contours provocations - 2004-0817

contours provocations
journal - sun, 2004-0817 - 1900

Charcters in a Single Shot; XP; Short Cords; Four not Three

Sunday evening I watched "Gosford Park" on A&E. When I saw it at the cinema, I was about four rows from the front which was so uncomfortable that I got up and stood in the back.

All directors have a consistency of style. Sometimes it's more noticeable; sometimes it's harder to catch. With Robert Altman, it's the arrangement of multiple characters in a single shot. Within a shot there might be a dozen characters each engaged in physical activity. You feel as if you're only a few feet away. As though you could easily walk into the frame.

I was trying to think if I could remember any close ups, but I can't. All the shots appear very natural. No cut aways or zooms. I really should buy the DVD.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on and off on a tutorial that explains how to save certain media files to the web. The process of creating and saving the files involves using an audio editor to convert the files to another format. An auxillary program holds text titles and headers for each story. That info has to be copied to a web page via an interface program.

But the most difficult part has been trying to explain how to use the functions of Windows XP. People appear to be totally unaware of the standard features of the operating system. The idea that you can copy data from one program to another is very much a novelty. And most seem to have no concept about the options available via the right click of the mouse.

I finally opted to create screen shots for each page and save them as jpegs. I next went back and circled the important elements in each. These images were then incorporated into a web page for each step.

The real real real problems is that some of the people involved don't want to the task, no matter how easy the process.

This afternoon, I decided to plug some earphones into the speaker jack on the back of my computer. It's certainly a great way to eliminate unneeded noise. Just one problem. The cord for the earphones is only about a meter long. So everytime I turned, I'd rip the earphones off.

After work, I drove off to WalMart to look for earphones with a longer cord. After looking, I decided the longer the cord, the more expensive the product. Tomorrow maybe I can try BestBuy.

I discovered this evening that there are actually four outside kitties instead of three. Two look so much alike that I never noticed the difference. But it is odd that all four never appeared together before now.

PAX!