Post #365,631
10/28/12 10:00:18 PM
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Polishing a turd
For some reason (for reasons inviting informed speculation, actually, but let that go) ever since ol Flatline, Comatose, Torpor & Drowse first set itself up for the ill-advised consolidation a decade ago that yielded up BrainDead Systems, on the payroll of which I remain a harmless excrescence, the local bosses, for over a century hitherto almost always Californians in good standing, have been thrust upon us from the East Coast. Moreover, they tend to rotate through here for a few years, just long enough to learn to use the sandbox but short of becoming otherwise useful. Just now IÂm stuck with a couple of New Yorkers (the merger saddled us with a layer of useless managerial flab across town, so, having been effectively demoted since last year, I now report to my boss, a humorless middle manager, and thence to The Boss, and thence to the Boss of the Boss, or ÂBoB.Â
BoB arrived earlier this year from NYC. As a young man BoB served in the US Army in Germany in the 1980s, and BoB today believes that donning the uniform of the US armed forces is just about the swellest thing a boy could ever do. Some suck-up in New York last year put together a dreadful Veterans Day video Âtribute to the military alumni on the payroll there. ItÂs quite horrible, beginning with a long title crawl about how our uniformed Âheroes have Âfought and died for our freedoms (including—and yes, they went there—the Âfreedom to burn our FlagÂ). So now BoB wants me to work up a comparable product.
I really ought to have planned for such a contingency and become fluent in Final Cut Express or at least iMovie by now, but I never had the interest. Now I have to get up to speed in a hurry. WhatÂs dreadful is that after having six days cut out from under me (jury duty) I returned on Friday to find the material I have to work with, the stuff I have to assemble over the next eight days. ItÂs all over the map. Images and information spread among multiple Powerpoint files, PDFs, spreadsheets, Word documents, emails, JPEGs. And oh, the JPEGs! Some of the images date from the first Gulf War, when the last word in consumer digital cameras was the Sony Mavica, which saved onto floppies after compressing the pictures so steeply that they resemble basketweave.
IÂve at least written up a prefatory crawler that treads a middle ground between the Âfought and died for our freedom bullshit and my personally preferred Âgave their lives to maintain and expand the global hegemony of a predatory empire and enhance the already obscene profits of a class of bloodthirsty oligarchic plutocrats.Â
Fortunately the NY product is so badly done that I feel confident of at least matching it even from a standing start. But the organizing of the information, which IÂd been assured would be done before the material reached me, will be an ordeal. Polishing a turd is one thing, but this is sheer diarrhea shot through with clots of blood. I am feeling very sorry for myself, and very baleful toward our blameless BDS veterans, as this week begins.
despairingly,
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Post #365,633
10/28/12 10:30:24 PM
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Ouch. Best of luck. (Thanks for the story! :-)
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Post #365,636
10/29/12 12:54:23 AM
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DO NOT LIKE!
Wow. I feel for you!
Learning this kind of stuff when under pressure, does tend to give you that adrenaline rush though...
At least you'll have that "high"...
I'm sure you'll do a better job than the other schlub did...
Good luck!
--
greg@gregfolkert.net
PGP key 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05
Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0 2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C
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Post #365,639
10/29/12 7:20:55 AM
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Try for "even worse"
If you must do this, go all-in and make it as smarmy as possible.
I think the single most compelling piece of evidence for global warming is that Fox News viewers think it's a hoax.
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Post #365,660
10/29/12 9:52:45 PM
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And I take that these days...
... setting to Jimi Hendrix' take on the Star Spangled Banner will just go "Woosh" about a mile overhead :-/
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Post #365,686
10/30/12 9:55:18 PM
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further to turd
The jury duty was really most unfortunately timed, and I'm now a week out from my drop-dead date. I feel rather like a handyman my wife engaged a couple of years ago to duplicate an elaborate cabinet door. He presented himself as a master woodworker, and quoted a reasonable estimate, but the job turned out to be the other side of his skill set. I don't think he realized this at the outset, but he certainly understood it at the end, by which time I think he'd actually acquired some chops the hard way. The promised product and the finished product did not quite congrue. We paid the guy the agreed-upon price (although we felt that the door as delivered was markedly inferior to the model) and not his suggested treble-sum ("It took much longer than I thought it would!").
This is rather how I feel about this video project. I blame myself: I've known for a long time that it would be useful to work up some video-editing chops beyond those rudimentary moves I presently possess, and there's no reason I couldn't have diverted some time and energy to this end. Because I have been negligent I realized today that ten hours of image processing from Monday will have to be done over again.
I venture to hope that, like the unfortunate woodworker, I will emerge from an undertaking for which I was woefully underqualified at the outset with a few tricks and techniques I had not troubled to master hitherto.
cordially,
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Post #365,689
10/30/12 11:07:47 PM
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Something in the Lyapis Trubetskoy style is out then?
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Post #383,488
11/12/13 1:03:15 AM
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Re: Something in the Lyapis Trubetskoy style is out then?
i am happy:):):)
DUA>>>>>>>>>
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Post #365,748
11/2/12 10:06:15 PM
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and still further
The prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully, as Samuel Johnson, who never as far as we are aware found himself obliged to gather his thoughts under like circumstances, famously observed. Under the gun, and with the Apple software currently available having been deliberately crippled since Cheney was president, I have lost days before at last stumbling upon a third-party solution, not elegant, that looks as though it can deliver a solution "good enough." I'm going to work this weekend to make "good enough" as good as it can be, the while hoping that Apple hasn't any further nasty surprises waiting for me on the DVD authoring end.
Aside: I'm not a Mac high-end professional, much as I'd like to be, but I've hung out with that crowd in living memory, and most of these are old-timers who've traditionally bought Apple hardware at the upper end, and who feel, not without justice, that their custom helped keep the beleaguered company's nostrils this side of the surface tension during its direst period prior to the Return of the King. My take is that this class is not feeling the love much these days. Apple may have repositioned itself to face the consumer market, but with its zillions of dollars in the bank I think they'd do well to start salting away some goodwill from those old graphics professionals against the next fall of snow.
cordially.
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Post #365,760
11/3/12 10:21:06 AM
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See "Oh Pun" ... there's something there for you
--
Drew
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Post #365,693
10/31/12 2:06:39 AM
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(See e-mail)
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Post #365,797
11/4/12 5:31:36 PM
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The turd at the end of the tunnel
Apple's shitty consumer-level authoring software bit me another several times, but my little video, now nearing the last stages of production, has definitely crossed the threshold of "good enough": it's as smooth and as shiny a turd as my tools and my skill sets (among which I include a certain gift for desperate improvisation in a crunch) can between them devise, which is fortunate since I learned on Friday that my masters expect it tomorrow morning and not on Wednesday, as I'd previously understood.
My creation is still irredeemably stool-like, but is better formed, of a more even consistency and pleasing color, and discernibly less smelly that the New York product I was charged with adapting. Unfortunately there is a real chance that precisely the most egregious qualities of that model appeal most to the primitives I report to here. I have to make it clear on the morrow that revisions are not possible.
Cripes, I'm glad it's all, ah, behind me now. Note to self: find time to become conversant with "Final Cut Express" before this time next year.
cordially,
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Post #365,798
11/4/12 6:05:45 PM
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Crossing the finish line is good. Congrats!
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Post #383,523
11/13/13 3:13:58 AM
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Re: Crossing the finish line is good. Congrats!
Apple's shitty consumer-level authoring software bit me another several times, but my little video, now nearing the last stages of production, has definitely crossed the threshold of "good enough": it's as smooth and as shiny a turd as my tools and my skill sets (among which I include a certain gift for desperate improvisation in a crunch) can between them devise, which is fortunate since I learned on Friday that my masters expect it tomorrow morning and not on Wednesday, as I'd previously understood.
DONN>>>>>>>>>>>
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Post #365,806
11/4/12 9:54:48 PM
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Final Cut is more than adequate
I touched on just enough of it to see that, with time and desire, I could do quite a bit with it.
--
Drew
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Post #383,524
11/13/13 3:15:39 AM
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Re: Final Cut is more than adequate
If you must do this, go all-in and make it as smarmy as possible.
I think the single most compelling piece of evidence for global warming is that Fox News viewers think it's a hoax.
DONN>>>>>>>>>>>
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Post #365,825
11/5/12 9:11:19 PM
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the upside of working for ninnies:
They are easily dazzled and distracted by shiny objects. I gave senior management across town lightly buffed fecal material for review this morning, and they have proclaimed it a Fabergé egg, and exclaim rapturously over the precious gems and lapis lazuli with which its surface is adorned.
cordially,
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Post #365,826
11/5/12 9:12:58 PM
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Times you wish your expectations were wrong
--
Drew
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Post #365,827
11/5/12 9:26:32 PM
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rofl. :-)
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Post #365,850
11/6/12 2:55:30 PM
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It's always wonderful working for idiots
as long as they are distractable.
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Post #365,852
11/6/12 3:49:56 PM
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Probably good that you didn't properly heat-set the enamel..
lest some of the malodorous Magic Smoke seep out at some inopportune Closed-Suit Meeting.
Eh?
as in, Whew.. the customer is always Rihgt!!
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