Month: February 2005

A movie slate is actually pretty necessary. You will wish you had one when you start editing or even reviewing your footage.

I bought a real nice one- it’s backlit so you can use it in the dark!

You could probably make your own slate. The bare essentials:

• writing area for either chalk or dry-erase. I prefer dry-erase; chalk is too messy and I never shoot anything where people are wearing white, so it can potentially get on clothes or set.
• clapper – with stripes, so you can tell when they are fully closed
• hinge at the exact center of the two halves of the clapper. This is necessary because, by definition, the clapper must close
• magnet in the ends of the clapper to make the last moment the clapper closes as brief as possible

but the features that the nicer ones have:

• larger area- duh
• inlaid stripes on the clapper. No stickers = higher durability
• COLOR stripes on the clapper… Nyeh… who cares really. If you’re doing your color balance based on your clapper you are insane.
• etched lines on the slate itself. Again… no stickers = higher durability
• BACKLIT writing area for night shoots. VERY nice. That feature adds you around $60. Or adds me that is, since I actually bought it.
• (super expensive) digital readout with the current time. Ideally it synch’s with your camera gear!

I’m considering making a simple LED readout which would display the current local time, along with the fractions of a second. That way I could tell when something was shot, and not have to get the crazy expensive kind of display that plugs into the camera!

I was looking for a perl library on my system- once I found it, I didn’t know if my perl was using it properly or not.

Here’s how to answer that question: Check if it is in the list:

perl -e 'foreach (@INC) { print "$_\n"; }' | xargs --replace find {} -name "*.pm" -print

To print out all the entries in @INC, the perl library include path:

perl -e 'foreach (@INC) { print "$_\n"; }'

This guy will sell you a replica of a real Letter of Marque; i.e. a pirate license!
Web link of note: Pirate Documents
(At http://www.piratedocuments.com/)

A very simple site. This thing needs cartoons!
Web link of note: Dharma for Kids
(At http://www.dharmaforkids.com/)

Someone find me a better page for this…

The machines at work are named after Mexican food items.

I just had our long-suffering sysadmin name my test machines “huitlacoche.”
Web link of note: Mexican food words
(At http://texmextogo.com/Glossary.htm)

From the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), the Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs, by John Montgomery.

Web link of note: Maya Dictionary
(At http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/dictionary/montgomery/a/a.htm)

My friend William‘s band, Sheltering Sky. They play celtic music; he is an amazing guitar player.

Web link of note: Sheltering Sky
(At http://www.shelteringsky.net/)