Wanna join him?

“Jewish tradition holds that Kabbalah is so powerful and complicated that only bonafide students may begin to approach it and then only after age 40. Among the elements of Kabbalah are mystical revelations drawn from holy books by recombination of letters and other signs” writes Associated Press.
Yeah, mystical revelations that you learn after age 40, like “There is no God! Gotcha! Hahaha…”.
I mean come on! How can I take seriously mysticism when it’s meant only for people “who can handle it”? It reminds me of Gentoo Linux. If a religion or tradition or whatever is not meant for everybody, then it holds no merit for me. It’s an ellitistic tradition, and these days it has become yet another way to take money off celebrities.
I mean no disrespect to the people who follow it, but myself as an atheist/agnostic, I have serious doubts about such things especially when I read that it’s selective (although it’s obviously less selective if you have money, otherwise Madonna wouldn’t make the cut — heck, even Britney was allowed to follow it). And reading wikipedia’s Kabbalah article on the explanation of what is God etc, it all sounds gibberish. I can’t believe that people still fall for that in the 21st Century.
However, of course, people should be free to believe and say whatever they like just like I do right now, exercising my right to write down my personal opinion and criticize religions (not just Kabbalah — I have nothing personal against it, in fact I much prefer it over Scientology). Richard Dawkins said it best though, about the right to criticize religion:
You can emulate the “Matrix” look using Vegas built-in color plugins in a way that resembles almost exactly ‘Magic Bullet for Editor’s 2.0’ third party plugin. Here’s how it looks (higher quality version here, 5 MB):
And here’s how I did it (keep plugins in that order):
Brightness & Contrast plugin: Contrast at 0.15 (or 0.20 if you shot in Canon’s “Cinemode”)
Color Corrector plugin:
Low: Angle: 225.0 Magnitude: 0.263
Mid: Angle: 174.6 Magnitude: 0.327
High: Angle: 229.8.0 Magnitude: 0.264
Saturation: 0.500
Color Balance plugin: Green on 0.0250 and the “Highlights” radio button checked.
The governing conservative party of PM Costas Karamanlis has claimed victory in Greece’s general election, with opposition socialists conceding defeat”, writes BBC, which later adds “…the Papandreou [socialist] and Karamanlis [conservative] families have dominated the Greek political scene for most of the past 50 years.”
This second sentence shows exactly what’s wrong with Greece (and yes, my family traditionally votes for one of these two too, not the Communist party).
I tried the trick for smooth panning today. It works as advertised! It’s amazing how a $0.05 item can add so much value and quality to your work! Explanation of the trick here and here. Right click to “save link as” this 2 MB .mp4 video where it shows how a panning looks like when using your hand to move the tripod fluid head’s handle, and how it looks when using the rubber band.
Conclusion: if you are shooting video and you do pans regularly, make sure you bought a tripod with a fluid head and you use that rubber band trick!
There has been a discussion on the Vegas forum that the built-in color tools are “enough” to do just about anything regarding the film looks you are after. I beg to differ. When the third party plugin Magic Bullet for Editors 2.0 charges $400 for the job, it does so because it can get away with it. It indeed does things that are not possible with Vegas’ own plugins or even plugins like the freeware Aav6cc. It is able to apply coloring on specific “similar colors” only and leave the rest unmodified. When I try to do the same with the built-in/freeware tools everything turns orange, including the greens. Here’s a video (.mp4 version here, 5 MBs) with the original footage, my attempt to emulate the CSI:Miami look using the free tools, and how Magic Bullet does it:
In other words: if you need a specific job to be done right, shell the cash. Everything has a price, especially for something that works well and can’t be done otherwise.
UPDATE: Check the eugenia.png image here, it shows how close you can get to the Magic Bullet version. Plugin settings are included (requires Vegas Pro, not doable with Movie Studio because VMS does not come with the CCSecondary plugin).
Being the lazy fat porcupine that I am, I was just reading Digg tonight and I found a link to this web service. It’s an interesting service actually: it lets you upload all your music and then letting you accessing it from any place in the world via the internet. Kinda like having an iPod with you at all times, except not having an ipod, plus it doesn’t work without an internet connection. And it’s legally questionable because it allows users to listen to other’s music. Anyways.
The FIRST song that auto-plays when you go to that web site is this: “Weekend Full of Weekends” by the “Vanderveen”. What an amazingly catchy song! The kind of song that it could be used in an iPod commercial in fact… And it’s a free download!
So, one link led me to another, and I ended up at GarageBand.com. I knew of that site for years now, but I never bothered to have a look at it. Apparently some amazing songs are hosted there, waiting for a free, legal, download! The advantage of GarageBand.com is that because it allows ratings and contests, songs can be “charted”. This is a very convenient feature in the chaotic indie scene, an easy way to find out what’s actually good. And I already found which CD to buy from CDBaby next too: the one from the local SF band “Cold Hot Crash“. I first heard them tonight at GarageBand, and they were so good that they deserve a buy. The “Bright Side” song from the “Rantings Of Eva” band is great too.
I downloaded 900 MBs of high quality music tonight. All legally. All for free.
Update: I downloaded another 2 GBs of legal music today from mp3.com, SubPop, InSound and FingerTips music sites. Hopefully Comcast won’t cut off my connection because of the bandwidth consumption. I now have overall about 12 GB of legal indie music (mostly alternative rock). It feels like a huge library and I will have to clean it up and keep only the good pieces. I really don’t know how people can fill up 60 and 80 GBs iPods… I don’t seem that I will ever need more than 20 GBs for music, and maybe another 10 GBs for my own videos (which is why I hope for a 32GB iPod Touch or iPhone v2.0)…
Wow, I was listening on the ERA-Sport radio station via the web to the Eurobasket match between Greece and Slovenia but I just stopped listening to it when Greece was losing with 61-49. There was no way to win that match… And then, out of a miracle, Greece did win at the end: 62-63. Great work guys! I am pretty sure that even Nick Galis watching that specific game would have had a distinct facial expression showing some feelings (my mother was a Yannakis fan, she always kept saying how “cold” Gallis is). Now in the semi-finals against Spain…
Πάμε σαν άλλοτε.
The band called “Band of Horses” was one of my favorite indie rock bands for the past year. I loved their song “The Funeral” (mp3 available for free by their label) and so many other listeners too, and recently the band won the most awards in an indie music awards Grammy-equivalent competition. More over, I even got angry at JBQ for not wanting us to go to the Slims club in San Francisco last Sunday to see them live.
Fast forward to yesterday. Now, their new single from their new album called “Is there a Ghost” is also released for free by their label. What a disappointment this single is. The same verse is going on and on forever, while the arrangement is nothing extraordinary either. Sure, it is a BETTER song than most crap out there in the chaotic Indie scene, but I don’t think that this is a song equivalent to the kind of press and label support the band is getting. I think the band can do better than this.
I had given up watching “The 4400” this summer. It was going on and on and on for years now, and it was pretty clear that the producers was making it up on the way. So, I DVR’ed most episodes and watched them only when I had nothing better to do — like tonight.
I am starting to get back to the storyline, and it’s now becoming good, it’s becoming more philosophical. The two sides that are at war are no innocent. From one side we have the idealistic religious proponents who want to become higher beings at any cost to the society, and on the other we have the kind of phobic people who would do anything to get what they want for their own purposes and no one else’s. And this is an interesting concept for a TV series. While as a viewer you are usually asked to take sides, with the 4400 you don’t know which side to pick. They both have their good points, and they are both evil at the same time, stopping at nothing.
On other TV news, check this “Lost” theory. One of the best around.
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