Blog on...

Well, blogspot.com has been good to me I guess (simple & easy to use), but I've also recently discovered MySpace.com & I really like the way they have things setup. especially the networking aspects. In any case, future blog entries & other misc. madness will be posted wily nily at both sites...

If you'd like to check out my new blog site, go to:

http://www.myspace.com/kpr2

Silver Streak

Not much to blab about today, just sitting back to watch one of my favorite
Richard Pryor / Gene Wilder movies (not to mention Scatman Crothers - hell yeah!), the Silver Streak. Great stuff, and the first pairing of Wilder & Pryor (pretty much my generations Abbot & Costello you could say hehe).
Just watched Stir Crazy a couple of days ago & almost fell out my chair when I noticed it was directed by Sidney Poitier! Almost as surprised as when I realized Pryor had been one of the writers on Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks kicks ass, Young Frankenstein being bar none the coolest spoof of all time, with Spaceballs being right behind - IMHO anyway *cough*).
Other than that, hurling some nifty tracks into the ether for the world at large to enjoy. My favorites of late:
Blue Man Group & Dave Matthews - Sing Along
The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist
mc chris - Hijack

's 'bout it for the moment... Watched some Buffy the Vampire Slayer (up to Season 6, Disc 3 so far lol), some Angel (Season 3, Disc 3 at the mo'), and some Firefly (got the whole series & Serenity - fuckin' *LOVE* the show!) today... Sort of a Joss Whedon overdose, lol. Ah well, the guy's great at what he does & my girlfriend & I both have a blast watching his characters evolve. Granted, I'd rather be watching the continuing adventures of the crew of Red Dwarf, but although a movie is supposed to have been in the works, there hasn't been a peep in a couple of years. *sigh* I just keep hoping & checking, checking & hoping. I'll be pretty sad if it turns out to be another Good Omens - great book that was supposed to become a movie directed by Terry Gilliam, but fell through as things do.
Anyway, that's the news from here... I'll be back to work in the next day or two (w00t) and back on World of Warcraft (Finneghan, Horde - Kul Tiras) by this weekend (I'm stoked!). Fun fun...

Til next time,
KpR²

k-OMG!!111 Internet Radio

w00t!
k-OMG!!111 Internet Radio is on the air & in full swing!
I'm havin' a fuckin' blast hehe! We've had relatively steady traffic all things considered (like for instance the fact that I really haven't done shit to promote it yet, lol). I've even got a couple of regular listeners if ya can believe it! Arkansas & Amsterdam seem to dig the mix anyway ;p
Getting the rest of the station site itself in order before I go back to work in the next day or two - not much left to do really (tho I hope to have a friend of mine retool the whole damn mess when he gets time - he's a much better designer than I - http://www.cdcstudios.com - check it out)...
Not much new other than that... More later ;p

KpR²

& the band played on...

w00t!
OK, I came up with a (hopefully) better name for my radio station & have been working on putting together everything that isn't already up (website, etc).
The new station name is
KOMG One Eleventy-One (hope ya get the joke there lol)
& you can check out the website at http://komg.back2thebeat.com or tune in directly by clicking [ THIS LINK ]. You can send rants, raves & requests to me via the following messengers:

AIM: KOMG111
MSN: KOMG111@HOTMAIL.COM
Yahoo: KOMGRadio
ICQ: 333-299-580
IRC: Coming Soon




\m/(>.<)\m/
KpR²

Time Flies...

*grin*
I had a feeling something shiny would distract me & it would be a bit before I got back to posting on this site again.

I've gotten a bit further in my stop motion work, and am still taking stereo
photo pairs to be made into anaglyph 3D pics when I get the time.

In the meantime I've been looking for work (always fun oh yeah), and
playing the latest MMO to come my way - World of Warcraft. Helluva lot of fun! I've been taking pics from within the game to convert to 3D as well & will post them when I have time to convert them.

If anyone wants to pop in & say "Hi!" on WoW, I usually play on Kul Tiras as Finneghan (lvl 50 Undead Rogue).

I've also finally taken action on an idea I've been kicking around for a couple of years now. I've setup an online radio station. I've got a huge music collection & am always DJing for myself & those around me anyway... What the hell, eh?

It's still in the developmental stages as I try to iron out a couple of minor technical issues & spend a lot of time weeding through my music collection, creating playlists, etc. Should be a lot of fun!

If anyone wants to check it out
("umm, dude, no one reads this" - yeah yeah, I know),
you can find the station here:
[Pirate Radio]
as long as you have Winamp.
I'll have a website as well as Media Player connectivity soon...

Just thought I'd drop by and actually post something since it has been so long...

More to come...

KpR²

Stop the world...

Ugh, it's 8am! Sunlight! <*hiss!*>

I've been up all night tinkering around with my new homemade greenscreen and testing some stop motion animation out. I'm new to both and was having a blast, even though the end results of both were pretty crummy, I'm sure they'll improve as I fiddle with different ideas.

In any case, here's a quick run-down on the components that make up my new greenscreen:
2 pieces of lime green poster board (one for a back wall & one for a floor)
1 large picture frame (it just happened to be there, I was gonna tape the shit to the walls, hehe)
8 small squares of duct tape to hold the poster board down.
The whole mess is lit from above with a fluorescent light that was already in the room. I need to pick up some poseable lamps at some point in the near future, but will make due with what I've got onhand for now.

While I was picking up the materials for the greenscreen, I swung by the toy department, mostly looking for models & miniatures that might be fun to work into some of these video projects. I ended up spending $5 for 10 little cans of Play-Doh(TM-beatch!) in assorted colors. My girlfriend, Elizabeth, spent an hour or so quickly creating a family of clay mutants for me to animate.

While I do have a camcorder handy, I chose to use my still camera in order to capture stereoscopic views of each frame (by capturing a left and right view of each frame) so I could render the end result as a 3D anaglyph video. After studying the end results, I believe I can achieve faster, cleaner images by using a camcorder and frame capturing from that footage. This will keep the variation in camera movement to a minimum. Sadly, this means that 3D video of my stop motion animations will have to wait until I can afford another camcorder (or borrow one for a day or so).

The stop motion animation was thrown together without thought for plot or direction. I was simply trying to see what we might be able to do with what we have, and get an idea of what what we will need for future endeavors. I'm pretty happy with the results, all things considered, and can't wait to start focusing on putting something a bit more substantial together.

So it begins...

Wheee...

Thought I'd finally break down and start randomly muttering into the ether since I find myself twiddling my thumbs so frequently anyway (usually waiting on this damned computer to finish rendering or compiling one project or another).

I intend to post on this relatively frequently, most likely as a way to document some of the things I'm teaching myself lately & hopefully share tips/tricks w/ others who have similar interests.

My most recent forays into self education include stereoscopic (3D) video and photography (red/cyan anaglyphs - click HERE for free 3D glasses!), as well as 2D to 3D video conversion (not as easy as it sounds), chromakey (blue or green screen) video, composite video editing, playing the guitar, and juggling of various sorts. I've also been working with mixing music, graphical modeling & animation, stop motion animation, and video game programming (most notably MOD building for Neverwinter Nights, but I do tinker with quite a bit of other progz as well).

Whew. That's a freakin' mouthful and probably doesn't cover a lot of things that are currently escaping my generally muddled mind.

In any case, I'll be posting a lot of my 3D photos and maybe links to some of the screwy video projects I'm working on, not to mention logging in whenever it occurs to me so that I can babble endlessly about absolutely nothing in particular for hours on end...

[ mc chris rocks! \m/(>.<)\m/ ]

'Nuff said,

KpR²