Back to Solitude
Playing with your sense of time and logic.
Twice yesterday I was surprised at how fast the new ipod detects networks. The first time was in one of wagamama’s restaurants. It found ten within two seconds of opening up the application. The second time was in a block of flats. Both times it detected the networks within a matter of seconds.
It’s a shame youtube isn’t working on the Touch Ipod at the moment.
Student unions are one of the best places to meet people and make new contacts. It’s a place where drinks are cheap and normal rules no longer apply.
At least that’s what they’d have you believe. The undercroft is one of the worst student bars in the United Kingdom for a number of reasons, firstly the prices, highest in the UK, secondly the location, a basement with rats scurrying about. thirdly poor management, the reason for which many of the staff quit the job.
For over two months now I’ve been unable to go due to the management, not the staff, taking a dislike to me.
I went in today, not planning to get anything to drink because a friend wanted to drop down. The manager took a minute or two before he asked me to leave. I had not had the time to do anything of any sort.
I’m disappointed because tonight is the first night that everyone is back from holiday and I can’t go to be with those I’ve studied and had fun with for two years. I enjoyed the convenience of that bar being so close. After tonight the bar is so empty there is no reason to go anyway but tonight could have been different.
On the positive side, I’ve just started my six-day weekend and one friend in the same year is wondering what to do to occupy all our free time. Shall we find work, shall we live at home and commute only for the lessons? Shall we spend three or four days a week on dissertation work? I think so.
I need to find work. I need to carry out phase two of the research, interviews, and discussion groups before starting phase three, the first draft, and subsequent copies.
Last night I watched the Nile DVD and it’s interesting to see how different it is. It’s an anthropological documentary, taking time to speak first about the geography of the place, secondly about the people and thirdly about how they’re affecting the environment. It’s an interesting documentary that lasts about 100 minutes, 50 minutes per part. Already I’ve written notes about it and I’m getting closer to seeing how it’ll fit in as one of the case examples for what I’m talking about.
I still need to read through the two dissertations I have. It’s going to be interesting to have so much time to work on one project. A documentary about the differences and similarities between the two documentary genre.
Hours of fun as long as I organise my time so well as not to feel any pressure.
After talking to a friend about possible collaborations in the near future I decided not to invest too much money on a new camera so I bought the Sony HDR-SR12. It’s a small easy to carry video camera that records in AVCHD at a resolution of 1920 by 1080i.
The hard drive is 120 gigs for a total recording time of over 30hrs depending on what you want to shoot. I chose the highest quality setting and I still get 1780 minutes of recording time, more than enough for a day’s shooting. It’s a small camera, much easier to travel with and there are no moving parts and no need for tapes. I love that, it means I can start editing as soon as I get home. I’m tapeless at last, I’ve been waiting years for this moment.
It’s charging so I can’t play with it quite yet but I’ll keep you informed as to developments on this topic.
As a side note video capture is easy, just use log and transfer rather than log and capture in Finalcut Pro. It’s shift option 8.
A few months ago I saw the video of a mobility scooter going fast across snow. The video was shared as an anim gif with no context. As I explored the diversity of content on Youtube I came across Colin Furze videos. In one project he sent mobile phones to the Middle of the Stratosphere at about thirty three thousand meters.
He usually produces at least two videos. The first video usually shows him building his latest project and the second video shows him using the finished project. To celebrate the million subscriber marks he creates fireworks contraptions. He has created a hover bike, a centripetal chicken cooker, an underground bunker, magnetic shoes, a jet powered barbecue and has tried to set fireworks off in the stratosphere.
When you look at individual videos you see that they can get up to nineteen million views. He has just over three million subscribers at the time of writing this blog post. I suspect that he has more video views than subscribers because of the subject matter. As the projects vary from jet propulsion to mobility scooters to cooking content is compelling part of the time. Youtube also recommends his content so we might watch it through recommendations rather than direct searches for specific terms or keywords.
In the video where he tried to make magnetic shoes to walk across a ceiling we see him try and fail several times before he finally manages to achieve his goal. Once his goal is achieved the video ends and you can “wait” for next week’s video to appear online. When you learn about youtube personalities weeks, months or years in to their “career” the more content you can watch in a single sitting.
What unique or eccentric topics or projects could you document?