Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin October 11th, 2008

We got in late Tuesday night. Our flight was delayed about an hour and a half, but we did make up some of it in the air.

The first night, we just kind of settled in and watched Planet Earth: Seasons in BluRay.

In the morning, we woke up to this:

The view from Nancy and Tim’s balcony is amazing. They’re such gracious hosts for letting us crash at their place.

I could really get used to weather like this.

After a quick breakfast of french toast, we went to the Amoeba:

This is a crazy large music and DVD store. They sell tons of used stuff. It’s not a place where you go to browse, but to go in with a plan to find something cool and obscure.
Continue Reading »

• The Daily Monster (2)
• Taiwan: Day 1 (1)
• Sneak peek at 100 Days of Monsters (3)
• Mr. Stefan G. Bucher’s portrait (1)
• Illustrator/designer: Stefan G. Bucher (0)

Tags: Amoeba Music Store, Castle Crashers, Daily Monster, Los Angles, Pictures, Santa Monica, Stefan G. Bucher, Sunsets, Trips

• Posts by Penguin
• Comments

Ninja October 8th, 2008

The talented triple-threat (designer, illustrator, writer), Mr. Stefan G. Bucher, turned 35 today. Stefan has been a good friend to me these past 2 years, & he’s been kind enough share his work & keep me company during the wee hours of the morning (seeing how we share similar sleeping schedules).

Today, NvP had the pleasure of celebrating Stefan’s birthday with the man himself!

Before entering his cool apartment, we were greeted by his flock of festive flamingos.

Oh, and here’s the birthday boy with plushy monster number 80. I commissioned Wenny to crochet this little guy, after all she did such a bang up job making amigurumi versions of us!

Continue Reading »

• Illustrator/designer: Stefan G. Bucher (0)
• The Daily Monster (2)
• Tarsem Singh’s The Fall trailer (4)
• Sneak peek at 100 Days of Monsters (3)
• NvP goes amigurumi! (1)

Tags: 344 Design, Amigurumi, Birthday, Crafts, Daily Monster, David Hockney, Los Angeles, Stefan G. Bucher, Tarsem, The Fall

• Design , Posts by Ninja
• Comments

Penguin October 8th, 2008

LifeZero has a nice rundown on how to setup a fast 4TB RAID system for $1500

Detailed instructions on setting up RAID

The Hardware

1. $520×8 – 8x fast hard drives (buy)
2. $550 – The PROAvio EditBox 8ML (buy)
3. $35×2 – 2x Infiniband cables (buy)
4. $275 – 1x great PCI-Express RAID card (HighPoint RocketRAID 2322 – buy)

Total: $1420 + SH

The Setup
After you setup all the hardware, and follow the instructions, open a browser and log in to your RAID.

Browse to: https://localhost:7402
Login: RAID (case sensitive)
Password: hpt (case sensitive)

Create an array, then format it to your filesystem of choice. And that’s it!

Now you have a great and super fast external RAID configureable to RAID 0, 1, 5, or 10

+ RAID directions
+ Buy 500GB Western Digital Hard Drive
+ Buy Express Sata II Raid Controller
+ Buy External Mini Sas To Infiniban
+ PROAvio EditBox 8ML

-Penguin

• Video: Great Pans with Rubber Bands (0)
• Drobo: File Storage Solution (0)
• Archiving Solutions Compared (0)
• Which Mini DV Tape is Best? (3)
• Where we do what we do (0)

Tags: DIY, Guides, Hardware, RAID, Storage

• Guides , Posts by Penguin
• Comments

Penguin October 5th, 2008

Today, we finished principal photography on Jeff and Nancy’s wedding music video. We also finished a rough cut with the wonderful assistance of the other Nancy, who’s been my DP on Interview with an INS Agent, Collide, and Cupid’s Chokehold.

The two of us have really hit our stride and she’s a dream to work with. I had the pleasure of working with her on the edit too.

Once we finished the rough cut, I replaced the proxy assets with the HD ones and rendered it out. Ninja and I spent the last half hour watching the 2 minute video over and over. It’s that good. I can’t to share it with everyone.

There’s still some fine tuning I need to do, but I know it works. Then it’s on to color correction. Yay!

-Penguin

• Cupid’s Chokehold: Day 3 – Compromise (1)
• Video: Ingrid Michaelson – The Way I Am (6)
• Video: Howie Day – Collide [NvP Music Video] (0)
• Video: Gym Class Heroes – Cupid’s Chokehold [NvP Music Video] (0)
• New Project: Cupid’s Chokehold (0)

Tags: Collide, Cupid's Chokehold, Interview with an INS Agent, Jeff and Nancy, Music videos, Nancy Chan, Production, Projects, Rough Cut, The Way I Am

• Filmmaking , Posts by Penguin , Projects
• Comments

Penguin October 1st, 2008

The ShuttleXpress and its big brother, the Shuttle Pro, are USB peripherals designed for media applications.

The ShuttleXpress comes with a spring-loaded shuttle, a jog wheel, and 5 buttons. It’s also conveniently configured for many popular applications such as, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut, Adobe After Effects, and others. It’s also easily configurable for any application such as, Winamp and VLC.

The construction is pretty solid. The buttons have a satisfying click to them. The shuttle has nice resistance in the spring for fine controls. And the jog wheel has subtle clicks for precise tuning. The base is wide with 5 rubber feet to give it nice stability. Not that you’d be thrashing the thing around.

Using the ShuttleXpress is a breeze. It’s not meant to replace the mouse, rather, compliment it. I placed mine to the left of the keyboard. Scrubbing through long footage and navigating the timeline is fast and easy.

My one regret is not going for the Pro model. The Xpress only comes with 5 buttons while the Pro has 15. But for the price is fair.

If you do a lot of video or audio work, I would definitely recommend one.

+ Buy ShuttleXpress
+ Buy Shuttle Pro
+ Contour Design

-Penguin

• Which Mini DV Tape is Best? (3)
• What’s Good Editing? (0)
• What Filmmakers Can Learn from Android (3)
• Video: Great Pans with Rubber Bands (0)
• The Game is Mental (1)

Tags: Contour Design, Filmmaking, Hardware, Reviews, Shuttle Pro, ShuttleXpress

• Filmmaking , Reviews
• Comments