This is going to be a quickie post just to introduce the slideshow. I've linked to the photo album at Picasa Web Albums (rather than included a movie) so you can view them on demand. Just move your mouse over the image and click. You'll then be taken to the Album at Picasa.
Yesterday was chilly and the sun came and went. Winter is hard - the sun is low in the sky and there is no pretty foliage on the exotic trees - just long shadows and eucalypts.
The art exhibition at C3 was a total surprise: I hope interiors are accepted in this round the block challenge! I usually drop in to C3 at the Convent on the way back from yoga so it's a legitimate trail. I was totally blown away by 'Numan' and 'Hanging Garden' and little Angelina obliged to lend these installations perspective. She was equally intrigued and engaged with them. Thanks Greg and Angelina.
The street art is a mere fraction of the public creativity around here. I'd like to snap more on another walk.
Finally I cheated: the coffee was 'created' in Carnegie later after a countery at the Rosstown. And the little creatures were 'sunbaking' on my back window sill, originally from Hermannsburg, they crave some solar radiation in this hard winter...
When you're presenting a video to a formal gathering like an AGM, it's a good idea to run it from your PC hard drive rather than from the internet. So just copy it to your USB stick and remember to grab the CORRECT one as you leave home that morning...
And just in case the USB stick malfunctions - or you take the wrong one - arrrrgh! put a copy of your precious video in the cloud at Dropbox. In the unlikely event that you've taken the wrong USB stick, you can simply download your flippin' video from Dropbox.
Allow plenty of time for this download process. How much time? you may ask. About 3 flippin' hours for a 350 MB video. That's right. The download finished about 15 minutes after the end of the AGM.
When all else fails, ask someone at home to peddle over and hand deliver the correct USB stick (as long as you live within 20 minutes of your workplace). It works a treat.
Postscript: now if you absolutely have to play (another) video directly from the internet, play it through before your guests arrive, so it will play without interruption (buffering) on demand. And NEVER navigate away from that particular web page or else all that preparation was a waste of time!
Spent most of the weekend trying to upload a 'little' video to one of the hosting sites available for our work wiki.
What a smorgasbord! I felt like Goldielocks.
There's Teachtube - just for education - perfect! Except they only accept videos smaller than 100MB and there's my Latest Favourite - Vimeo a 'respectful community of creative people'. It's quick and cute but unfortunately only takes videos up to 500MB, or is that 600MB? I dunno and don't care because the video in question is 689MB.
So I cast my eye around to blip.tv which I seem to have used before (I've got videos floating everywhere in the cloud, it seems). You can grow old waiting for videos to upload at blip.tv and there is poor communication on their side when they spit the dummy after 2 hours and a big zero has uploaded.
I googled Best free video hosting sites and nearly fell for Viddler - it's got great interactive tagging and comments facilities which I might eventually use. But luckily I watched all their talking head how-to videos before going through another lengthy sign-up process and found a limit of 500MB for those too stingy or poor to pay.
Well, what about Youtube? I hear you ask. Unfortunately whilst they seem to accept anything, there's no privacy controls, and many of my students have a healthy contempt for having their faces appearing all over the net. So I think I'll just go back to the Flippin' software and split the finished product into Part 1 and Part 2, thereby getting around the limitations of free hosting sites.
...and the story of the Church of the Lake at Nagambie.
It was delightful Autumn weather for the Easter break spent at Moyhu. The orb weavers were out in force, just like back in 1992 (?) when you couldn't walk anywhere without waving a big stick ahead to clear a path through the invisible webs.
Everywhere new, lush growth.
A few jobs were undertaken and then a trip back to Melbourne via Nagambie to drop in on a chap in Heathcote.
A night out in ACDC Lane from Jill Koppel on Vimeo.
What does a cheesy Country ballad have to do with Flinders Lane cutting-edge street art? Probably just that the audio track was one of only two that I have of Dale Watson in my itunes collection, from the compilation album Ten in Texas. And I was keen to get the photos out to those who love our Dale. Of course, being the amateur photographer that I am, I missed a golden opportunity to snap Dale chatting with his fans outside in the break: I could've got him in the foreground with one of those artworks. Never mind, I got some fresh air and a close look at the finely tailored jacket that he was sporting.
The Cherry Bar was packed with punters: the air was hot and stuffy, and the oldies were jammed up on the benches round the sides with a perfect view of the band over the tops of the heads of the smart young things with coiffed hairdos like Dale's.
I tried to keep track of the set list - jotting down scraps of lyrics from the chorus of each song so I could google them later. At least his lyrics are understandable: whether it's truckin' and texting, crying into his whiskey/ tequila or beer or sharing his love and loss with us all. And the crowd was extremely appreciative - a lot had been to Austin (or so they claimed, in answer to his query).
The band was jumping - Chris Crepps on upright bass, new fiddle player Don Raby, Don Pawlak, pedal steel guitar and Mike Bernal, drums.
While I hunt around for those song titles, I'll post this for currency...
In the last few days I've filmed an ESL class (more on that later) and worked out how to trim (top and tail) video clips made by the work Flip camera. Here's a short video compiled with Flipshare software on the imac. I've given up using the netbook because the software started behaving badly when trying to open it there.
The floods video will be preserved for posterity: next drought we'll be able to view it again and again to admire the abundant waters. I really like the effect of the raindrops on the image.
Pan and zoom should be undertaken very slowly otherwise those predisposed to motion sickness might start feeling queasy.
Whilst I was filming Toni's Hands on English class I fortuitously worked out how to prevent the Two Touch smartboard from doing crazy things on the PC when writing on the projected image. Most of us are using the Two Touch at least to go to the internet and operate the PC by touching the board. But if you want to write something anywhere on the active area, it would inadvertently activate the PC. All you have to do is pull out the USB plug thereby disconnecting the whiteboard from the PC and Bobs your uncle! Problem solved. Just don't forget to reconnect when resuming 'touching'.
Here's the video from Toni's class: it was a little chaotic, especially when our student 'expert' told us we were folding wrongly. But that just gives us more 'language opportunities' for the follow-up class...
I've been away at the Port Fairy Music Festival (I think they're trying to dissociate themselves from their past exclusively 'folk' reputation). This time I took along the wonderful Flip video camera and made some (short) video clips instead of attempting out-of-focus snaps of performers refusing to stop still for even a microsecond.
The results are patchy, to say the least. I forgot to take it on the first night - missing a superb opportunity in the front row to film Shakura S'Aida and band followed by Rosie Flores.
On Saturday I started filming the French Canadian group Les Chauffeurs a Pieds (that would be the walking chauffeurs?) followed by Crooked Still - an eagerly anticipated gig only marred by the Flip suddenly and inexplicably freezing: with the battery going flat, I couldn't record, play or turn it off. So I took it home to show it who's boss, and then proceeded to have a frantic live text chat with a techie somewhere else in the world - only after first installing a Telstra moby broadband USB borrowed from a generous companion. So it charged up whilst its primary carer caught up on an hour or two of much needed sleep.
The day's entertainment resumed with Joe Pug, and Tim O'Brien and the Two Oceans Trio. I captured one of several special 'moments that bring a tear to your eyes' when Tim O'Brien sang and accompanied himself on fiddle: achieving an amazing 3 part harmony. Listen for his wisecrack at the start about how to tell if your fiddle is out of tune. (I'm still trying to master that trim tool in Flip - again, it refused to acquiesce to my wishes.)
The timbre of his voice also morphs to blend with each musical style in their wide repertoire.
Other magical moments included the phenomenal guitar licks of the young Donna in Shakura's band (eat your heart out Santana, Hendrix and Zappa) and the delightful duet of 'You are my Sunshine' with Joe Chindamo (on accordion!) and Doug DeVries, guitar. We were all bowled over by young Callum, the drummer in Blue Shaddy (is he allowed to be away on tour without his mum or dad?!)
For more on the PFFF experience (yep, one of the 'f's stands for folk) go to Annie's Cat Politics one of the blogs featured to the right.
Better go and sort out that chaotic pile of video files floating around in the virtual universe between netbook, USB stick and imac Flipshare, imovie and iphoto...
