Month: November 2003

Mike Kahn

looky

Mike Kahn is a photographer and multi-media artist living in the SF Bay Area. He also is a skilled project manager, having organized “NeighborSpace” for the Midpeninsula Community Media Center.
Web link of note: Mike Kahn
(At http://www.kahncious.net/)

xKobo

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xkobo is a great open-source game where you control a tiny space ship in a 2d scroller space.

You are trying to destroy these giant fortresses that are made of nodes which branch out like plants- when you destroy a node, the bars which form the fortress dissolve back to the branch from which that node sprung. Only the nodes themselves can shoot at your ship.

The original xkobo uses the X11 libraries and can therefore be played on any Linux or Apple (Mac OS X) system.

Highly addictive!

Web link of note: xKobo
(At http://olofson.net/kobodl/)

Images in Final Cut Pro

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My still pictures being imported into Final Cut Pro are grainy and pixelated. Here’s how to prevent that from happening using Adobe Photoshop.
Basically the gist of this is:

  1. Make your image 720 pixels wide and 534 pixels tall

  2. Do your art
  3. squish the image so it’s only 480 pixels tall – this is because NTSC pixels are rectangular. The image will appear “square” again on TV.

Taken from Ken Stone’s FCP homepage:

Thanksgiving Day Parade

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Every Thanksgiving I get up, make some mochi with some koshi an and watch the parade.

So, this morning I got up, made my food, and flipped on NBC… they were showing a musical which was showing in the parade. And then they showed some NBC sit com actors. And then another musical.

And then commercials.

Repeat.

Not once did they actually show the marching bands, or the giant cartoon balloons, or the damn floats. What the hell? NBC sucks!!!

I had to break my boycott on CBS (for backing down to policital pressure on The Reagans, which is now playing on Showtime, which is a different VIACOM network with a smaller audience) and change to their coverage. They actually showed the parade. What a concept! They showed the LEGO float. They showed the Firecrackers Jumprope team. They showed the Marshmallow Peeps float. And THEN they showed a lot of commericals, literally about every two minutes.

If you needed convincing on why there needs to be more television companies and media monopolies are a bad idea, this should be it. Even if you don’t care about getting the real news, do you really want to watch a five hour commercial every time you want to see some national spectacle?

Do you want to see the parade? Too bad! The Network knows what is good for you! You are free! To do as we tell you!

Since this comment on “The Reagans” may be wiped from IMDB, I had to preserve it for posterity:

Mike Smith (mjsmith@kskc.net)
Tonkawa, Oklahoma, U. S. A.

Date: 24 November 2003
Summary: The Comedy Miniseries Of The Year!!!
Not since Susan Sarandon’s Hitler have a miniseries have got so much crave than of this one, THE COMEDY HIT MINISERIES OF THE YEAR CALLED THE REAGANS!!!

Jack Kennedy give us no comments, no documentaries and no trailers, other than The Bridge On The River Kwai, From Here To Eternity and The Guns Of Navarone, as the Reagans miniseries is remembered for years to come.

MUST SEE!!!