Alan Hendrickson and I pulled off a successful* session about automation terminology at this years USITT.  Armed with nothing but a PowerPoint presentation and a laser pointer we covered the basics of stage automation.  If you were unable to attend, I will upload the handout (or swag) that we gave the attendees as they entered the room.  You can find the PDF here: Automation 101-Terminology
Below you can see Alan and I in action and the crowd that was already assembled 5 minutes before they barred the doors.  Since we ran out of our hand outs, we figure we had over …

Supposedly, there is an internship available at Warner Bros to go spying on your illegal on-line activity.  According to Ars Technica – “Warner Bros. in the UK has published a job listing for an intern to dig through known piracy mediums in order to “gather information” and report back to the studio. For £17,500 (or US$26,000) per year, this internship sounds like the perfect opportunity for a student to learn about the ins and outs of copyright—and possibly get ostracized by content-lovin’ peers.”
After reading the full article (Hey students: snitch on pirates, earn $26K a …

I feel that I try to stay up on the new technology, science, concepts, etc.  My wife will tell you that this is true except for when it comes to pop culture, this includes social networking.   This blog probably started a couple years after it should have.  I am on Facebook, but hardly keep up with the thing.  Well now I am Tweeting.  This is just in time for USITT*.
Look to the top right of this page…this tweet is what I recently said.  Ooooh….Ahhhh….
You can click on PiraTWEETnical and follow me through whatever tweet tracking method you might use.  If …

The title doesn’t lie. USITT has created a iPhone App. You can see details on their web page here: http://www.usitt.org/USITTiPhoneAPP.aspx.

If you want to go grab it for yourself go to: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/usitt-2010/id358128548?mt=8

If you have been to VideoCopilot.net then you know exactly what I am about to say….
Andrew Kramer is a great source to learn and/or help expand your knowledge of Adobe After Effects.
If you do video editing and like creating visual effects, I recommend Adobe After Effects.  I have used Final Cut Pro and its companion Motion and find them limiting in comparison to this software.  I am also an avid PC user and that might have something to do with it.  But back to the topic at hand:
Video Copilot offers many stock effects and footage DVDs for sale that are …

Well the CES ended last weekend and one of the topics to come out of the showroom floor was 3D in your home. Many LCD and Plasma TVs coming in the option of 3D should be available to you some time in 2010 and many are allowing you to pre-order them already. They all pretty much require you to wear some sort of glasses. Some are basic cardboard polarized glasses and others are powered glasses that actually link top the TV to shutter each lens as you watch. I also heard that there was one TV …

BIG NEWS!!!
I finally got my Window’s 7 in the mail.  It took me a while to realize why I missed out on the initial mailings of the software.  I fell victim to the curse of too many email accounts.  I am sure there are many of you out there that have multiple e-mail accounts.  Many of those accounts probably forward e-mail to one central account.  Well I sat back and took a look at the e-mail accounts I have collected over the years and I have a minimum of 10 email addresses.  There might be more out there but, these …

I want to tell you all about my new installation of Windows 7.  Sadly, I am still waiting for it to be delivered.  I pre-ordered it for discounted rate back in July.  And here I wait.
So why did I decide to write a post on this untried OS, well it is this specific link: http://lifehacker.com/5390086/the-master-list-of-new-windows-7-shortcuts
I am a huge advocate in hot keys or keyboard commands over pointing a clicking.  If you learned AutoCAD back in the 90′s or earlier I imagine you might come from the same school of thought.  Using 1 finger on the clicker and your whole arm …

Turn a sketch into an actual photo…”Say what?”  A hand full of researchers have teamed up to develop a program that will interpret a sketch that you make on their software, surf the internet for pictures, and stitch together the parts to make a realistic photo of the original sketch.  The project is called PhotoSketch.
They haven’t released a version of this yet.  They have, however, released the code that does this process (I am sifting through it right now, pretty neat).  According to their site a demo is being created.
How could this be put to use?  In digital media design …

You’re in the audience of dramatic play.  The tension of the plot has the viewers on the edge of their seats.  Then, despite the pre-curtain speech, a cellphone goes off.  And whats worse is it starts playing “Super-Freak” as the ring tone.   I am sure this has happened to many of you (perhaps a different ring tone).  Well, Shin-ichi Ohkoshi of the University of Tokyo* has developed a paint that prevents the transmission of wifi signals.  The BBC has an article here “Anti-wi-fi paint offers security”.
Now lets think up some of the pros and cons of using this on the …