"Ben's Letter" video now online

Nice to do some blogging that isn't a rant for a change. Longtime readers here will remember the video shoot for Austin band 54 Seconds and their single "Ben's Letter," which I blogged about working on back in November. Well, said video is now done and streaming at the band's site. It's been heavily compressed and is real pixelly, but it's up. The broken window I designed is right at the tail end; looks pretty convincing, if I do say so, though that's mostly Jen White's gifted videography. Check it.

So, have you heard the one about George Lucas and his minions being assholes?

So the news comes out that, this September, after enduring nonstop complaints from fans, Lucasfilms will be releasing DVDs of the original theatrical versions of the first three Star Wars movies. You know, the ones without the dodgy CGI and where Greedo doesn't shoot first. Now we hear that the DVDs are simply going to be ports of the 1993 laserdisc transfers, and are not even going to be encoded for 16:9 anamorphic widescreen. They will be released as 4:3 letterbox transfers only. They're not even putting in the tiniest effort to bring the source materials up to current levels of quality.

So basically, here's George, acting all magnanimous in throwing a bone to his legion of fans who have wanted the original movies we all grew up with on DVD for years and years, simultaneously showing his contempt for those same fans by releasing the movies in the crappiest substandard quality he can get away with. You can read the whole ugly story on The Digital Bits.

If The Phantom Menace didn't make me say this already: Bite me, George.

First pic with the new digital camera

And it is, naturally, of my radioactive dog. I picked myself up the Panasonic DMC-TZ1S today. It's a mid-price, 5-megapixel model, but with more than enough bells and whistles for my needs. Apparently it's the first model of its size and price range to allow 10X zooming. So I guess that'll be a good thing if I ever become a filthy voyeur or sexual predator and want to give myself plenty of head start in my getaway.

The only thing is that I noticed, when I opened up this shot in Photoshop to resize it, that it was already at 72 dpi. I hope there's a way I can reset this to 300 dpi, which will be desirable if I ever want to take pictures for print publication somewhere. No worries, though. I'm not really that huge a shutterbug. I was just sick and tired of buying disposable cameras to take still pictures with when everything else I do is as high-tech as I can make it. Seemed silly.