Tag Archives: movies

WebCam Timelapse – July 11, 2007

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Lots of confused cloud activity.

The Arizona sky is making me a liar. In a post earlier this month, I talked about how most days started clear and the clouds built up throughout the day. This week, however, it’s been cloudy early in the day and clears up in the late afternoon. Makes me look like I haven’t got a clue, huh?

This is a great video (in the new “large” size) that shows off all the confusion in yesterday’s sky. Watch the clouds carefully — they move in various directions throughout the day!

After clicking this image, you may have to wait a few seconds for it to load before it starts playing. Be patient and click only once. It’ll play right in this window. QuickTime is required.

[qt:https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/Timelapse-071107.mov https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/Timelapse-071107-poster.mov 320 256]

Although I can do a larger image movie, I think the 1.1 MB bandwidth is enough. I’d like to increase the number of images that make up the movie, but that’ll also increase the movie size and bandwidth when it’s played. If you have any preferences about this, use the Comments link or form to be heard.

And I do want to note that I’m not releasing these every day — just the days when there’s something interesting to see. This time of year, that can be several times a week.

WebCam Timelapse – July 9, 2007

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Another interesting timelapse.

What I like about this one is:

  • Nice colors at sunrise. Remember, this camera points northeast, so we don’t actually see the sun.
  • About halfway through the day, the clouds going by seem to make a right turn as they move across the sky. I think there was a wind shift up there. Interesting.

You need to click the image to download and play the file with QuickTime. I did this purposely for the folks who aren’t interested in wasting bandwidth on something as trivial as this.

[qt:https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/Timelapse-070907.mov https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/Timelapse-070907-poster.mov 160 136]

For those of you who requested a larger image, one is on the way. Yesterday’s big image was too big, so we’ll have to wait until the next interesting sky. Today’s might be a good candidate; lots of clouds. We’ll see.

And for those of you just tuning in, these images are my attempt to show how the weather changes here in Arizona during out annual monsoon season. Usually we don’t have any clouds at all, so these images really do show something special. I’m hoping that images created later in the season will include storms and, if we’re lucky, even a few lightning strikes.

Gila Monster

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My first Final Cut Express video project.

After spending three days going through a tutorial to learn Final Cut Express HD, I was ready to create my first video project. I’m sharing it with blog readers so you can see how much effort a person can expend on 25 seconds of video.

About the Project

This particular project features a Gila Monster (pronounced “heela monster”), which is a rather large lizard that can be found in the Arizona desert. If I’m lucky, I see one or two of these in a year, so they’re not exactly common. They are, like so many things in the desert, poisonous, so you don’t want to get too close. But since they’re not exactly fast and they’re definitely not aggressive, you can get photos of them in action if you have equipment with you.

On a backroad trip with Mike and some friends, we happened to come upon one croassing the road. I had my video camera with me and whipped it out to capture some pretty decent footage. This Final Cut Express project cuts out the boring shaky bits, replaces our silly comments with music, and adds opening and closing titles. This is the first in a series of short videos I hope to add to wickenburg-az.com, so make the site more interesting to visitors.

But this is also an experiment to check out video formats and Final Cut Express’s export feature. I had great success when exporting to QuickTime movie format, for iPod, and for Apple TV. But the Windows Media Player export didn’t work right at all and the AVI format was extremely poor quality, despite the file size, so I’m not going to distribute them. I just spent another few minutes using the iPod version of the file to create an e-mail version using QuickTime’s Share command. That worked best of all for the Web view of the file. Only 3.3 MB (which is smaller than the iPod version, and it looks pretty good.

Getting it Online

XHTML purists will tell you that the EMBED tag is a no-no in Web development. I think it has something to do with Internet Explorer which, for some reason, can’t interpret XHTML and CSS like the rest of the Web browsers on this planet.

So this project is also an experiment to see if the QuickTime Embed plugin for WordPress will work. If you’re reading this article shortly after I put it online and there’s no QuickTime movie below (or if the whole site is messed up), it’s because I’m trying this out and debugging. (Check in again in about 30 minutes.)

That said, here’s the movie with a Poster movie. I think I’l leave the iPod file for wickenburg-az.com distribution.

[qt:https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/GilaMonster-web.mov https://aneclecticmind.com/wp-content/movies/GilaMonster-web-poster.mov 480 335]

Amazon.com Wish Lists

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A great way to let people know what you want.

I’ve maintained an Amazon.com wish list for at least a year now. I do it for two reasons:

  • To keep track of the books, DVDs, CDs, and other items I want. When I place an order with Amazon.com for something I need and I either need another item to get free shipping or want to piggyback a little gift to myself on that order, I pick something off the list and buy it in the same order.
  • To let other people know about the books, DVDs, CDs, and other items I want. This is especially useful for family members around the holidays, when they don’t know what to get me. But it’s also nice for site visitors. After all, I’ve bought Amazon.com wish list items for other bloggers and software developers. I thought maybe someone might want to surprise me.

My list grows. I add more things to it than I actually get. In fact, I added about 10 books today (after going through a back issue of Bookmarks).

My Amazon.com wish list didn’t help my mother buy me a Christmas gift this year. I sent her the link to my list and she e-mailed me back saying, “Is that all you have on the list? Books and movies?”

When I told her that was it, she didn’t reply. But the Friday before Christmas, she e-mailed me to let me know she’d sent my Christmas gift late. I still haven’t gotten it, but I know she didn’t buy anything on my Amazon.com wish list. I’m imagining a sweater (I live in Arizona) from Belk, a Florida-based department store. I distinctly remember the fruit trees she bought me for my birthday a few years ago. Yes. Live fruit trees. Apple and pear, I believe. (Remember, I live in the Sonoran desert of Arizona.) I sent them back to her in Florida. They probably died en route — she never mentioned them. The trees are one of the reasons I created the wish list.

I don’t get it. The wish list includes items ranging in price from about $10 to $75. A person can choose any number of things to buy a perfect gift for his/her budget. Shipping is usually free for orders over $25. And ordering is as simple as clicking a few onscreen buttons. (She even has DSL now!) I know my brother and sister would have used the wish list if they hadn’t bought us a wonderful set of Calphalon cookware for a combo Christmas/Wedding present. (Something else on a wish list.)

So apparently it’s up to me to eat away at the wish list by piggybacking items with other things I need to buy. That’s okay. The wish list is there when I need it, so I won’t forget what items I want.

Anyway, I recommend creating an Amazon.com wish list if you don’t already have one. Then keep the link handy for the next time someone asks what you want for Christmas or your birthday. But if your mom is like mine, add a few things other than just books and CDs. Otherwise, you might wind up with a sweater, too.

The Firm

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Better than I thought it would be.

The FirmThe other day, The Firm with Tom Cruise, arrived in my mailbox from Netflix. This 1993 “thriller” is based on a book of the same name by John Grisham.

The movie was a lot better than I expected. (I have very low expectations these days.) It was about a newly graduated lawyer (Cruise) who accepts a too-good-to-be-true offer with a Memphis-based law firm. Unknown to Cruise’s character, the firm’s clients are the Chicago-based mafia. It appears that there’s no way out of the firm.

There’s lots of suspense that, in all honesty, is softened by the soundtrack. In other words, the music is all wrong. With the right music, certain scenes would have been a lot scarier than they were. Oddly enough, I’ve never picked up on this kind of problem before — it was just so darn obvious in this movie that even I couldn’t miss it.

It was interesting to see Tom Cruise so young again. It reminded me a little of his Risky Business days. The movie also features Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, and Gary Busey (in a short-lived — pun intended — role).