BTW, as of this writing I am choking YouTube with an 8 1/2 minute upload.  I am putting up a clip of the best footage that I got from my trips to the Ramapo Reservation.  I didn’t use any of the footage that I have already put up the past 4 days.  Now that 1 1/2 minute clip I put up this morning took 20 minutes to load.  So far it’s been a little over an hour and the clip is only halfway loaded.  As for now, it’s on "private" setting becasue after it finally loads it will take just as long for the HD option to kick in!  Oh, if you are wondering why my clips are fuzzy and not sharp, it’s the infrared setting.  I have some scenes in this big clip shot with normal black and white and they look much sharper than the IR footage.

I figure it will be loaded between 11PM to 11:30 PM EST.  After that I’ll just go to bed and hope that it’s fully processed by tomorrow morning.

OK, here it is.  Now if you set it on HD it will take, depending on your internet connection, up to TEN minutes to load.  Like I said, the infrared isn’t as sharp as the normal black and white images of the creek and waterfall.

OK, last clip from the 5 day weekend.  This is the lookout point that I refered to earlier.  However, this juts out right down to the Hudson River so I don’t think this cliff is in danger of the strip malls.

Now this is the last of the 5 day weekend videos but if I get any deer in the woods they will go up as well.

OK, back to the noise-er-music I was listening to over the years.

OK, it’s 1991 and Yes, and ABWH merged into an 8 man Yes.  Well, they don’t play all at once!  From what I gather ABWH were having problems doing their followup CD so the record company suits decided that they should bring in the material that Rabin and Squire were doing and attach them to the ABWH tracks.  Jon Anderson sang on the 4 Rabin/Squire tracks they were working on while Squire sang backing vocals on a few ABWH tracks.  Not that great in the end BUT not as wretched as many critics and band members said it was.  The 4 cuts with the 90125 Yes were the best ones out of the whole lot if you ask me!  The ABWH tracks had too much producer interference………….many of Wakeman’s keyboards were replaced with LA session men!  Well, I did see the concert.  OK, it was great seeing the 8 guys on the revolving round stage set in the middle of the arena but many tracks only used parts of the band.  The song "Long Distance Runaround" used the 5 members from the "Fragile/Close to the Edge" era and many 90125 era tracks hardly used Steve Howe.  Oh, Bruford’s electric drums didn’t work for the first half of the set!  He only had his snare, bass drum and cymbals!  He would later admit that Alan White was used for the main drumming and he was used for additional decorations.  This would be the last concert I would go to.  By 1994, the friends that I had that liked prog-rock had moved out of state.

In the early 90’s there were some events going on.  Nirvana hit big time.  At first I was indifferent to them though I did notice that they looked like regular guys…………no big hair and spandex!  Now a few years later I would realize that they helped bring down that "Hair Band" era much to my liking!  I also like the other bands from the Seattle area: Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains".  Then there was Mr. Reznor…………………

In 1992 Nine Inch Nails put out the "Broken" EP and the video for "Wish" got heavy airplay on MTV…………..yes, they were still a music channel back then!  This was much harder with angry guitars as opposed to the more techno sound of "Pretty Hate Machine" from 1989/1990.  I did get both and I loved "Broken".  "Pretty Hate" took a little while to get used to as it was more synthesized techno music.  But Trent was on a shoestring budget at the time and "Head Like a Hole" was great!  Out of those 4 bands I mentioned, Nails would be the band I would follow mainly.  I would catch on to Alice In Cahins and the other a bit later.  Now since my musical taste was getting a bit more louder I began listening to the Seaton Hall radio statio WSOU which was mainly metal and they tended to avoid the "Hair Bands".  One group they played was Helmet:

Like I said earlier, thanks to the King Crimson LP "Red" my bias that I had towards heaver music began to wane……………but I still hated Poison and co!  So when SOU played this clip I was like "Holy sh*t!".  I got the "Meantime" CD and I’ve lost count on how many times I played it.  I also got the more raw sounding "Strap It On".  These two combined with a more decent sound system, made life hell for the sister and parents!  Then in 1993 the "Judgement Night" soundtrack came out and it had Helmet and House of Pain colaborate on a song "Just Another Victim".  Sorry, YouTube had to yank the clips of that classic song do to Wanker Music saying "Copyright violation!" so  I have no sample.  It was a great metal/rap crossover.  Soon the soundtrack to "The Crow" came out with songs by Helmet and Nine Inch Nails.  The Nine Inch Nails put this out:

Um…………wow!  Reznor took the pain of Roger Waters from "The Wall" and took it to the next level.  Hey, Adrian Belew is on a few tracks!  This does have the classic "Closer".  The uncensored version of this is on Vimeo.  The inferior cleaned up version is on YouTube.  Now this wasn’t a perfect CD as there were two cuts that I didn’t like in "I Do Not Want This" and "Man With a Big Gun".  The former overdoes it with the "f-bomb".  Gets very annoying after a while.  The latter has words that could say a man is bragging about his "big gun" and the track sounds too much like 1980’s Motley Crue.  Tommy Lee got some weird credit for the "Stakehouse".  He supposedly supplied the distorted sounds of a woman hitting the big "O" at the beginning of the track.  The rest of the CD is top notch though.

1994 was my year.  I graduated college with NIN as my soundtrack, the Rangers FINALLY won the Stanley Cup, I landed the job in the photolab in September and in early October my sister got married. 

{Note: There was no official video taken at the wedding.  My uncle’s then wife did take some footage on a VHS-C camcorder but the batteries went dead when the cake was cut.  Too bad!  We then decided to start a mosh pit complete with me getting knocked flat on my back!  If there was any footage of that it would go on YouTube titled "Mosh Pit FAIL!" }

Now Yes did put out "Talk" that year but I didn’t like it that much.  To "LA sounding". I didn’t see the tour and by the end of the year the 90125 band was no more as both Rabin and Kaye had left.  Wakeman and Howe came back to the band!

Call this "Oops! Now I’ve Done it!"

We went to my sister’s to celebrate my birthday.  Well, it was yesterday but that was a work day so we usually do it either the weekend before or after.  I also went there with that stuffed chocolate lab for my niece.  I also got two knotted rope balls for their dogs.  We didn’t forget my nephew it’s just that the present that my mother got him didn’t arrive yet.

Why did I choose the dog toy?  OK, about four years ago my sister’s oldest dog Rudy, the Dalmatian I have in the "Pets" topic staring at the sticky buns, could no longer walk so he had to be put down.  To make it worse for them, it had to be done the day before Easter!  Now they were all upset.  To help ease the pain a bit for her daughter, sis got her a stuffed Dalmatian toy dog who was named "Rudy Puppy". My niece loved it and she always goes out with him.  Now go back a bit further to November 1996: Sis and her hubby decided to get a second dog, a chocolate lab that they named "Diva".  Sadly, she developed a large tumor on her leg in her later years but at her old age it wouldn’t have been worth trying to remove it.  So she had it on her and it seemed to have spread to her liver which began to fail.  Well, last Fall, Diva had to be put down   Out of the two kids, my niece was more upset as she grew up with the two dogs.

Now my niece is going to have her cyst removed this Friday and to help things go a bit more smoothly, I decided to get her a "Diva Puppy".  When we got to their house I got my gift and cards and I gave my niece the "doggie bag"………..the doll was in a present bag with its cute head sticking out.  Well she loved it!  My nephew liked it too though he was a bit upset that his present didn’t arrive yet.  We told him that when it arrives he can get it as my parents baby sit him a few times during the week.

Well, it looks like my sister loves the stuffed puppy too!  She has a pic that I took of her when she brought Diva to our house on Thanksgiving and she’s holding the little puppy in her arms. Well, she was holding the doll the same way whenever my niece didn’t have it!  A little while later the kids were begging her to get another dog!

Sorry sis!

However, they have had THREE dogs at once on two occasions.  In the early 2000’s they got a black lab-rottweiler mix and they called him Carmine.  Shortly after Rudy was gone they got a second Dalmatian and they called her "Ripley"……….yes, she’s named after the chick from the "Alien" movies!  Now that Diva is gone, there has been talk of getting a third dog again.  They are talking yellow lab this time.

My sister is married with two kids and she wants three big dogs………………and they live in a tiny Cape Cod house!  Oh, my brother-in-law was out of state as he went to Florida to attend a wedding.  Wait until he gets home to have the three family members begging for a third dog in the house! 

Oh, I did give Carmine and Ripley thier toys.  Carmine ran around the house with the ball in his mouth the whole time.  Ripley, however, decided to drop it by my sitting father so she could be petted by him.  Bad idea!  Carmine then swatted the ball over by him and he proceded to lie down on the floor with both balls under his chin!  They were now BOTH his!  He even gave my sister a dirty look when she sat near him!  My sister was a cheerleader most of her childhood so she was like "DON’T YOU LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!!!!!".  Of couse she had to warn the kids not to reach for the toys while they were by the dog as he may get possessive and snap at them.  He did lighten up a bit and he didn’t question having to go back in the bedroom so that my mother could roam about the house without getting knocked over by him and Ripley.

So………I now have the niece and nephew wanting a third dog and the big 100 pound Carmine now has HIS two toys!  Mybad!

Recently got like five Emerson, Lake, and Palmer CDs here.  All donation.

I’m gonna check them out, don’t recall hearing their music before.

You put the bug in my ear :)

Rommel Cottontail said:

Recently got like five Emerson, Lake, and Palmer CDs here.  All donation.

I’m gonna check them out, don’t recall hearing their music before.

You put the bug in my ear :)

I put the bug in your ear and I put the "Get a new puppy" bug in my niece and nephew’s ears

OK, short little blog:

My Car……..The "Bird Magnet"

Yep, I think it is and I’m not talking about bird poop!  A few years ago I was driving to work several weeks removed from having my driver door fixed when it was hit at the parking lot where I worked.  Well, as I was going down a hill, these two Turkey Vultures were on the other side of the street and they wanted to cross.

{Not my pic}

Well, one of the dumb-ass vultures decided to try to cross while I was driving by and it flew smack dab into the newly fixed driver door!  The idiot bird was OK but I got some nice scratches on the door and pinstripes!

OK, now we go to this morning.  I am not too far from where the Turkey Vulture hit happened and this female  duck in in the middle of the road on the double yellow line.  Well, she decided to take off and fly across the street……………right into my windshield!  I don’t know if she was injured as I didn’t see her flopping around on the lawn in front of the house I drove by.  Now if this was a dog, cat or person I would have pulled over!  For a duck?  No.  Besides, if I did stop I would have had to put up with all the morons that drive in my town who instantly blow the horn if they see the brake lights light up in front of them! 

Now this does run in the family.  A few years ago, my father was driving down a street when a homeowner opened her door and her unleashed dog bolted out of the house to chase a nearby rabbit.  The rabbit was across the street and the dog made a beeline for it……….not noticing my father driving by.  Well, the DOG HIT THE CAR!!!  It must have seen the car at the last second and tried to turn and stop but its hip slammed into the front fender area. My father did pull over and someone called the police.  The dog was first thought to have died but it was only knocked out and it revived a few minutes later.  The police faulted the homeowner as she didn’t have the dog leashed.  In fact, my father’s car insurance company could have gone after the homeowner to re-imburse them for fixing the $1,200 in damage done to pop’s car.  We don’t know if that happened.  The car got fixed and the dog got fixed at the vet.

Oh, pops also had a run-in with a bird.  One day he was at the local golf course and he took his drive and he noticed that on the green there were some Canadian Geese who were acting strange.  Well, when the ball landed, it bounced once and hit a goose on the head killing it!  When my father’s group walked over to see this they also saw that the other geese got upset and crapped all over the green! 

Rommel Cottontail said:

Recently got like five Emerson, Lake, and Palmer CDs here.  All donation.

I’m gonna check them out, don’t recall hearing their music before.

You put the bug in my ear :)

IMHO choose carefully what you listen to. They made some very fine music, and they did some horribly self-indulgent music. If there is a greatest hits CD amongst them, I would suggest you start with that.

Well, if they are donations  Rommel could use them as coasters if they are not up to snuff!

OK, things are back to normal………………was this ever normal?  OK, I got rid of Rick both here and on the Tube.  I also got rid of Debbie.  Rick is still on my gravatar so Kindertrauma will be stuck with him till tomorrow.  I’ll get back to this blog next week. 

Things will change image wise for me in October.

You were warned

Message to those on this board that have subbed to my YouTube channel………..all one of you …………………

I am not too thrilled with the way my clips have turned out there.  It may be the camera, editing programs, the computer, the compression done to the clip when uploaded or a combo of some of the mentioned.  What ever the case this week I am pulling the clips I have off YouTube and they will be replaced with smaller versions.  In other words, I am uploading the widescreen images on 4:3 ratio so the image will be a small rectangle in the screen.  I don’t give a rat’s ass about what YouTube says about "double letterboxing".  They are my clips!  Besides, I don’t like their HD screen.  The bigger size makes that sharpness problem I have look worse plus long clips can take longer than 10 minutes to fully buffer in the HD setting.   Here is the first "final do-over":

I also had two new clips put up on YouTube last night but I didn’t like how they turned out so I removed them.  One had some color images but I didn’t like the way they looked.  While I have a filter to use to allow me to shoot in normal color, the image had a cyan cast (if I use no filters the image will be pink as the sensor is shooting both visible and IR light).  It can be doctored up a bit in editing by adding some red to the clip but the shot was done on a mainly sunny day in a shaded area.  Some rocks in the foreground were hit with sunlight and were overexposed while the shaded area looked normal.  I will make a new clip out of the footage I shot yesterday but it will be mainly the black and white images.

This Saturday I am going to try out the other camcorder that I have.  It’s a Sony that’s not doctored up BUT it only shoots in standard def.  The weather report say cloudy with rain and infrared looks bad when shot on cloudy days.  Now with this test I will see if the problem is with YouTube or my setup.  If the images look better on the regular camera I’ll still have it in the small screen.  I’ll still want use the infrared HD camera so I want a standard frame setup. 

We’ll see how this goes………………………………………..

{Note: The older clips I have here are mainly gone as I have replaced them with the smaller versions.  I’m sleepy.  Time for go to bed.  I’ll give a few more details on the latest clip tomorrow night}

And now for something completly different…………………………….

OK, for those who live on the East Coast, today was a crappy day weather wise.  I went on this Easter Bunny Train ride in Whippany NJ to take some video footage from inside and outside the train.  Well, with the rain, the proposed infrared footage that I wanted to take out of the window was a no-go.  I did take some color footage out of the window but the window was covered with rain drop streaks.  Also, because if the rain, I used my WAY cheaper Sony DCR-HC52 standard def. camcorder.  I’m not risking ruining that HC9 in the rain!  So what I have are some basic shots of the train leaving and arriving at the station by the Whippany Railway Museum.  NOTE: This is hand held…………….and done badly!  Next time I’ll use a tripod or monopod.  Tomorrow should be sunny and I’ll try more IR footage at Harriman State Park.

Um, I was kind of hoping to see the Easter Bunny.

anglagard1 said:

Um, I was kind of hoping to see the Easter Bunny.

He didn’t pass out any candy!  No candy, no being videotaped   I also don’t think the parents of the kiddies there would have wanted me videotaping them with the Easter Bunny.

OK, this one I put up in full HD for the bigger screen.  What I have learned it that the modified camcorder looses overall sharpness kind of like that old Kodak HIE film.  It SLIGHLY improves when the IR blocking filter is used for normal shooting.  However, the best quality is from an undoctored camcorder.  That train clip taken in normal SD is sharper than the HD infrared clip.  So, I will still use the modified camera for IR shooting but for normal shooting I will use a regular HD camcorder.  I have the same model on order so when it arrives I’ll give it a go. 

This is taken from the same Reservation by the college only from the west side of the Ramapo River.  It is taken near the same location where I took this photo 17 years ago…………

Note that some of the trees are now gone.  The river is also different.  The 1991 pic was taken after a flood while the 2009 video  shows the river at normal level.  I also have the camera in the 91 pic facing east into the sun.  The video is more south-east with the sun a wee bit more on the side.  I have more footage with the wind both here and at Harriman State Park.  However, I don’t have an external mic.  I just have the condenser mic in the camcorder and it has no wind buffer so any direct blast of wind will make that classic rumbling sound.  Note to self: Get an external mic with wind buffer in the future!  If it’s not as windy this weekend, I’ll go back to Harriman again.

OK, my "undoctored" camcorder arrived Thursday and I put it to use today at Harriman State Park in NY State.  I brought the IR one as well.  This time I was going to shoot the color and normal black and white on the new camera and keep the older camera for just IR.  Well, I just finished downloading the footage and I edited the good stuff for two clips.  One is about a minute and a half and the other is 7 + minutes.  Now check this out: The footage on the new camera looks great.  I downloaded the stuff from that camera first.  After that I decided to place the tape of the IR footage in the new camera for downloading since it was still hooked up to the computer.  You know what?  The IR footage looks MUCH better when played on the new camera!  I don’t know if the older camera has a bad playback head or the output for the jack is bad.  All I can say is that tomorrow when I upload these to YouTube and, a bit later in the week, Vimeo they will look MUCH sharper!   I suspect they will look great on that large sceen on YouTube for the HD setting. 

Since I know that the IR images can look better, I will one day re-dowload the footage that I have from past sessions via the new camera and I will edit them and put them up on YouTube as improvements to the originals.  I will keep the older/smaller clips on YouTube as most have been rated and a few have comments.  However, that "Stony Brook" clip will be re-shot in the fall as the color on the new camera is much better than the color images taken on the old camera.

See you tomorrow!

MUCH better!  Note: If you double click the clip to see the video on HuluTube’s site  you can choose the HD screen.   Note: If your internet connection is mid-range, or worse (I have Verizon’s so-called high speed internet) the clip can take almost 20 minutes to fully buffer the 7 minute clip!

I also removed that "Howling Wind" clip as I can now put up a better version, which I will this week.  The older/smaller clips will stay though I will put up improved versions in the future.

OK, I was going to do some more shooting on the newer camcorder this weekend.  I wanted to go to Ridgefield Park, NJ. where two railroad lines paralleled each other.  They are shortline New York Susquehanna And Western, a single track, and CSX’s double track portion of it’s "River Line".  There is an old passenger station there that goes back to when the "River Line" was owned by New York Central.  What remains is now, from what I’ve heard, and architect’s office.  It’s mainly closed on weekends and it has decent parking so one can go there and watch trains………………..provided you stay on the platform.  If you go by the tracks, CSX and NYS&W police will either chase you away or even arrest you.  So I was set to go out and tape the trains that went by……………………….

NOT!  I’ve been sick for the past three days with infected sinuses!

So what do I do to keep busy?  Well, I decided to get out the IR modified camera and fool around with it.  What i have mainly done with it is shoot black and white infrared.  Now, what would happen if I used colored filters instead of the standard black IR filter?  Well, I first placed the camera in my bathroom and shot what was outside-the backyard-with the window opened.  I turned the mic input down to zero and I was only interested in the image plus the toilet has a slow leak that would have been picked up by the mic

{I also had Heart’s "Dreamboat Annie" playing on the stereo which, if recorded, would have upset the copyright police at YouTube}

So, I did some clips with various filters on the camera.  #1 was the greenish "hot mirror" to shoot near normal footage.  #2 was with no filter which gave a magenta cast to the whole image.  After that I used various filters used for changing grey tones on black and white film.  I used a yellow #12, an orange filter, a dark red one, a yellow green one and a dark green one.  I even used the standard BW 093 filter but this time I left the camera in color giving the subject a black and white tone with a deep purple cast.

After shooting and playing back the tape, I decided that the image with the dark green filter looked best.  It resulted in a green sky with magenta foliage.  My images taken on the now discontinued Kodak EIR color IR slide film gave me, when used with the yellow #12, dark blue skies and red foliage………………………….

So I then decided to shoot some more with the dark green filter.  This time I shot hand held with the sound back on.  I took images of the backyard and some of the front.  Then I went to the computer and I fooled around with the color correction settings while editing:

OK, it’s not exactly like the EIR image but I did get something interesting.  I got the blue sky but I had to settle for orange foliage.  This looks like a combo of EIR taken with both the yellow #12 and a red filter.  The yellow filter made the sky deep blue with the red leaves.  A red filter used on EIR film gave yellow green skies and orange leaves!  So I have a bit of both effects here.  BTW, the house is yellow!

Now I did also do a clip using the bathroom window view with the 093 filter.  However, I first color corrected it so the purple cast as nealy made pure black and white then I converted to real back and white.  Since there was no sound on this clip, I decided to make it look like an old, grainy silent movie with film scratches:

OK, the grainy effect isn’t as strong as it should be but I’m keeping it! 

Well, my weekend was altered from being sick but I did get something done!  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to upload both clips to Vimeo and I’ll upload the short clip to Flickr.

OK, scratch that idead of putting op the "Silent Movie" on Flickr.  I just put it up and, despite it being in HD, the "film grain" does not show up.  I may go back tomorrow and do a re-edited version of the clip with more grain put in so it shows up better.