Category: Toiling In The Pixel Mines

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Should We Talk About The Weather? Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Delayed on account of …well, more than rain

She really should've saved her gameWell, I got a sharp reminder Friday evening from Mother Nature about what part of the country I live in. I was mentioning not too long ago about having only 40 days to complete PDF Level 2, and that’s accurate…but I may have to revise the number downward. We’re headed into March, the beginning of Some Kind Of Severe Weather Every Other Day season. “In like a lion” is an apt description of March in Arkansas.

Now, I have my Avid and all of its related equipment on a pair of pretty stout surge protectors, but I’ll put it this way: while this Avid came to me insanely cheaply, call it fate, call it the hand of God or whatever you like, I treat it as though the entire lot of equipment would cost me several thousand to replace. Because…well…it would. This is one gift that I do not play the odds with. In the event of bad weather moving in, the Avid gets shut down; if the aforementioned bad weather is a lightning-maker, it gets unplugged, period. My living rests with this machine right now, so I don’t screw around to put it lightly.

I got caught with my pants down on Friday evening though; I wasn’t watching the radar or paying any attention to the sky getting darker, mainly because I was a bit stressed out after an epic bout of baby barfage. I cleaned up the boy and let him take a nap while I cleaned up the mess, and then sat down at the Avid to try to get some work done, and… ZAP. The power went out.

This Avid has to be powered up and down in a very particular sequence; either procedure takes about 3-4 minutes. The outboard SCSI drives’ self-check sequence accounts for the lengthy power-up; the computer’s closedown sequence is why it seems to take forever to power down. Powering down the Avid stack is best done some time before the bad weather arrives because it just can’t be done quickly. And it’s just not supposed to be done by just shutting everything off simultaneously – that’s how you lose a lot of work.

Fortunately, everything checked out – though the SCSI drives, having not had a chance to park their heads, took twice as long to self-check (which had me holding my breath a bit) – but as soon as that was done everything was shut down once more. The lightning seemed like it was right on top of the house, so I may have lucked out.

Just a little reminder from Mother Nature to not get too cozy…and that my “40 days” may end up being something on the order of 30-35 days due to storm-induced downtime. That’s just great. 😛 I know we live in a world where folks have vital systems on a UPS – but that’s just something I don’t have handy at the moment. So the equipment to which I owe nearly every cent that I bring in gets treated with kid gloves. Kinda like the kid does, come to think of it.

Here’s to a less stormy, more productive and hopefully less barfy weekend.… Read more

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Gadgetology Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Building a better audiovisual mousetrap

Work has been completed up through the “1980” segment of Phosphor Dot Fossils Level 2, a ~3 hour DVD project that I just realized I have only about 40 days to complete. The end of the “1980” segment roughly coincides with the 45-minute mark…and it’s taken me since the beginning of the year to get this far. To put it lightly, I’m a little worried about pulling this one off – especially with a few minor last-minute issues to do with the CGE DVD project cropping up at the same time, to say nothing of daddy duty and the work that always needs to be done around the house. … Read more

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Music Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Just an insane amount of stuff.

All kinds of DVDsIt seems like it’s all hitting the fan at once here at Casa Green. In case you managed to miss it somehow (surely not for lack of me blabbering about it everywhere), after months of teasing everyone along, the Classic Gaming Expo 2007 4-DVD set is now up for pre-order, with the first discs shipping at the end of this month. PDF Level 2 now has a drop-dead date in early April, giving me around a month and a half to complete it at its planned 3-hour running time (which includes editing, post, restoration of commercial clips where needed, writing, and composing the music – not necessarily in that order).

As a sidebar to PDF Level 2, though, I’ve fallen in love with a bit of my own work. I hate to admit that, because at some point you have to step away from it and view it with a critical eye. Or ear, in this case, because it’s a piece of music I composed to cover an audio-less stretch of the 1970s segment of Level 2. In the course of prepping a segment and getting it to the point where I’m finally ready to put it to bed, I get to where I have the sound memorized, and the music memorized to the point where I’m sick of it. But, pathetic as it may sound, I could listen to this piece of music all day – I embedded it in this blog post as “RCA Studio LIV” (think Roman numerals to get the joke). I’m probably going to go back and do an extended/embellished version of it to use for the trailer. Why I’m so fond of it, I don’t know – it was intended to resemble a late ’70s Alan Parsons Project instrumental (a sub-sub-genre of music that I dearly love), and I must’ve gotten somewhat close to the mark because I can’t get my ears off of it. It’s all that stuff that jumps around at fifth intervals – that sounds very Parsons. I don’t rate myself as a musician, especially not with a loop-based program as my weapon of choice (the conceit here being that the music for a video game documentary is being composed on a video game console), but this thing is just an earworm. At least for me. Your mileage may very well vary.

I have an actual client edit soon as well, and then once PDF Level 2 is on the floor and out the door…I might actually sleep. Yeah. That sounds good. Was I ever working this much when I was punching someone else’s clock? Probably not, but then I didn’t have a little guy running around “helping” me edit. Having him around (eating us out of house and home) keeps me highly motivated! 😆

One thing I’m going to try very hard to accomplish after Level 2, though, is to get my old VHS taped of the various Northside High School drama department productions transferred to DVD, do any restoration work needed, and get discs authored and duplicated in time for their respective class reunions (there were two productions in the ’88/’89 school year, and two in ’89/’90). Now, considering that these are 20-year-old edits of plays staged 20 years ago, I’m not exactly saying these are up to what I’d consider my current professional standard, but they are what’s there. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I probably won’t be charging an arm and a leg for these, just covering my costs and making sure everyone who was involved in those productions who wants ’em can get a copy.

After that…who knows? Best of CGE 2003 & 2005? Jump Cut City: Remastered, now with CGI Burchuss? Actually writing one of these books I keep promising/threatening to write? Or sleep?

Oops – Evan just woke up. Silly me – daddy stuff is what I’ll be doing with my time. 😛

P.S. I can confirm, for folks attending OEGE, that I’ll have some CGE DVD sets at my table at that show. Anyone who’s only been to OEGE who watches the CGE DVDs may be in for a bit of a culture shock. 😆… Read more

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Gaming Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Press release-ish post: Phosphor Dot Fossils Level 2 release date, contents & event

Phosphor Dot Fossils Level 2Phosphor Dot Fossils Level 2, the follow-up to the successful Phosphor Dot Fossils documentary timeline DVD released in 2008, will make its debut on Saturday, April 11th at the Oklahoma Electronic Game Expo, on the Oklahoma City Community College campus in OKC.

Like the original, Level 2 will cover a wide swath of video game history, including arcade, home console and computer games, from 1972 through 1987, with shots of the games in action, historical notes for every game shown, other trivia, and even vintage commercials from that era. Also like the original, Level 2 has an easy-to-follow visual design, a concise menu system to allow instant access to any clip on the entire DVD (which is once again estimated to have a running time of around 3 hours), and an original music score. Level 2 will cover games not featured in the first Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD, from Atari‘s early post-Pong arcade efforts and blasts from the vector graphics past, through the era when the Nintendo Entertainment System revitalized the American video game scene after an industry-stalling crash in the early 1980s.

Phosphor Dot Fossils Level 2 will be released at the 2009 OEGE event at a special “show price” of $15; orders will be taken via theLogBook.com Media the same day for those unable to attend the show, at a price of $20 (shipping inclusive) in North America, and $25 for the rest of the world.

Based on the award winning web site of the same name, Phosphor Dot Fossils and Phosphor Dot Fossils Level 2 were written, produced, edited and scored by Earl Green at theLogBook.com Media. DVD specs: NTSC DVD, 4:3 standard definition aspect ratio, running time: approx. 3 hours.

The original Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD is still available, and will also be available in a 2-disc bundle with Phosphor Dot Fossils Level 2 in April. Phosphor Dot Fossils is also available from Digital Press Videogames in Clifton, NJ.… Read more

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Gadgetology Home Base Music Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Resolutions high and low

Yo Max, wake the hell up!I was amused to run across this post from a year ago, in which I apparently – and I had forgotten this – set working on the PDF DVD and finishing it as a new years’ resolution. Holy crap, I actually kept a new years’ resolution? Put a star on my calendar. Now let’s talk about this year’s resolutions (or lack thereof). … Read more