Independent Film in Australia by the travelling filmmaker

ubuntu linux on the lg p100

2009-01-29T23:48:00.000+11:00

Installing now. Not the mobile ubuntu mind you but the full distro and dual boot with vista. And i don't really know anything about linux. How? With a cool new piece of software that makes it a piece of cake.

Samsung Q1U-XP versus LG-P100

2008-07-16T13:34:00.000+10:00

Recently due to frustrations with the LG P100(most of which are tista related i might add) i bought a Samsung Q1U Ultra.
Here's my reasoning: the LG takes ages to come back from hibernate and because the battery life isnt fantastic i tend to let it go into hibernate more often than i would other machines (the Mac:never, other umpc:once a day at most).
The LG has the power, much more than many other umpc's or subnotebooks, but do you really need that sort of grunt in an ultraportable? Well no, i don't.
I never really liked the look of the first U1 that much, it reminded me of the sega gamegear and looked dated the day it was launched imho. But the Q1 ultra looks a lot better, more proffesional and something i would have no qualms about pulling out in a metting or business situation.
So i took the plunge and a week later it has completely won me over.
The pro's and the con's of the two
My disclaimer here

tablet spotted

2008-04-10T16:48:00.000+10:00

I had almost given up but then i spotted a hp tablet on the way out the door. Sitting next to a white macbook.

the eeepc hunch

2008-02-20T16:34:00.001+11:00

Unavoidable on a small screen?

The land of the lost thinkpad

2008-02-19T18:59:00.002+11:00

I swear that's what, it's like when you travel now days in the business lounges.

I thought I'd blog my continuing mobile PC spotting adventures and there are so many think. pads ! Both IBM and lenovo flavoured ones.

I saw one macbook pro, couple of dell's. No tablets except mine.

umpc in the wild

2008-02-02T11:50:00.000+11:00

Went to the local art markets this morning and spotted this umpc being used by one of the sellers. Which subbie? The asus eeepc of course. The eeepc is the best thing to happen to umpc for one reason: it's popularised the form factor to non-umpc enthusiasts.

Macbook Air specs and pricing

2008-01-16T07:48:00.000+11:00

Pricing announced on Aussie site:
$2499 for the base model and a whopping $4338! for the top model (only two models).
$1500 option for the solid state drive. Man Apple is money grabbing like usual. A $400 SSD for $1500?

Macbook Air info released

2008-01-16T07:28:00.000+11:00

Well the rumours are over. Macbook Air is the next big thing for apple.

Ultra-light: maybe, 3 pounds aint so light to me. It's not really a UMPC either for my 2 cents. 13.3 inch screen. OK, maybe sexy for engineering types as it's amazingly thin but it's still fairly big, fairly heavy and fairly low powered. No user accessable battery either which means when it runs out find the power socket or suck it up.

Review - Sony Vaio UX50

2008-01-15T20:02:00.000+11:00

After a few weeks using the Sony Vaio UX50 I can happily say I love it.

I have previously owned many sub-notebooks and lately had a Vaio TX27GPB and a 12 inch Powerbook. The 12 inch Powerbook weighs in at 2.1kg and is small but not an ultra portable or subnotebook. The TX is heading there but being 1.3kg is also not what I’d call a true ultra-portable. So I sort of had two full spec’d powerful laptops with DVD burners but neither met my requirements for an ultra-portable.

I decided to keep the Powerbook as my main work machine and get a very small, very light road machine that had different requirements from the main machine.

Before going back to a tried and true Vaio U101, having had a U50 and sold it as it didn’t really fit the bill, I bought the Ux50.
Now I’ve sold the TX. The UX50 does everything I need and more.

But on to the good stuff.

The screen is sharp, clear and bright. After using the UX for a while the powerbook screen looks downright blurry. It’s surprising to me just how usable it is being so small. I hardly ever use the zoom function as web pages, documenst are quite usable at the highest resolution. On the zoom; it seems a bit silly the way it works. When you zoom in the content becomes sort of like a pdf in that you can only use the mouse or stylus to scroll around the screen, but not to do any sort of input. This may be a setting I haven’t found yet but it seems silly.

The touch screen is great. For web surfing i use the keyboard to type addressess and enter fields on webpages. For quick emails I tend to use the keyboard too. It’s simple to use and I find there is plenty of feedback to let you know which keys you’ve hit. Interestingly when bluetooth is on the blue light from the LED indicator casts a rather bright blue light onto the keyboard, whcih is already backlit with blue, and I found it makes it a bit tricky to see a couple of keys. I think I’ll move to using the touch screen more now I have this on screen keyboard (U-Board - http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/04/jkontherun_revi.html). I use such a thing a bit on my smartphone and find it simple to enter text with. When you need to enter text in a hurry, for example in messenger, the handwriting recognition works really well. I am using ritepen which came with the unit and I can happily freehand write all over the screen. It pops into whatever application you are using and for quick responses in messenger it’s gold.

I have Studio 8 and Adobe creative suite 2 on it and have found both to be very useable. I run a P4 2ghz desktop and I have a gut feel that this thing boots up CS2 just as fast. I wrote a photoshop tutorial on it capturing screengrabs and in this real world test it was just as easy to do as on the desktop - but with an external screen hooked up mind you. Which is also why this is a cool little unit. The dock, a bluetooth mouse/keyboard and a 17 inch LCD screen are the only things on my desk. When home it’s docked and when i leave the little unit comes with me. I don’t have unrestricted web access in the office i’m working in at the moment so during breaks I whip over to the cafe next door which has nice comfy booths with free wireless and so I can download my email and do some web admin stuff. So cool. I feel the little screen is too small for extended photo editing or even web design but for quick fixes and small jobs it’s fine. I’m so used to a really small screen on my smartphone that this thing is big in relative terms.

I’ve played around with the cameras a little. Skype is so easy on this thing. With the speaker and mic on the front of the unit while it’s on the dock I can easily talk at normal volume and be heard and clearly hear who i’m talking with. And it’s neat to be able to do video skype calls without having to muck around with external cams. The other camera I haven’t really found much use for. I’ve showed it off but since i don’t do video or photo blogging (yet) it’s not a lot of use to me. It is simple to use. Press the capture button and shoot stills or video at will, it’s temporarily captured and you can view, email or delete in one simple interface. Sony seems ahead of the game hear setting it up for VOIP and photo blogging and so it’s a machine that will last i think. I’m keenly thinking up things i can do with the function like record a video/picture blog of my next trip OS or something.

For cool factor I used to get a lot of comments on my TR. Lot’s on my U3 and U101, less on the T and TX (actually none). But man this little Baby turns heads. People can’t believe it’s an XP computer. And they spin out at the keyboard.
One quibble, it only has one USB port, which i find a bit limiting. It has more on the dock but as i only use a bluetooth mouse at home and travel with a USB wireless mouse I found that i had to unplug the mouse to plug in my thumbdrive. That got a bit old. It really needs on more USB port i think. That said I could buy a little travel usb hub so it’s not a biggie.
I find it gets warm in the hands but never hot. Although the fan does seems to run a bit once it gets up to temp. It’s very quite though so not an annoyance. the compact flash slot is awesome as my digital SLR use CF. So i can dump down my pics while mobile stright into the computer. Then once i’m home edit them in RAW format in CS2. The MS duo slot means i can crunch video onto my Duo, transfer music, and chuck them straight into the PSP. That’s handy too.
Battery life is fine for what i’m using it for. I turn down the screen pretty low and have got a solid 2+ hours of use every time so far. I considered the extended battery but it is expensive and adds significant size and weight. If i get another battery i’m going to opt for another standard one.

So all in all after a couple of weeks I really think this thing has nailed it for ultra-portables. It’s fully featured enough and has the right balance of usable features and functions, and it’s only 520 grams!

2008-01-15T20:00:00.000+11:00

Really hard way to work on a bus

2008-01-15T17:46:00.001+11:00

Saw an amusing thing on the bus this morning; a girl working on her laptop, on her lap, with a mouse! A Full sized plugged in usb mouse. It was precariously balanced on the palm rest. She was using it quite a bit to. I don't know whether she hated the stick or whether she didn't know the keyboard shortcuts for the app she was using but this is a very hard way to work. I felt like shouting haven't you ever heard of a umpc or a tablet?

Notebooks business people use while travelling

2008-01-15T11:41:00.000+11:00

In the Qantas Club (business lounge at an Australian Airport :)) I spent a couple of hours working and while taking regular trips to the snack bar I spied on the tech people were using, as I always do.

I saw lots of standard (read as boring) laptops, all PC's, a big mix, Dell's Compaq's, HP, Sony.

Only two Mac's in the whole place (Macbooks) and no Tablets!

Later in the evening a Japanese man walked past carrying a Panasonic T series (light, tough Japanese notebook, big screen and only 1KG) - awesome. He was carrying it on, in one hand and reading the screen, try doing that with a 2.5kg clunker. My wife has a Panasonic R3 and it's a great, fast 900 gram machine so I appreciated seeing a Pana in the wild as they're not available in Australia.

An hour later another Japanese man walked past with an older Subbie, a Vaio 505 and one guy had a Libretto U100, which he was using on the table with a mini USB mouse. But alas I had the only tablet in the place (P1610). After sending an email as a laptop I converted and surfed the web in tablet mode and that's when the looks started. The libretto gets a lot of "how cute, can you really work on that thing?", but the tablet actually gets looks, comments and questions because people are intrigued by the way you're working; "you can write on the screen?!"

qantas club sydney

2008-01-15T08:20:00.000+11:00

My new tablet pc didn't arrive in time so it's the trusty p1610 for this trip. As a side note the smaller qantas club in terminal 3 at sydney has a great kids room with heaps of toys, a tv and comfy chairs for the parents. Brilliant.

Awaiting the arrival of a new tablet

2008-01-14T22:43:00.000+11:00

Well I've taken the plunge and bought a new convertible tablet PC. The Fujitsu p1610 has been good to me (apart from the Vista nightmare). But after expericcing Vista on a great machine (the R400) I'm now missing it.

The Toshiba R400 was an amazing. awesome experience but: it was way to big for me. I laid it on top of a Tecra M7 (15 inch screen) and the damn thing was the same size. It was fairly light. but not light enough. And the battery life was woeful. I could have bought the extended battery but that added to the weight and also made it look weird.

So it's gone, sold, in a new home. Now looking at the pics you can see some of my madness, I have in the pic to the left a Panasonic R3, a Fujitsu P1610, A 12 inch Powerbook and the R400 at the back.

So the Fujitsu P1610's days may be numbered when my new machine arrives later this week. I'll run them both for a cuple of weeks (as I did for the R400) and then decide.

Commuting again

2008-01-11T17:39:00.001+11:00

On public transport again; commuting. No where near as bad as Sydney though. Only a 15 minute bus ride. Bogging This from my phone actually. Now running a Nokia N95 which is awesome.

Super Ultra Mobile

2007-12-27T15:40:00.001+11:00

This trip I decided to travel super ultra mobile. No 7 inch UMPC for me. No 5 inch UMPC. No I instead opted for a Nokia N95 with a Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard

All my email goes to my mobile and I figured I'd only need to send a couple of emails and possibly logon to the intranet (which I can do from the phone too actually) a couple of times, so I thought I'd probably get away with this ultra-portable setup. I did.

I successfully conducted all my business from the phone/keyboard and even did these blog posts. The N95 has all sorts of connectivity options, wifi, bluetooth, 3G internet, etc. I found the wireless handy for the free wifi in the Qantas club and otherwise when away from a wifi I could connect via 3G. It wasn't perfect as the screen is very small and the keyboard can get a bit tiring to type long comms on, but overall I was very happy and know I could do it again no problems.

travelling at xmas

2007-12-25T15:50:00.001+11:00

Is it a sign of success that one has to travel for business at xmas or is it a sign of not quite enough success? Merry christmas and here's to not working next year!

Projects underway

2007-12-14T08:05:00.000+11:00

We're almost finished the final cut on a Hip Hop training DVD (it's huge) and in pre-production on a couple of shorts.

More later but one of the shorts will do something never before seen in a short film. We're not even sure it's technically possible yet!

Vistamised - booting vista on the Fujitsu P1610D

2007-08-19T19:11:00.000+10:00

14 minutes and 44 seconds. That's how long it takes to boot Vista and get to an email. I waited to purchase my Fujitsu P1610D with Vista Business as I'd read there were some driver issues. I figured if I bought one with Vista pre-installed there'd be no issue - WRONG! The speakers stopped working after I plugged in headphones. Of course the speakers don't run while the headphones are in, but they never came back on. Known issue apparently. I had to download a new driver off the Singapore website as the english one didn't work. And the microphone doesn't work at all - driver to be updated soon....

This is not a slow machine, Core Solo 1.4, 1GB Ram, and Vista on it is unusable. I'm going to phone Fujitsu tomorrow and demand an XP Tablet recovery disk.

I was so frustrated with Windows Vista that I shot a video of booting it up. If you want to watch the whole thing you'll see it takes nearly 15 minutes to get to read an email in Outlook. And i've turned off all the eye candy. All I do is start the machine and click on the Outlook icon, 14 minutes and 44 seconds later I can see an email in the preview pane.

I compare to an old G4 Mac Powerbook and a Panasonic CF-R3, both of which boot and get to email in under 2 minutes.

Vista is ridiculous.

Back into it

2006-02-27T01:10:00.000+11:00

Haven't really used the blog stuff for a while (too busy).

But getting ready to post some articles here about the how, the why, and the why not of the Australian Film Industry.

Got some exciting Video art installations coming up as well as other stuff, so back soon.

on the train

2005-06-10T20:58:00.000+10:00

Ok. How cool is this: on the train sending this to the blog from my phone. Love it. I also love the phone: nokia n-gage QD. For so long i listened to my friends & avoided getting one but i love it! The games are great; i have about 10, i use the pda functions, its got great batt life. They took the mp3 player out of this model & made it smaller & lighter & there's really no comparison to the old one, but i dwnloaded a lil app to play my mp3's & it's my walkman as well. Might have to start writing some reviews for this site to give it some content because as far as i know no one ever reads any of this.

The new firm

2005-06-08T22:56:00.000+10:00

Interesting working in the funky see funky doo world of advertising.
It's sort of like this Company absorbs everything that's "best
practice" with regards to making a better workplace for employees and
the Company. For example if you get in before 9am there's a girl making
espresso on a nice big machine. And there's subsidised beer on Fridays.
And air hockey and more. But it's sort of soulessly applied to the work
place. Someone "upstairs" read; if you want your employees to get in
early without demanding it - give em some motivation like coffee or
raisen toast.

working for two weeks

2005-06-05T01:12:00.000+10:00

working for an advertising agency for two weeks. Interesting. Not the place I'd like to spend heaps of time as it's kinda funky see funky do if you know what I mean.

continued...

2005-06-05T01:07:00.000+10:00

offering bullshit gap financing type options to films that already had
pre-sales. If you already had the stuff in place that they were
requiring then you wouldnt need their funding. They were supposed to be
set up to fund new production and they dig squat. Useless government
and banks getting into bed to fund tax dodges for large investors.
Total Joke!

Heard about the flicks

2005-06-05T01:05:00.000+10:00

Film Licensed Investment Company Scheme: well the minister who approved
them last time was certainly in bed with someone because they were a
joke. I got all the application forms and it stated you had to list all
the projects you were going to invest in up front. And then when the
two companys that were approved released their prospectus' - guess
what? Neither of them listed any productions. They had not even looked
at any, and why? because the bullshit companies weren't even really
funding films. They were set up as dodges. They were

Seek totally sucks

2005-06-05T01:00:00.000+10:00

So does commuting but more about that later. The jobs website
(www.seek.com.au) which recently floated on the ASX and made the
founders multi millionaires, sucks badly.
I have sent off into the ether via their crappy website about 10 job
applications in the last fortnight, and I've heard zip back. You hit
the apply now button, send off your CV and a well crafted cover letter
and it just dissappears. I'd love to even get back a rejection letter
rather than the stony silence that comes out of that crappy site. I'm
not going to apply for any more jobs online there unless they list a
phone number and then I'll call up and get a direct email address or
better yet a real address and post it.

No bargain Macs

2005-05-30T18:49:00.000+10:00

Oh yeah. The auction was a total blow out. Some graphic design looking
tweaker was there and bid heaps on the dual G4's. Way outta my price
range. Picked up a couple of Dell P-III's; one of which I am going to
use as the basis of a Home Theatre PC I am setting up. Using a software
package (open source) called Media Portal which rocks BTW to setup a
Home Theatre Server for all my pics, movies and music. Stay tuned for a
tutorial on how I go about it.

Starting work on the Sports Show

2005-05-30T18:21:00.000+10:00

Had a first discussion with my co producer about the sports show. It's
a concept sports show for community access TV. We want high production
values with low cost and high audience. Can we do it?! I think the
show's going to be a hit. I think we'll look at doing a pilot next
month.

Effects are letting me down

2005-05-30T18:18:00.000+10:00

Did a bit more on the effects tests for "Desert Bride", the dance film.
Not happy with the effects that I was thinking would work out. Mind's
eye and reality are pretty different things. Back to the drawing board.
Might have to try some compositing, I thought (hoped) I might have been
able to do it all in Final Cut Pro and not have to go to After Effects
but that might not be realistic anymore.

Going hunting for a bargain Mac tomorrow

2005-05-30T00:14:00.000+10:00

Off to bed now. Getting up early to attend an auction. They have a
couple of G4 dual processor machines there and since I do all my
editing on a single proc G4 I am keen to upgrade if I can get one
cheap, cause as you know...us low budget filmakers don't have any cash.
Which is actually true cause I don't at the moment. I am applying for a
few jobs for a couple of months to get some ready's in the bank so I
can continue to work on the films. Yesterday was a low point as the
current state of the bank account got down to less than you could take
out of an autoteller and so it was off to the supermarket for some
eftpos. I honestly thought a weeping might be imminent but got home had
a cuppa and started sorting the Adelaide footage and that sorted that
out. Anyway my secret plan is to pick up both of the G4's real cheap
because the windows people there won't know how damn hot the macs are
and I can sell the other one online and make enough to pay for mine.
That's the theory; let you know how I go.

Starting the edit

2005-05-30T00:08:00.000+10:00

Just started digitising tonight. I have to take in the footage from a
shoot we did in Feb. Spent a couple of days in Mannum, a one road, two
pub town in South Australia. This should be a cool little film since I
can really go to town on it, be creative. I have a big vision for it,
based on the title sequence to an old formula one car racing flick i
saw years ago. Should be an interesting take on a dance film. Yes
that's right; a dance film.

Using Konfabulator

2005-05-30T00:06:00.000+10:00

Right. Just got this cool new tool called Konfabulator which allows you
to use Widgets (little applications that sit on the desktop). Only
works for Mac's ;) and this little widget allows me to type text
straight into the box and post to the blog with ease. So they will be
lots of posts. That's the theory anyway.

Twisted tales mostly suck, what about Two Twisted?

2005-05-29T23:45:00.000+10:00

OK, going to have a rant because i got rejected from two twisted.

Firstly I watched the re-run of the first series; twisted tales, which they were saying was being brought back by popular demand but it was on at 1.30am on saturday night so go figure.

I submitted a short script of mine for the proposed new series. This same script had been doing the rounds via my agent in the States for a new series called new masters of horror but they didn't take it in the end; i think the whole series over there will be written by the new masters of horror i.e. sam raimi or clive barker etc.

Anyway I watched twisted tales and they sucked: Big Time! All but one out of the four i saw was complete shit.

There was one featuring Bruce Spence and it was pretty cool, mainly due to the awesome acting by Bruce. The other three were soooo bad. Script, Direction, everything. Couldn't believe it. One wasn't even anywhere near a horror/thriller or even had a twist worth standing up for.

My question is; will the second series suck as much as the episodes i saw of the first?
God I hope not. They apparentkly went through 3000 scripts so they better get something good on the reel. Mind you, in the first series they used the same crew for all the files. And you could tell. Now nothing against the crew as they were obviously very capable dudes. But you can't really use the same cinematographer for all of them and exoect them to look visually different. Not with the obviuos time constraints.

So what if you are using a different director, allow them to use their own cameraman and you'd get a better result.

That's my tweo cents. And if even one of them sucks I'll scream because of course my script rocked.