Dr. Milo T. Pinkerton III

Snoozin thru Mobicon

2008-05-18T04:35:24Z

Well, here I am at Mobicon in Mobile, whiling away the time... as relaxacons go, this is pretty relaxed alright. (Yes, Jeannine and I still go to sci-fi cons! Been going since the early 80's... and hey, C.O.G. played its first show at a con some 12 years ago this June...)

On the positive front this con, my script editor Chris Enyart and I got to listen to (and speak with) current fave author Jim Butcher - the biggest reason I got tix to the con. Mr. Butcher answered many of my questions about his own book to TV series adaptation (he wasn't very involved at all, they changed producers on the series 10 days before shooting began, necessitating an almost complete rewrite of the entire season, he thinks the series got some things right, etc.) Also listened to a nice artist panel earlier (digital vs. traditional art), checked out the art show and an anemic costume contest, and toured a respectable dealer room (where DVD bootleggers were brazenly hawking movies that were still in the theater, such as Iron Man and Speed Racer, as well as fan productions and commercially available offerings like Dr. Who! Sheeesh!) Well, at least the dealer room yielded a good gag purchase - 'DM'ing for Dummies' (for real!) which I intend to bring to the next shoot of 'Dice Jockies'.

As far as costuming themes go, BTW, piracy is still surprisingly hot, and once again I've seen a number of people dressed as drow elves (what's up with that trend?)

Aside from that, this outing has really been more about bumping into old friends, much like CoastCon was, than proper con events. This hotel's configured like a motel, with a large open courtyard, and at this hour, there's no real con events going on, just a bunch of parties with lots of people congregating in the open space adjoining the pool. Which is fine, of course; but it still makes me think fondly of the cons we had a decade ago in New Orleans, where there were lots of activity tracks going into the night and cool new things to see.

I just hope somebody reinstates a New Orleans (or at least Baton Rouge) area convention; I'd certainly love another chance to contribute meaningfully to the local fan scene, even if it's just DJ'ing the dance or contributing a classic arcade game for some diversion. It's been way too long (since Exoticon, really), and lemme tell you, the dance at this con SSSUUUUCCCCKKKKSSSSS... (well, at least the parties are decent and going strong now at 1:30am)

Interesting day...

2008-05-16T03:06:36Z

Today my friend (and C.O.G. cameraman extraordinary) Arvid got me onto the set of 'Final Destination 4', which has been shooting a few blocks over from my office (and is about to wrap in a couple days.) Lots to see on a pro movie shoot (although this is actually shooting on standard 1080p HD video (not even 2K!) but they're shooting in 3D which is plenty interesting, esp. for a special effects movie like this one.

Arvid took me around the production and showed me all the various departments. He's working primarily in the office as a production assistant, but we had free run of the set. They were shooting some scenes in an apartment interior, and I was surprised by how subdued the lighting was - these modern cameras seem to work just fine in natural light levels. I met some folks in the production office, and on the set I met the guy supervising video recording (Victor seemed like a cool dude) and the sound man and his assistant. After that we went to a trailer behind the building which was set up to preview rushes in 3D! They had two video projectors aligned together with polarizing filters, and a rack of glasses on the wall. The 3D supervisors showed me how they correct convergence alignment "if there's vertical camera misalignment, you get a real headache!" and they can also adjust horizontal convergence somewhat, to draw your eye to different points in the scene. They showed me this in one show of the trailer they had edited together for press people.

The trailer included some of the ridiculous death scenes this series is known for, as well as some wonderful looking 3D, some of the best of which depicted rather mundane sights like underwater in a swimming pool, a crowded restaurant, and rush hour traffic. I found myself reflecting on a very interesting article I found a couple weeks ago, interviewing James Cameron on 3D and frame rates. Mr. Cameron was right: when a scene is in 3D, you suddenly react differently to it, MORE critically, and find yourself noticing things you never did notice in standard 2D - such as 24fps frame rate, and the noisy shimmer of a light amplifying video screen...

New video

2008-05-15T04:33:10Z

Well, I just finished editing the concert video from our March show at One Eyed Jacks. It came out pretty well (despite my having to scrap one song due to technical problems.) The full length concert is 50 minutes in length and represents us well. Hopefully it helps us get some decent gigs too!

I've put up a video from this concert on YouTube and MySpace, and will probably put up more videos from it in the weeks to come...

C.O.G. - 'I Scream' live March 2008

Every time I post one of these, I try to simultaneously get a copy up on YouTube (for the popularity) and MySpace (for the quality.) Despite its ubiquitous nature, I just can't get into YouTube's complete lack of video detail or sound quality (it's mono for crying out loud! How much more bandwidth would stereo have taken?!) MySpace is far better, but I wonder how long it'll be until a widescreen video sharing site emerges? Ahhh well. With stuff like this I can crop and it's suited for the web; but as usual, I'm really editing this stuff for television, and that's where it looks and sounds the best. Wait till the DVD comes out later this year...

Congratulations

2008-05-13T21:11:12Z

...go out to previous C.O.G. Lab Girl 'Ilsa' for graduating ALIVE from the C.O.G. Secret Lab. She is the first Lab Girl to achieve this special distinction!

We rewarded her with a special diploma (and a $66.66 gift certificate to Blood Bath & Beyond) for this amazing accomplishment last night at rehearsal, and she proceeded to preview the promising progress of her protege, Lab Girl Trixie (whom you really should friend on MySpace if you get a moment!)

I shall leave you with this interesting list of quotes by prominent songwriters...

High-tech & heavy

2008-05-10T05:35:37Z

Last few days were pretty sedate, broken by another photo session Thursday night for new head shots of us geniuses. Here's three of the best pictures:

Photography by Amy Enyart.

Friday I'd been cutting the concert video footage of our last big show to show off to the cast & crew Saturday. My labor was interrupted by my friend Ralph, who came by my office to show off his new baby: the new Red digital video camera, a $32,000 investment with the prime Nikon lenses and accessories included. This puppy is a full-scale professional digital motion picture camera! It delivers raw uncompressed imagery from a 2:1 aspect 4K pixel sensor to a hard drive array mounted atop the camera, or if you are going for slightly less bulk, you can shoot straight to a special compact flash card (8GB = 4 minutes.)

I'm doing my usual type of custom work for Ralph hacking up special cables to interface his new camera to his Steadicam rig, and provide a hardwired remote focus control for jib or Stedicam operation. I don't envy him the job of piloting the Steadicam with this camera attached; between the batteries and the massive camera, it's over 50lbs.

After work, Jeannine and I met Filbert, Chris, Billy, Alfred and some other friends at the movie theater to see the long awaited 'Speed Racer' movie. I've been a fan of the American version of the TV show since a very young age (in fact, you could call it my first exposure to anime), and I was of course concerned with the movie translation. I was happy to find out that the good outweighed the bad; the actors, music, and technology were beautifully translated and I actually enjoyed the colorful, videogame-like visual style.

The bad elements included a very slow first act (almost the first hour of the film), a muddled, perhaps deliberately messy style of past and present meshed storytelling by the Wachowski Bros. that's sure to confuse the younger audience (appropriate for 'Kill Bill', not so appropriate for a kids film), and the exchange of 'spy' intrigue in the 60's cartoon for a more up to date 'big business' backstory. I doubt that any kids will be able to comprehend the premise of race fixing for stock market piracy, but fortunately, once the cross country race part of the film began, the movie really shifted into gear, and it was pure Speed Racer from that point on (great for fans, but perhaps questionable for non-fans.) And from then on, it was well worth seeing. Perhaps someday some amateur editor will straighten out this film into the streamlined wonder it should have been, but I'd still recommend it to anyone who loved the original series.

In the future...

2008-05-07T21:53:46Z

...who knows what will happen? But time has this way of rolling inexorably forward, and we don't have a whole lot of control over the pace of it all. This coming Sunday will mark the start of my own 40th trip around our local stellar orb! Certainly a good time to reflect on time itself.

I can feel Summer creeping up on us. The thermostat in my office this morning was three degrees hotter when I came in yesterday. I've been riding my bicycle into work on favorable days (which have been pleasantly abundant lately) and have managed to avoid having to fill my truck's gas tank for a month!!! Wow. In the last month, I've also managed to establish a new PayPal account and restart my ebay auctions to clear out some old things from my office, and been pleasantly surprised at the lucrative results. One auction a week is certainly worth running, esp. with my winning ebay sale formula (pick something worthy to sell, make sure it works BEFORE auctioning it, take some sharp, well-lit pictures, and then list for 10 days with a starting price of just $10, no matter HOW much it's actually worth. A fight will inevitably break out between two or three individuals, pushing the price to the reasonable limit!)

My job itself has been rather slow lately, and I've thought a bit recently about how long I can keep this little software company going, and what I'd most like to do for an encore. Hard to believe, but I've been doing this for 16 years! But after this, I don't think I'll be doing software for a living. There's so many other things I enjoy and know how to do quite effectively, but what would I prefer doing for an actual paycheck, and what do I know how to do that's reliably lucrative and gives me sufficient free time? Hmmmmmmmmm.... there's probably plenty time to plot and plan accordingly.

Meanwhile, commercial prospects for my beloved C.O.G. are back on the front burner. The next thing required is proper glossy head-shots of all our major characters, and the shoot's scheduled for tomorrow. Might be a good time for me to update my faux follicle fitting...

Great weekend so far...

2008-05-04T06:04:09Z

Started it off early with Jazzfest on Friday. Saw some great acts during the day (Tulane Jazz Ensemble, 007, Jumpin' Johnny Sansone's Harmonica Revue, and the Pinettes Brass Band) and ate some great festival food, as always! The evening's entertainment consisted of a fantastic two hour set by the great Stevie Wonder, playing almost an hour past his scheduled time. That guy's amazingly musical delivery made a rain soaked evening fly by. Very glad I got to see (and more importantly hear) that!

After that we came home and settled in, which gave me a chance to catch up on TV. 4th Doctor Who episode of 2008 was great!!! Mike of the Young Ones makes one hell of a Sontaran. Downloading the second half of that right now...

Today we got up early, did some yard work, and generally goofed off most of the day, up until a scheduled audition for the role of 'Computer'. After the audition, Dr. Z and I went over his bass playing in the concert soundtrack, fishing for clams. We caught two or three... (now I've gotta sit down with Rachnid and do the same.) Following that, Jeannine, Chris and I snuck off to the movies and caught Iron Man. Wow, I've got to hand it to them - perfect casting - there's no way they could have done better than Robert Downey Jr. We thoroughly enjoyed the first of what looks like a summerful of Hollywood blockbusters. (I'm also betting that ex-guitarist Dr. A Pentatonic will enjoy the hell outta that movie's soundtrack... inspired choices for songs, not the least of which was putting 'Institutionalized' by Suicidal Tendancies behind an early scene with Stark in his garage. Great stuff!)

Meanwhile, I'm watching my latest ebay sale... if you know anybody with a Tempest videogame, tell them they need to bid on this auction!

Time out for a friend

2008-04-30T18:40:06Z

Last night was fun... Jeannine and I spent the evening at Ya Mama's bar and grille in the Quarter, shooting a concert by the ever-luminous Beth Patterson. We each took a camera and shot an hour's worth of footage, much of which will turn up on YouTube, I think...

Tonight calls for relaxation. Tomorrow night calls for more auditions...

Another concert last night, not quite on the same level as last weekend's

2008-04-28T04:49:22Z

Re: the Asia concert last night... good performance, great opportunity to see some prog legends perform up close.

Steve Howe - still an amazing guitarist, fluid and inventive. What a mind; he can turn the mundane into an amazing platform for utterly creative style and showmanship. Steve got a great tone out of his Line6 gear, and unexpectedly even used a Variax to supplement his classic old Gibson ES-175 (though he played 'Clap' on a Martin') Steve looked really frail, like an errant gust of wind might waft him of

Carl Palmer - still a hell of a drummer at his age, and he does a nice Buddy Rich impression ;^} His playing was as tasty and sloppy as ever. Not one of the great timekeepers in rock and roll history, but I do love hearing him play. In this case he played a set of purple Ludwig Vistalites, with Paiste's on top and two of his trademark gongs behind him. Rather modest set actually. It didn't really help his cause that I saw Neil Peart utterly pwn poor Palmer last weekend!

Geoffrey Downes played 9 various Roland keyboards, two Fantoms, a digital drawbar organ, a digital piano of some type, and a little Moog 'Little Phatty' on top of the right hand stack. He also worked a ridiculous looking Roland synthaxe at the end of the night... I'd personally like to know what he was processing his voice through for backup vocals. They sounded ridiculously huge and it was really hard to tell it wasn't just samples (but I think it was a keyboard process... for 'Video Killed the Radio Star' he used a classic vocoder, and I think it was a vocoder like process that gave the rest of the backups their thickness, as nobody else in the band was really trying at all, except for Steve Howe during 'Roundabout'.

As for the band as a whole, they only really caught fire during the cover of ELP's 'Fanfare for the Common Man', which gave everybody a chance to really step out. That was pretty much worth the price of admission, and made me really want to hear some more ELP. No such luck. The abbreviated 'In the Court of the Crimson King' was pretty nice. 'Roundabout' was just serviceable - it just left me really wanting to go see YES (on tour in a month.) The Asia material was mostly fine, but lacked energy. Strange night, but glad I went. I predict the chance won't reoccur.

Rehearsal tomorrow night, and I'm looking forward to it!!! Later in the week, I've got more auditioning to do for other roles in our show, and also some videotaping to do for Beth Patterson. For now, I'll leave you with a few more pictures of our wonderful new Lab Girl.

Picture 1 - Brains for Brunch!
Picture 2 - Don't move
Picture 3 - Flying Car nose art

Ladies and gentlemen...

2008-04-26T05:15:26Z

Please welcome our new Lab Girl, Ms. Trixie (played by Judith M.)!

Excellent photography by Amy Enyart.

Things to look forward to

2008-04-25T21:16:35Z

Lots of things to look forward to soon...

The first of a series of shorts called 'Dice Jockeys' has been released by its creator, our 2nd unit director Charlie Brown. I'm acting in this, playing the uber-geeky 'Freddie the DM'. Check it out.

Tonight we're getting together a quick photo shoot for our new Lab Girl, Judith (and simultaneously be taking advantage of the occasion to give her predecessor some parting presents... shhhh, don't tell Liz!)

Tomorrow, Jeannine and I are cruising to Marksville LA with Rachnid and Nicole to see 'Asia' in concert. With Steve Howe and Carl Palmer in the band, the night should prove notable for musical virtuosity (otherwise known to some of you as wanksmanship!)

Early next week I'm looking forward to getting my new guitar amp. (I realized I needed one after borrowing a Peavy bandit and Rachnid's Mesa Boogie pedal to play rhythm guitar in last month's show at One Eyed Jacks.) I didn't want to break the bank or get something too big and unwieldy, and decided that a digital combo amp would suit the bill and be nicely self contained. Rachnid and I visited Guitar Center on Tuesday and looked at the Line 6 'Spider' amps, the digital Fender amps, and the Vox Valvetronic amps. I settled on the 50 watt Vox AD50VT. It's not as flashy as the Line 6 (no screen, no midi, simple rotary selection controls) but it sounds absolutely great, and that was the main factor. Its competitors sounded thin and disembodied by comparison. This amp features a tube preamp and a 12" Celestion speaker. Our friends at C&M Music are ordering the amp for me. With luck, it'll be in the Secret Lab in time for next rehearsal. Fingers crossed...

I'll leave you with a neat little article on the BBC website about the late, lamented BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Lab Girl Located

2008-04-22T18:44:52Z

OK! As of last night, we've finally cast our new Lab Girl. The part has been awarded to the amazing Judith M. (who was also the previous Lab Girl's personal choice.)

As usual with the C.O.G., when somebody joins the band, they add their own stamp to their character, and Judith is no exception. She brings amazing vocal sensibilities to the part as well as a classic sense of style, based on the greatest 1940's Hollywood starlets. The character itself will change somewhat as well as a result. We are all really jazzed about where she's going with the part... it's unexpected and fresh.

I'm really looking forward to showing you all our new lineup, but you'll have to wait a couple days for us to have time to do a photo shoot... one thing's for sure - our next live lecture is going to be the bomb, I promise!

Last night, New Orleans Arena echoed with the sounds...

2008-04-21T18:29:22Z

...of the almighty RUSH.

Wonderful night... compared to Houston last summer, it was a good deal more comfortable indoors but the sound suffered from too much echo in our boxy arena (mind you, a friend who works in the building told me that it was the best sound he'd ever heard in there!) The only legit complaints I can offer in comparison to last year are the omission of 'Circumstances' and 'Entre Nous', both personal favorites. I bet that few people complained about the substitution of '2112 Overture' / the 'Temples of Syrinx' for 'Summertime Blues' and 'Secret Touch'! NICE!!! ;^}

The older RUSH gets, the longer (and more precise) they seem to play! They performed from 7:45 to 11:30, with a 30 minute break in between sets. Geddy's voice was in great shape on this sixth stop of their current tour. I heard him duck a few notes here and there but when it was time for him to belt, as in the last stanza of 'Freewill', he delivered solidly. Neil Peart's drumming fit that description as well... his playing was focused and intense.

Reflecting on the setlist, it was kind of eclectic. Rush, Fly By Night, Caress of Steel, Farewell to Kings, Power Windows, Presto, Counterparts and Test for Echo were not represented at all. The classic Moving Pictures album, however, got as much attention as the new one. Here's the setlist from last night:

SET 1
01. Limelight
02. Digital Man
03. Ghost of a Chance
04. Mission
05. Freewill
06. The Main Monkey Business
07. The Larger Bowl (with McKenzie Brothers intro)
08. Red Barchetta
09. The Trees
10. Between The Wheels
11. Dreamline

SET 2
12. Far Cry
13. Workin' Them Angels
14. Armor and Sword
15. Spindrift
16. The Way The Wind Blows
17. Subdivisions
18. Natural Science
19. Witch Hunt
20. Malignant Narcissism
21. Drum Solo
22. Hope
23. The Spirit of Radio
24. 2112: Overture / The Temples of Syrinx
25. Tom Sawyer (with "South Park" intro)

ENCORE
26. One Little Victory
27. A Passage To Bangkok
28. YYZ

The little touches really put it over the top for me (Geddy's 'Trogdor' tshirt and the South Park "Real guitars are for old people!" quote during 'Freewill' made both me and Jeannine LOL) The miniature drumset w' Neil Peart doll in front of the keyboard rack also elicited a great WTF moment. And Ged's gracious comments to the crowd made up for lost time in the last 12 years. The packed house made it evident that RUSH is always welcome in New Orleans, despite the clumsy scheduling tactics of the NBA... which Geddy joked about "I think there was a hockey game here last night or something..."

The concert started out kind of laid back, precise but somewhat staid, esp. Alex, who must have been conserving his mojo for such an long evening (the entire concert was 3 hours, and that's taking into account intermission!). The evening became really electric in the second set with the bounty of classics following a great set of songs from Snakes & Ladders. Even the minimoog's volume being turned way down (whoops!) couldn't derail 'Subdivisions' from being so hypnotic that I completely forgot to snap a photo. But I got a lot of other pictures... see this site for some of the best.

I actually videoed the entire second half of the drum solo before being harassed by Arena security... (will try to post that later!)

Fantastic night... I ran into innumerable friends there, many of whom were seeing RUSH for the first time. The dazed, even drained look on those first-timers' faces after the show was priceless! After the show, my group joined Beth and Ron and their new bassist Brad for a VERY late night dinner at St. Charles Tavern (replete with 'Tom Sawyer' blasting from a CD player in the kitchen, and lots of other diners in RUSH t-shirts!) The long wait for food was assuaged by great conversation... Beth DID get to meet Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson earlier that day, at a meet and greet along with 20 other folks, and she enjoyed great conversation with Alex, who accepted her gift of a book of intentionally bad poetry. When she got to meet Ged, alas she was speechless... I'm looking forward to seeing the photos (which were taken by the band management, as cameras weren't allowed in the meet and greet!)

Tonight looks to be promising as well. We've got another round of 'Lab Girl' auditions tonight, and I'm also keyed up to showing the guys the first 20 minutes of the concert video that I've edited. I've been looking forward to practice night more and more these days, which is a good thing! Now I've just got to get off my duff and book another show...

doctorpinkerton @ 2008-04-20T17:30:00

2008-04-20T22:48:01Z

Thursday: Helped my friend Charlie with the audio mix for the first of his upcoming series of shorts entitled 'Dice Jockies'. (I play 'Freddy the DM') Looking forward to showing ya'll that when it's posted to YouTube.

Friday: More work on the C.O.G. concert footage... I'm working on a full length video from our last show. It's coming out pretty good considering the rocky experience of that evening...

Saturday: Prepped the house for visitors... I've got friends in for the Rush concert this weekend.

Sunday: Lunch with friends and Rush in concert tonight at the Arena!!! As much as I'm looking forward to it, I'm also looking forward to hearing the story from my friend and part time supernatural antagonist Beth Patterson, who hooked up a meet and greet with the band! She's the biggest Rush fan I know (and can play all their music on several instruments, probably at once); there's nobody who more deserves to meet them than she does.

Shudder at the depths of my prog musical geekery

2008-04-17T19:02:04Z

Going to see my #1 favorite RUSH perform this Sunday, and Asia next Saturday (mostly because Steve Howe and Carl Palmer are on the tour, and the band will be playing selections from Asia, Yes, ELP, King Crimson, and even the Buggles!!!) Sorry, but when it comes to good old prog rock, I lose all sense of perspective. (So, what are YOUR musical guilty pleasures?)

Aside from that self-indulgence, I've learned that my trip to Lala land has been pushed back another month at least, so C.O.G. will be concentrating on band activities, including our ongoing quest for the new Lab Girl, recording, and booking another big show in New Orleans. I am currently working on cutting up some video footage from our last concert. (If I'm truly motivated I may try to get the whole concert cut together.) While there were little technical glitches everywhere, it was a pretty strong performance, well recorded, and we absolutely need some new footage of our stage show to show off. I'll post this stuff for public viewing as I finish it.

In other news, MEET THE THEREMIN PLAYING CAT!!!

doctorpinkerton @ 2008-04-15T16:22:00

2008-04-15T21:45:07Z

Last night's Lab Girl audition was great... our previous Lab Girl, Liz, brought over her protege (both of them showed up in costume!) and we went through several songs and a screen test. Quite promising... the new auditionee brought kind of a 1940's sense to the character, and her harmonies were great! There'll be even more people to audition next Monday, but on the whole it's looking real good so far.

We'll also be auditioning a non-singing role as well...

Allow me to geek out for a moment...

2008-04-13T20:35:44Z

Well, I'm back. Back from the first science fiction con I've attended in a couple years - the old stalwart CoastCon, which is 31 years old and sinmply refuses to die. Despite Friday night's low turnout, Saturday showed signs of life, which means it'll probably also be the only game on the Gulf Coast next year as well.

C.O.G. performed at CoastCon in 2001, granting me a guest pass for life. That plus free time, an interesting guest list (more on that in a second) and a cameo invitation by Luke Ski, who was the musical guest this year, proved an irresistible to me and so I carpooled with my script editor Chris to the Gulf Coast Coliseum Friday afternoon (Jeannine was working all weekend and couldn't make it.) Real slow start; the biggest room in the con was the gaming area and it was pretty empty. Dealer room was fairly interesting for a small con, and included C.O.G. friend and fan Kris Overstreet of White Lightning Productions. It also included guest David Gerrold, who was selling scripts, novels, and of course tribbles (Mr. Gerrold actually wrote those lil' beasties into existence way back in 1967!) I looked around the dealer room, then jogged back to the car and fetched my long treasured nonfiction paperback he wrote about his experience writing for Star Trek, which I bought at my local K&B drugstore wayyyy back in 1976. In retrospect, that book was probably the first fannish purchase I ever made, back when Dr. Smerlington (who was back then just a kid next door named George) and I were practically wallowing in Star Trek reruns in syndication on a local UHF station. It was also my first glimpse of the world behind the curtain, as it were... I didn't understand everything I read in that book about the realities of television production at the time (c'mon, I was 8!), but I was FASCINATED, especially by the secrets behind the (then very) special effect illusions. I asked David Gerrold to sign my book, and he obliged. Strangely enough, I don't remember giving him my name, and my badge had only my Evil Alias written on it. But he signed my book and even spelled 'Lewis' correctly. Huh...?

That night I put in my in character appearance during Luke Ski's set, duetting with him on 'Brain Wrap.' Luke took great delight in channeling Filbert Snodgrass to a dazed looking audience of about 20 people. Like I said, light attendance. The sound was pretty horrible, but the concert was fun, and everybody had a good time. After that, I attended a panel by David Gerrold on his efforts on the upcoming Star Trek fanfilm 'Blood and Fire'. Those guys are really blurring the line between pro and fan efforts... (will people still be able to call them 'fan films' if more than 50% of the production team are pros?) The script is actually an unproduced holdover from the 'Next Generation' days. David showed some rough footage from the episode, and it was indeed quite rough, but promising. It didn't help, however, that the convention was unwilling or unable to dim the lights when showing the video, feh. (they claimed that the union would have charged them $600 to reach out and hit the light switch! I'm not lying!!!)

Afterwards, me and Chris drove Luke and Kris around the corner to a mexican restaurant called 'El Rancho' which was reasonably priced and really pretty good. Fun & ridiculously geeky conversation ensued, offending a family at a table next to us (hey, geeks will be geeks!) when the subject matter took a brief dip beyond 'Torchwood' through the hentai realm. We returned to the con to find it deader than before... people were actually calling it a night in the gaming area. The biggest crowd was in the LARP room nearby, where some kids had set up Rock Band and were competing in front of a decent little audience. Looks like another fan generation gap to me! It was encouraging to see that many young fen in attendance though. At midnight I exhibited our 'Rock City Morgus' episode to a handful of interested folks left in the video room, and then took off, having decided that commuting to and from New Orleans was cheaper than booking a hotel room.

Saturday, I was crestfallen to find out that Filbert wasn't going to be able to make the trip, as he was babysitting his nephew. Pity; I was on a con panel with Luke Ski at 4pm and had been looking forward to doing it in character, with Filbert as my foil. Ahhh well. I got some last minute office stuff done and we loaded up a couple needed things (like a loudspeaker) and drove to the con, making it there just in time to start the panel, which was on 'Funny Music'. Since Luke was the featured act and had to make his keep for the weekend, I stayed in my day-to-day duds and sort of moderated the panel by, in essence, interviewing Luke on the subject of funny music, Dr. Demento, and his comedy music web project, 'The Fump'. Luke played some very funny musical selections from some of his favorite artists on the (very) loudspeaker I brought, easily blasting away the noise from the panel next door. The small but appreciative audience, dotted with friendly faces, enjoyed the panel, and an hour wasn't enough time for all the great music Luke had brought.

After that, I spent some time just drifting around the con with my old fan circle The Anonymous. Saturday was a lot better attended than the previous day, and many people were taking the effort to costume. Nice! Chris and I took advantage of a special rate for Mobicon pre registration in group blocks, and I got Jeannine and I some memberships for that con. I bumped into a hell of a lot of people I hadn't seen in ages, especially with the dearth (death?) of New Orleans cons in the last decade. I had been interested in attending some room parties, but learned that the temp manager of the next door hotel had put down his jackboot on room parties the previous night, necessitating a change of venue for room parties from the hotel to the main con panel room, after the con dance. Unfortunately, I knew I'd probably be on the way home by then, having promised Jeannine not to slink in at 3AM like I did on Friday night!

There was one last event I wanted to see Saturday - a writers panel by David Gerrold on 'World Building.' The panel was fun and informative, but told me more about Mr. Gerrold's personal SF writing inclinations than it did about constructing a consistent universe when writing (as I had hoped.) He's quite good at spinning anecdotes after 40 years in the industry though, and an enjoyable hour was passed.

I was marginally interested in the costume contest, but it was packed - standing room only. My friends and I were shooting the breeze and passing the time, when another opportunity presented itself. While my friends and I were gabbing in the concourse, David Gerrold had plunked down at a table across the hall to catch up on his business via cel phone. When he was finished, me and C.O.G. script editor Chris went over to meet him. After some pleasantries, we got to ask him some questions about show bible writing and pitching, which is our ongoing concern these days. Mr. Gerrold gave us some fairly generalized advice, most of which was fairly familiar, until I asked him about what do to when confronted with a contract to sign. He reached into his pocket, withdrew his business card, and threw it my way. "When that happens, give me a call. I'll hook you up with a trustworthy entertainment lawyer who will insure you won't get screwed." Wow! A professional hookup with one of the first people in television production I was ever dimly aware of, back in my childhood. For me, that was the highlight of the entire weekend.

Now, off to watch some new Dr. Who...

New interview...

2008-04-10T16:40:39Z

Wow, 'they' (they?) finally posted another one of my admittedly off-kilter interviews... this one was conducted at the Alternative Media Expo a couple months ago. ENJOY - just don't take these idiots too seriously (I mean Authorviews, not the Consortium of Genius!)

AUTHORVIEWS INTERVIEW WITH DR. PINKERTON

Oh, by the way, if you've ever noticed that the Consortium of Genius is not mentioned in Wikipedia, it's obviously some kind of massive conspiracy or something (Go ahead and try looking it up...) I had put up a nice little stub entry on us a few years ago, but it was removed due to 'lack of relevance'... Been sitting back ever since waiting to see just WHAT level of breathtaking notoriety was required for us to achieve the 'achievement' of making it onto Wikipedia...

P.S.: just got clued in on this... if you luv metal and you also like Homestar Runner, by all meanz CLICK HERE

Interesting...

2008-04-09T17:47:13Z

Wow, we've gone from one actress to audition for 'Lab Girl' next Monday, to 4. How'd that happen?!

So far so good...

2008-04-08T18:29:08Z

Last night's audition session was interesting... promising. There's more people to audition next week as well. The more we get to read for the part, the better!

Meanwhile, there's CoastCon. I'm looking forward to making a nuisance of myself, and also meeting David Gerrold.

It's time

2008-04-07T18:20:23Z

It's that time of year... time when it starts taking more than an hour to cut the lawn. At least it hasn't gotten to the point where you break a sweat just walking outside. That'll come soon enough... but these days it's great spending time outside. Jeannine and I got some good time in our our bicycles, I helped my dad replace an attic ventilation fan on his roof, and of course, did the obligatory lawn work. And the weather's so beautiful, I've ridden my bike to work again today.

Oh, also got to watch the first new Doctor Who episode of the year yesterday. It was an entertaining season opener, albeit a bit more like a 'Sarah Jane Adventures' plot than a serious Doctor Who episode. A bit lightweight - but lots of fun with plenty of great sight gags. Next week's should be better - a historical adventure set in Vesuvius, on volcano day, naturally! Looking forward to it.

Yesterday, my friend and fellow HD-DVD enthusiast Farrar stopped by and sold me his spare Star Trek TOS box set (which very well might be the first and last one issued in HD-DVD.) He had bought his own set before being given a second one by his unwitting parents for his birthday. So he sold his second one to me for a song (plus a few bucks.) This set is NICE - great video transfers, nice commentary and extras. And lots of stupid menues and animations that you can't turn off. Jeannine and I sat and watched 'Shore Leave' and the high definition picture showed off the location work on this episode really nicely.

Tonight we are scheduled to have our first three auditionees for Lab Girl stop by the Secret Lab and do a camera test and some singing ... looking forward to it!

Oh, one other thing... I need to make up a new concert video. I'm gonna edit something from everything we've got, including the news. What song to use? Give me your vote, if you've got a preference!

Interesting day...

2008-04-06T04:55:45Z

...spent mostly in the service of others. Helped Mel Graziano (pianist on 'Lab Coat') transfer an old DAT tape. Helped Flattstein's wife with an online payment. Helped my mom recover her address book on her computer after it crashed. And finally, I helped my great aunt out by transferring an old cassette tape to CD. The tape is of my aunt Lorraine going through a stack of 78 rpm records she found in my grandmother's attic and playing them, with my she and my grandmother commenting on and reminiscing about them. My dear grandmother (mother's side) was very lucid for her age (late 80's I believe) but but didn't live very long past that point (July 1982), making the tape a sentimental time capsule.

The transfer proved to be a bit of a project as it was a Memorex CrO2 tape from the late 70's, and the foam pad that held the pressure pad had disintegrated, necessitating the physical transfer of the tape and spools to another cassette cartridge, just so it would hold azimuth OK during playback. Guess that's the price of never having invested in that $2000 closed-loop-dual-capstan Nakamichi cassette deck back in the day... but whatever, having prised open the shell and transferred the tape, it worked out quite well. The recording on the tape was actually surprisingly good; I'll have to rib my aunt Lorraine about her killer vocal recording techniques!

Aside from that, a spate of 'Lab Girl' auditions are scheduled for the next couple days, then Z's going out of town for a week. And next weekend is CoastCon; I'm planning on a couple special appearances at the con. More on that soon. But first, it's finally time for some new Doctor Who! Only 26 minutes left on the download... I can hardly wait!

Film fests, feh. ... eh?

2008-04-04T15:51:40Z

Rats. After today, there's a small but notable price hike on entering the New Orleans Film Fest. This is the part I hate - marketing myself. I'm fond of saying "I'm no salesman." But the C.O.G. would probably be a lot further along if I didn't hold such a distaste for this necessary evil, and I've got a small but growing list of film fests I could submit our latest episode to...

So what do ya'll think? I can think of a lot of ways I could spend $45.00. Is the New Orleans Film Fest worth a damn?

Progress...

2008-04-03T23:35:13Z

Got some good stuff done since my last post... for one thing, I finally got around to uploading the first part of our latest episode to YouTube and MySpace video for the motley, mangy masses to see. Here ya go:

'Rock City Morgus' - part 1

On the opposite (much higher) end of the quality spectrum, I did some research last night in my continuing fascination with homebrew HD, and made a demo disc with the teaser from the newest episode, along with camera footage from our Cult-Pop interview and footage from my last two vacations. I discovered:

- That (as I suspected) it's noticeably better for HD if I work at 960x540 (square pixel aspect) instead of 960x480 (DV pixel aspect) as I've been doing. Doesn't impose a substantially greater hit on the editor or disk resources, but it gives me an integer scaling factor from the vertical resolution of the original footage, which makes for a cleaner image in the end. '960' by the way is the purported horizontal rez of my video camera's image sensor, although the image is stored on tape at 1440 pixels across.

- Normal DVD looks pretty lousy when directly compared against the same footage on HD DVD, even at SD rez. Well, I guess this shouldn't surprise me much, as the bitrate is so much higher and the color sampling is so much better.

- My little Sony HC-1 camera still kicks major ass, esp. when shooting under bright lighting or daytime conditions. I'm not used to seeing it in full rez on a big screen, but it sure is nice to be able to... this opens the door to making pretty eyepopping vacation videos. My HDR-FX1's image looks soft by comparison, but still quite good (and really great in low light, which is why I bought that camera.)

- My Tmpgenc MPEG2 software, which I've relied on for years, refuses to encode in 1440x1080 (or really, anything beyond SD.) Hmmm. Wonder if it's time to upgrade? (It's bound to be faster than what's being used in the Ulead software.)

Aside from all that, today I've been messing with rebuilding LCD panels (anybody know where I can get a 330mm cold cathode tube for cheap?)

Oh and I found out why our audition Tuesday night was a no-show (it wasn't her fault, she had gotten the wrong address!) and so we're going to reschedule that meeting for the weekend sometime. Looking forward to it...

I'll leave you with this list of wildly optimistic predictions by the late, great Arthur C. Clarke. (The sad thing is that these were made less than 10 years ago.)

Interesting / frustrating April 1

2008-04-02T17:51:31Z

Last night's rehearsal was great from a musical perspective, but a fizzle from an Lab Girl point of view... our first audition failed to show up (or maybe she got lost, electrocuted, or devoured on the way to the Secret Lab...) We'll give her one more chance and then move on to our other contenders. Also conspicuously delinquent was Filbert, who was supposed to stop by and record a voice part for a new Luke Ski comedy song cameo, but ended up falling asleep at home. Filbert's been workin' too hard IRL!

At least we sounded good in rehearsal, not bad at all for not having played in a few weeks. I also started re-picking up the 2nd guitar parts for 'Born in the South,' something I'd done a long time ago and had vowed to get back to, having picked the guitar back up recently for 'I Think Therefore I Rock.'

Aside from that, last night I got my trial version of Ulead DVD Movie Factory 6 Plus to make a nice looking HD '3x DVD' disc for me, on an old DVD-RW blank! After having been informed by their tech support that this would not be possible without buying the full version and applying an add-on pack, I went ahead and just tried setting up an HD-DVD project, using an mpeg file imported straight from one of my cameras, but offering a normal DVD-R when it came time to burn. Success! The disc played back beautifully, preserving all the detail of the original camera footage, which is normally sacrificed in my current production pipeline (C.O.G.-TV is shot in 1440x1080i HD, but actually posted in 960x480p.) This means I now have the ability to take vacation footage, etc. straight from the camera and make an HD-DVD disc that will play on any HD-DVD player. You get about 30 minutes on a DVD-5 and about an hour on a DVD-9 blank using 1440x1080i mpeg-2, which is what my cameras put out. The format accomodates several different codecs, which would allow more time on a disc, but currently mpeg2 is what I have to work with (although - I really need to look into h264, which the player is capable of decoding and would allow more content on a disc.) The format also accomodates 1920x1080i, which I'm not even going to mess with. (Why don't they allow 1280x720p? That's a format I could see myself actually producing in.)

As I said, I currently edit in 960x480p. This is like normal 720x480 SD, but with extra pixels on the 'wings' to make it 16:9, instead of anamorphically stretching the pixels like DVD does (which looks horrible IMO.) So we use an intermediate resolution, if you will (but still not even as detailed as HD 1280x720p, which is what most HD television shows are done in.) For the hell of it, I tried taking a scene from the last episode of C.O.G.-TV and burning that on an HD disc. Mpeg2 encoding took a LONG time - 12 minutes or so for a 2 minute clip (their built in encoder must not be that efficient.) But the results were promising - noticeably better than a DVD encode of the same scene. It looked a lot more like what it looks like on the computer. Next thing I'm going to try will be increasing the vertical rez. If I go up to 540 pixels in height, for instance, that'll be exactly half of 1080, and should yield a nicer looking image due to the integer math of the resize. It'll also make the aspect ratio of the pixels square, which is desirable to me as well. I'll take a scene from the last episode and re-transfer the camera mpegs to 960x540, then re-render the scene and make an HD disc of it. If that works fairly painlessly, I'll try it at 1280x720p as well. Let's see just how much quality I can get before my standard workflow becomes too much like molasses...

Anyway, bottom line is that the Ulead software works, and works quite well with my current setup, accomplishing something you seemingly can't even do with Blu-Ray (unless you shell out $300 for the burner and $10 per blank!) I think I'll give Ulead my money. Excellent.

The best thing that happened yesterday remains a surprise visit I received at work by my old friend Morgus the Magnificent. He'd been across the street at the Cox TV studio (no doubt castigating those "idiots at the station") and stopped by my office to say hello. Unexpectedly, he came bearing a parchment - a rare and genuine 'University of Morgus' diploma. Morgus told me, "I will reward you with this certificate if you are able to answer a philosophical question. Here it is: 'Brothers and sisters I have none, but..." I quickly jumped in, "but this man's father is my father's son. A venerable old chestnut!" Morgus chuckled and handed the diploma over, muttering "I can't put anything over on YOU, Pinkerton!"