it is slower at 1mb but more reliable that the crappy Wimax. It was worth a try though but now I can expect Skype to work better for me.

Nambu

I have given up on Nambu again – it kept crashing on me and I have had to go back to Tweetdeck, Really wish they could come up with an app that didn’t keep falling over

Raymond Did It

Today I posted a new podcast interview of a horror movie director by the name of Travis Legge. He is shooting the movie Raymond Did it – this very week. if you are into horror movies and would like to support Travis he is still taking donations to help fund the movie. Just before I was about to interview Travis I saw a tweet from him to say he was covered in Blood. No worries though it was just some testing of the special effects for the slashing effects in the slasher movie.

Apple WWDC 2010

OK I suppose I had better mention WWDC. The iPhone 4 looks great and I will be drooling over one for quite some time to come
I like that it has the A4 processor same as the iPad because the iPad is lovely and quick as I saw in the shop.

Nice that there is a front facing camera now and Face time will be great except we will have to get dressed to make face-time calls
I don’t think it is there to provide a better service for the sexters. You know the young ones that like take photos of their bits and send them to their friends, who then distribute the images to every on they know and they pass them on to all their friends……

talk about sexually transmitted diseases – here we have technically transmitted sexbits going viral, although I expect some pervs will still be doing some of that sexting anyway.

Nice shape too – yes I am back to talking about the iPhone 4 again…..

iPhone 4

Apparently the screen resolution is one of the highlights of the new phone and when I see one in action I will be able to comment – looked good in the keynote from Steve

IOS 4

iOS 4 looks good too and I will be admiring from afar as most of its benefits are not available for the 3G iPhone I have. I wonder if the iMovie for the iPhone will be available on the iPad – his Steveness didn’t say so but I expect it will be the case. That was one of the questions my missus had about the iPad and its ability to edit video. I was asked about that and other things on the way to the store and I was amused to hear the same questions being asked of the guy in the store. She must not have believed the answers I gave to her.

Here is a weird one – the iPad is such a good idea for the education market but there is no educational discount
Another plus point for the MacBook Pro and more bang for the eurobuck

Give me some advice

So tell me given the circumstances we have here – what would you do
get the iPad
get a MAcBook Pro
Or go for the Air

Or tell me whether you will be ordering your iPhone 4 and getting in line for it on June 24th

My next trick will be to get some interviews set up for Mac 20Q – If you would like to be featured on the show to talk about what you do with your computer I would love to hear from you. send me an email to mac20q@gmail.com and lets get something arranged.

Please call into the iTunes store and leave a comment for Mac20Q Podcast, It really helps the show to get noticed and will bring us more listeners, thanks for your help.

Really pleased to have another film maker guest on the show. Travis is just about to start shooting a horror – slash movie. Just before the interview I saw him tweet that he was covered in blood. Transpired he was doing tests for the film special effects.

He is friends with Julie and Jessica of Kingisafink and Phil Holbrook, I think it is great to see such a vibrant group of film makers taking advantage of social media. helping out with each others projects as well as moral support.

Like Danny Lacey Travis has been using the crowd funding Indiegogo to raise money for this movie he is about to shoot
which btw is called Danny Did It and if you want to help out with the film you still can – by going to his film company website and he is taking Paypal donations.

Many films wouldn’t get off the ground without this type of support so if you are in to horror send Travis a dollar or two.

Raymond Did It is a slasher film in the tradition of Halloween and Prom Night. When twelve-year-old Bryce Rourke is accidentally killed in a playground scuffle, his friends decide to blame Bryce’s developmentally delayed older brother for the accident. Raymond is taken to a state hospital while the true killer walks free.
Six years later, Raymond escapes from the hospital to seek bloody revenge for his brother’s death.

This is how it worked out with Indiegogo for the crowd funding.

$10 or more = Fan Contribution: A special thanks noted on the film’s website and Director’s blog.

$50 or more = Fan Plus Contribution: An 11 x 17 movie poster in either the theatrical or comic book design, signed by writer/director Travis Legge in addition to the aforementioned perks.

$100 or more = Friend Contribution: A DVD copy of the film upon the film’s release, signed by writer/director Travis Legge in addition to the aforementioned perks.

$1,000 or more = Family Contribution: A copy of the DVD signed by members of the cast and crew, a producer’s credit in the film, and a VIP invitation to the official wrap party in Rockford, Illinois at the end of June (travel costs not included)

Funds generated via donation will go to cover the costs of catering, location management, prop purchases, and transportation associated with the film.

The rumours are appearing on the very eve of Steve Jobs announcing a whole pile of new things at WWDC. One of the new things alongside a new iPhone is possibly going to be a new Safari.

What does Apple have on the horizon for Safari ? So far we have not heard anything and that isn’t a huge surprise, Apple is a very secretive company. The good news is that Safari is based on the open source WebKit rendering engine, so we can check out the list of feature enhancements added to WebKit since Safari 4 released with AppleWebKit/531.9.

New WebKit features:

Geolocation API including suspend/resume. This has been in the iPhone browser since last year

HTML 5 draggable element implementing the current spec

HTML 5 Forms pattern and required attributes

On top of expected HTML, CSS, and JavaScript improvements, Apple will surely tweak the web browser again to build the most usable web browser.

This week I have been getting stuck into the programming and learning about things like the if else , for and while loops and I dare say that for most listeners it would not be that interesting.

I have though during the last couple of days been trying to work out how to do for free – what I demonstrated in the last quick tips video screencast – In which I was using Hazel – A paid app – I made an automation of separating audio tracks and converting to AIFF ready for Amadeus Pro – I want to do as a free option as in using the tools we get free with Mac OSX.
That means Automator or AppleScript

With these there a few flavours of automation. You have folder actions, services, workflows, automator actions and the ability to save workflows as Applications.

The folder action is good when you want to drop files in folder and things will happen to them as if by magic. The Applications obviously can be used to open a file and do something with it
Services are workflows that you can get to from an application such as with finder with a right click on a file and the contextual menu will have the services that are applicable to that file or files.
You can also get to the services from the application menu item and again it give you the services that are available to that application.

Services was a new concept with Snow leopard and is trying to make automation all the more accessible. Then there is AppleScript – which can be run separate or can be included in an automator work flow or runs as an application.

The task that I worked out for Hazel to do for me automatically when the files were simply drooped into the right folder last week works great but not I am trying to get the same job done with Automator which comes free with Mac OSX. No point in spending money if you can help it. Hazel is worth the small amount it costs though and has a few other tricks too. So lets have a look at how it has been going with Automator.

There a number of ways to go about doing it and the first way that seems to present itself is using Folder Actions. This is like in Hazel where you just drop in the file to be automated and there is a certain amount of hey presto and you have your desired end result. In my case I am looking for a pair of AIFF files from the single .MOV file I saved into the folder.

What would be great is to have the Automator do the whole job in one automator action but I can’t seem to get that to work. So like in Hazel I have split the task up. I made one folder action to split the audio into 2 tracks then another automator action to convert those files to AIFF. So far so good, I can make that happen, although sometimes I put the starting file in the folder and nothing happens. The file just sits there festering and getting impatient to have something happen to it.

In Hazel there is a menu where you can start a process for a folder manually and it does the rest by itself. SO what I have done is to create a Automator service that take the first part of the automation and starts it with a file that is selected. When the two files are spat out of that process the second automator folder action takes over.

As I write this the first automator action which I set in motion by the service menu in FInder is still running as can be seen in the picture here the cog wheel is turning indicating that there is an action running. The action did the opening of the file with the audio splitter application and now is waiting for the next part because of a pause I put in the action. I told it to delete the starting file after 30 minutes and it worked.

I did also put in the action that it should quit the application used to split the audio, but that didn’t happen, so I will have to back to the drawing board on that one. I will get to the bottom of this. Funny thing is though that the way it works is a bit fuzzy. A couple of times I have put a file in that should have been worked on but nothing happened. tried again a little later and it worked. I would like to think it would be fool proof and work every time.

Here are the workflows so you can use them yourself.

Today there were queues for the iPad for the lucky few that either managed to get one via the courier and the pre-order process from Apple, or went to the local Apple Store to buy direct from the shop.. The lucky gits were then confined in some quiet place for the rest of the day so they could enjoy the iPad without any molestation from lesser beings. No I am not jealous at all. Honest !!

Really pleased for the people that got the iPad today, the likes of Gazmaz who was getting itchy and antzy while waiting for the courier to arrive with the iPad. I am sure Gary will be telling his story on the podcasts that he takes part in.

I have been struggling with internet all day today. First off I had no internet due the power being off yesterday from 5pm until about 10:30pm. The antenna on top of the hill didn’t get working again after the power came back so we had to wait until it was fixed and that was about 11am. I also tried to get the MiFi working – I got the MiFi a couple of weeks ago but I was waiting for the SIM to arrive from MasMovil. So I had the SIM and it took ages to get the Wifi end of things working but still no luck seeing as I had no 3G at the house for the SIM.

I still have to go out to a place where there is some 3G to test the MiFi properly. If I wasn’t so busy cleaning the house and doing that sort of things to be ready for a visitor that was due to arrive later in the day I would have been able to see if the Huawei miFi thingy would do what it is supposed to do. This is the MiFi that I was hacking into and jailbreaking a couple of weeks ago.

I did manage to get a bit of learning in with AppleScript and programming in general, won’t get much of that done for the rest of the weekend. Funny but I am sort of enjoying the programming even though it is super frustrating at times. Apart from the nitty gritty end of that I am thinking about possible applications to make. I am thinking about something in the education market for students and teachers. I would love to see technology being used to help people be the best they can be in a learning situation. I used to be a teacher and sometimes miss being one.

Here I show you how to use the Mac application Hazel to automate a process. I have to take files I get out of WireTap Studio as .mov files and split the 2 audio tracks into separate files and then convert .mov files into AIFF files so that I can use them in AmadeusPro, which is my preferred audio editor. Does a much better job than Garageband for what I do with the interviews for Mac20Q.

I wanted to do this job in Automator and have it either as a service or as a folder action, but I was not able to get it to do what I wanted , I may have another try to see if it is possible with Automator or perhaps I can get it to work by using AppleScript. I have been learning AppleScript lately so I could have some success this time.

If you have any questions about how to do things with Hazel then please fill in the form below and ask. I will help if I can.

This Podcast was produced using ScreenFlow my preferred screen capture application You can find out more about ScreenFlow on the ScreenFlow page on this web site.

Comments or questions are welcome.

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In this episode of the Mac20Q Podcast I am pleased to say I was talking to a really decent chap from Southport in England. he works for an Australian company which is pretty marvellous seeing as he is based in the UK. Ah the power of the internet! After studying computer science he went on to work indirectly for Apple at an Apple reseller, fixing hardware and also working in sales. So Leon Walsh surely knows his way around the Mac.

We chat about how great the iPhone is and he tells me that his could be surgically implanted because he makes so much use of the device. he has plans to buy a iPad when he makes a trip to the US in June. Leon tells me that he has his iPhone jail broken and will be using the iPhone to provide the connectivity for the iPad when he gets it also. Seems like a good plan that, saves having to have multiple data plans to serve the various devices he wants to use. Having said that though he may buy one of the MiFi devices from the UK Mobile phone company ’3′ and jail break that as I have recently done because it could be extra useful when he is travelling to his place in Spain.

A favourite application of Leon’s is iTunes because all that you can do with it. I mention in my ramble too about how you can increase its functionality further by getting scripts from the Doug’s Applescript web site. I do that as part of my ramble about automating things with things like Automator, AppleScript and Hazel.

Leon and i talk for quite a while because as usual it is a friendly chat about using Macs generally and covering things like best free application, most expensive application and so on. Leon tells me that he loves using Garageband and also Logic because he is a keyboard player and a bit of a musician.

Ramble

Learning iPhone programming.

In the ramble I talk about how I made my first iPhone application, simple but I think an important first baby step of many steps in the process of becoming an iPhone and iPad developer. I was so delighted, I did a little dance because it took me a couple of attempts with the tutorial, I learned a few things on the way including the fact that a step had been missed out and I was lucky to spot in an accompanying picture on the site.

Do you have any suggestions for me to try to make for the iPhone or iPad? It could take me a long time but I do plan to eventually make it to the heady heights of Mac and iPhone developer. I have a couple of ideas already but more is always good.

Evernote

Evernote has a new version of the application for the iPad and iPhone and many of the improvements are shown off better in the iPad It has improved tagging – keywording facilities. If you are not using tagging in your applications that support them then I suggest that you get into it. Last podcast I was waxing lyrical about how they were so useful within iPhoto, especially when combined with Smart folders

Comments or questions are welcome.

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Steve told me a funny story, although it probably wasn’t funny at the time. He was out and about shooting, in the no threatening way that photographers shoot things and out of the blue some cops come at him pointing as gun. The dim witted law enforcement officers, or maybe they just had poor eyesight though his camera was a gun.

Steve is a professional photographer and does wedding and event photography, he uses a Mac and is a Canon guy. Steve is enjoying the new DSLR cameras that do really good video capture. He has a Canon 7D. Straight away Steve was telling me that in his area things are picking up financially and business is good. I am so pleased so see such a positive outlook after all the doom and gloom that we see too often.

The iPad is a huge help to Steve in his business as he can so easily show photos to clients using the iPad. Since he bought his he can’t put it down. Uses it all the time for business and also for games. We all have to have some fun from time to time.

In my ramble I talk about my efforts to learn some cocoa programming to be able to make Mac and idevice applications. As part of that discussion I mention the use of MacJournal which I have been trying out and liking a lot. Telefonica get a poke for being a pile of rubbish for making me use a Windows machine and Internet Exploder. Then get an extra bad mark for forcing a download of an exe program file. Very bad !!

I was pleased to see that the Marsedit was updated and one of the things is that it will now let me work on Pages in the blog and not just the blog posts. Thats a big plus for a start. And the logo has a fancy new rocket in there…

There is a new Rich Text editor. The rich editor offers an alternative to MarsEdit’s beloved HTML text editor. While you are writing your blog posts you can style text, arrange images, create lists and more without using HTML code. For me though I actually like working in the HTML because I can add things to the html making it better for the search engines. You can still use html though and that has also been improved.

The updated HTML Editor with Advanced Syntax Highlighting. For those who prefer straight HTML we’ve added beautiful new syntax highlighting with different colours for attributes, keywords and tag structure, to make it easy to spot syntax errors at a glance.

Support for Custom Fields
For WordPress and other blogs that implement the WordPress API, you can configure custom fields in MarsEdit to customise the post editing interface.

iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom Integration
Browse your media collections to find the perfect photo for your post. When you attach an image, MarsEdit lets you specify the size, name, and alternative text in one easy step.

Scheduled Media Attachments
With scheduled media attachments you can compose your posts with rich media even when completely offline. When you are ready to publish, the images or other media files are uploaded to your blog and inserted into the post.

Not a huge difference in some ways and that could be a good thing so that we are not left wondering what we should be doing with huge differences, but the things that are added have for me made quite a change. I like how I can set the size of an image and also that I can get the images from iPhoto. I think there are more improvement that could be made with how it handles pictures what I like what I see so far.

David in Maidenhead near London UK has an iPad and used Bundlebox to get himself an iPad. Bundle box were swamped in the first few days but he managed to get one using his own credit card. Only took a few days to get the iPad in his hands. £128 for shipping, insurance and duty. There was a bit of sales tax that bumped it up a little. I don’t like the way they don’t advertise the prices with out taxes over in the US.

David got a 32Gb model and is very happy with the tablet computer from Apple so far. Very excited to do the unboxing and left work just a little early to get using it. He has a silicone case that he had ready for it as soon as it arrived. he tells me that it is an incredibly useful tool and carries it nearly everywhere.

David has a MiFi to use with the iPad and is paying £5 a month for up to 500MB a month. I was pleased that he gave me the information about how to get a MiFi from Three in the UK and unlock it with some software called DC Unlocker. He says it will cost me €15 to unlock the MiFi. I have already asked my mom to bring one to me in SPain when she visits next month.

The weight and size of the iPad seems just right in use and has been putting on applications. He did have to have a US iTunes account to be able to activate the device. Activating the device is pain really which tells us that you are best to have another computer to be able to use it with. You also have to have an iTunes account in the US to be able to download some of the applications until the iPad is released internationally.

iPhone applications on the iPad is not nice and look horrible. Much better to get a proper iPad application. Some applications though do come as universal apps which is one package that know which it is going onto and sets up right for the bigger screen when it needs to.

David says that reading books on the iPad is a pleasant experience and has read a whole book using the iPad already and prefers the book reading on the iPad compared to the Sony E Reader he also has.

A very useful tool would be the dock connector to hdmi so that you could connect the iPad to a TV

Dennis makes the podcast YourMacShow, a wealth of information for Mac users

He gets questions he doesn’t know the answers to but is not afraid to ask questions, he uses Skitch to grab screens and work with Screensteps the app that Allison Sheridan loves to use. Denis likes to use Things on the iPad and Circus ponies NoteBook

Notational Velocity and Simple note as per Merlin Mann and his ideas about how to take notes. I think a good idea is to spread tasks to certain applications so that you pigeon hole the task on the computer and help avoid information overload. Dennis is a big fan of PathFInder and will be talking about organising files and folders.

He has a workflow that means he put his clippings and notes into Circus Ponies NoteBook and works in Garageband to make the podcasts and makes a AAC version with the

He has a little trick to get the pictures of the icons to use in the podcasts from the applications. select the application in the folder and hit cmd C then paste them into Preview to get a nice set of logos. All you have to do is to save them out as a png file.

Dennis has 4 iPhones in the family and is a fan of the Magic mouse and would love to get a Drobo. Lots of gadgets including a Nikon D5000.

For the video editing Dennis has Final Cut Express but still will use ScreenFlow to top and tail the video with an intro and outro because it is really easy to output direct from it to where it has to go to and in the right resolution and format. Handbrake is in the mix for converting video files.

One of his favourite applications would be Busy Cal because it is user friendly and there are extra facilities in there too despite it being a little pricey. He is a Pixelmator user and logo design studio Pro for creating icon logos and business cards. We both miss CorelDraw though. Drop box gets a mention

Dennis has been messing with AppleScript do to some fancy geeky stuff and likes to dive deep into the system for little know video files for example

Kurt has been podcasting since 2008 and his topic of interest and expertise is Web Comics
He has interviewed people like David Reddick who created the Legend of Bill and Star Trek comics
Phil Foglio and many other comic artists.

This version of the podcast is the short version concentrating on the video end of things. There is another podcast that is quite a bit longer in which Kurt talks more about the worlrd of comics.

The reason that Kurt is being featured on the Video20Q podcast is because he told me some of hos plans to extend his podcast with video and is going to do the lone gun video interviews at a comic convention taking place in Chicago. Well not quite lone gun as he will have a friend helping him out with the video. He has an inexpensive JVC camera and will be interviewing artists at the show.

Kurt likes the manga and anime influence on comics is a manga fan, comics such as Dragon Ball but grew up with the Marvel style also

We also talk a bit about comic influenced movies such as, Sin City – Frank Miller
Watchmen – which I have not seen yet but Kurt reckons is too long, dry and painful to watch.
Kick ass Movie – story based on comics

Moving from tape to a hard drive camera bought a JVC for 600 dollar with a 80 gb HD
He is working with a friend called mike to record the interviews at the comic conventions
Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame will be at the event also.
Kurt is an Audacity user for the editing of audio, he tells me that he loves the Mac and may think of getting one for when he needs to do the video editing. Kurt has been known to make really long podcasts – up to 3 or 4 hours, he was using Talkshoe for the podcsasting but the quality was bad – still uses it for the hosting of the audio podcasts.

He was or is a World of Warcraft player and that got him into podcasting since 2008 has done 97 episodes, starting with WebComicPlanet.com

Here are a few links for those amongst you interested in the world of comics.
The Drunken Fools – created by Antoine Gagnon, this is the comic that I’m helping co-write based on my character submission Stubby the guardian angel skunk.

Web Comic Planet run by Byron Wilkins it’s a combination collective site run by fellow webcomic creators and links through a database over 2200 webcomic sites. This site also has a batch of tutorials and processes for up and coming webcomic authors and artists from veterans in their fields.

1977 The Comic – is Byron Wilkins actual webcomic site. About 1977 in Chicago loosely based on his life.

Danielle Corsetto, wonderful person and very active in the community

Penny Arcade These two are pretty much the godfathers of Webcomics. They didn’t start the community but they have been the most consistent and successful at it.

Eldon Cowgur created this and I’ll let you decide what you think about Astray 3.

Devils Panties – Jeannie Breeden consistently updates every single day without fail for many many years.

Johnny Saturn created by Scott Story This comic could easily rival DC and Marvel

Kurt has been podcasting since 2008 and his topic of interest and expertise is Web Comics
He has interviewed people like David Reddick who created the Legend of Bill and Star Trek comics
Phil Foglio and many other comic artists.

This version of the podcast is the short version concentrating on the video end of things. There is another podcast that is quite a bit longer in which Kurt talks more about the worlrd of comics.

The reason that Kurt is being featured on the Video20Q podcast is because he told me some of hos plans to extend his podcast with video and is going to do the lone gun video interviews at a comic convention taking place in Chicago. Well not quite lone gun as he will have a friend helping him out with the video. He has an inexpensive JVC camera and will be interviewing artists at the show.

Kurt likes the manga and anime influence on comics is a manga fan, comics such as Dragon Ball but grew up with the Marvel style also

We also talk a bit about comic influenced movies such as, Sin City – Frank Miller
Watchmen – which I have not seen yet but Kurt reckons is too long, dry and painful to watch.
Kick ass Movie – story based on comics

Moving from tape to a hard drive camera bought a JVC for 600 dollar with a 80 gb HD
He is working with a friend called mike to record the interviews at the comic conventions
Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame will be at the event also.
Kurt is an Audacity user for the editing of audio, he tells me that he loves the Mac and may think of getting one for when he needs to do the video editing. Kurt has been known to make really long podcasts – up to 3 or 4 hours, he was using Talkshoe for the podcsasting but the quality was bad – still uses it for the hosting of the audio podcasts.

He was or is a World of Warcraft player and that got him into podcasting since 2008 has done 97 episodes, starting with WebComicPlanet.com

Here are a few links for those amongst you interested in the world of comics.

The Drunken Fools – created by Antoine Gagnon, this is the comic that I’m helping co-write based on my character submission Stubby the guardian angel skunk.

Web Comic Planet run by Byron Wilkins it’s a combination collective site run by fellow webcomic creators and links through a database over 2200 webcomic sites. This site also has a batch of tutorials and processes for up and coming webcomic authors and artists from veterans in their fields.

1977 The Comic – is Byron Wilkins actual webcomic site. About 1977 in Chicago loosely based on his life.

Danielle Corsetto, wonderful person and very active in the community

Penny Arcade These two are pretty much the godfathers of Webcomics. They didn’t start the community but they have been the most consistent and successful at it.

Eldon Cowgur created this and I’ll let you decide what you think about Astray 3.

Devils Panties – Jeannie Breeden consistently updates every single day without fail for many many years.

Johnny Saturn created by Scott Story This comic could easily rival DC and Marvel

Here is the trailer for a gritty, dark psychological thriller based in a weather station in the back end of no where up in the mountains. Guns, shooting, sex, and death, this movie is not a chick flick.

Psychological thriller from Russia. A mysterious 18-year-old and two meteorologists are visited by a seductive beauty and her rich husband. When two detectives are sent up to investigate their disappearance, the secrets of their past merge with those of the weather station and they get sucked into a vortex of mistrust, betrayal and murder.

MarsEdit

As you know I have been very fond of Blogo the blogging software. What I like best is the way I can use it with Ping.FM. The way it deals with other blogging sites is OK but perhaps a little unconventional. I had looked at Marsedit before but decided that since I had bought Blogo I would stick with it and its foibles with regards the actual blogging on the WordPres sites.

Lately though I have been getting a bit miffed with the way it handles putting more than one image into the post. I have to say that MarsEdit does a far better job of handling images and where they are placed in the text. So I bit the bullet and bought the MarsEdit software. I like the way that the Categories and Tags are separated. The Options panel which slides in and out as a panel is handy for setting up the post.

Then there is the drop down list in the top right corner of the application where I can choose the make text bold or headline and do some of the basic formatting. Just noticed also that it is possible to add some more markup macros. So I will be setting one up that will put in images with a bit of spacing around it. This option actually takes the software that one big step to total flexibility, which I am really impressed with.

Would it be too much to ask for to have the ability to post to Ping.fm also.

So there you go I give a big thumbs up to MarsEdit and I will be using Blogo for the Ping thing.

I went to WordPress.org and looked in the forum and someone suggested that the Twitter Tools plug in was causing the problem. The problem bugging me for the last load of hours is gone. There is a chance too that the other problem I have had with WordPress will also vanish. I will know when I click Publish on this post.

The other problem is still there. Not too worried as I have been getting around that by using Blogo.

Steve Garfield is the author of the book – Get Seen: Online Video Secrets he has been doing video online since 2004, which would make him one of the first video bloggers out there. This was before YouTube came into existence so it was really cutting edge stuff. Obviously he was in an area with reasonable internet speeds.
Steve is the founder of the Boston Media Makers and has his own web site too, of course.

Only natural that with having so much experience with putting video online that he would be asked to write a book about it and that is how Get Seen: Online Video Secrets came about.

Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series)

In the book Steve talks about what cameras to get depending on what you plan to do. He agrees with me that audio is very important for video but at the same time believes that you should use what ever you have to hand. he loves the iPhone for that where he can take some video and have it online via QIK straightaway.

Despite having some expensive mics and cameras he will often be getting in there and getting the immediate results with much cheaper equipment like the Flip cameras

I am still pondering on the usefulness of the e book, Could see a case for it on a device like the iPad or other ebook reader. The schools market is going to get a big shake up thats for sure. Would not see a use on a desktop or a laptop – We open up web pages if we want to get information that way

Or theres the PDF – except that the PDF format from Adobe is not always that safe to use – so some people would decline to open such a file. That is those people that don’t want to leave themselves open to what Bart Buschotts would call Arbitrary code execution on the computer

The ebook readers & creators I have looked at on the OSX platform so far leave me totally cold as far as the reading experience is concerned. I tried out Stanza, Calibre & Sigil & had a look at Indesign also. Some apps are more readers & organisers of e books than creation tools.

Looking in Calibre it seems that it should be able to send an e book to the iPhone but I have not managed to make it do so yet. I thought it Could be that I would have to have the iPhone USB tethered where I am expecting it to work like Stanza, In which you click on share & then you get to opportunity to download the ebook in the iPhone app via wifi.

I was able to download the UK Guardian News paper into Calibre & then I open it in Stanza to push to the mobile device. Not a good reading experience for the Guardian ebook on the iPhone though, There is a poor quality image of the front page & then pages which have a header with a link & a short part of the story below that.

When you get it in the iPhone in Stanza – you can’t click on any link because the whole screen is taken over by controls of the book, Left side to go back, Right to go forward & the centre is for getting to the interface of the app. So none of the links will take you anywhere – When reading it in the Calibre reader the links do work, & take you to the Guardian web site. This example helps to make the case I think for Newspapers & Magazines to have an app rather than ebook distribution for E readers

There is quite a variety in terms of quality interface & feature sets in the ebook apps I looked at. Stanza is a reader & convertor which also has an app to sync with on the mobile device it isn’t at all a creator of epub books & it recommends using Calibre for creation of the e books.

Calibre is more full featured but confusing at first look because of having such an ugly interface
Obviously started life as an open source or Windows program, It fell out of top of the ugly tree & hit every branch on the way down.

Sigil is more of the creation tool & is pretty enough. Still needs work in terms of ease of use but does the job of creating the epub format e books. All you need to do is to drop in some text & images & the job is nearly done

I already have a Canon Vixia HF100 which does HD video & does a good job of it. My friend Paul has a similar Panasonic camera.
What we are both looking for is something in the Prosumer line of video recording devices.
I want a camera that has the 3 CCDs so that I get better quality video & also has better controls that you can find on the better cameras, like focus & zoom rings on the lens for example so that manual features can be better used to enhance the final video clips.

Paul talks to me about his reasons for wanting a Prosumer camera & what he plans to use it for. For Myself I want something that I can capture video for microstock video sites as well as the possibility of doing some corporate work & even some narrative shooting.

Because of my needs I did wonder about the DSLR cameras that also shoot HD video such as the Canon 7D & the Canon 5D Mk2 & even the new Canon T2i. Nikon also have DSLRs that will shoot video. Many good things have been said about these DSLR cameras & their abilities to shoot video.
If you have good glass on them the video is extremely good quality especially in the area of Depth of field. Some people will use depth of field converters on cameras like the EX1 to get the same sort of results

Of course though there are some disadvantages too.
I think the main one is the lack of good audio input – usually you will only find the 3.5mm jack input. Then you would need to use a juiced link or beachtech pre amp to be able to get good results from connecting a XLR type mic. I have connected an XLR mic to my Vixia though just by using a converter connector cable & for what I do it is OK

The other thing with the DSLR is the length of shot you can take. I think the max is going to be about 12 minutes. If you wanted to shoot a conference or maybe other events which are long then you would come up short. I am leaning more towards a proper video camera like the NX5 or the AX2000 from Sony

But Like i said I have seen many posts & reviews of the latest DSLRs in which the film makers are raving about how good they are.

Obviously there is a bit of a gold rush going on here and the makers of the software realise that there is a premium to be had by being the first iPad apps in the App Store.

All of this is a mute point for the thousands of Apple fans world wide that have been let down by Apple. I did see one person say that Steve Jobs lied to us about the date of availability of the iPad. Seems that it took more than the 60 days. Whether it was a lie depends on the intent at the time of saying what he did.

Apple has forced many fans to go to buy an iPad from Ebay at inflated prices and have to pay the postage and probably the import duty also. I suppose it is all down to how many units they could get made in the time available. Would it have been better to have a date when they could get the iPad out to everyone worldwide? Seems that Apple have got used to the idea of the drip feed method, starting off with the announcement followed by availability  and  distribution to the first class citizens of the Apple World then moving on to the next layers down.

Well it won’t make much difference in the long run Apple will still sell tons of these devices anyway. My plan still remains the same, I could buy one for my wife because she deserves the love. Seeing as I have the iMac and MacBook and Mac Mini and iPhone, I don’t need one but I want one. I would be content to stroke the iPad belonging to my nearest and dearest. Although I would be tempted to sell a few items to gather some cash together. I could even sell my iPhone as I hardly ever make phone calls and I am finding the 3G model I have, to be slow to do things lately. On top of that I am sort of saving for a Video camera and that will get priority, spending on other things will only slow me down in aquisition of the camera hardware that I need and will earn me some money.

What about you ??

Following the week with no electric there was, certainly as far as I was concerned, too much time in the garden trying to sort out the devastation the storm left behind. Our garden is full of mostly cork trees and a few pines. Five of the pine trees fell down and all  of the cork trees lost branches, such was the weight of the snow. I still hate gardening, even if I get to use a chainsaw.

I did have interviews arranged during the month and the people were unable to keep the appointment. One of them seems to be very busy and the other had a bad cold. These have been re scheduled but has left us without the interview content. That is the problem with the fact that the shows rely on content coming in from external sources.

I did do something different last month also with the production of the Mac20Q ramble as a video. I enjoyed that experience because I did it with green screen in Final Cut Express. Of course it does take longer to arrange such a production, but I thought it came out well enough that I will do more of those. Good to have the video posted out in varoius places too all pointing back to the show notes for the audio podcast. I have bought a set of LED lights to illuminate the green screen and I will post a picture of the set in the studio shortly.

The lack of podcasts was overall for the Answer20Q network and I think I will have to do some catching up. Also though I will have to get a schedule. I plan to chose a day of the week for publishing a Mac20Q podcast and do that once a week. The Video 20Q can be a every other week and the others I will aim for one a month and I’ll see if I can ramp it up when the summer is over.

During the summer I work in a camp site, a bit of cash is nice,  I improve my Spanish and get to practice my German speaking too. It does mean though that the podcasting lessens during the summer also.  I have started work for this year already but until the end of May it will probably only be weekends. That works out quite nicely and I am not looking forward to the working 10 hours each day in a reception that has no air conditioning. The owners are too tight to look after the staff at this place. At least maybe I can write a script or two in the quiet moments. It is a shame though that it will have to be as today written using a Windows computer and a Spanish keyboard which has a few extra characters and a few in different places.

Funny thing about camp sites is that you get used to seeing people walking to the showers in the dressing gown and a toilet roll in the hand. Maybe I should think about a story involving a camp site as a location. I have seen one or two other funny things here.

I have started work on a story /  comedy sketch that I want to make as a short movie. Writing it first in Scrivener as a narrative as the first draft and for the second draft I will make it into a screenplay- script. I will perhaps keep doing that in Scrivener but I might try using Celtx which is dedicated script writing software. Planning to send the script to my son who is a professional cameraman because I can envisage him helping me both with the camera part of the filming and with the acting side of it. I need 3 actors for the job and I could see two of my sons and a friend filling the roles nicely.

I have not  written a screenplay before so I am also in the process of learning how to do that, luckily I found a web site that shows the correct way of doing it as per the industry standard and gives good practice type of tips too. After I have the short film made I will publish the script also on Video20Q.

APRIL FOOL !
Let you know more when I have had a chance to play with it a little more.

APRIL FOOL !

If you want to know what this was all about select the text above &  read between the lines, literally……..

Got to have some fun sometimes.

Only changed to the Mac properly as he was a Windows fan up until about a year ago. He did have contact with Macs in 2003 with a Bluberry iMac which was sold through Ebay before getting any use from Ben. He tried a previous Hackintosh but was unsuccessful but now for the last 7 months or so has running OSX. Ben even produces a Mac Podcast and it doesn’t make much difference to his approach to the podcast.

Ben has been with Mac OSX long enough now that he finds it confusing to go back to Windows. He was telling me that he was very untidy in the way he arranges his files on the desktop and all over the place. The audio connections baffle Ben for how it works and how is able to record with his Heil PR20 mic connected to a Yamaha mixer. We talked microphones and I told him about my Behringer B2 studio mic I use for the podcasting and the mixer and also about the Shure SM58 which get used with the Canon Vixia camera.

Ben is planning to make a video podcast at some time and is finishing up with a tech based podcast he has been doing moving on to a podcast that he will do with a friend that is a truck driver. It will be stories and tales from the road. His mate is a hoot that loves talking so should be a fun podcast.

Terminator surprisingly gets a mention in the podcast – ‘I’ll be Back’ Automator and Applescript are not part of the staple diet for Ben, he found it a bit fiddly to use. Talking about tagging of files I mention MetaX which is an application that will tag video files.

He gets his Blackberry filled with podcasts and music by bringing in content with an RSS feed reader, and tells me how Windows media player messed things up with bring in some of his music.
Most expensive application he has is CS3 for Photoshop and uses an application that works out colour. The first things that he would put on a new machine would be TinyGrab which is a screenshot application that would be similar to Skitch. Ben also has to have Skype on his Mac along with Text Expander. I like Text Expander too and I have recently upgraded to the latest version. Ben likes to use Textexpander to do some automatic spell checking.

DropBox gets a recommendation, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Filezilla has hot been working as well as he would like so I suggested that he might try Cyberduck for FTP file transfer.
Bens’ Twitter usage gets the Tweetie application and he has recently found it to be not functioning as well as he would like, but prefers if because he doesn’t like Adobe Air applications like Tweetdeck. Memory sucking pile of rubbish, but II have been using Tweetdeck because it has so much more in the way of facilities.

Ben uses GarageBand for his podcasting and has made about 80 podcasts on his Mac. He does other creating things with the Mac too like images creating in Photoshop.

Follow Mac20Q on Twitter

Mark was at the MacWorld 2010 and had a great time there. He met with a pile of his mates and enjoyed meeting many face to face to face for the first time. Mark bought a few toys there, not least a photography application which he got for $130 instead of the usual $180. Mark attended the Nosillacast castaways party, which must have been fun, especially meeting the venerable Allison Sheridan.

He is taking it step by step with the photos increasing his knowledge and skill while also using the camera to take sport shots of his girls playing football (soccer) and the camera being in a mode Canon have set for sports.

Back ups are all well taken care of with a system that includes, DVD’s, BackBlaze, Carbon Copy Cloner and Time machine. Something that a photographer really has to do to protect the portfolio or archive of photos. Using a To Do list is not a good idea for Mark as like me the items on the list are less likely to get done than noting things on a piece of paper.

Mark was a super bloke to talk to on the Mac20Q Podcast and I know that you will enjoy hearing what he had to say about how he uses his Mac, a 20 in iMac. he would like an iPhone but can’t switch away from Verizon which doesn’t have the iPhone available. Mark is sorely tempted by an iPad though and can see many uses for it in his daily business.

I also comment on using Kinemac, After Effects, and about learning what Motion can do to make a video animation fly through that could be an intro to the videos I make.

This video is made using my new green screen set up in my studio, with the new LED lights I have bought. These lights are work lights that I bought for 25 euro each at Lidl. I got five of them and I might buy another two or three. I used 4 of what I have to light the green screen and the other one to light the subject. I do have one more small video light that is the type you can fit on top of the camera but works well on a light stand as a fill light.
I did put some white gauze material over the light to soften the light and I might at some time see about getting some filters to put on them to warm the light up. Not too necessary because it is easy enough to colour correct in Final Cut. Still have to do some more working out to get the set up right but pleased with the results so far.

I also mention another Mac in the family. My 70 year old mom sent me a text message to tell me she was buying things in the Apple Store in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre in Birmingham. She got a white MacBook and iWork & one on one training to go with it. Tomorrow she will go into the store for them to move her data off her old Windows laptop.

Tell me how you would cope without email and power

Contact me by email !!

Ever since Douglas’ Mother mysteriously vanished when he was 8 years old, his life has been controlled by panic, fear and desire. Now, two decades later, Douglas returns home to his small industrial town to take care of his dying father. In a bar one night he finds a mysterious wallet and in attempts to return it, enters a world of lust, deceit and murder; a world that holds the secret to his family’s tortured past.

The sepia look of the trailer is interesting and I was impressed with the sound design in the trailer. High drama and a Film Noir look about it. Violent and bloody – captivating….

Thanks to @Kinkisafink for the suggestion for this weeks’ Film of the week.

At least if I get the power back and I can use my computers again I will be able to make some more screencasts showing how to do some things with various software. I have to finish one I started already about using MarsEdit. This will be a bit of a comparison with using Blogo for which I made 2 screencasts last week. I am using Blogo to make this post by the way. Also coming, when I am able to is the interview with Ben from DrinkBrainJuice, the developers of Blogo. He has told me that he will give Mac20Q a copy of Blogo to be won by the listeners.

I have a mind to make some more screencasts about Scrivener the writers software. I only scratched the surface with what it can do in the previous screencasts. I was using Scrivener the other day with a project I am writing at the moment. It is a comedy story which I will first make as a story and when I have finished I will turn it into a screen play. Right from the off I see it as a short movie and I have actors in mind to play the parts. Can’t say more about it right now except that ladies underwear is involved.

When I do the screenwriting part of the job I may give Celtx a bit of a run. Celtx is specialist screenwriting software which gives FinalDraft a run for its money. It read the FinalDraft format and the only downside that there is is that sometimes the output does do such a good job of representing the time in a script. Maybe I should see if I can get a test copy of the software to do a proper comparison. There is another screencast possible out of that.

Thanks to Paul Shadwell for telling me about the Sony AX2000 video camera which looks very good. It is 500 dollars cheaper than the similar Pro version NX5 and has the same lens and many other of the same specs. I think I could live without the GPS and the time code and the ability to add a memory pack to be able to record for up to 11 hours. Mind you with only 500 dollars being the difference it may be worth saving the pennies for a while longer.

I was also interested in looking at the Canon 7D or 5D for video. There are some advantages and some drawbacks to using a DSLR rather than a video camera, but quite a few videographers are very impressed with the video shooting DSLR cameras. With a video camera you will get better, smoother zooming features and much better audio. Getting around the audio is possible though with recording it separately

iPad Available in US on April 3 Pre-Order on March 12 CUPERTINO, California—March 5, 2010—Apple® today announced that its magical and revolutionary iPad will be available in the US on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. In addition, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April. Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple’s online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store. “iPad is something completely new,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

link: iPad Available in US on April 3

That is the word directly from Apple that US customers get the iPad before the rest of the world. April 3rd and it looks like non US customers will have to wait until late April. Probably due to the manufacturing problems that have been rumoured. By the way only the US will be getting iBooks on the iPad too. What we need is a company that takes care of us in Europe.

iBooks
The books will be in the ePub format and I am looking into making ePub books. I have downloaded one application that may be good for making eBooks of this type. What would be handy though is to have that capability in Pages from the iWorks suite of applications. I will make an ePub book an let you know more about how it goes. Could be interesting for podcasters as a way for us to get our content out there. The e book could have the links in to the podcasts

I talked to Paul Boag who is a popular guy, there have been over 400 downloads of the Mac20Q Podcast 84. Paul is a web developer that goes out extensively to talk about making web sites and I found him to be very interesting.

Then there was Video20Q podcast 17 featuring the filmmaker Jon Reiss, who made the movie ‘Bomb It.’ I watched it and was impressed. Great that it tied in with what I have been doing already with the Graffiti Podcast, you can watch the first two episodes of the Graffiti Podcast on YouTube also.

Peter Boodts from Belgium was the next to be featured on Mac20Q. I find it amazing that I get to talk to so many interesting people doing some super stuff with the Mac, and Peter was no exception.

Andrew Jones, who is a British guy living in New Jersey in the U.S. doing photography, art, web design, video and all sorts of artistic endeavour was featured on the Mac20Q Podcast 86. He has set up a web site that he would like to see as a community of Mac users helping each other, which follows on from the work he does helping Mac users near where he lives. For a change I came upon Andrew via YouTube instead of Twitter, where I seem to meet with most people.

Screencasts
During February I also posted two screencasts showing how to use Blogo. This came about due a bug in WordPress that was annoying me and Blogo filled the bill in terms of avoiding the bug and since then I have gone on to love using it. I am using Blogo to make this post. I expect to be talking to the developer of Blogo soon and he will be donating a copy of Blogo for listeners to win. So keep an eye out for that.

YouTube
I have also been putting out video from the local Carnaval, in Platja d’Aro. One video of Josep Marin a magician that has been seen over 800 times and another of Xirois Drummers from Girona. The drummers were astounding, I loved getting into the thick of them to film the shots for that.

Twitter
I am still working on growing the numbers of my Twitter followers and I am as of this moment up to 13,619 followers for @Wizardgold and there are over 3000 followers on @Video20Q plus another 2000 approx on @Mac20Q. Trying to keep Mac20Q for Mac related things and Video20Q for film making items. Wizardgold will be for general tweets and Rt’s of the other things to ensure max coverage. Well pleased with the growth of the Wizardgold account seeing as I only had 2000 followers in December.

All in all it was a busy month and great to be creating content for the listeners and viewers. Let me know if you would like to be featured on any of the podcasts, would love to hear from you. I will ask you 20Q about whatever subject you would like to talk about.

[contact-form 1 “Contact form 1”]

I mention that there are keyboard shortcuts and menu items to be able to format your text in the post and do things like add lists. Of course very important to me is ability to publish a podcast in the blog post with Blogo. I show you how it is done with Blog.

Our chat was very informal and we had a laugh along the way. He is also into video creation and uses a Canon video camera to capture his images. I met up with Andrew first of all on YouTube which is a surprise seeing as Twitter seems to be the place these days. Mind you seeing as we are both into vide then it should not be a surprise.

Andrew is a photographer too and loves nothing better than getting out and about taking pictures of amongst other things , Fire Hydrants. Have a listen to the podcast because he talks about what he has in his camera bag and also about the workflow he uses to take something from initial idea to a finished art work.

In August 2009, a special teaser promo was created to raise awareness for a horror feature film called ‘INVASION OF THE NOT QUITE DEAD’ which has the support of such names as: Tom Savini, Kevin Pollak, Ken Russell, David Hess, Lloyd Kaufman, HG Lewis, Lee Boardman, Justin Kerrigan & talk show host Jonathan Ross…

The teaser was shot on S16mm film on location at a small farm in Kent and stars horror veteran Leslie Simpson (Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Doomsday), Efisia Fele and Frank Jakeman.

Having to run when they see a car with blue lights on top kind of makes things more difficult. The police will prosecute even if the painting is any good and enhances the locality. Can’t expect them to make a decision based on artistic taste. It is all black and white to them, either guilty or not.

In the next podcast I will be looking again at the graffiti in Girona. Far better quality than what I have in this video and the intro and outro picture I have used in this video will be in that video.

You know what? I like it and finding to be a great way to work with my blogs. I can do keywording and enter the categories, although I did get a little confused at first it is pretty easy. Have a look at the video to see how it works.

In this video I show also how to use Blogo to deal with un-moderated comments as well as using the bookmarklet that will allow you to place YouTube video in your post. In the next video I will show how to place a Slide Show from Flickr. Wicked eh?

Another thing to come in these quick tips will be publishing a podcast in the blog and making sure that the category is correct so that it goes in the right feed, you can see some of that in this video too.

Look out also for a video that will make a comparison with some other blogging software that I have also tested.

In the story an apathetic clinical psychiatrist who prefers treating the criminally insane is forced to confront his inner demons when his criminally insane patients are replaced with the clinically heartbroken.
Written/Directed by Angelo Bell

Setting up a database with Bento and using the information stored in record that you have already in Address Book and getting access in the same place to iCal events and Apple Mail.

Using data that is stored in one place and one place only is a nirvana for databases. That way you can?t have different versions of the same data and lose your database integrity. That?s what I want to have this work so that I can collect the data in Address book and so long as I put in a keyword in the Note fired then the information will also propagate into Bento also.

So I don?t have to have Bento open all the time but when I do open the application I will have all at my finger tips.

Why I think Bento is so useful is because it is easy to set up extra fields for information that you want to track and even though it isn?t a relational database like Filemaker is it so much better that keeping your data in a spreadsheet table.

Technorati Tags: Bento, Address Book, Email, Apple Mail

Jon made a movie called Cleopatra’s Second Husband’

A diabolically clever psychological suspense movie. An assured and daring dramatic feature debut for writer-director Reiss. Kevin Thomas LA Times
Jon Reiss debut feature is a harrowing yet delicious and often wickedly funny study . . . one of the most unusual power struggles in cinema history. Filmmaker Magazine
Fascinating, strange, twisted and f**ed up . . . I’ve never seen anything like it. Juan Morales Detour Magazine
An insidiously clever movie, a variation on those creepy 1960s British classics, ‘The Servant’ and ‘The Collector’. John Hartl The SeattleTimes
First-time director Jon Reiss evinces indisputable control over his material, which most directly recalls the Pinter-Losey classic “The Servant” in its look at an insidious power shift between unsavory men in a household. Todd McCarthy Daily Variety

You can buy the book ‘Think Outside the Box Office’ from Jon’s Blog and it will take you to a page with more information as well as descriptions of all the bonus gifts we provide when you buy the book from our website. Free movie tickets, discounts on distribution services and until December 15th 2 raffles – one for an OpenIndie membership, the other for 3 hours of consultation from Jon Reiss. Plus the book is discounted at $21.95!

Other News
Veoh the video sharing site goes bankrupt and out of business.
The first episode of the Graffiti Podcast is available at Graffitipodcast.com

More on Using Illustrator

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can see that if my Mom gets a Mac, and she has said that she is looking into it. I would be able to help her out with using screen sharing even when she is in England and I am here in Spain. Also I have some applications on my iMac that I might want to control from the Macbook either because I am too lazy to get off the sofa or if I am away somewhere else.
I will have to set the iMac to wake up when I contact it for the screenshare. Those applications would be the ones that I have bought for the iMac but are only licensed to work on one machine. I don’t like those licenses. If I have bought software I should be able to use on which ever of my computers, it can even be set so that they can’t be used on two computers at the same time. I have not yet worked out how to be in two places at the same time, so no worries there.

I suppose though that using screen sharing will be like being in two places at the same time allowing me to use an iMac paid application from my MacBook. Then when the iPad comes I could use an application on there to do the same. Now that makes the iPad even more useful.

It worked and So I come back to Mars Edit to see if I can do something similar to get a Podcast into a post from a url. You can click on Media and do an upload to the blog of your media. But what I wanted is to continue using Libsyn because I like the stats from Libsyn.

So same as with Blogo you have to go to the menu Post and click on Edit Enclosure. In the dialog that comes up you can paste in the url and even cick on a button that will fetch the type and the length of the podcast in bytes from the url.

For the fact that MarsEdit has the box ready to past in the url and that fetch details functionality it gets the nod on that side of the job.

I have also noticed that in the edit window there is a field especially for Tags or Keywords and a separate area to the right for Categories. In Blogo you have to put in a hash symbol to say if it is a category and it all goes in one place. I think I prefer the MarsEdit way.

I am still waiting to find out if Marsedit can post to Ping.fm. I use that a lot and it is a deal breaker for me. I have the paid version of Blogo and I like its ease of use and the Ping thing. Will not pay out extra money for MarEdit when Blogo does all but is a little more fiddly for some things.

The other possibility is MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software, and this one does look like I might be able to add the tags too.

The reason for looking at software to do this rather than go into the WordPress installation is because at the moment when I want to publish, WordPress always fails the first time. It usually gets saved as a draft and I can go back in to edit it up to the auto save on the draft. But it is really annoying.

As you can see from the previous post ‘Struggling with RSS‘ that went in from Blogo I can put in picture OK That was done with a drag and drop. With this one I have to click on a media button. After clicking the Media button another window comes up and there is drag and drop. Blogo does a better job of the placing of the image. I like to have some padding around the picture, as it makes the text read better.

I do like the way that you type into one window and there is a preview window that shows what the post will look like too. Adding links is pretty good too with MarsEdit.

It is hard to choose between the two of them. Blogo does connect up to Ping.fm nicely though, and I do use that a lot.

I think I will have to give both of these more testing.

What makes me think that it is contained within one of the posts from Mac20Q is that fact that the feed was working when I moved some posts over to a temporary category and the problem was not present. Also all of the other category feeds seem to be working, so it has to be to do with a post just in that category.

I will get to the bottom of this at some point in time.

By the way, What do you think of the new logo in the header? I had no internet for some time yesterday so I set my self the task of creating a new logo.

At my Spanish class yesterday we we trying on costumes for Carnaval which is taking place this weekend. A bit of clowning around

Paul started building websites back in 1994 when the web was simple and grey backgrounds were the order of the day.

Now he is the primary web strategist at Headscape and one of its three founders. Most of his day is spent helping clients get the most out of their website.

When he is not doing client work he talks and writes about web design. He speaks regularly on web design both in the UK and abroad. Engagements have included SXSW, @media, FOWD and the Highland Fling. He also hosts the longest running and most popular web design podcast over at boagworld.com.

Between speaking enagements Paul is endevouring to complete a book as well as writing articles for .net magazine, Think Vitamin and other publications.

Paul confessed to be a country yokel or Redneck because of where he lives, so we chatted about what it is like living or working in rural England. Paul though surely must be too tech savvy to qualify as a yokel anyway. he is a fairly recent switcher and said much of the change was down to the fact all his contacts at conferences were using sexy MacBookPro machines and he was embarrassed to get out the Windows laptop computer. Now that is part of the mac community we will forgive him his winding up of Mac Users in the past.

Paul runs a web design business and is well known enough that he is asked to talk at events like SXSW. He gave me a few recommendations for Mac software and iPhone applications. MagicPress is an application he says is good to use with the Magic Mouse but warns not to set up too many fancy touch commands for the mouse or it will get confused.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I also filmed some by a playground near to the Carrer Migdia. All in all a variety of street art and graffiti including some good creative stuff and some of the usual rubbish.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I love the Magritte references in the video

Today’s podcast is about the first year of Mac 20 Questions and a bit about what I plan for the show in the second year.
Well it has been one year and a couple of days with the Mac20Q blog and podcast
It has morphed into a whole series of podcasts called 20 Questions

Last year when I started the podcast I was bashing out a podcast nearly every other day in order to build up a catalogue of podcasts for listeners to find when the arrived at the site and I kept up a fairly frantic pace through most of the year, only slowing down when I was working during the summer in the camp site reception.

I have had good feed back and great following from quite a few people during the year and each podcast at the moment has about 200 downloads in the first 30 days but keeps on getting downloaded after that. The most popular people like the photographer Steve Carty from Canada has been listened to 984 times at this moment and there are quite a few like the Rob Hanson, Adam Christianson and Don MacAllister episodes which have been downloaded more than 700 times.

The podcast still has not reached the critical mass and gone viral but I believe it will given time. I keep the Apple rumour mongering to nil if I can. I only ramble for about 5 mins at the start of the podcast and I like to make the podcast about the person that is the Mac user or the film maker or the photographer.

Creativity is what interests me and even the lowliest Mac user gets doing some creative things with his or her Mac because that is what Macs are so good at. It is no surprise that some of the Mac interviews have been able to be re packaged and sent out in Photo20Q or Video 20Q or Writers 20 Q

Give a donation to the Haiti Fund

So the other monetary comment for me to make now is about donations, as in donation ware like you have with software. Other podcasters work with this model so I put up a donation button. Someone will use it one day I expect, although if cash is short and you are thinking that you would rather give to a charity than pay for what I am giving away for free anyway – then the desperate people of Haiti have a better claim to the money right now.

My aim still is to be a professional podcaster and seeing as other people have got there then I should be able to also. Persistence and loving what I do should win the day eventually. Compared to a bricks and mortar business where you could see 3 to five years before your business starts to see a profit – being a podcaster is not at all bad in the scheme of things.

It has been a good year for Mac 20 Questions and looking towards the second year I expect things to get even better. Video20Q is really taking off and thats exciting, Writers 20 Q has also been great with having best selling authors like David Hewson on the show and successful audio book podcasters like JC Hutchins. There are more interviews to come with novelists and writers.

Updating the web presence

It was getting a bit tedious with looking after each of the podcasts on its own website with all the WordPress installations. WP is pretty easy but becomes a chore when you have a few sites that you have to be updating WP from time to time, and also the plugins too. So I have just found out that I can do it all from one site with category podcasting . Enter stage right Answer20Q.com

I can re direct the visitors of the current web sites by forwarding them at hosting level with Godaddy so the change should be fairly seamless. And I can publish each of the podcasts separately as categories.
There is some messing about with the RSS feeds a little – although that is made a little easier by using feed burner. I only have to change the feed going into feedburner and that is a lot less painful than trying to change the feed at iTunes.

For Mac20Q there have been some a few screencasts, with a Mac tip or two and I plan this year to do more with video. I have my green screen and the Shure SM58 mic that I can connect to the camera so I am all set to go.

Thanks to all the guests that have been on the shows, couldn’t have done it without you. Huge thanks to all the listeners likewise.

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PluralEyes for Final Cut Pro

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Try it out for yourself at Singular Software

There are a lot of people stating there preferences for the iPad. Loads of negative comments as well as positive ones. The most telling are the comments from those that managed to get their hands on the iPad at the event and they all say only good things. Andy Inahtko, Stephen Fry , to mention a couple of them. Here are a few things I came across initially mixed in with a couple of thoughts of my own.

Leave a comment below and tell us whether you will be buying one or not. Tell us what you plan to do with it. What application do you think will be your most used app from the ones you have already on your iPhone

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I like the look of it, I want one but don’t really need one. My wife will be getting one of these beauties though. She is a teacher and has been on the look out for something exactly like this for using with her work. She wanted a MacBook Air for the lightness of it and this is lighter. The iPad has a super looking version of Keynote on there for $10 and she can do all her information management that teachers have to do easily on this device.

Best of all – She may let me touch it from time to time, perhaps even use it?

Fail to understand why there are some bitching about it not having Flash which is a resource hungry pile of rubbish we really don’t need.

I would have thought there would be a camera on the iPad though.

Some complain about it not being 16:9 in shape and I wonder about that too seeing as it is touted as a perfect device for watching movies, but then it does have to do other jobs too, the book reader thing and general usage is best with the shape that it is I think.

One nice thing is that all the iPhone apps that are there already work on the iPad. Those I have bought already will go straight on there without re buying. There are file management apps in the App Store already so the people griping about it not having file management on it are talking out of places where the sun doesn’t shine.

What are your views on the iPad now ??

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Time for all the rumours to be quashed and all the picking apart the bones of whatever Apple comes out with today. 10 inch form factor with an iPhone like interface. Will it be fast? Will it have Kindle like abilities? Will it be a game changing platform that will take the world by storm. Are you going to buy one as soon as it is in the store?

It is still all questions right now as I write this but in eight hours time there will be an explosion on the internet when every Mac fan has one topic to talk about. The iSlate, iTablet or the iPad. For sure some will be deleriously happy with the new toy and many will snipe at it, saying well it doesn’t do this or doesn’t do that. It will depend on whether the hype has been over done or not.

There are number which indicate that a lot of people will buy one what ever it looks like and whatever they think it can do. I am sure that if I had the cash I would be one the first in the queue even though I already have a MacBook and my iMac, an iPhone  and a Mac Mini.

In the picture above the concept artist put in a pen type of thing to use alongside the taken for granted touch interface. Could be a good idea for the artists among us to have a pen / brush interface and not have to resort to finger painting.

What would you like to see in the upcoming device? Will it have a dock to use on a desk and connect with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse?

Have Apple done deals with content providers so that you can download books movies as well as your music. More deals perhaps with mobile phone companies to give it constant internet like with the iphone?

Leave a comment below or fill in the form to send Mac20Q an email.

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Zak Forsman is an American independent filmmaker whose emotionally-charged work is known for highly authentic performances and beautiful compositions. His work has been praised by Ain’t It Cool News as “Brilliant” and “Absolutely Gorgeous.”

His stories depict compelling human threads in a poetic and minimalist style. Zak has directed two shorts films, “I Fucking Hate You” and “Model/Photographer” which have won several international audience, jury and festival awards. He is currently developing two new features for production in 2010 and 2011 and serves as editor of the New Breed blog at The Workbook Project.

His wish is simply to provide a safe environment for the actors to explore the hopes, longing and loneliness of their characters in an effort to capture their humanity truthfully, and without judgement. Considering himself less a director and more of an interpreter, Zak nurtures a family-like atmosphere on set through guided improvisation and radical collaboration to elevate each artist’s creative contribution to the project.

The hope is to realize an understanding of the film that could not have been discovered alone. Further, for the stories to resonate in very real and unexpected ways with an audience starved for meaning in their motion pictures.

FILMOGRAPHY
I Fucking Hate You (2009)
Heart of Now (2010)
Eloquent Graffiti (2011)

Sabi Pictures is his production company which he founded with his friend Kevin. He likes a high level of collaboration in his movies. Zak explains that he like to let the actors improvise  as the make the movie.

We also discuss what got him into movies and how he got to discover film makers such as Tarkovsky after being into war type movies inspired by movies like Platoon.

Zak is always itching to get the camera working on set filming something. Planing to write two screen plays in 2010. He will be working with people involved with Sabi Pictures.

He uses the SAG ultra low budget (Screen Actors Guild) agreement to determine the money spent on his movies.

Zak told me about the way he likes to use the casting process, letting the actor play off each other and see how the work together and how they can take direction .

Video20Q News

In my ramble at the start I talk about going to Girona and shooting video in a squat inhabited by some hippy types. They invited me in to see the graffiti they had in there place.

This morning I got my Shure SM58 microphone which I connected to the Canon Vixia HF100 via a converter cable going from XLR to 3.5mm jack. Works a treat and I am pleased that I will be able to get better audio with my shooting video. It will do until I can get a wireless lavalier mic. Although I do have a clip mic I can use with my Zoom H2 audio recorder.

I comment on a couple of cameras that I would like to try out. A JVC HM100 and the Sony NX5 which is only just becoming available now.

As you know I love using ScreenFlow to do my Screencasts and I thought I would have a look at what else Telestream do and this seems like it will be a great piece of software for some video professionals.

There is a trial version so I can only suggest that you check it out for yourself. Tell me what you think about it. I am in the process of testing it too, so lets compare notes.

Ultimate desktop video encoding for media professionals

Episode Encoder Pro is a powerful cross-platform desktop video encoding application that includes all the features and functionality of Episode Encoder plus support for advanced professional formats: MXF, GXF, H.264 High Profile, DVCPRO HD (with Final Cut Pro), mobile multi-bit rate and more with unlimited batch processing. Also includes complimentary instructional video, ”Complete Training for Episode Encoder and Episode Encoder Pro”.

Unrivaled Professional Format Flexibility

• Supports virtually every SD & HD video & audio file format, in and out
• Encode to new media plus high-end professional formats, such as GXF, H.264 High Profile, DVCPRO HD, MPEG-2/4 Transport Stream, mobile multi-bit rate and more
• Unlimited batch processing

Optimized by Media Experts for Media Experts

• Includes a wide range of encoding templates or create your own customized settings
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• Choose from hundreds of video and audio filters to enhance your media files
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Scalable desktop to server solution

• Upgrade to server-based Episode Engine Pro with ultra-fast job processing for high-volume, time-critical workflows

Includes Training DVD: Complete Training for Episode Encoder and Episode Encoder Pro by Nate Caplin

Final Cut Integration for Mac OS X Users

Includes direct integration with Compressor 3. Jobs can be submitted directly from the Final Cut Pro timeline. Expands Final Cut/Compressor access to virtually every video & audio file format available. Provides extensive list of formats. Maximizes user control of the encoding process to optimize output quality. Use as a stand-alone video encoder for all single-file and batch encoding needs.

Today’s interview is with Adam Weiss who uses a Mac Pro that is a quad processor antique and also a MacBook. Not only that he has hackintoshed a Dell mini9, just for fun and using on trips where he can’t carry much. He says it is useful but very slow in use. Good as a portable storage device and quiet to use as a recording computer and works with the microphones he has.

Adam Weiss is a successful educational podcaster and podcast consultant, as well as a sought-after digital media strategist. An expert interviewer and communicator, he aims to show that digital communication is more about story, presentation, and technique than fancy gear and tech toys.

He is the creator of the award-winning Current Science & Technology Podcast for the Museum of Science in Boston, which he hosted for more than two years. He now hosts his critically-acclaimed Boston Behind the Scenes Podcast, and has profiled everyone from street vendors to senators and astronauts in his career.

Adam also provides consultation on social networking, living with technology, web design and best practices, and general digital media strategy. He has started working in the digital video realm recently, and has been a photographer for years.

Adam does video reviews in which he shows what you can do with iPhone applications. He films using a Canon 7D SLR camera that also does video. He tells me that the main restriction would be the length of the clip you can record and that it doesn’t do autofocus while in video mode.

Adam is a podcaster too working as a podcast producer and also as the host on a podcast. One of the podcasts is a nature – science podcast. He even helps other people out with their podcasts as a podcast consultant.

Today’s interview is with Adam Weiss who uses a Mac Pro that is a quad processor antique and also a MacBook. Not only that he has hackintoshed a Dell mini9, just for fun and using on trips where he can’t carry much. He says it is useful but very slow in use. Good as a portable storage device and quiet to use as a recording computer and works with the microphones he has.

Adam Weiss is a successful educational podcaster and podcast consultant, as well as a sought-after digital media strategist. An expert interviewer and communicator, he aims to show that digital communication is more about story, presentation, and technique than fancy gear and tech toys.

He is the creator of the award-winning Current Science & Technology Podcast for the Museum of Science in Boston, which he hosted for more than two years. He now hosts his critically-acclaimed Boston Behind the Scenes Podcast, and has profiled everyone from street vendors to senators and astronauts in his career.

Adam also provides consultation on social networking, living with technology, web design and best practices, and general digital media strategy. He has started working in the digital video realm recently, and has been a photographer for years.

Adam does video reviews in which he shows what you can do with iPhone applications. He films using a Canon 7D SLR camera that also does video. He tells me that the main restriction would be the length of the clip you can record and that it doesn’t do autofocus while in video mode.

Adam is a podcaster too working as a podcast producer and also as the host on a podcast. One of the podcasts is a nature – science podcast. He even helps other people out with their podcasts as a podcast consultant.

We talk about microphones and how you can get more credibility when out and about shooting video. Adam like to shoot using natural light where possible. Using a reflector is a good way to enhance your lighting. He is a FinalCut Express user like myself and doesn’t yet need to move to Final Cut Pro. It is possible to use Keynote to do some transitions and effects in his video.

One of the sponsors of the show is GoSim and they have a product that is great when you are travelling to other countries and you don’t want to get stuck with high roaming charges. I will be giving a try on my next trip away, for sure.

Adam recently lost his iPhone and was wishing that he still had his Mobile Me account. The ability to wipe the phone from a distance and perhaps even locate the phone would have been very useful. He has Qik and other video apps on his iPhone and is interested in the streaming of video

Click here to view the embedded video.

A poignant tale about a young girl, Seonag, who travels back in time to visit her recently deceased Grandfather.

www.lilyislandfilms.com

On Video20Q we like to do filmmaker interviews, cinematographer interviews, and talk about movie production. Let me know if you would like to be featured on the Video20Q Podcast

I watched some of Tylers’ work and he like to use antique films as can be seen in The Fourteen Minute Gap and also in ‘Il Mio Canto Libero’. He has experience with working with non profit organisations. So working as a indie film guy that will be an advantage, unless he gets lucky and a movie goes viral. Which can happen.

there is Gather ‘Round the Mic’ which is broken up into parts and available on Vimeo.

For more than 10 hours on a sultry Cleveland night, in a bar roughly the size of a small two-bedroom apartment and on a “stage” cordoned off by tables and place marked with an Oriental rug, musicians from all over the world played and sang their hearts out.

Tyler has been making movies since 2003 and was working on film scores before that, slowly working more towards the visual end of the game. Of course Tyler is a Final Cut user, he doesn’t have the latest version and is happy with version 6.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Danny Lacey has set himself off on a course of learning how to make movies. Danny makes video for corporate customers anyway but making movies, either short films or feature length film is a whole different kettle of fish. As part of his learning regime he has mad a short movie for a horror competition called ‘Angel of the Night’. I watched the 3 minute version of the movie and was impressed. You have to have a twist in a movie to make it more interesting.

Danny talks about how he takes an original idea, writes the script, tears it apart and puts it back together again and then takes it all the way though to the finished article. He has managed to come up with a very professional looking movie using this process. He says that the planning stage is vital to the process. Making a list and checking it twice, just like the one you send to Santa when you were a kid.

I was amazed that even for a short movie like ‘Angel of the Night’ he was able to film it in one day. Danny was able to make the movie with no budget if you don’t count the pints of beer he bought for the actors to consume in the pub scene. With no cranes being available he tells me that for one scene the camera man was hanging out of a tree to get the angle for the shot in the woods. A bit of film making  monkey business.

STADA MEDIA

A dedicated, creative and affordable video production company. Danny makes video for the web and for promos

Danny’s next movie is going to be called ‘A Love Like Hers’ he wants to have higher production values and for it to be longer. He is using a site called Indie Go Go to help him raise the $8000 he will need to make the movie. Obviously a more ambitious project and I am looking forward to seeing it when it is finished, later this year.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tyler has been working for a non profit organisation and has produced some movies for them. There is ‘Il Mio Canto Libero’ in  which there is some totally enchanting music that just swept me away. Means something like ‘Its my song of freedom’ then there is Gather ‘Round the Mic’ which is broken up into parts and available on Vimeo.

For more than 10 hours on a sultry Cleveland night, in a bar roughly the size of a small two-bedroom apartment and on a “stage” cordoned off by tables and place marked with an Oriental rug, musicians from all over the world played and sang their hearts out.

Tyler also likes to produce movies using vintage footage and this can be seen in The Fourteen Minute Gap and also in ‘Il Mio Canto Libero’

The lastest movie that Tyler saw in the Cinema was ‘Avatar’ – Same for me too. We discuss the 3D quality of the film and agree that Cameron didn’t overdo the effect and used it to give more depth rather than have loads of stuff flying out at you.

Have a listen to the podcast and you will get the full details on our chat about movie making. Of course Tyler is a FinalCut Pro an Mac user too. Good man.

If you would like to hear the podcast without any advertising then sign up for the news letter and this interview is available along with other interviews of  film makers and some Mac users.

If you don’t want to miss any episodes of Video20Q then go to iTunes and subscribe. You will get the newest podcast automatically as soon as it is published. While you are there in iTunes if you would put a review of the Video20Q show I would really appreciate it because it makes the show more visible so we can get it out to more listeners. Thanks again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you would like to get this interview in the raw as it were without advertising or preamble sign up for the news letter and you can listen to this one with 3 other movie maker interview and 4 Mac20Q interviews. All without advertising or ramble from me. Give it to me in the RAW

I do have two interviews in the bag that have to be edited. One of them, the one featuring Tyler Weaver a film maker is nearly editing and I will be turning into a podcast today and tomorrow. Then I have another interview with a film maker Danny Lacey, from the UK, that I will be publishing here and on Video 20 Questions during the next week also.

I should have shot some video at the Red Hot buffet style restaurant. The food was great. I easily ate three platefuls and I wished I could have found room for more.

If you get a chance to meet some of your Twitter buddies in the flesh then go for it. People are often as nice face to face as they are online.

Here is the video

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘Libidoland’ is the title of their latest movie short and the trailer for it looks like fun. Jessica and Julie told me that they have a weird sense of humour and like to combine that with social comment in their movies. They ask,  why should movies follow the Hollywood trait of having to have a tidy ending or even a tidy story. Life is messy and there is no reason why movies can’t reflect some of that and still give a level of entertainment.

I would say that you would get a higher level of entertainment if the story makes you think a bit too. Get those brain cells working for a change, while it is good to have a suspension of disbelief while watching a movie it doesn’t mean that the thinking processes have to be dormant too.

Have a listen to the podcast to find out about their way of working, to take an idea, work it through to a finished movie via the writing, story boarding, filming, collecting the sound, editing, and finally getting the bums on seats, or eyeballs in front of the movie.

One of these two is a teacher, Jessica I think, and she challenges her students to watch movies that are not the usual Hollywood blockbuster in order  to get some critical thinking happening and an open mindedness that will lead to them seeing more interesting films.

I am often watching movies and TV drama on the TV and wondering how they got that shot. I sometimes count how long a film maker will use a shot before changing say from a wide to a close up and so on. Most shots only last a few seconds and change with a cut to the next shot. Lots of work there for the film editor. Thank goodness for FinalCut.

Here is the ‘Libidoland’ trailer for you … have a look at their ‘Snow Bunny’ trailer on YouTube also

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Their website: http://kingisafink.comTwitterfeed: http://twitter.com/kingisafinkEmail: kingisafink AT gmail DOT com

The other thing I will do with the newsletter is to send it out monthly to list the latest podcasts published and let you know if there are some good ones in the pipeline.

One more thing. In order to improve the podcast I will set up a couple of surveys which I can put on the site here. or send out if I feel I need to add as part of the monthly news.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

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The other addition is for the audio. While I was in Liverpool before Christmas there was a friend there with a similar camera to mine and he had a converter cable to go from the 3.5mm mic jack on the camera to an XLR cable with a Shure SM58 microphone on the end of that. It worked pretty good and so I have got the same. The guy from Shure was suggesting a cable that they sell costing about 60  but I found one much less than that. Maybe it will work right and maybe it won’t. At least worth a try anyway.

I had tried to use a wired lavalier mic but while it works connected to my Zoom H2 recorder it did not work in the Canon Vixia camera. To have the EX1 would be great seeing as it has XLR inputs already. I can record the audio separate with the H2 and I might still use that method for some shooting. It is just that it takes time to marry the audio back up with the video afterwards. I think I had better start saving to get a better camera.

I have just set up a Video20Q Newsletter. I will only be sending infrequently because usually if I have something to say I will put it in a blog or post onto Twitter. But after seeing a video by IzzyVideo about running a site like this he was saying that he wished he had set up something like that much earlier than he did. Here is the place to get the video from Israel Hyman. Also do check out his Video site that shows how to use FinalCut Express. which is a series of very good video tutorials.

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‘Libidoland’ is the title of their latest movie short and the trailer for it looks like fun. Jessica and Julie told me that they have a weird sense of humour and like to combine that with social comment in their movies. They ask,  why should movies follow the Hollywood trait of having to have a tidy ending or even a tidy story. Life is messy and there is no reason why movies can’t reflect some of that and still give a level of entertainment.

I would say that you would get a higher level of entertainment if the story makes you think a bit too. Get those brain cells working for a change, while it is good to have a suspension of disbelief while watching a movie it doesn’t mean that the thinking processes have to be dormant too.

One of these two is a teacher and she challenges here student s to watch movies that are not the usual Hollywood blockbuster to get some critical thinking happening and an open mindedness that will lead to seeing more interesting films.

They told me that they are serious about the movie making and look to generate and build upon ideas with a view to being able to sell them on. The shorts are the show reel that lets the movie business know what they are capable of with the writing and the film making. The tasks required to bring it all to fruition are shared between them and they work very much as a team with helpers coming in to ho;d the boom for the mic or take the acting roles. One of them does do a cameo role in the ‘Libidoland’

Hope you enjoy the interview and please put in a comment at the bottom of the post. I really want to hear back from you. here is the link to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and while you are there please leave a rating and a review. It all helps to get the word out there and grow the listenership of the podcast.

Here is the ‘Libidoland’ trailer for you … have a look at their ‘Snow Bunny’ trailer on YouTube also

Click here to view the embedded video.

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This interview started over at Video20Q blog and podcast and seeing as Phil is a Mac user it is only right that I publish here on Mac20 Q also. I have cut out some of the interview that was more specific to film making and if you would like to get the full skinny on Phil, then you can listen to the interview in full at Video20Q.

Phil is working with an older Mac at the moment and is aware that he will have to trade up to a newer Intel based Mac soon.

Phil made the film short ‘Honest work’ using his editing skills with FinalCut Pro on his Mac and the video is to be found on YouTube. Nice idea for a short movie. I actually like the was he did the titles at the start of the movie too.

His advice to people that are thinking of doing film or video work is to get training first if you can but mainly the advice is to get out there and just DO IT. No point waiting around doing nothing because that will get you no where.

What Phil did was to buy the computer and software he needed to do the work he wanted which was to edit in TV and movies and learn how to do it well and found work from that. Excellent way to go.

Had a good time meeting with friends in Liverpool at the Tweetup.

Despite being videoed with other peoples’ cameras while there and it being streamed live to uStream, one person has asked me not to use the video off my camera that I shot with him in it  at the event.

Of course that person has a right to his privacy and I will not be using the video of him or his friend. As for the rest of the footage shot then if you were at the tweetup and want to remain anonymous then send me a message and of course I will not use the video. I am not in the business of upsetting people, not on purpose anyway, so just let me know and anything with you in it will be deleted.

Seemed like a reasonable thing to do, at the time, to take pictures while at the Tweetup seeing as we are all socially networked people and some are podcasters too. I even took it for granted that it was expected seeing as we were put up on uStream, which I personally didn’t have any objection too either.

To contact me and tell me what is your preference with the footage let me know with a email to mac20q AT gmail dot com or post a comment on this Blog post.

Life is too short for worries, problems and unfriendliness so lets keep it all sweet. Mac 20 Questions podcast is for the people that have been featured on the show and for the listeners. Here is wishing you all a good new year for 2010.

I love my iPhone but the results I get from the camera in it are not that good. I only have the 3G version and I think they may have increased the resolution with the 3GS model. Apple added video capability with the 3GS anyway. Even if the best camera is the one you have with you I don’t think I will be up loading many pictures to any of the microstock sites that come from the iPhone.
I suppose there is still possibility of getting a good shot when you have all the necessary things in place like good light and an interesting or exciting subject. It just depends on what you want to do with it afterwards.

There are loads of photography applications for the iPhone, some that are for reference when you are using other photography equipment and some that are to help you get the best from the camera on the iPhone. Then there are the applications that are to do things like post your photos to the internet and geo tag them etc. On such appp could be the iPhone application “Sekai Camera,” a social, Augmented Reality service for browsing and sharing user-generated text, photo, voice, and other location-linked information.

Tell me what iPhone applications you have and what you do with them. Leave a message in the comments section. You just need be on the page for the post by itself and scroll down to enter your comment

Phil Holbrook goes by the name of Philontilt on Twitter and also has a web site called CreativeJinx. He works in the TV business editing footage and during his free time he makes films.

Phil runs a film festival entitled EgoFest Films and will be working hard on that up until February.

One of Phil’s’ films is ‘Honest Work’

Simon and I talked about how he uses his Mac. he is a tech support guy working with Windows installation in the main. There is on place that has Macs so he has to be content with having fun with his Mac when he gets home.

Simon is planning to start a Mac podcast soon in which he will be doing reviews of Mac software mainly and probably other stuff too. I am looking forward to hearing and seeing the screencasts that he brings out. Get Simon on Twitter

He likes to use iMovie and is planning to get the latest version soon to be able to do a better job with the screencasting for the podcast. I did tell him about ScreenFlow for the screen capture part of the job, but he already has different software for it.

In my ramble I talk about the Liverpool Tweetup which is starting on Friday which I am so looking forward to. There are some of the group celebrating birthdays so I expect there will be some boozing. With me being a teetotaller it won’t make a difference to me. Will be a pile of fun anyway.

I might also see if I can catch a movie while I am there too. I wonder if Avatar will be showing in Liverpool at the weekend. So long as I don’t have to go to do too much shopping although part of the meet up includes going to the AppleStore.

Look out for the podcast that will come out of the Liverpool face to face interviews. We should have loads to talk about.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I went int the forest next door and took my Canon Vixia with me to film something. I used the technique of putting the camera on a mono pod and putting the end of it in the top of my trousers. I am sure it must have looked rude. I saw the technique being demonstrated in a YouTube video and thought I should have a go. The main point was to have some footage to play with in FinalCut Express. I wanted to use the Ripple, roll slip and slide tools for arranging the clips on the time line. Really keen to make something creative with the camera and my Mac too.

Here is the result of the adventure and I will be putting up another Mac20Q Quick Tip about what I was doing with the sound also. I recorded the sound with the Zoom H2 recorder and a wired lavalier mic and matched up the sound after in AmadeusPro. It worked nicely.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you have to convert video files then get Visual Hub..

So…how do you get your film on iTunes? What’s the secret password or magic number?

That question has come up a lot lately on Twitter among indie filmmakers enduring the plight of self distributions. I decided to do some quick research on the matter and figure out for myself how one might go about getting their film on iTunes.

I know the filmmakers of Ink did it, but then again their film has a huge  following and has been around for a few years. I wondered if the little known indie filmmaker has the same access to iTunes that a more well known film has.

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Gary Rosenzweig pictured here in an English pub  (Mind you if he was doing it properly he would have a pint of beer in his hand) talked to Mac20Q about what he does with MacMost Video. He has been very busy producing Mac tips in video form for about 2 years and is doing very nicely on YouTube.

He was previously into making games with Flash and still might do the odd game. He has also made an app for the iPhone. So as you can see he is multi talented with the programming, podcasting with video, writing books, drinking beer and probably many other things too. He is successful in bringing in revenue from his podcasting, He has the links on the MacMost site and apart from one month doesn’t have the advertising in the videos.

Gary also has an Sony HDV camera which is plugged into his MacPro and he records live into Wirecast which comes from the same company as ScreenFlow. I was amazed that his preference for movie editing was with iMovie because it is so fast to do the editing. He could use FinalCut Express but prefers iMovie. He compresses the file at the end of it all with MPEG StreamClip. He uploads to Blip.tv and it will send the file off to YouTube which saves some time with the uploading. Naturally you will find Gary on FaceBook and Twitter.

He recommends that if you want to get into video podcasting and you don’t yet have a HD Camera then just shoot in standard def. move up to HD when you are able to. If you wait until everything is perfect then you will never get to make a podcast.

Gary admits to being a geek, and using terminal editor on his tiny netbook rather than using the Ubuntu that was installed. He was using EEE Ubuntu. He has been using as Mac for a long time though and was issued a Mac SE in 1987 when he was in college. It was a requirement to have a Mac there.

For a favourite application he has to choose between Garageband and iMovie, but was perhaps edging towards iMovie more. Gary does use Audacity and although it is a free application I would recommend that you use AmadeusPro, it looks prettier, more Mac like and I think it is more stable too.

He uses Fluid the custom browser application that you can use to make a web application for one specific purpose. I have it for FaceBook but Gary uses it for a Todo application. he is an iPhone user and use MocaVNC, Tweetie, Cycle Meter, and Scrabble plus other games. On the MacMost Newsletter he does a recommended iPhone app of the week.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Marcelo is the NewMediaDude an he talks to me about his new media business and about how he creates new media and gets paid for it. As you can see he is shy because he only supplied me with a very small photo of himself, despite being a handsome man. I thought at first that I should pronounce his name in the Italian way but he informed me that the correct way is the Argentinian or possibly French. Aren’t we being very international here on Mac20Q.

Honestly though I had a great talk with Marcelo and I know you will learn things from what he had to say as well as enjoy the interview. He has a pro camera with the Sony EX1, I know is good because my son who is a professional cameraman has one the same and the guys at Double Edge Films told me that either they would like one of they have one, can’t remember which right now.

Marcelo Lewin, CEO / Founder
As the CEO and founder of Center For New Media Studies and CNMS TV, Marcelo Lewin is in charge of the vision, the day to day operations of the company and building strategic partnerships and alliances. Previously, Marcelo founded and was the CEO of Pixel Heads Network, which was acquired by ProMAX Systems in 2008. Prior to that he founded My Internet Desktop, which was acquired by Internet Appliance Network in 2000. Having worked with a variety of companies, from Walt Disney Imagineering to NBC to Toyota, he is always on the forefront of interactive and new media projects.

I have looked at his site and it is certainly impressive and I have signed up to see on of his Webinars later this month.

Marcelo was telling that sometimes it is just him working alone like a one man band with his camera, sound gear and the cymbals attached to his knees, a harmonica around his neck and a large drum on his back. That has got to be funny to look at. Seriously though he asks the questions and holds the camera and I can only imagine how difficult that can be trying to control some impressive technology at the same time. Marcelo is a great guy and I really enjoyed talking to him.

Here is a movie from DV Expo

Click here to view the embedded video.

Honestly though I had a great talk with Marcelo and I know you will learn things from what he had to say as well as enjoy the interview. He has a pro camera with the Sony EX1, I know is good because my son who is a professional cameraman has one the same and the guys at Double Edge Films told me that either they would like one of they have one, can’t remember which right now.

Marcelo Lewin, CEO / Founder
As the CEO and founder of Center For New Media Studies and CNMS TV, Marcelo Lewin is in charge of the vision, the day to day operations of the company and building strategic partnerships and alliances. Previously, Marcelo founded and was the CEO of Pixel Heads Network, which was acquired by ProMAX Systems in 2008. Prior to that he founded My Internet Desktop, which was acquired by Internet Appliance Network in 2000. Having worked with a variety of companies, from Walt Disney Imagineering to NBC to Toyota, he is always on the forefront of interactive and new media projects.

I have looked at his site and it is certainly impressive and I have signed up to see on of his Webinars later this month.

Marcelo was telling that sometimes it is just him working alone like a one man band with his camera, sound gear and the cymbals attached to his knees, a harmonica around his neck  and a large drum on his back. That has got to be funny to look at. Seriously though he asks the questions and holds the camera and I can only imagine how difficult that can be trying to control some impressive technology at the same time. Marcelo is a great guy and I really enjoyed talking to him.

Here is a movie from DV Expo

But the secret is out and I have made a Screencast showing you some of the settings and the successes I had while learning what it can do for my work flow. Matthew of the StealthMac Podcast suggested that I use MPEG StreamClip with the movies produced by ScreenFlow before putting them into FinalCut Express. I found that a good idea. It means that there is less rendering to do once you have the clips on the time line.

I did try to convert a DVD to .h364 but that was not a success. the finished file was bigger and also the sound was way out of sync. Have a look at the video below to see what I have been doing today and you will see how you can make use of the free application too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Apple news has been fairly slow seeing as they came out, early in the month to say that there would be nothing more in the line up for the holidays. The rumour mill can take a bit of a break now until CES in January and then MacWorld in February. Still no sign of a tablet computer from Apple and even rumours to say that the thing was likely to be delayed. Amazing how you can delay something that was only a rumour in the first place. We don’t do rumours here on Mac20Q anyway.

I have spent loads of time watching video from Lynda.com to learn how to do video with FinalCut Express. Pleased I got it despite that fact that it is more work to do things sometimes that it is with iMovie. Well I still have iMovie there to avail of but there is no point in having FinalCut Express and then not using it because I have iMovie. There will come the video projects that need FinalCut Express and I want to know what I am doing for that. So I will have to just devote the time that is needed to the learning curve. I expect that after a while I will be so au fait with FinalCut Express that it will seem to be as quick, anyway.

One of the things that I struggled with, was the getting the video files to be a decent size for uploading to the web. I did manage to find some settings that still gave me the quality I wanted from the 1280 by 720 video but then this morning Matt Hillyer gave me information about MPEG StreamClip, an application that is so small, must be using the Quick Time conversion already on my iMac but gives the controls to do a better job. That is often the way with this video conversion utilities, I also have Videovangelist to try out. There is of course the tried, true and tested Visual hub application though. I did try MPEG StreamClip to convert a DVD but the result was even larger and the sound was offset. Took ages to do it and I had to delete the resulting file. I do like Matts’ work flow though for getting files from ScreenFlow to FinalCut Express and then from FinalCut Express to the web. One test I did today worked a treat. I ended up with a file about half the size and still good quality at the same resolution.

You can see the videos I produce on YouTube on the Wizardgold Channel.

Remember to subscribe to the Mac20Q Podcast on iTunes and even tell your friends about the podcast, or write a review of the podcast there, which will help promote the show. Thanks for those of you that have done that already.

You may leave a comment on the site here too. If you are on the home page of the site, click on the page for the single post and then scroll down to the form to fill in. Looking forward to hearing from you. Let me know if you would like to be featured on the show.

Bob has been a supporter of Mac20Q for some time and was telling me that he has listened right from the start of the podcast. Thanks Bob, good to have you along for the ride. He was the winner of one of our software giveaway competitions too!

A good chat was had and covered all the good stuff about being a Mac user. Bob is in the process of making a podcast about Bridge the card game. He started doing it as an audio podcast then decided to start again but with video. Makes more sense if you can see the cards, for this he has been using BoinxTV. I also have BoinxTV but it didn’t work on my iMac and when I looked at it working on the MacBook I decided that it was more for making Live TV programs with multiple cameras. I think I am better off using FinalCut Express or iMovie.

Whilst on the subject of FinalCut Express, I have still been working away to learn how to use the application and I am pleased that I am getting into it due to using Lynda .com with the excellent tutorials they have there. I also found FinalCutKing web site and there is a whole load of video tutorials on the IzzyVideo web site. All good quality stuff. I checked out YouTube also but the quality of the tutorials is much more variable and at the lower end of the scale.

I though it was funny that all the news sites have been talking about Applecare not being available to smokers because the filth that had accumulated in the machine had made it un safe for the technicians, Well smokers are disgusting creatures and deserve it if it is true. Blackened lungs and blackened insides of the computer. So there you go passive smoking is bad for computers too.

Back to Bob – he is certainly a die hard Mac user, having experience with Macs from the very early days, he did veer away during the dark days when Jobs was pushed aside but was happy to come back to the fold when Intel processors appeared in the Mac computers. Thanks to Bob for coming on Mac 20 Questions. I had a great time chatting with him and if you would like to be featured on Mac 20 Questions then why not contact me and we can make a date and time to record an interview.

Leave a comment by hitting the blue button above and then scrolling down to get the the input form, or send me an email using the form below

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I have the Magic Mouse for a couple of weeks now and I have to say it is thumbs up all the way. I was listening to the Mac Geek Gab podcast this morning and Dave was going into huge detail about his experience with the mouse. One of thing he said was about the size of the mouse. It is not very high or thick, or tall and seems small, built for small hands. The comment was that Steve Jobs must have small hands. Well my hands are not that small but for me the mouse is a good size. I had suffered with some RSI pain for about a month prior to getting this mouse and now after using the Magic Mouse for a couple of weeks I now can shake hands with people when we meet without wincing. Definitely a big plus for me there.

Another problem that other people have reported is the tracking speed of the mouse, and perhaps needing to run a third party utility to get to work fast enough. Strangely I have not had that problem. I installed 10.6.2 before I started using the mouse, which could have been a factor with this, and the tracking has been good. I adjusted it to the speed I wanted in System Preferences and that was that. I am working with 2 screens on my iMac also and I can easily track the whole width no hassle whatsoever.

So if you have not had a chance to try one of these Magic Mouse rodents from Apple then I would say you should definitely jump in there and have a play at your local Apple Store.

FinalCut Express

I have been learning how to do things in FinalCut Express during the week and using Lynda.com to teach myself. It is taking some practice time to get my head around the roll, ripple, slip and slide tools but I am getting there. The training videos in Lynda are very good and makes the learning much quicker and in depth. Reading the PDF manual is painful in comparison. So far I have been working on one video with footage I took while at a friends’ horse riding school. I had some good shots in there and I managed to make a short movie with FinalCut Express without too much bother. I struggled with moving clips on the timeline and I still need to learn how to make the audio fade where I want it too. In this case I looked at the length of the audio required and opened up AmadeusPro to do the job for me, but it can be done in FinalCut Express.

In the Lynda training videos there are details on how to set up the preferences to work better. It seems the standard prefs are not the best for working with. If I had not got Lynda.com to work with I would never have found this out. There is always a gap it seems between the designers of software and the users, the lessons are from people that know the application inside out and that is a huge benefit. As part of my learning I have been watching the videos for Final Cut Pro also and there is a separate series that deals with LiveType, the application that deals with titling. I am quite impressed with that application.

I have noticed that there are some small differences between the Express application compared to the Pro but for the most part you can do all that you need in FinalCut Express. For instance one difference is the speed controls. I see that in Pro it is possible to have easing in and out of the speed of a clip or a selection of a clip, so that when ramping the speed you can do it with more finesse. There is no 3 way colour corrector in FinalCut Express, which I saw being used in tutorials on the FinalCut King site. So nothing major anyway and watching the tutorials for the Pro application are also helpful and not potentially confusing.

The first video I sent out of FinalCut Express is now on my channel at YouTube, if you would like to have a look,