Myke's 'blob.

Shooting All You Want

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Sat, 19 May 2012 23:22:00 -0400

I'm working on another film! This time I've got the rather prestigious title of 'Director Of Photography' - which is pretty cool. Check out me being all intense 'n stuff - I have absolutely zero recollection of this photo being taken:

Me, framing a shot.

However, with a great title comes great responsibility, and since this is a small production (company of 40 people tops, split about 50/50 crew & talent (actors)) I have many roles beyond DoP. I'm also the primary camera operator, I do most of the lighting design while working with the directors to design each and every shot/angle, then I have to implement it all while being mindful of all the photographic qualities (contrast, exposure, colour, dynamic range (dark-to-bright gradient), etc...) and manage my crew plus being responsible for all the gear - be it mine, the company's, or rental. Oh - and I get to yell at the sound department when their gear is in my shot!

But I get my name on the slate

Mark It!

One of the things that I never quite realized before working on this project, is that the DoP pretty much has zero downtime when on set: I set-up the shot, we do the takes, and move to the next shot. There's no gap for me. Most of my crew gets to stand down and watch the performance, and the talent get to relax (or go to make-up & wardrobe) while we setup the next shot... but for me - nope! The very first day of this company was about 14 hours on-set, and I think I had about 17 minutes off all day, and 8 of those minutes were my bio-breaks. It's grueling, it's intense... and thus so am I. I'm very demanding of my crew, but I think they're up to the task and they've been doing a great job. Everybody has been. We've got some incredible talent (actors), and the crew is there to make them shine.

Some notes...

First Day of Principle Photography: Cinco De Mayo

First Day of a New company: everyone's learning names, roles, abilities. Many of the crew have never worked on a feature-length project, or any production at all

Sue is wearing an "AD*HD" shirt

"It's not that kind of movie!"

The Lighting Consultant I was promised to help with a very foreign and difficult set - flakes out

I get no downtime (17 minutes?)

A kitty has gone missing...

Day 2: May The Siths

"Are they paying you?" I'm asked by 3 different people during the day... nope!

In conversation with my crew:
      Me: "Yeah, I guess I can be a little intense..."
      A: "No shit dude."
      Me: "That bad?"
      A & B: "YES!"
      Me: "Sorry! You guys are doing great!"

2 locations means a company move in the middle of the day (stressful: do we have everything? Is everyone going to get there?)

"It's not that kind of movie!"

tales of pirate TV stations... Arrrr!

Day 3: May 7th

Greg is wearing the AD*HD shirt today

Shooting in a bar/pub, very dark, but we get it lit

DotMom's Birthday - so I leave for the first half of the shooting

Upon my return I work a very complex multiple-point focus-pull action shot - and we all nail it on the 3rd take

... one of the extras is a girl I went on a date with a few months ago

"It's not that kind of movie!"

Day 4: May 14th

Back in the bar/pub

"It's not that kind of movie!"

"Take it up with the teamsters!"

Greg and Tom are both wearing 'Creeping Beauty' shirts - I assume they picked them up at ComicCon

Cue Harley

Wardrobe malfunction!

My FEEEEEET HURT!

Ooooh - Waffles!

Hillary Kitty!

Day 5: May 19th

1/2 day shoot

"It'll be easy" we all thought... except

Sound guy is not available - and back-up guy is nervous

Cue Sun! Cue Clouds!

I have no crew at all, so I'm mostly working solo, stealing PAs wherever I can

Cue WWII Biplane Flyover... for 3 minutes

"We're not doing foley now!"

Walked backwards for 90 minutes

... with a huge 15lbs camera rig on my shoulder

... at a focal length between 135-190mm (at least it's CinemaScope-sized)

... in high sun & full heat

Cue uninvited extras!

but get word that the missing kitty (from Day One) was found safe & sound!

Speaking of kitties, I get to play with 3 of them while we prep for the next day's shoot

Tomorrow will possibly be our most prepared-for day yet.

The 3 directors doing prep-work

BTW: We're looking for extras Monday May 21st, from 5PM to 9:30PM. If you've ever wanted to see what an film shoot looks like - and you want some light snacks, please sign up! It's a restaurant scene, so if you know how to dress up for a night out and can sit patiently for a couple hours - we want you! Location is at proximate to Lincoln Fields/Lincoln Heights Galleria Shopping Centre.

Searching for the Beat

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Sat, 12 May 2012 09:41:00 -0400

Automatic gmirror script on FreeBSD9 with gpart

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Thu, 03 May 2012 03:21:51 -0400

This is far from perfect, but it seems to work for my purposes. Input & improvements greatly welcomed. Licensed BSD or whatever, since most of it's just modification & gluing of Ralf S. Engelschall and Christian Laursen code & smarts.

There's no error checking/handling/trapping, so if things go wrong, you don't even really get to keep both pieces. I will say it's worked fine for me, but I've only tested this in my staging environment, never on a running machine with actual, real, live, important data.

The next things I'd like to do are:

add are checking (via mount and swapinfo) that the first stage has worked properly before blindly adding the first drive to the mirror.
make the whole thing stop cold if something goes wrong (I think this is quite easy but I forget how)
remove the extraneous logger in stage II, since it doesn't actually log anything
figure out what's up with boot.config and how to not hard-code it (though I know extremely little about FreeBSD's boot/loader/etc...)

I appreciate input & improvements, please leave them in the comments below!
Continue reading "Automatic gmirror script on FreeBSD9 with gpart"

Girls cup upside-down alien code: Timecookie.

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:57:00 -0400

Before I ordered my drink, I told her I liked her glasses, (which was really just code for "I think you're cute.")

Confidently, and perhaps with unintentional sass, she said,
"They're Ray Ban's"

Then it turned into a thing.

Another girl was mentioning her bizarre sleep/wake times, I posited that perhaps her clock was upside down. She demanded a photo of that - I tried to explain why this wasn't usually a problem for me.

Lately though, the woman I talk to the most in life has been giving me attitude and cryptic responses. Sometimes I wonder if she really understands me.

Huh, maybe I'm not the only one that speaks in code... although I'm not sure I'd call anyone "giant"...

Augh! What is that? A baby metal alien?

Hmm, that little silver thing grew up into shadow aliens? This doesn't seem right.
And your grainy cameraphone picture isn't going to convince anyone.

Okay. That definitely isn't right. Anti-Freeze? In a wine glass? No.

"Bilingual Hot Cup"?
Drr... That wasn't quite what I had in mind. What goes in there anyway?

Enough with package labels! This is making me uncomfortable!

Oh, home-made labels are okay.

No really, forget that other stuff I said about them.

Please can I have a cookie?
(And by that, I mean, ALL OF THE COOKIES!)

Why Hello There.

Are you my Tall Soy Peppermint Hot Chocolate?

Venti? Very well then.

... Do you mind if I teach the difference between an apostrophe and a backtick? Also - that's not my name.

Continue reading "Girls cup upside-down alien code: Timecookie."

Phone Wiring

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:50:00 -0400

I was born in the 80s, thus I still use my phone like a phone.

... And I got a land-line, here's what those boxes on the outside of your house are for:

Thanks to WTL from DarnerMedia for the recording, and Server North for the Internets.

Phone line comes in from a splice-case on the pole via an aerial cable, is attached to the side of the house, runs down the pipe, into the Bell Canada NID, (aka "Protector", "Fuse", "Demarc") which is the demarcation between my wiring and the telco's wiring. From there it's run into an ADSL/VDSL/xDSL POTS splitter (just a big Z-Filter) and then the twisted-pair cables are run the the various phone jacks and ADSL modem. The little blobs you see are Scotch Locks, which are handle little wire connectors - you don't even need to strip the insulation off of 'em!

If you live in a apartment building ("MDU"), this video shows what the other end of a DSL line looks like. (It's a trick though! That's just the middle, since your dial tone still comes from somewhere else!)

Don't Ask Me, I Just Live Here

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:03:00 -0400

Somedays...

I've yet to actually see the show...

_{(This is from when my landlord put the house I'm now living in on Paul Rushforth's 'All For Nothing?' show.)}

Happy Hand!

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:25:30 -0400

Just saw Dr. v.S and he's quite pleased with how my healing is going and I'm to start exercising my range of motion. I'm very happy about it!
... This is probably the best news I've had in years. I'm stupidly gleeful right now.

Oh - and he encouraged me to play guitar, I will now show you how I feel about that:

I've got some stretching exercises to start doing, and I can pretty much wean off the splints for now... that's not to say I'm clear to start mountain biking, but I can do light tasks and "not push it". Driving is likely still out of the equation as my left grip strength is only 16, versus 70 in my right hand... Full range of motion shouldn't be expected until the end of the year! No physio or hand-therapy for now; only if I don't see progress on my exercises.

But It's still exciting! For weeks now people have been asking how it's doing, and I honestly had no idea. I figured it was good, but I couldn't be sure.

It's good. Very good

My Camera Distribution on Flickr

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:51:00 -0400

Not as many as I'd thought.

These are the cameras I've used for the photos I've posted to Flickr. I'm surprised the only Nikon up there is a film scanner; I've used or tested pretty much ever major Nikon camera in the past few years...

My 5D MkII is still my go-to, and my X100 is getting a lot of use too. Clearly I'm a Canon-Fujifilm fan

Taking Double-Fisting For Granted

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:47:00 -0500

Just a flesh-wound!

Many people have been asking how #RepairedWrist is doing, but realistically, there isn't much to report: as of Monday this week I'm not longer totally immobilized in a cast, but now wear a splint 23 hours a day. It hurts when I use it, the range of motion hasn't increased much since the last video update - but the pain is somewhat reduced. It's gotten banged around a bit in the past few days, so I usually switch back to the removable cast (VacoHand) when I'm out in public, it's big and somewhat more obvious. (Not that stopped that jerk on the empty subway platform from plowing into me...)

It is hard to believe it's been almost 7 weeks since the operation. It doesn't feel like it's been that long, but when I think about the challenges I've been facing in day-to-day life, it's amazing I haven't just written (or chopped) the damn thing off!

Some tips:
How to take a shower with an arm cast

I wonder what the hotel housekeeping thought of the piles of elastics and garbage bags I'd leave in the bathroom...

I am not a strag.

Obviously you use a small garbage bag and many elastics (3-6), but here's the secret: Wrap your arm in a small towel first, it'll absorb moisture, and blot up any leaks & punctures - which do happen.
Next, get your shampoo & (liquid) soaps put into free-standing pump-bottles. Makes for easy one-handed operation. Scrunchie-bath-puff-thingies are also vastly superior to washcloths for lathering.
Towels... have many available. Some big, some small. It's hard enough to wrap yourself with one hand, don't forget you have to take the bag off your other hand too!

Fail.

Brushing your teeth doesn't seem like a challenge, and it's not. However - not making a mess while applying tooth-paste to a modern, blobbily-shaped brush isn't really as academic as you might imagine. I have no real good solution here. Wedging didn't work, nor did letting it hang over the counter. You just have to make a mess.

Clothing
Button-up shirts cut two ways - they're easier to get in or out of, but there's diminishing returns when you have to actually operate the buttons - depends on how useful your immobilized hand it. (Obviously having someone of the opposite sex do your buttons for you is advantageous due to the orientation of the placket.)

Belt buckles can be tough. For the first few days I just wore classy elastic-waisted pants, then graduated to clip-buckle mountaineering pants, and after about 3 weeks finally mastered the typical sprocket & hole leather belt.

Dressing for the outdoors (in the winter) is probably one of the biggest challenges. Between not being able to get your arm INTO a jacket sleeve to not being able to properly do up the jacket, never mind tying shoe laces or putting on mitts, means that if you didn't like winter before, you're going to hate it now. I stayed inside on cold & snowy days - I was very lucky it's been a relatively mild winter, but I definitely had a lot of stir-crazy days. The liner of my Columbia jacket has been destroyed as well.

Locking my front door
Problem: You need two hands - one to pull so the deadbolt aligns and the other to turn the key.
Solution: Go out the side door.

Communication

Love, Siri

Phone calls: Headset / Speaker phone, your iPhone comes with a decent headset. You'd be amazed at how often you want to take notes or do anything else while on the phone - and when your only hand is monopolized by it... well, yeah.

Program everyone you talk to into your directory.

Incidentally - Siri has been quite a useful tool, many high-interaction tasks like setting alarms, timers, reminders and events are very quick and easy with Siri. Basically anything you have to enter a date and time is pretty tedious by hand.

Typing on a computer is going to be slower, but where the real problem lies is passwords that you only know by muscle memory - and now half of those muscles are immobilized...
Different keyboards present different problems too: I loved the (really) old split Microsoft keyboards - the really big ones. Unfortunately they're not well suited to one-handed typing at all, they also have a fairly long 'plunge' or 'throw', which means you expend a lot of time & energy pushing the keys a long way down. Laptop and Apple keyboards are nice because they're VERY short throws.

Pardon the pun, but touching back on the iPhone, on-screen keyboards are wonderful: a) you barely need to apply any pressure at all, b) it's easy to operate the whole alphabet with one hand / thumb while holding the phone with the same hand.

Cooking
Pretty high risk, period. My biggest fear was making pasta - lifting 2-3 litres (aka Kilograms) of boiling water with one hand is really hard, no matter how strong you are, if then you spill boiling water onto your encased arm, a) that water isn't going to just flow off or out quickly, b) you can't take a fiber-glass cast off quickly, c) it's also not going to cool or evapourate in there, so in case of disaster, your best hope is to pour cold water in to flush the hot water out - which might be a challenge if d) your sink also has hot water in it and e) you need to get your arm under the tap.

Sure, it's a worst-case scenario, one that wouldn't happen very often, but since you're disabled and unaccustomed to it, (and possibly on many drugs,) the risk is much higher - and the repercussions are much worse than common case too.

ZipLock Bags & most packaging can be incredibly challenging. This much I knew from the last 2.5 years of the saga!
Have a strong set of scissors, big & small, and transfer things to semi-solid Gladware-esque/Rubbermaid/Tupperware containers immediately.
I stopped buying things in jars and switched to cans because I have an automatic/motorized can opener. (I used to ridicule people for having these - how lazy can you be not to open a can with a crank!?)

Eating
Easy! Chopsticks! If you need 'em, then you don't need a knife!

If you need a cut something, have two knives: one that's big, heavy, and good for cleaving, and another that's also big, and heavy but serrated too. A cutting board is a good idea because you'll likely be using a significantly higher amount of force than usual. Ooog cut meat.

I like milled salt & pepper, obviously cranked mills aren't usable - so I have a pair of push-top mills. There's others that a trigger-grip operated. Shakers are another obvious solution, although nowhere near as refined.

Breaking the caps on sealed bottles (beer, pop, mustard, jam, etc...) can be nearly impossible. Using your disabled arm's armpit to hold while you twist with the other might work for peanut butter, but a jar of pickles is going to make a big mess. Put the bottle on the floor and hold it in place with your feet (rubber soled shoes make this work) and twist off the cap with your good hand. If that doesn't work - find something else to eat.

Things that are Unpossible
Driving: I was simply Not Allowed, and won't be for some time it'd seem. Even moreso because I drive standard. I should note that legally I haven't been barred from driving, however cranking the steering wheel is a good way to re-injure or pop the repair job, doubly so because I drive standard and it'd be my repaired left hand on the wheel.

Shovelling snow: If there wasn't very much - I could do it, but then it wasn't enough to bother with anyway. If there's more, then you hope someone will do it for you.

Clipping nails: Easy to do on on the immobilized hand... and that's the end. I suppose I could try biting them - that's what my one-armed friend told me he does.

Great Resources
Friends & Family & Public Transit - I am thankful for all of these!

... and a keyboard is playable with one hand!

Just Desserts

nospam@example.com (Mike Geiger) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 12:01:34 -0500

Yay!