Social Networking Woes

Okay, I've just set up a Twitter account for no good reason. I do like that I can keep track of things as well as update posts using Firefox extensions and Adobe's TweetDeck rather than opening a tab to the site it self. I've not been fully satisfied with how Facebook functions, which I absolutely hate, or MySpace, which I can never take seriously although I do like it considerably more than the aformentioned social network. We'll see how long I'm able to keep up with posting information to it. I like it's simplicity but I'd like it a bit more if we could double the character count on posts. I don't expect more than a few posts per week as I would only share something that I think has some relevance to my life and those in it.

So I ask those of you who may be reading this, are you using Twitter and if so, what do you think about it? I know a number of people who are more or less addicted to it but I'm not entirely like them. Thus far the only thing like this that I've managed to use on a regular basis is MySpace simply because I don't feel like I need to take anything I do or say there seriously. Granted, that goes without saying for any similar social networking service including blogs and such but I feel like those others are less conducive to my sarcastic nature opting to share have truths that are more entertaining rather than share how boring my daily life really is.

One thing I wont do is share something private on any of these sites and I personally feel that making one's social network page private and unable to be viewed by the general public completely defeats the purpose of having it. For example, I was searching for an old high school friend on MySpace and all I had was there name to go off of. It's been more than ten years since we had graduated so I have no way of knowing where they are or anything else beside there name so that is what I type into the search. I end up with several hundred people with the same name as it's a big world out there despite what Disneyland would have you believe and I've got no real info from the results page to go off of beside their very small ID image which may not even be of them but possibly their children, significant other, or a group shot that leaves all who are in it unidentifiable. So I click on the links which leads me to their page marked private. Now I receive little more info other than a somewhat larger ID image that may still be useless and if I want to figure out who they are I have to send them a message saying who I am and are they the person I knew way back when? But finding random people from my past isn't that important to me so I never bother to spam people with "do you know me?" mail. I don't want anyone from my past to have to go through that either so I leave all my info open to the public so that I am readily identifiable to anyone who may know me. It's worked too. An old friend from before high school contacted me through MySpace a little over a year ago. He may not have found me if I had my page set to private.

If I want or need to share something private then there is that social network that has been around far longer than MySpace, Facebook or any other such service and that is email. This is the thing that bothers me the most with these networks, Facebook in particular. It seems everyone has their profile set to private and I get random friend and group requests from people I'm not remotely acquainted with. I'm not going to add someone that is a complete stranger to me, no way in hell so I click on the link to their profile and guess what? It's private. So I have no idea who they are and no clear way to find out so I ignore their request.

If you want to protect yourself on a network, be it Facebook, MySpace, or any other such networking sites then go through the account configurations and pay attention to all the available options. It is possible to protect yourselves from the majority of spamers and random people out their without making your entire profile private. My Facebook, which I never use unless contacted by someone, can be found the same way my MySpace and Twitter accounts can be found, by typing my username into Google or the network's own search bar. It's thefilminator just so you don't have to look up from this long, dull bulletin turned semi-rant. If you feel like adding me then go right ahead, just let me know who you are so I can go, "Oh, yeah! They're cool!" -ADD-. I don't discriminate against cool people, and if you actually read this than you are cool in my book, and probably already know me and are already on my friend lists.

I'm just sick of trying to find and get reacquainted with old friends and acquaintances only to be hampered by their ignorance and/or paranoia. Private accounts do not equal safe accounts, just inaccessible ones. Contrary to popular belief, someone that intends to hack into your account will not be stopped or even slowed down by an account that is set to private. All they need to figure out is your username and password, that doesn't change if a profile is set to private and the way such things are discovered or hacked is not necessarily obtained through your page. I imagine most utilize a self written software program designed to go through any number of possibilities given a number of preset variables.

If you want to protect your pages from hacking the first step is to have a sign in username that is different from what you go by on the site. Use a longer password that includes numbers and if the site suports font case sensitivity, capitol and lower case letters, and not something that could be obtained from even a private page like birthdates, names that are familiar to you, or even favorite foods. Try to be as random as can be, like Stone Temple Pilots. Three random words/numbers drawn from a hat that when put together mean nothing but stand out enough to be remebered by you. Mine is Fried Wombat Dew 83vs794life, now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to change my password, again. Oh, and I dare you to figure out what that last part means.

If Money Were No Object

Here's how much of a geek I am. I think that this is one of the coolest things ever. Running 24 256GB solid state hard drives, very large, very fast drives built on the same technology as your USB and camera memory cards for those of you who may be unfamiliar with what a solid state drive is, in tandem so that they are working as one. Each drive costs around $700 not to mention the very expensive high end computer components that also went into their little test. It all comes together to make one very fast system.

Another sketch/drawing to explore the visual style for my story. Thought I'd go with a female character this time around. The great thing about women in film noir is that you can never tell if they are the damsel in distress or a cold blooded femme fatale. A great rule of thumb with women in noir, never trust them. A great rule of thumb with women in real life, never trust them but sometimes you can give them the benefit of the doubt.

This is the rough sketch and starting point.

And the finished drawing. I'm not entirley happy with it but it'll do for now. I'm also not sure about the grey tones in the dress. I'd prefer it stayed pure black and white but I didn't know what else to do with it. It's just an exploratory drawing anyway but I can always go back and try something else if ever I come up with a better idea.

New Tricks

I've been playing at being a photographer for a few years now. I've considered myself an "advanced amateur" photographer, capable of/making money with my photos but not making a living off them. An advanced amateur should know their way around a camera and most of it's custom settings and functions and can take consistently good photos. I have a strong knowledge of what my camera is capable of and how to adjust it's various settings to get the image I am after but there have always been a few settings that I haven't looked into yet with much detail.

Tonight I decided to play around with some of them and have learned a few new things and set some custom functions that will help me make the adjustments to the settings I need to capture the image I want. I've also began to experiment with the long exposure going beyond the shutter speed settings of my camera, which go from 1/4000 of a second to 30 seconds. In the "Bulb" mode (I don't know why it's called that at the moment) you can make an exposure as long as you need manually by pressing the shutter release once to start the exposure and then a second time to end it after the desired length of time has passed. With this you can leave the shutter open indefinitely but you need to know a few things in order to get the image you desire without wasting hours experimenting until you find the right settings.

To practice I brought out my Alien sculpture and played around with some lighting to get the desired look that I envisioned. While it took more work than I would have liked to get the lighting set up just right what with my limited resources for custom lighting, I did get a photo that is fairly close to what I was after. The only thing that was disappointing with the outcome was that the long exposure brought out the fatal flaws with my low end SLR. I had to remove a lot of bad pixels to get a clean image I wanted. So now I know that there will be a lot more touch up work to be done on any long exposure I take with my current camera body but at least I'm prepared for it now.

So I've learned some new tricks and have really gotten to that "advanced" level as I have finally learned everything my camera can do and have experimented with those settings and functions. Although I've never used any of the preset auto modes that give up full control to the camera.

Canon Digital XTi with EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens
Settings:
Focal length - 35mm, Aperture - f/14, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 275/1 sec. (4.5 minutes),
Light Metering - Evaluative, Format - RAW
Touched up with Apple Aperture 2 and Adobe Photoshop CS3

A Professional Look

Another quick update. This is a photo I took last week to use as my portfolio ID. Don't I look like I know what I'm doing?

Film Noir

**Caution: Excessively long explanation ahead**

Those of you who know me well, know that I'm a big fan of film noir and that I've been wanting to do something in this genre for a long time. I've come up with and subsequently thrown out one idea after another for the last ten years. There have been a few seed ideas that I had held onto feeling that they could work if I could just figure out how to make them grow properly but always had trouble with getting the idea to germinate.

I held onto those ideas knowing that someday I'd be able to make them grow into a good story. Last week I sat down with renewed determination to bring one of those few ideas into a full fledged concept with a clear direction and enough information to begin proper research.

One seed idea I had is a neo-noir set in the not so distant future with a detective on the trail of a faceless assassin. Another idea I had was less a story and more a scene set in a more traditional 1930s noir period. That scene was actually a dream I had and it was pretty intense considering it had only two characters and one of them was a bloody dead mess. It was vivid enough that I was able to write it out in detail immediately upon waking. It was that idea that I started to work on after all, I already had a strong opening scene loaded with story potential.

The problem was that it was an introductory scene and usually the best place to begin writing any story, especially a mystery is with the ending. You need to know where you're going before you can get there otherwise you're just wandering in the dark and will end up with nothing more than a disheveled mess and you will lose your audience before the second act has had a chance to get started.

So I had some questions to answer before I could go anywhere with the story. Number one being, How does this end. But in my scene I already had all the dialog, in voice over of what was running through the protagonists head at the gruesome scene before him. His dialog was very detailed, dramatic and revealed a lot of information about his state of mind and relationship with the victim but it posed more questions than three seasons of Lost and they all needed to be addressed.

When I started working I was in the mind set that the protagonist was a private investigator who found himself on a case that was far bigger than he could have imagined. That idea alone kept me from being able to answer most of the questions posed by his dialog. Some of the things that ran through his mind didn't quite fit with the small time, strait arrow P.I.

So hitting a road block I decided that rather than throw out what I had managed to develop like I had previously done, that I would instead step back away from it for a moment and look at the bigger picture as I would an illustration. I looked back at my other seed ideas and came across the neo-noir with a detective on the trail of a faceless killer and then it hit me. The man isn't a P.I. or detective but a man out for revenge and not for the death of the victim from the opening scene, that was an unfortunate casualty of his personal war.

Along with that I learned exactly how the story ends, while it will end as I had first determined I now knew much more of the details. I also learned that this story leads directly into that detective story with the faceless assassin which is great because it answers a lot of questions related to that story.

Now I'm very excited because I can finally start some serious research on a story in a genre that I've wanted to work in for a very long time. In addition to research I can also start sketching up ideas which is where the accompanied art comes in. It's more a scene from the second story which begins where the first ends.

Oh, yeah. I drew it in Corel Painter X with a custom calligraphy pen.

Nothing Hurts Like My Back

If you like vampires raise your hands. If you like music raise your hands. If you like vampire music videos raise your hands. I personally don't care one way or the other but I did have the opportunity to work on a vampire themed music video last week with Oh Rio! Productions. I worked as a production artist putting the set together and moving things around as needed for the shoot and I was also the stills photographer. It was a lot of fun but a lot of work that had to be done in a very limited time frame.

The song is called "Nothing Hurts Like Love" sung by Jimmy Demers and written by Diane Warren. The video also stars in addition to Jimmy, former supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, and Hollywood actress Amy Smart. I don't know how long it will be before the video is completed and available for viewing so don't bother asking me, I'll share that info as soon as I find out. The song is about three minutes long and we recorded hours of footage so the editing process could take a while.

While I took hundreds of photos I will only be able to share a handfull with you at the moment but I will share lots more eventually.