murrays

My favourite Mac utility is a little shareware program called Photo to Movie. It does one thing very well. It allows you to do multiple zooms and pans over a still image ("the Ken Burns effect") and export into any of the formats Quicktime supports..including full quality dv NTSC and PAL. It costs $19.95. Here's a link to it on Versiontracker. Anybody else want to share? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Lots and lots....retailers love selling customers these warranties on electronics because they make a ton of money on warranties. Chains do their own warranties as well as manufacturers. They might lose money on skydiving videographers but they more than make it up on the general public. Generally I never buy these things but based on the experiences of many camerajumpers I might reconsider whenever I buy a new camcorder. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Well, my fellow Canadian, I feel exactly the same way Rhino does. I feel GWB has been patient. I agree that Hussein is a cancer on the face of Iraq and the world. I trust GWB to have assessed the risk and threat to the U.S. and the rest of the West appropriately. I don't think GWB is "trigger-happy". I think that when he has made up his mind to do something he will do it. I believe he has the courage of his convictions and his faith and will do what is best for the U.S....and indirectly for the rest of the mostly ungrateful Western World. And, I think that someday we will all be grateful he had the courage to stare down the opposition and do what he thought was right. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I see a little blurb on CNN that there are unconfirmed reports 2 of OBL's sons have been captured. The trail may be getting very warm...let's hope! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Ha! It was minus 50 celsius this morning in Saskatoon with the wind chill. (-58f) For anybody from the rest of Canada Pitt will seem almost tropical. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I haven't gotten a copy of my friend's footage yet, the clip you checked out was somebody else's. Will try and get a copy over the weekend. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I'll talk to him tomorrow an dsee if he wouldn't mind sharing on here. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I think the Jaguar upgrade is worth getting..regardless. It's faster than 10.1.x and better in other ways as well. I'm glad I upgraded. But, to my mind, the major reasons for having iMovie3 are the improved audio capabilities and the Chapters feature. If you can use an audio editor to do what you want in the sound department and aren't burning DVDs then iMovie 3 and the need to upgrade to Jaguar isn't as compelling. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

One of the local skydivers just got back from a trip to Zephyr Hills. While there he bought a Sky Systems helmet, stuck his PC-9 in it and went up for a skydive...and forgot to do up the chinstrap! As his helmet floated off at about 11,000 feet he was thinking, "Man am I dumb!" He landed and went out looking with another guy. After about 45 minutes they found the helmet next to the runway. My buddy picked up the helmet, turned the camera switch to off and then to camera again. It beeped and shut down due to low battery. He took it back to the dz, put a fresh battery in it and it started up just fine. So, he rewound the tape, watched the video of the 11,000 foot freefall, impact and the 30 minutes it took for the battery to run down while it lay on the ground. His helmet is fine and the PC-9 seems fine. Pretty amazing! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I use QT Pro for lots of things, including audio, and I've used Cacophony. I found Cacophony easy to use to do the easy edits and fades that I've wanted to do. No experience with the other programs. Do you, or anybody else, know how to use these audio programs to rid voice-over narration of sibilants. I do that Dan Rather whistle on "s" and it drives me nuts when I'm trying to do voiceovers. Is there a way to filter those out? I've tried normalizing, and most of the filters in Cacophony but it would be easy to miss a setting that woulld allow me to do that. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Tom, I just tried it out as well and experienced lots of audio and video skipping. I exited iMovie, reopened the same project and it was fine after that. (800mhz G4 iMac) It seems a bit faster moving clips around but I have only spent a couple of minutes on it and the project I have loaded is only about 5 minutes long. I want to try it with an hour long project to see how it seems. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Just spotted an update to iMovie 3 on Versiontracker. The comments are positive regarding a speed increase. Will download after supper and check it out. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

What are your export options in Premiere? If you can export as .dv then you can do all sorts of good stuff using Quicktime Pro ($29) (www.quicktime.com) -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Thank-you for the "how-to" Cajones, I've installed the OS X screensaver module. Easy good cause to participate in! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Bob Sinclair sounds like a great old guy! Thanks for posting that. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

And ya know what....he's never going to look that good again. And he deserves it. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Seeing as how a bleeding heart like Alan Dershowitz has come out in favour of legitimizing torture in certain circumstances - and I believe he would call this one of the circumstances he had in mind - I certainly hope they are doing whatever they need to do to make this piece of scum talk. Who knows what al-Qaida has planned? Certainly Khalid does and whatever it takes to make him sing like a canary is fine by me. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Rob, Thanks for the history of drogues. You say that Booth followed a few years after Strong...really? I'm surprised to learn that. I just reviewed my logbooks and we had a drogue in 1986, a year after buying the tandem rig in 1985 which was a year after Bill Booth demo-ed his tandem at the Canadian Nationals at Gan in 1984. Did Strong add the drogue that much earlier, like in 1984? If he did I wish we'd bought a Strong tandem as the openings were not much fun without the drogue. In my logbook, all my drogueless tandem jumps have delays of 5 or 10 seconds noted. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Andyman, If the rumor sites are to be believed, a video iPod could be happening fairly soon. I've read that we'll likely see an evolutionary iPod upgrade to 40gb drives as Toshiba has just made drives of this capacity in the same form factor...and then we'll see somehting completely different. I'd bet that within a year we'll have something very new and different released by Apple. It would be very cool to have about 3 hours of dv on an iPod sized package with a sharp little lcd screen to play it on. Interesting that Sony doesn't make an mp3 player..I hadn't noticed to tell you the truth. Am I the only one that thinks the music companies are missing the boat by not making music available on line for a reasonable cost? I would pay to download the music that I want without having to search, get disconnected, start over, download songs of less, than top quality, etc. I'd be happy to pay to be able to get exactly what I want from a good fast server. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I heard on one news report that several laptops were recovered from the place of arrest. I am hoping this leads to OBL and Zawahiri. This arrest may force OBL and others to start moving from the obviously safe places they are now residing in. When they start moving they become more detectable. OBL's day is coming....and it can't come too soon. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

It's tough to keep a cat inside that is used to going outside. We have three cats...2 females and one male (all neutered). We got the females first - they are litter mates - and always kept them in the house. No problem. When we got the male he wanted out all the time and we were constantly chasing him back into the house. The house we lived in had electric heat, including one in-floor blower...which the male, Fred, soon started using to express his displeasure with us by pissing into it. I replaced the blower, he pissed in it again, and I opened the door and let him out....end of pissing in the blower. He still has to go outside everyday - even when it's 40 below. I hope that Mr. Kitty is back home soon. I'm worried that he might get his fixator hung up on a wire fence or something....it looks like it has snag possibilities. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Well,. all things considered he looks pretty good! I was just wondering how Mr. Kitty was doing. Glad to see he's on the mend. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Here's some video of my buddy doing a drogueless tandem in about 1985. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

As one of the early adopters of tandem technology, I remember very well doing tandems without the drogue.....I usually did an 8 second delay and then pulled. The openings were often HARD if you took them to tandem terminal. There were a few instances of canopy damage that I recall. I didn't think that passengers liked tandem terminal very much..it was just too windy and fast. Bill Booth was up in Canada at the Canadian Nationals demo-ing it in 1984 and I think that he and Ted Strong both started working on tandem rigs in 1983. We were very impressed. In fact, my logbook entry for the first tandem jump I did as a passenger reads..."After thinking about this, I think this is the way of the future." I bought a tandem rig in 1985 with a buddy of mine. I think that the drogue was added the next year..1986. The only thing I liked about drogueless tandem compared to tandem with a drogue was that the rig and emergency procedures were exactly the same as on a regular rig...Throw-out, cutaway and reserve...only three things to pull. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

The only situation, other than crw, that I can think of where an RSL or the Skyhook may not be advisable is camera jumping. Making sure your helmet is clear before opening your reserve is something that I think advisable. As mentioned in a previous thread on the skyhook, there have been instances where camerajumpers have cutaway from spun up canopies in situations where they couldn't tell if they had a snag or not. This would be my only reservation. If it is possible to disconnect the rsl/skyhook when jumping camera, that would be an ideal situation. I think the Skyhook is a great invention...but it will take time and real world experiences to reveal any unforeseen issues. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey