The Surprise Birthday Party of Betty Bryant HD from A Musing Propaganda on Vimeo.

Video of my Grandmother's Surprise Birthday Party. Betty Bryant turned 75 in September. Included are also messages to my cousin Chris who is currently serving in the Navy. By the way, that's my mother in the beginning cursing her way to the church house.

Shot on an overcast day in the basement of a church with low fluorescent lightning. Not the best conditions. Video source was then exported as 720p HD. Video is not as sharp as HD, but better than SD version.

Source: MinDV 620 x 480i 24 fps exported to 720p HD, Quicktime MP4, H.264, 24 fps, Frame Distance 30, Frame Recording On, Deinterlace On, Bitrate 3,000 kbits/sec.  ¶ 8:24 PM

  It has been a busy week and then some. Right now, I'm uploading a mp4 file (h.264) to Vimeo of my grandmother's surprise birthday party last week. I have a version up on YouTube, but it's not public yet. I'm not too happy with the quality. Once I have the highest quality I can have online (without me hosting it), I'll post a link. I have to have a YouTube version so my cousin Chris can see it. He's in the Navy so I must provide the simplest way possible for him to view it.

I will get to what I've learned about shooting what I like to call Doc when I can share the video. I spent a lot of time this week learning about Three-Way color Correction in Adobe Premiere Pro. Spin that Color Wheel! Most importantly, I learned that I need a Mac. Before, I've said I needed a Mac. But I think I just wanted one. Want and need are two different things. I really do need now. If you are going to do something with video, use a Mac. It's just what Macs are really good at. I won't lie and say I'm a fan of Microsoft. But it's no secret that Macs do video editing very well.

I finally gave in and started a Twitter account. I named it after my seldom played Holy spec Priest, Monzeki. Of course, now I have a reason to level my priest. I'm trying my best to remain holy spec and not given into the temptations of shadow just to level more quickly.

My Twitter page is at http://twitter.com/monzeki It has been a nice challenge to say something within 140 characters. Here on Blogger, I can ramble on as long as I want; not on Twitter. It is a form of micro-blogging, but there is a weird conversational feel to it. It's mostly an illusion. You have to follow people to get the illusion. But sometimes, it does feel like you are contributing to a larger conversation when something like the presidential debates are going on and you Tweet about it. Twitter can filter posts about a certain event which can show a Twitter-wide discussion. I actually tried to follow the Twitter conversation about the first presidential debate. I'm glad I wasn't the only one bothered by the fact that McCain wouldn't even look at Obama. Personally, if I was Obama, I would have yelled at McCain for being so rude. I mean, come on. McCain went to great lengths to not even look at Obama. At best, you can take that as rude. At worst, you can take it as racist. Yeah, I said it; racist. I do not think McCain is racists. I'm just saying that when you have an old white man on stage refusing to look at the young black man, it can come off as racist. If I were Obama, I would have been yelling at McCain, "Hey, over here!" Also, McCain said that at the eve of the Normandy Invasion during WWII that Dwight Eisenhower wrote a resignation letter the night before the invasion. That's not true. I'm not a historian. I'm just a WWII nut. Eisenhower never wrote a letter of resignation. McCain just lied, which he has been doing a lot of lately just to win an election. I'll be honest. A few months ago, I used to like McCain. I thought he was different than the average republican. I honestly thought he was a "Maverick". Now I know he's just a liar wanting to be president. He did say and record in his own voice for a book on tape that the only reason that he ran for president last time (against George W.) was because of ambition. He is a liar driven by ambition and a small (hopefully) aspect of the republican party that would rather win an election that tell the truth or do what's best for American.

I got to stop before I really start talking about McCain and Palin (no joke, I honestly have panic attacks every ten minutes because of her). I'm going to go level my priest alt while I upload a video. My main, by the way, is an elemental shaman (56 5 0). I'm the finger of God... if God liked batteries and lightning.  ¶ 1:21 AM

  I just finished putting together a rough cut of my grandmother's surprise birthday party, which was held at her church in their large basement. My mother wanted me to film it. No problem there. I spent the weekend and today going through the video and cutting and collecting clips. The problem I'm having is that my eyes are now crossed and even though we were at a church, my mother kept dropping the S word, which I now call the Baptist Amen.

I can not believe I'm going to have to beep my own mother. After all these years of her telling me not to curse.  ¶ 10:50 PM

  Moon

Just the moon through trees. Taken with by my Canon ZR850 video camera, still photo mode. Black and white applied in photoshop. Just thought it was an odd photo from a video camera.

  ¶ 3:38 AM