Dude, there's a parade outside

I was at carnaval on the weekend and stopped to get a coffee.
Inside there were not one, not two, but at least three people ignoring
the festivities and working on their laptops.

I just wanted to scream
     "There's a fucking parade outside on the first sunny
      day in San Francisco in weeks! what are you doing !!"

But I didn't.

This Guy was even on a video chat with someone. I wanted him to at least spin the camera around so his friend could see the parade.

The Last Avatar

I Saw 'Avatar'. I hated it. I edited it.

Now, don't get me wrong, it was visually and technically excellent.
There is no limit to the amount of praise you can lump on a shot like this:

But when it was 150 minutes long, and story that was just painful, no amount of
visual effects work was going to gloss over bad writing and a lack of desire to edit it
down to a palatable mouthful.

So instead of just complaining about the problem, I did something about it,
I re-edited it myself.

I set myself 2 goals :

• Edit the film down to 90 minutes
• Straighten out the story so it follows the monomyth better

Well, about a week later, and with a story that is now stuck in my head
forever, (thank you, James Cameron) you actually end up with something
that seems to make sense and, oddly enough, closely resembles that
other epic 'The Last Samurai', (but is much shorter):

---

The Last Avatar
1 hour, 30 minutes, mostly coherent

download the xmeml

---

Yes, there is a catch, I'm not going to post the actual movie, that's
your problem (copyright's a bitch like that). Instead I'm posting an
EDL that will let you cut your own copy. Here's what you need to do :

1. Go get a copy of Avatar (yes, you have to give James Cameron more
   of your money, its a price we pay for art)
2. Get a copy of the xmeml, this is an edit list that will load up, I hope, into
   Final Cut or similar tools. (I actually used 'iMovie' to do these edits, then
   exported the XML edl. It is surprising how much you can do with a basic tool)
3. Find a way to import it into your editing tool of choice.
4. Sync your source. The edits won't work unless your source has cut points
   at the same times that mine did. Read on...

This edit was created from the NTSC DVD (USA edition) which runs at ~30FPS.
The opening sequences contain a lot of cross fades, so it is hard to mark a good
cut point. however, to sync, you can use the following cues:

This is the first clean cut in the film
01:02:19	01:02:20

The next obvious one is here
01:42:28	01:42:29

And the end of the film is here
2:34:55:06	2:34:55:07

Then, if you can sync your source, you should be able to cut a new version
using the edl and enjoy a much more palatable version of the movie.

A few final points:

• Check the edits, some of them were very close to an original cut and,
  if you are out of sync, you may end up with an unwanted frame from the
  next shot.
• The same applies for the audio, some of the audio in/outs are designed
  to overlap multiple shots.
• There is 1 cross fade effect that may not make it into the edl, This was
  just me trying to match the fade from the original. You may not notice it.
• Yes, there are some continuity problems, I had to work with limited source
  material, there is only so much you can re-arrange a story, just roll with it.
• If you are working with 720p it can take a while to cut a new version
  of the film.

My life in airline miles

I know I fly a lot, so I mapped all my flights for the last 4 years. I
used make one of these a year, but this time I got curious and overlaid
all the data on one map. There are some really odd "open jaws" in Europe
because I would flip between cities on the train.





A visual history (pdf) of my life on a plane (as of Dec 2009)
There is probably some missing data.