One of those VHS tapes was my high school graduation ceremony from 1997. The conversion to DVD wasn’t a disaster but it had problems: wobbly sound, washed out colors, and bands of video distortion. Rather than leave the DVD sitting around, I instead copied it to my PC. I then cropped out the distorted areas and compressed the file down to 282MB (320×224 pixels). The result is pretty good considering the source. The video won’t degrade over time and it’s much easier to share.

Download the graduation video and relive 110 minutes of absolute monotony punctuated by three seconds of mortarboard tossing fun. You’ll need the Xvid video codec to watch. It’s open source and free to download at xvid.org. Or you can watch the Flash version above – go crazy.

When my colleague at work sent an e-mail requesting a logo, I immediately thought about using a utility called Wink to capture the design process. It’s a freeware utility that converts mouse movements and keyboard strokes to Flash.

In the video you can see the original logo created by my colleague’s study group. Shown below is the revised version I designed. I had to modify the final video using FFmpeg. Rather than use Wink’s ability to generate SWF files, I exported to HTML to get all 3751 screen captures. I then used FFmpeg to produce the frame rate and format I desired.

What Works?

The business plan, according to my colleague’s e-mail is “..the aggregation of real estate information along with local information such as schools, restaurants, crime rates, etc that would be location specific based on a handheld GPS or GPS enabled laptop.” The people all point towards one spot, which is the aggregate of information they offer on a specific location. The red dots or bread crumbs is the path taken to find your way, assisted by VirtAgent.

What Failed?

It’s not clear where the bread crumb trail starts or ends. Was the journey successful? Since speed was my focus, the abstracted shapes of people are not symmetrical. Overall, it doesn’t convey a clearinghouse concept indicated by the business plan.

Unfortunately, its $100 price tag contributed to its demise; it survived two years in the market. Its departure was also hastened due to its ability to devour six AA batteries in only 30 minutes.

I didn’t finalize any of my video footage until 2004. The footage was recorded just after Christmas in 1988. I was really anxious to try out my new camcorder and new model rocket. All the footage was shot at Naples Park Elementary School along with my family and a few bystanders.

Before Naples started to sprawl and commercialize, there was a lot more room for such activities—launching model rockets, flying model planes, etc. The huge field behind the school was perfect for rocket launches.

With the wind moving in a calm westerly direction, we pointed the rocket slightly east. It probably reached 1000ft before deploying the parachute. It was a long way drifting towards the west. The animated image shows a few key frames of the event.

One thing you might notice in the video is the loud whirring noise. The reason is because the camcorder’s motor would spin the tape so fast that it’s picked up by the microphone.

Post Mortem for the PXL2000: After reading various web pages, it seems they are rare in quantity and functioning units are even harder to find. Fortunately, mine fits into the latter category. To read about the history of the PXL2000, the technology behind Pixelvision, and various stories of its usage with independent filming, I suggest Wikipedia.

My former roommate described an event, what he called “A god damn egg blew up in my face!”, referred to as detonation. He microwaved a normal hard-boiled egg, dashed on some salt, and took a bite. BOOM! Egg was everywhere. I was curious how this happened so we tried to reproduce the effect. I’ve never used the expression to have “egg on one’s face” but now I know it means a blunder.

The Experiment

The egg must first be hard-boiled. Boiling an egg in its shell for approximately seven minutes is sufficient for the albumen and yolk to solidify. Then place the eggs in the refrigerator until they cool.

After selecting a cool egg, carefully remove the shell. It is important that you do not tear the albumen while removing the shell. This will ensure proper heat retention and distribution when microwaving the egg. Now microwave the egg for 30 seconds.

When the egg is done microwaving, place it on a flat surface and pierce the egg yolk with a sharp object. A quick jab works best for producing the most violent reaction. The video on file doesn’t illustrate the most dramatic results we obtained but you get the point. We chose not to use salt because we thought it was incidental, not critical to the experiment. Your results may vary depending upon the size and/or density of the egg.

Conclusion

If you tried the experiment yourself you may be wondering why this happens. We determined the yolk of the egg is the energy source for the explosion. A microwave warms food from the inside outward. When the egg yolk is quickly pierced, the heat is released in all directions. What’s left are scattered remains of an egg…great for salad topping!

There’s a twist of irony in this experiment. The video camera we used is actually the Panasonic Eggcam. I’m not sure why Panasonic associated greater sales potential with egg-shaped products. This was before USB webcams gained dominance in the market.

The Earth graphic was a catalyst for even more artistic activity. Not only did I design the unsaturated.com logo around it, I decided to take it into three dimensions. But where does an artist find an affordable 3D editor? Bundled on a CD with his video card, that’s where. And what kind of quality should you expect from such an application? Not much.

After hours of adjusting primitive objects I had a new appreciation for 3D model editing. The 3D logo shaped up very nicely. With frequent file saves I lost little ground. Every aspect came together except for the gradient color shading. The 3D logo only has solid colors. Applying an image to the surface may have solved the problem. Instead, I changed directions and decided to animate it. What you see is the vision of my unsaturated.com studio trailer.

What Works?

The speed of rotation comes to a nice halt while the unsaturated.com text fades into the last frames. The scaling of the logo matches the original. However, this 3D model is more accurate than the original 2D version; the lines are sharper.

What Failed?

The gradient of the 3D model doesn’t match the original. The text was used on my web site in the past but now seems dated. There may be symmetry issues because I can’t recall any rulers on the editor that allowed me to space objects evenly.