Sunday, January 17, 2010

How to Make a How-to Video on Making Coffee Pods

The other day I was talking about making my own coffee pods for my Senseo, and Jon said, "You should blog about that." I'm not sure if he thought it would be a good idea, or if it was his polite way of saying, "Leave me alone. If you write about it, it would be less annoying and easier to ignore."

Either way, here I am. The only problem is, I learned how to do it from a blog. So I didn't want to just rewrite someone else's words. How about a video showing just how easy it really is. Not just a video, a duel camera video. That would be a challenge, so that's what I decided to do. Here's how I set the whole thing up.

The main camera (a Canon ZR850) would shoot down at my kitchen counter. Two legs of the tripod set in the sink with the third on a TV tray.


This camera fed a small black and white monitor in my cabinet, so I could see what I was doing.


Next to the monitor, I put my Flip video camera. And so I could see what it was shooting, I put a mirror behind it. This is also the camera that captured my audio.


For lighting I just the kitchen lights (CFL bulbs,) an incandescent shop light reflected off the cabinet door to soften the shadows on my face, and I mounted a small fluorescent tube light under the cabinet to help with shadows in the work area.


I set my iPhone in a Mini DV tape case next to the Flip to keep time.

Now the setup sounds all well and good, here's where I take a left on What! street.

To show how easy it is to make the coffee pods, I would do it first thing in the morning. No showering, no brushing the hair, no changing out of the PJ's. Just out of bed and shoot a video.

Where's how it turned out.



Editing was super easy. I used Adobe Premiere Pro, synced the two videos and cut out a lot of my morning head.

Just as simple as that.

Remember, if you're gonna consume internet, you gotta feed internet. Go create.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Dust Off Those Old Memories, Then Throw Them Away

Cleaning. What a pain. It would be so much easier if it wasn't my stuff. I could just shovel it all up, fill trash bags, and toss it out. But it's all my own crap that i kept for some reason or other. Now I have to go through, examine each item and determine if it has reached it's expiration date of usefulness and sentimental value.

Old birthday cards, blurry pictures, obituaries, news paper clippings, those are the tough things to sort through. So I decided to tackle one shelf stuffed full of old magazines. Here's some of what I found.

(Upper left to lower right.)

Art? Alternative
- "Bizarre, Abnormal, Weird, and Other Wonderfully Strange Stuff." It featured surreal art from the likes of Robert Williams, The Pizz, and Sandow Birk.

Subliminal Tattoos - "Art, Media, Behavior, Obscure Culture." Like Art? Alternative with less color and more words. Included music and zine reviews (zine's are now called "blogs without the dead trees,") interview with folks like Dana Crumb (R. Crumb's ex,) and plenty of illustrations from artists like Matt Feazell.

Adbusters
- "Journal of the Mental Environment." It's still around, and a great place to find inspiration, for ads.

Brill's Content - "The Independent Voice of the Information Age." I have the complete set of this Steve Brill work.

Consumer Reports - "Expert, Independent, Nonprofit." Easy call here, they're out dated and I can just check the amazon reviews.

The Empty Vessel - "The Journal of Daoism Philosophy and Practice." I still pick it up a Barnes and Nobles from time to time, in case electricity goes away.

Chaparral
- "1999"? It's Midland College's annual magazine. I didn't attend class there but a photo of mine was printed in it. So it's a must save. And it also features a piece by Staci Lumby.

Time - They all hit the trash. Well all but this one, (if you don't know, don't ask.)

Dog Fancy - Gone. I don't have a dog, and they don't have a website.

Newsweek - "The Year in Cartoons." They're online now.

Wild Cartoon Kingdom
- This copy is online, but I think I'll hang on to it anyway.

Reptiles USA - Right up there with Dog Fancy. My reptile is dead and so is there web presents.

Yahoo! - "Internet Life." When the world was on dial-up, they had to kill trees to bring internet into your home. The first of two publications be Ziff Davis. And here's the second.

Internet Underground - "Hackers, Smugglers and Cheaters, Oh My." Because the internet was slower than ink drying on paper.

Cigar Aficionado - They're going up in smoke, too. Maybe not the trash, they may be better suited for the men's restroom at work.

My favorite find was the Popular Science, Flash Forward from 2001.
It tells of a day when your PDA will also play MP3's and connect to the internet via a Bluetooth radio signal to your cell phone. Stick the cell phone in the PDA/MP3 player and you have the iPhone.

Another article addresses cloud computing (Microsoft, Sun, and Corel.) Microsoft said, soon you wouldn't have to buy their word possessor program, you could rent it over the internet. Who would ever make that available for free? (Surely not Google or Zoho, they weren't even mentioned in the article)

The car of the future would take after Honda's new 70mpg Insight (not like 40mpg Insight of 2010.) And they said nothing about the 2000's Hummer craze.

I also turned up a few bonus items in the mag stack.
A $50 gift certificate to Wood's Boots that expired in 2000.

And a phone list from Big 2. I use to work there, but I don't now. Your loss Big 2, no mid 90's Cigar Aficionado magazines for your men's restroom.