Logan’s Run Online

Right, so I’m currently working on a new film. The idea and basic plot has been floating around my head for a while (since last summer, actually) when my friend Raye helped me conceive it; this summer I’m glad to say I’ve finalized a scene list with the entire story arc and have now talked with some people to pen it down in a real story format with action and dialogue.

This means that, hopefully, by the end of the summer, I’ll have the longest screenplay ever I’ve helped to create! And then it’s off to storyboarding and such other fun aspects of pre-production. What joy!

(In case you can’t tell, all of this stems from YET ANOTHER change of my major; this time to Radio/Television Production. I think I’m still gonna graduate in four years with a major and three minors. Hot stuff.)

So after MONTHS of delays and procrastination on it, I’ve finally finished the editing on and shipped out my latest film, a short horror idea centered around a local DJ, “Radio”. Check it out up on YouTube (in 720p HD, no less!) over at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN0szeAZaJ4. Or, feel free to view it below!

If you’re interested in some of the technical principles I came across while shooting this, read on. The biggest problem I ended up having with this film was loss of my audio takes from the shoots: I shot the film in my camera’s 24p mode which wraps the 24 progressive frames in a 60i stream, thus necessitating a reverse telecine process to extract them out. When doing this in After Effects and rendering out the subsequent frames, I lost all my initial audio takes because AE’s default render options doesn’t include audio–I’ve since learned to ALWAYS check that audio rendering is enabled. I ended up recording all the audio in separate takes and dubbing them in afterwards–lip-syncing is almost impossible on film. The second thing I really learned about in making this film was the importance of storyboarding. Although I shot a lot of b-roll and had all of the shots I wanted, I realized both while shooting and editing that my mis-en-scene looked a bit capricious, as if I didn’t really have a grand idea at the time as to exactly how I wanted to scene to look. I realize now that, by storyboarding out the exact process and shots beforehand, it’ll probably make shooting go a lot faster and ensure in editing I know exactly what goes when.

HAHA, WOW. OMG, the Team Leader retreat was AMAZING! I definitely now know I made the right choice in applying to be a team leader–I’m gonna love this group and the whole experience. I can’t really say much more–it was awesome! And I met some terrific friends! Aside from staying in a VERY nice hotel (the JW Marriott Grande Lakes Orlando) and enjoying all of its amenities (gym, pool, lazy river, restaurants, GLASS shower), there were just SO many fun activities planned for all of us and I learned a whole lot. I’m probably way too excited about this semester and my group and can’t wait to do this again next year and the year after that (if given the chance). Some of my favorite quotes from the past three days:

This activity is going to involve handling balls.

Alvin, Alvin!!!! (Theodore, Simon!)

Mmrrrmm, roofies

EYES, THROAT, GROIN

And so much more–I gotta talk to Brenna because I’m pretty sure she was writing down quotes all retreat long as they happened. TLs who happen to read/see this–what was your favorite part? Any good quotes I forgot? And see if you can match the above quote to who said it!

So I’m up here in Orlando for ONE NIGHT and ONE NIGHT ONLY, basically just to make sure that my apartment is clean and bare and ready for me to check out tomorrow morning. And since I’m still here for the nightttime (and everything’s packed), I had nothing to do tonight, so I figured I’d grab my friends and hang out with them for a bit…we go to Jimmy John’s for dinner, cause raucousness there for a bit, then head back to my room in Tower 3…and while en route, we notice that there’s a spot in the corner of our lobby for “donations”: basically anything still in slightly good, usable, working condition that people don’t want anymore. And what a buinch of things people threw out! We found a ton of useful items in Tower 3 alone and afterward, content with our pickings, headed back to my room.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! We decide to make a night out of it and visit the rest of the Towers (1-4) and loot the rest of them as well–I mean, you’d never know what you find, right? So we head off to Towers 1 and 2 and finally 4 to pick up a bunch of other things. And we certainly did get a whole bunch of items. Here’s just a short list of some of what we acquired:

• Cabinets
• Shelving units
• Beanbag chair
• Three printers
• A fan
• Dart board
• Mini-popcorn machine
• TONS of frisbees
• and, Lauren’s best score: A LAZY-BOY OTTOMAN! Yes, that’s right,a FULL RECLINER, complete with leg rest. THAT was amazing.

So now we’ve got a TON of awesome loot, and a new tradition I’m certainly gonna look forward to in years to come…you can pick up some great deals indeed; even if I don’t end up using everything (like with the printers), I can always sell them for some extra cash!

So go out there, UCF! Find some stuff and partake in social equity!

Hooray!

Yes, today’s my birthday…hooray to me!

Not only was I smug enough to write and post this, I actually wrote it two days ago (on Monday) and set it to auto-publish on my birthday! Take that!

Preliminary reports have been confirmed that AT&T is regionally blocking access to 4chan’s /b/ and /r9k/ boards, citing them as a “security issue” as originating DDoS attacks against AT&T. Believe me, AT&T, if they weren’t before, you’re certainly going to incite them now! Censorship of the Internet in this form is not only uncalled-for, but also in direct violation of the Internet’s freedom principles. This certainly can’t and won’t go over well–I’ve already heard plans of possibly posting AT&T executive’s information online, or orchestrating an attack on them for real at this point in retaliation. You don’t mess with 4chan, apparently!

Here’s a few pertinent updates (from a very well-received blog over here):

UPDATED 3: It turns out 15.5% of all US internet users use AT&T DSL, so this is quite a big problem. It will severly affect 4chan, both in regards of traffic and advertising volumes.

UPDATED 4: moot, the founder of 4chan, officially acknowledges the ban – calling for disconcerned users to «call or write customer support and corporate immediately»: http://status.4chan.org … Somehow, I get a feeling they’re gonna do a lot more than that, moot.

UPDATED 5: From rumors on /b/, it seems 4chan’s first retaliatory strike will be towards Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T. The Consumerist has more. There are also murmurs about the AT&T block being put into place because of supposed mass DDoS-attacks to and from img.4chan.org, but so far there has been no official, verifiable response from AT&T.

Also, apparently there’s a retaliatory plan in-place (or being developed) in 4chan’s favor against AT&T over on ED.

Anyone else remember the YTMND and eBaum’s war from ‘05? This could easily shape up to be the same.

More updates as I find them out!

UPDATE: AT&T has apparently unblocked 4chan. That took, what, 12 hours or so? Not a bad turnaround when you considered what they were about to get themselves into. More over here: http://stormen.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/att-blocks-4chan/ http://mashable.com/2009/07/27/att-unblocks-4chan/

So Rodrigo first played a brief clip of this for me like three weeks ago, back during the second RHPS trip this summer. I had heard of Auto-Tune the News previously; back during Spring semester (I think mid-to-late April) I had first seen coverage of one of its videos on digg about gay marriage and something like that. I didn’t really pay much attention to it until Rodrigo showed me this (as of when this written) current installation #5, about unemployment, smoking lettuce, and American exceptionalism.

This song has been stuck in my head for the past 3 weeks.

I can’t get it out of my head. I can’t stop listening to it. I even frakking bought it on Amiestreet.com for $0.98 (not a bad price, really) so I could put it on my iPod and listen to it my car!

WTH did they do to this song?! Put nicotine in the audio waves?

It’s really amazing what the Gregory group has done with this concept. The videos are funny, the songs are addicting, and it’s really a terrific idea, too.

For those interested, here are the lyrics to #5 (along with a link to watch it):

ML: Any world order
That elevates one nation over another
Will fall flat
SG: Ah, snap
ML: I think that goes against the idea of American exceptionalism
SG: Exceptional fast food and exceptional dance moves.
ML: Most Americans believe that this country was gifted by God, a blessed nation, and that we are better.
SG: Yeah, we the promised land, a sacred place, gettin blessed by Joe Biden in space!
JB: God bless America!
All: Ay!
JB: Gah-awd bless America!
All: Ay!!
JB: God bless, God God bless
God bless America!!
All: Ay-men!!!
SB: Do you realize if you were to take that lettuce, dry it, and roll it, and smoke it…
MG: I know, it tastes like goat shit.
SB: You smoke your lettuce.
MG: Believe me, I’ve tried.
SB: You’re gonna end up with similar problems than if you were smoking tobacco.
MG: I know, fo sho, you should try it with tomato - burnin salad in my throat!
RM: Steve Buyer, warning complacent Americans about the risks of smoking lettuce.
MG: You can warn me all you want, but you’ll never stop my leafy green fetish.
SB: It’s not the nicotine that kills! It’s the smoooooke! The smooooooke. Cancer: it’s the smoke. Heart disease: it’s the smoke. Respiratory disease: it’s the smoooooooke! It’s the, it’s the inhalation, it’s the smooooke, the smooooooke. If they wanna obtain their nicotine, it’s okay. It’s the smooooooke, the smooooooooooooke!
SG: The more produce we come across, the more problems we see.
KC: Some companies say they’ve received hundreds of applications for just a single opening.
One man sent a shoooooe to his prospective employer
EG: Shawtayee, don’t you know
That Air Jordan was from meeee?
KC: I wore a long, white eyelet dress and a floppy white hat
And carried a walking stick
EG: Oo-wee! Am I crazy, am I trippin on shrooms
Or you singin bout pimpin on the late night news?
Katie Coo, baby boo, you got swagga like a star
Don’t stop, real talk, we gon take it to the charts!
You can be
KC: Lady Gaga
EG: I can be
KC: T-Pain
EG: We can be
KC: Bringing on the boogie
EG: Droppin rhymes like rain
You can be
KC: Lady Gaga
EG: I can be
KC: T-Pain
Both: Bringing on the boogie
EG: With floppy hats and pimp canes
LC: We’ve got some breaking news
Let’s go to Tracy Burns–she’s got all the news
TB: Actually, Liz, I think you wanna jump up to Robert
Robert: Tracy, baby, you crazy
I don’t know what the hell’s goin on
Or where the camera belongs
Let’s go to Nicole
NP: Me?
Robert: Yeah, you
NP: Me?
Robert: Baby boo
NP: Me?
Robert: Whooo-ooooooooh
NP: Me?
Robert: Nicole don’t know; let’s throw it to Joe
Joe: Uh, you know, I’m, uh, tryna get a hold of this myself
Breaking news guys, um
I, I don’t have it, Liz, I have to send it back down to you
I’m afraid
LC: Okay, that’s okay
But the basics of it is
Clearly this is a fascinating story

So I was asked someone earlier today to try to analyze two CDs with Linux (installed on another partition of my laptop) to see if they were blank or contained data. I figured, “hell, why not? Should be easy enough, right? Hibernate Windows, reboot into Ubuntu, check the discs, come back up”. Wrong.

Very, very wrong.

See, about a month ago when the Windows Seven Beta was threatening to expire, I upgraded in-place to the newest version, RC1 (Seven, by the way, rocks). This, by default, frustratingly overwrote my MBR to put Microsoft’s proprietary bootloader on there, so I could no longer boot into Linux. I realized this fact this afternoon when, after hibernating Windows and restarting my machine, Seven popped back up again. Recognizing my mistake, I set out to fix it by reinstalling GRUB to the MBR, something I’ve done before and shouldn’t be too hard, right? Wrong.

Extremely, direly wrong.

So I pop in my Ubuntu CD (8.10, “Hardy Heron”, old at the time of this writing) and try to start up the live CD, twice; it keeps freezing on boot (that’s a secondary issue I’ve yet to resolve, at least with that version). I realize I could install GRUB from really any Linux live CD (with grub built-in), so I pop in my System Rescue CD (I forget which version) and try installing GRUB, but I forgot (in GRUB-speak) where the HDD was (if it was “(hd0,0)” or something else entirely) (this is require for the “root” command of the GRUB installation sequence). So I back out of GRUB and try mounting my current Linux partition of my HDD in the System Rescue CD’s live-CD filesystem to read its current GRUB configuration, which I should then be able to find and install, right? Wrong.

Horrifically wrong.

Through some mix-up of whatever commands I ran, upon reboot of my machine (and not even getting GRUB installed), lo and behold, Windows wouldn’t start. Oh crap. Not a big deal, right? I messed up something with the bootloader config, should be easy enough to fix. But when I booted with my GPartED live-CD, it reported my entire 300GB drive as “Unallocated”.

Oh shit.

Unallocated?

Unallocated!

That meant my data was gone! Overwritten! Deleted! Non-existent, all blank, never to be recovered!

What terrible news…

So, realizing that I now lost my Windows configuration (and all of my installed programs) and about 18GB of recently-added music to my collection (amongst other, more insignificant things), I dejectedly set about to download a copy of the latest version of Ubuntu (at the time of this writing, 9.04, “Jaunty Jackalope”), and install it to my laptop so I could then download, burn (no other computer has a DVD burner), and install the RC again of Seven.

While this is all going on, I decide (just out of curiosity’s sake) to try a few other rescue-type live-CDs I have in my collection (I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve :-D). Nothing really got anywhere until I put back in the original setup disk for my laptop (yeah, back to Vista) and tried the “Repair Windows” link–it reported finding something wrong with the bootsector and, curiously enough, two Windows partitions (one from my Seven install and another embedded XP install Dell uses for its MediaDirect system). And, it found these partitions with consistent start/end blocks as I knew the sizes of the partitions to be.

But wait? How can this be? If all my data is gone…what is it finding…and how is it finding it?!

I think this to myself, and decide to allow it to “try repair and reboot”, which, of course, does nothing. But it gets me thinking further, so I reboot into GPartEd to encounter the same “Unallocated” disk I saw earlier. But this time I decided to go into the terminal and really see what’s up. I rooted around /dev/ for a bit, trying to find my particular HDD (it’s /dev/sda, not hda because it’s a SATA drive) and found 7 (logical) devices (excluding sda itself): /dev/sda[1-7]. Interesting, right? I created a mount point (/mnt/data) and tried various combinations of filesystems and devices until I hit on one:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda2 /mnt/data

Success in mounting? Surely this can’t mean…yes, yes it does! A quick `cd /mnt/data && ls` reported to me the contents of the embedded XP installation! Which meant that, indeed, my data was still intact and readable on my drive! And thus began my thinking that in fact it was not my hard drive that got overwritten, but simply its partition table that got corrupted.

So I did some research online and found a bunch of websites that really helped me out; I’ve linked to them here for completion’s sake and to help out anyone else who may have a similar problem in the future:

• http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-352723.html
• http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/Partition-Rescue.html

A summary of the steps I executed to finally rebuild my partition table and recover my laptop follows:

1. Run `fdisk -u -l /dev/sda`. This outputs a list of the various partitions and their respective starting/end blocks and FS types on the drive; it was apparent from this that at least one partition was overlapping another and 2 others were out of order (AKA contiguously not following each other in the drive).
2. `fdisk /dev/sda` to enter interactive mode. Here, I deleted (`d`) each of the offending partitions, one-by-one, verifying (`v`) the partition table after each time to check when the warnings about overlap no longer persisted.
3. Write the new partition table to the disk (`w`) to save the changes.

After this, I started up GPartEd again and, amazingly, it no longer showed my disk as unallocated! My partitions were back! (Minus what I had just deleted; those were now the unallocated space). So I reboot the machine excitedly and–YES–Windows starts up! I was never so happy in my whole life to see a Windows login prompt! I was able to get back into Windows and immediately start a backup of all my important data and compose this post (which I’m writing from my now-recovered laptop! :-D).

So, what is the moral of the story? If there even is one? I really don’t know. Be careful what commands you execute when you’re fucking around with MBRs? Or, more importantly, even when you think your data’s hosed and you’re fucked–DON’T overwrite anything or start to reinstall stuff immediately. Had I done so, then my data truely would’ve been lost from the new partitions created. Since I spent a little bit of time researching, mucking around, and looking deeper into the problem, I discovered my data was there all along! And even if I couldn’t rebuild the partition table correctly, the mere fact that I was able to mount and read my data meant that I could’ve at least backed it up first to an external drive and THEN wipe the drive again–still a better solution to losing everything permanently.

Whew. This took up too much time tonight. What should’ve been a relaxing evening enjoying a movie turned into 4 hours of data recovery and low-level hard drive partition table rebuilding.

Oh, and the CDs, by the way? The ones that kicked this whole thing off?

Completely blank.

So I woke up this morning, did some exercise on our elliptical, took a shower, etc., you know, my normal Sunday morning routine…of course, I knew it was Father’s Day, so I made sure to shave and get dressed nicely for a brunch I was expecting to go to…hung out for a bit, grandparents arrived, everyone said hello, and we got in our cars to leave…

…and then a black van showed up. Don’t worry; it wasn’t one of those FBI/NSA/government black vans, but instead a private, chauffered van ride that the restaurant we’re going to provides for its patrons. My mom organized this whole thing without any of us knowing–and that was only the beginning of this tremendously fantastic experience!

After our comfortable ride over to the restaurant (which is in Mizner Park in Boca, more specifically part of the old Cartoon Museum) (the name of it is “Zen 451″), we were let out by the front doors and welcomed in by the maître d’, who apologized for the (slightly late) van pick-up (slightly late?! Who the hell cares!? It was a private van ride to a restaraunt! Holy crap I would’ve never expected that anywhere in my life except maybe in LA) and proceeded to sit us at surely what had to have been the NICEST table in the entire restaurant–a private room, all by itself, in the center, with a gorgeous view of the rest of the place and encased by glass and very tall wine cabinets. The table–black obsedian marble–was built into the wall with a fireplace and set with AMAZING places. The knives at each setting had these really cool handles that were rotated 90 degrees so as to allow the knife surface itself to be perpendicular to the table–very neat.

So our waiter (server? host? He was pretty cool.) comes in and explains to us how the whole “dining experience” (yeah, this wasn’t even a meal, but a dining experience! Awesome!) works. First, he gives us all water and takes our orders for drinks, then says that, at our leisure, with no rush, we can go to their central “harvest bar” (a buffet style area) to pick out cheeses, small salads, deserts, fruits, and assorted other light starter items. Then, when we’re all out of the room getting our first courses, he and other servers will come in, whisk away our other, unused items, and place down fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits with “tangerine” butter, some type of awesome bacon, and other delectables. I barely knew they had done so; very clean, professional, and elegant. I got some quite delicious food and chowed down.

Then our host (yeah, I like host. I think it fits his role in our dining “experience”) explained that now, we each get to pick a stone from two small metal dishes in the middle of the table, and that those stones represent our dining wishes or something like that–if they’re to the left of our setting, we will be served; if we place them back, we’ll be left alone to digest and relax. When being served, hoardes (and I mean LOTS) of chefs come by like clockwork, every five minutes or so (sometimes even lining up outside the door!) with fresh meats and other dishes that they cut for us right at our table and serve to us individually. AMAZING raspberry-glazed ham, pork, rump roast, sausages, and more paraded our way for a long time while we gorged ourselves on fabulous food.

Finally, we all placed our dining stones back and our host came back one last time to offer coffee and desert (desert, again, being at the harvest bar). I went up and got a few pieces to snack on while everyone else got some coffee and paid the bills. We left and walked around Mizner for a bit before the van came back–at our call, no less–to bring us back home again.

All in all, a very, very good and surprising dining experience indeed! Mad props to my mom for being able to organize this whole thing! Dunno what we paid for this whole thing but it must’ve been through the roof (my delicious lemonade itself was $16 for 4 glasses, but it WAS oh-so-good), but, hey, who cares, it was different, out-of-this-world, and really special.

If anyone’s interested, a few pictures are on my Facebook over at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=116288&id=632011773.

So, who out there has heard of the LARP game “Assassin”? I’m starting up a guild of it here at UCF since it seems like no one else has, and yes, this blog post is just a shameless plug to get more people exposed to it and join the group. Check out our Facebook group and join if you go to UCF and want to stay in touch about upcoming games or just want to know more about it. We’ve got one game coming up next week during finals, so join quickly, spread the word, and TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=71872239019&ref=mf