Added the below info to the Free Video page, so figured I should add a post about it too since it’s some very useful info.
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Another nice little tool recently discovered from an anonymous little birdie that recently sent me a message: http://keepvid.com/
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TOOLS for getting videos in to your local storage for use with Media players, etc.
Video Cache View is awesome. It shows you the ‘cache’ your browser(s) use to store video files. This is very useful since those are bits and pieces of videos you viewed online that your browser saved on your computer already – no downloading of video is necessary since it’s already been downloaded. This gizmo just helps you figure out ‘where’ it was saved to already by the browser… Usually on my computer the individual files end up being about 6 or 7 minutes long for most video sites. It saves like 7 minutes in one file, then a new file will be another 7 minutes if the video in question is 14 minutes long, etc…
Fast Video Download add on for Firefox is similar to the Video Cache View, but it only is useful for a limited number of files that were recently viewed, so it’s usefulness isn’t quite as great as the Video Cache View, but for short videos it’s a great option.
Once you have all of the pieces of the puzzle, you need to put them together, but first you need to possibly edit them, etc. These cached videos are typically mp4 or flv files (but won’t necessarily be named with those file extensions at first).
To edit file start/end spots, etc. FLV EDITOR LITE is fantastic. It’s definitely not ‘Adobe Premiere’ quality, but it’s close enough for just splicing start and end times on flv files. I think it even allows you to put up to 4 flvs together in to one file, etc. I have not tested it a lot with multiple file editing, but you could probably piece together 4 videos, and then export that as one video, then add another 3 to the combined and so on and so forth? I might have to try that sometime… Right now I mainly just use it to edit start/end times on individual files and use other software to piece the parts back together.
That ‘other’ software is Free Video Joiner. It allows you to add flv and mp4 files together and save them out as one file that is joined… I’ll warn you though Free Video Joiner uses a LOT of cpu power so using it might cause the fans on your computer to get a little louder as they try to compensate for the heat all that computation cpu power that joining video files uses.
Also, MP4 Joiner sometimes can be fairly handy and fast. Both MP4 Joiner and FLV Editor Lite are very quick since they don’t seem to have to re-encode.
There are other free software applications out there, but these are the few I’ve found extremely useful for getting online videos I uploaded in the past that were deleted from hard drive or never backed up locally back in to one piece, etc.
Edit 5/27/2013
Got off of the workouts a few days the last few days and didn’t watch carb intake either. Going to try to get back in to it going forwards… Anyways, since it’s Memorial Day, here’s a video from this memorial day and one from last. If I remember, I’ll try to take one every year to show progress because I DO PLAN TO GET TO MY BMI GOAL WEIGHT BY AGE 45!!!
Memorial Day 2013:
Memorial Day 2012:
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Today is my birthday and I’ve decided that it’s time to restart the daily workouts after this weekend. I’ve had enough time to rest and recover after the surgery a couple of months ago. So.. here’s a new ‘before’ video…
Weigh in 2/8/2013: 277.5 lbs.
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Here’s a couple of Birthday Self Portraits. Many other artists do annual self portraits on birthdays, and I started this little tradition last year, so figure going forward I might try it more often.
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The self portraits got me thinking about things so I started some photo self portraits shortly after that…
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The hernia issue happened October 29th, 2012. I overdid it on doing a Power 90 workout. Up til that point in time I was using 10 lb weights on each arm for most of the exercises. On that day I upped it to 20 lbs on each arm for the exercises, with was just too damn much… so I got hit with a hernia and had to have it repaired with a surgery. The doctor said that it was an odd type of hernia unlike one he’d seen before because it wasn’t a tear all the way through. Instead a very long piece of fatty tissue had essentially come out from the back area up through where it should not be and the overdoing it caused that to just strain all of it much worse than it should have been which caused the surgery to be needed. The surgery was in the early part of December and I was out of work a couple of weeks to recover from that. Then I went to work about a week and half and was on a scheduled Christmas vacation that was planned before the surgery thing came up… I kind of have not gotten in to the working out too much since then. I tried a time or two to do some of the workout videos, but the strain on the area where the surgery was for some of the kicks, crunches, etc. was just too much at the time. I am hoping that I’m now ready to re-start fresh now that I’ve had another few weeks of down time that I have not been doing much exercise.
Past videos and weigh ins on the weight loss journey up til this point in time:
10/2/2012:
273.6 lbs:
9/3/2012
292.6 lbs
I went up above 290 since the ‘rest’ I had to take to let the stab wound heal was days I gorged and ate extremely badly. That was a HUGE setback!… Hopefully junk like that won’t cause me to have setbacks again in the future.
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Video of ‘The stab wound’ the monring after it happened. Sorry for the crappy video quality. I was using a low resolution webcam since it was the only video recording device I had available on that day. I accidentally stabbed myself with a steak knife while doing dishes. It was in the rack drying with the point up, but our sink is very small so I just moved wrong while washing a dish and accidentally the knife went right in. I bled a ton when it happened. Very scary situation since Tekla was not home when it happened. Very hard to hold the phone and call 911 when one of your arms has to hold a towel to stop blood and the other is bleeding like crazy.
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8/21/2012
284.6 lbs
8/16/2012
285.3 lbs:
8/9/2012
281.8 lbs
8/1/2012
284.8 lbs
7/24/2012
286.2 lbs
7/17/2012
289.2 lbs:
7/14/2012
288.6 lbs
Before then
6/29/2012
292.1 lbs
6/24/2012
296.5 lbs
Memorial Day
May 28, 2012
4/30/2012
4/10/2012
Weight Chart prior to the videos:
Just as a reference for this old chart…
135 kg = 297.624 Lbs
130 kg = 286.601 Lbs
125 kg = 275.578 Lbs
The chart sort of outlines my ups and downs… The time when I was at the heaviest was a very dark time. It seemed like death was everywhere I looked.
I think I was in a pretty deep depression at the time due to many family deaths those few years and various economic problems, as well as a lot of stressful political bullshit at work… One of my coworkers quit/got fired in a big huge spat that happened after several months of building up to it. They fought her getting unemployment checks, and that all ended us all in a courthouse type of setting in Jefferson City… one of the most nervous days I’ve ever had… It was a big fiasco. I’m not sure if she ever got her unemployment or not, or if she sued in a real lawsuit or not like she was planning to do… but anyways, in some of it I had to get sworn testimony in there about how the Associate CFO, who was sort of the head of our area had pounded fists on a table in a meeting a few years prior to this in some heated contractual negotiations, etc. (she was trying to argue something about a hostile work environment, etc.)… A few months after that whole fiasco, I was told that there just wasn’t room in the budget for me any more, and I was ‘reassigned’ to another department.
There was quite a bit of hostility in myself after that retaliation for speaking up… which is exactly what I still think that was all about… add in that type of getting pushed around to depression, etc. and with my personality being to overeat when feeling down or nervous, and it was just a horrible situation all around… I was a walking time bomb and heart attack ready to hit. Luckily, my rationale side, and amazing better half kept me sane during these insane times – so I didn’t buy up big bulks of fertilizer to use as a weapon of mass destruction, and stuck with causing havock in video games like Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas, various old NES games, etc. Entropia Universe, the video game, was a part of the depression, etc. as you can read about in my other blog as the developers in that game love to make promises they can’t and just won’t keep… and the love to break expensive items and estates in game that you pay for with real cash after you pay for it, sometimes for months, or years (taming still isn’t back since version update 10, etc)… However, even despite all the bull shit with that game, it was something I had some control over in my life… sort of this little escape from reality that was always there since I started playing it in 2007. There was some documentary on Eminem I watched on youtube the other day that talks about how his alter ego existed vs his real name use because it was this sort of alter ego he went in to deal with reality sort of and have control over… the documentary said that lots of folks that grew up in some conditions similar to his had the same type of issues sometimes. I think my avatar in Entropia has sort of turned in to that type of alter identity for me. I guess, like Neverdie, I am my avatar.
(note – blog link in above paragraph is now on a private blog, so it won’t work… new blog for entropia can be found at https://entropiascams.wordpress.com/ – I had to start the new blog and make old one private (although backup does exist in xml file that you can find a link to over on the new blog if you use a password in one of the posts over there… hint: password is a simple name that most folks that have played entropia a long time should know… it starts with an M and ends in an O… 🙂 ))
(August 2015 update on the job issue… currently working as a Dual Rate First Responder/Security Officer at the Isle of Capri Casino in Boonville, Missouri. Â I’ve held this job less than a month so far. Before that I was only a Security Officer a few months, and prior to that worked as a Steward at the Casino. I have a few updates to resume still needed.)
I have grown to love my new job… so sometimes the God(s) do have a plan. I actually kick ass at work now since I’m 3000% hyper focused. Also, I don’t have the constant man hating bullshit that I had to experience daily in my previous department. At one time back then my Supervisor back then actually hung up the phone and outloud gabbed about how the problems they were having was all his fault because he was a man. It was highly funny/ironic/sad at the time because the only other guy in the area we worked in and I had to go to a human resource training session the day before that talked a lot about how sexual discrimination was so bad to have in the work place, etc. In that department, at least at one time there was a massive amount of sexual discrimination of men in the department was happening by the female supervisor and boss… All the while chitty chatty brown nosing gossipy bitch who sat in the cubicle next to mine got a raise. They never really did this discrimination stuff openly. What they’d do is this stupid crap of creating a new position that did the exact same job of who they wanted out… then after they purposefully got the job duties overlapped enough they’d assign the old worker they wanted out the bullshit jobs like manually closing out 50,000 or so accounts in a huge database where a pulldown menu had to be selected to close it, and this backlog of unclosed visits existed because the brown nosers never did their job but did a good enough job of hiding that fact until months later that they were never reprimanded… and then after assigning the crappy job they’d say that due to the overlapping of duties, there just is no need for the person that was there longest, etc. It’s all political bullshit…
However, luckily the new position I’m in now has much less of that type of stuff going on. For the first time in my life I work for a Department Manager that actually gives a damn about what her employees think! Just the other day I had an hour long meeting with supervisor and department manager just to discuss a handful of emails I’d sent where I explained some concerns I had about processes in the office that I didn’t agree with. At no other job I’ve ever had in the past has anyone ever taken the time to care that much… That’s an awesome feeling. It’s nice to have control over your own real life world a little, and have coworkers that actually care about what you have to say and think. Also, even though I do have to listen to some coworkers and their phone conversations nowadays, it’s nothing like the hateful bullcrap I used to have in my old department where the brown nosing bitches like to slam phones down after the call, call names to the other party after that, and then repeat back the entire conversation they just had voicing out loud with as much hatred as possible why the other party was wrong, on every paragraph in the conversation, EVERY time they take a call or make a call, either on the office phone or on their own private cell phone… That type of venomous poison is easily spread as it’s yelled out daily. Kinda sad to say it but it’s almost too bad that rattlesnake they found in the hallway outside of my old department didn’t find it’s way in the mail slots. Might have adjusted some attitudes in that area, but I doubt it would have done any good. Hopefully some of the self-loathing venom being spewed from that old office can recede from that area in the future as it really just causes endless cycles of negativity to draw itself in more and more daily…
Hopefully, as I continue down a healthy past in the near future, this control over my own life can only get better and better over time. We are now in the age of Aquarius. Enlightenment that was just beyond grasp is now within reach! 🙂 😉
Well, it’s the 29th day of the 1000 day challenge. Tomorrow is day 30, the time of no more taking it easy…
Tomorrow I will start the 2nd month’s challenge, which will be doing that second workout every day, at least 5 days a week – 6 if possible. I will keep doing the one workout a day in the morning, and then do this second workout after work. I expect to see some major calorie burning going on since I’m basically going to be doubling the number of calories burned daily through exercise. Because of that I probably will need to keep an eye on my blood sugar a lot more than I have up til now because going low on sugar can be a big problem for me since I’m diabetic. It’s never been an issue too much up til now since I never really went to my max on exercise, but doing two hard workouts daily might put me there…
Today I also tried doing a little writing at lunch. I’m going to try to make that in to a habit over time.. I’m using the habit tracker from the LDS that was linked to from one of the first posts about the 1000 day challenge. I’m using that tracker for stuff like that instead of the main ones because it lets me track a little easier than the regular one that tracks day by day… since it’s a cross off tracker. I’m also using that tracker to start tracking my times of going to the gas station and paying at the pump (instead of going in, and likely picking up some diet soda and snacks in the convenience store while at as I typically have done in the past – a bad habit I’m trying to start to break…)
I decided to go ahead and shoot the video for this ‘month’ tonight since it’s still afternoon so the light is good…
Plus I really just kind of want to see where I am visually with the video comparisons so that I know where I need to go as that sort of gives me inspiration about what level I need to aim for tomorrow and going forward. The videos take a little while to upload and link to, etc. and this blog posting takes a little while to put together so I’m probably going to not exercise tonight, or on other month ends when these types of videos get posted.
Today’s weigh in weight is 273.6 lbs. That’s 19 lbs down since 9/3/2012, and 22.9 lbs down since 6/24/2012. That puts my goal of ‘getting in to my BMI target range’ at somewhere between 96.6 lbs -133.6 lbs more to lose. It’d be nice if I reach that goal in the next year or so, but if it takes longer, it takes longer… That’s why I’m making this is a 1000 day challenge, not a 30 day challenge, not a 90 day challenge, but 1000 day challenge… In the past I’d have seen this sort of progress and just quit after that… not this time… going all the way to that 1000 days, exercising and doing other things to live a better life than I ever have in my entire life. It will be so nice to actually get to the ‘BMI’ weight that Doctors are always talking about… that weight where people can’t say you are obese any more… where you can look at them and say I got down to my goal weight, why aren’t you there yet?… 😉
Here’s the video I shot this afternoong, Day 29 of the 1000 Day Challenge (10/2/2012)
273.6 lbs:
Here’s the video from Day zero of the 1000 day challenge (9/3/2012) – 292.6 lbs
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Below are the videos and weight ins from before the 1000 day challenge when I tried to do the Power 90 but had to quit around day 60 because of an accidental stab wound… which caused me to have to ‘rest’ 2 weeks which really was not good on the weight loss thing, but that’s the past… I’m looking forward now… Just looking at the videos for comparison purposes… Even though the past is the past, it’s good to know where you came from so that you can tell where you are going…
8/21/2012 – 284.6 lbs
8/16/2012 – 285.3 lbs:
8/9/2012 – 281.8 lbs
8/1/2012 – 284.8 lbs
7/24/2012 – 286.2 lbs
7/17/2012 – 289.2 lbs:
7/14/2012 – 288.6 lbs
Before then
6/29/2012 I was 292.1 lbs
6/24/2012 I was 296.5 lbs
Memorial Day – May 28, 2012 –
4/30/2012
4/10/2012
I have to thank my amazing wife, Tekla, for being behind me all the way in this crazy 1000 day challenge thing. Sorry I wake you up so early darling but now you can start to see the progress…
This is only the beginning…
Much more to come. 😉 🙂 :p
(*note – if some of the videos don’t show yet, it’s probably because they are not done uploading yet… Currently uploading the oldest ones and they are only at 5% upload progress so far in youtube at the time of this posting… if you really have to see the vids, come back and look again tomorrow…*)
I’ve been exploring the wide world of the internet from time the time the last few months, and have found quite a few nice online workout videos and diet advice in various locations such as youtube, podcasts, etc. I’m going to start a list here of some of the places to find these awesome resources…
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Please note: I take ABSOLUTELY NO RESPONSIBILITY for any of the content linked to below… I’m just linking to various videos and exercise links I’ve found online… I didn’t upload most of this stuff. If there’s some copyright violation or whatever, please don’t come knocking on my door with a court order or something like that. If you are a copyright owner and some of the stuff below is violating your rights, just leave a comment and I’ll try to delete the link as soon as I get a chance to read your comment.
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nice calorie counter thingy – http://www.fitclick.com/calories_burned?At_Home_Training&oc=729&page=11
Here’s why I’m tempted to do the Bodyrock videos as ‘the morning’ workouts…
Here’s an awesome tip… Use Google Video search!
Do a search for something in Google’s video search like a keyword for workout, or cardio, interval, etc. and then in the left column pick the option for results that are 20+ minutes in length. Blamo, you just found yourself a bunch of 20+ minute workout videos! 🙂 😉
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HOME MADE JUMP ROPE:
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Ryan Magin’s Youtube channel – He explores how various actors workout. http://www.youtube.com/user/RyanMagindotcom?feature=watch (warning – he’s trying to sell you something)
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nice long workouts here for medicine ball, etc:
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Walking 1-2-3 miles:
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Sword Workout – finally something I might be able to use to workout the crowbars besides the shovelglove stuff.
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Some nice little tools/plugins/Hardware to help with your home theater system (i.e. getting videos like the ones listed in this post to play on your tv or other type of monitor, etc.)
Streaming video needs a way to get to it’s end location (tv, hdmi monitor, etc.). Some hd tvs have hdmi ports that can just send video directly to a digital tv, using the tv as a second monitor…
For older tvs, some little gizmo is handy… For xbox and stuff like that xmbc might be the solution…
Some smart tvs now can do some video streaming… but some content providers block that when they can, so results can very depending on the hardware/software and what you are trying to stream.
For those on a little more of a budget or that are not in to gaming, streaming devices like the Roku or WD TV Live are fantastic. Take the time to evaluate and think about things before you decide to pick one streamer over another… they are very different beasts… for example The Roku 1 has good ol component out ports for audio/video to go to tvs whereas Apple TV doesn’t seem to have that, nor does later versions of the Roku… as with all gizmos and gadgets, you have to juggle what features you want vs what features will work with the gizmos and gadgets you already own since some things may not be compatible… and some folks try to scam the masses that are not aware of this sort of thing too much (like folks selling junk on ebay to convert hdmi signals in to component signals for regular old school tv ports without letting the buyer know that that won’t work without some other little gizmo that has to be purchased separately, etc.. buyer beware!)
Sometimes computers are needed as ‘middlemen’ of sorts to get some streams to tvs, etc. For this, great software like Plex and Playon Exists among many other various software packages, some of which is free, some of which is not so free…
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another little tip… if you find a video somewhere online that you can’t download for whatever reason, but you want to download, use a screen scraper that will record what’s on your monitor. The best/easiest one I’ve found for this sort of thing is bandicam. The free version lets you record 10 minutes at a time and it puts a little watermark on it… If you don’t mind the watermark that shouldn’t be a big deal. The free version of fraps doesn’t let you record 10 minutes at a time, even though some say fraps is better for this sort of thing, especially for recording online gaming, etc. What I like about bandicam vs fraps is bandicam makes it just a little easier to record areas on screen with a little box, or record one window… fraps it’s more hard to record one window or one area… there’s a few other screen scrapers out there like these two tools, but these two are probably the best ones…
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as far as with bandicam, etc. goes… it records avi files… if you do need videos more than 30 minutes there are ways to put several avi files in to one video file. Easiest way to do that is with a little command line thing:
What is the best way to join multiple DVD VOB files? Using the Windows copy command: Because the VOBs are simply split files created from previously contiguous larger file, you can reconstruct the larger file using the window copy command. To do this:
a) Open a cmd window using the Windows run command.
b) cd to the folder containing your VOB files.
c) At the command line, enter a command similar to:
copy /b vob1.vob + vob2.vob + vob3.vob outputFile.mpg
This will concatenate multiple VOB files into one output file. Note: Please don’t forget the /b switch.
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Avidemux works too… but not as well… it can rip up the area between the two avis or mp4s that are joined making screen unseeable as it’s all pixelated to hell.
Virtual dub is ok too…
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if it’s just avi files, windows movie maker or some cheap software like Magix Video Music maker work too.
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=120677201&page=1 – Another Cinder Block workout
============== http://thetumblrgym.com/workout – nice little list of workout and diet videos on youtube (won’t mention most here since most are 3 minutes or shorter – great for info, but not so great for being your ‘online workout’)
============== http://www.youtube.com/user/MensHealthMag?feature=watch – Men’s Health Videos on Youtube
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Adrienne White mentions in some of her youtube videos (see link below) that her cardio workouts have 150 beats per minute, and some other workout and fitness folks have similar type of suggestions… so how do you find out how many beats per minute a song is? There’s various ways, but one website that used to rock for this was djbpmstudio.com, however, it went offline quite a while back and nothing has replaced it with the amount of stuff it had listed in my humble opinion… BUT, we are still in luck because there’s an archive of it in the internet archive’s way back machine! 🙂
There’s also a few blogs and forums I’ve read about it lately… interesting idea… the idea is that if you overwork, you will get hurt… seems logical. Makes me think maybe my wanting to do workouts twice a day is a mistake?… Not sure on what is the most appropriate stance on that issue yet since working out this intensely is still a fairly new way of life for me.
============= http://omniworkout.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/befit?feature=results_main = Be Fit Channel on Youtube has quite a few free workout videos, some even from the popular folks like Jane Fonda, Jillin Micheals, etc. Very nice treasure trove there.
http://www.bodyrock.tv/ – Body Rock TV has a lot of great workouts on youtube. There’s multiple contributors to it, so various multiple channels on youtube… that’s why I’m linking to the main website… You’ll have to explore a bit yourself if you want subscriptions to all the youtube channels related to this.
Also, if you have a roku or some other way of playing video from internet on tv, both All Fitness TV channel, and Live Exercise seem pretty interesting as well as a few podcasts like Yoga Today, Hillary’s Yoga Practice Podcast, Yoga with Les, and Fit for Duty.
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Fit For Duty on Youtube… (if you have problems finding it in itune podcasts)
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now for something a little bit different…
Here’s a video about why exercise is bad for you…
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If like me, you find the ‘live exercise’ channel on roku to not work well, you might try getting their videos via youtube…
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A few interesting videos
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Zuzana’s Zwow workouts
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Zumba Nation:
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I’m sure there’s many more out there on the internet. Will update the list with more eventually. Have fun. Happy exercising! 🙂
Yes, Chris, and anyone else who cares to read this. I did post this and the last few posts. This is NOT a robot. I usually bookmark this sort of stuff with del.icio.us but since I don’t have the toolbar for that installed on this computer, I’m just posting it the stuff here…
Believe it or not (yes, you probably do believe since I”m a bit nutty sometimes), I had a jogging suit with pom poms sewed on way back 6 or so years ago when I wanted to get in to this d-sculptor, imodeler, and greenscreen junk. However, way back then the computers I was using were way too slow to do much… Aura 1 used to be in Newtek’s ftp site for free. Not sure if it still is. Newtek is the company that makes Lightwave 3d… There was some sort of a pixel tracking thing in aura that could be exported to lightwave… so you could record motion and create paths for it in 3d. Now that I’m starting to get back in to 3d and stuff mentally, a lot of this old knowledge is starting to flood back in to my brain… interesting stuff.
I have a couple of 1000 watt spotlights that are typically used for construction jobs in my basement. I was going to use them to make a homebrew photo studio, or greenscreen studio a few years back. Not sure if I will do that or not… never used the lights yet since I’m not sure how safe they are (warning label on the side of the box talks about lead)…
I might use them to set up as cheap homebrew strobes to shoot my portfolio in the basement someday.
Need to clean out the basement someday before all of that can ever happen though, or before I can convert the basement in to a descent painting studio like I envision it to eventually be… (assuming I can find some way to ventilate it).
It’s still got quite a few things in it that is a bit unorganized from last year, when mother-in-law moved and father-in-law passed away, and we inherited quite a bunch of odds and ends that are now in storage in the basment…
Jeff Thomann's Blog 
