From Global-Flat To Cambridge-Flat To Video

for a little while i've been a member of global-flat.com. it's a site dedicated to BMX riders who practice the discipline of flatland freestyling. as you may know, i too practice this discipline, and i've been fortunate to meet with some very good people from Mass on this site.

on Oct. 25 i hooked up with a bunch of guys from the Boston area. they congregate in a street hockey rink in Cambridge right on Charles St. upon my arrival i first met Rick. we first corresponded over global-flat.com. he told me that he too was a 35 y/o getting back into flatland freestyle. though married, and with children, he has made an effort to get back into a sport that he enjoyed once as a teenager. so we had a couple of things in common sans the marriage and children.

later in day more riders began to show up, and the scene was becoming more active with rider pulling off all kinds of spinning moves. initially all i could do was watch and envy at their skills, hoping that one day i could do all that.

i got to know some of them and found out they too were in their 30's, and though there were a few in their 20's, it kind of solidified my impression that, at least within the states, flatland freestyle was being practice mostly by the older crowd who lived through the glory days of BMX during its roots in the late 70's and 80's.

conversely, on an international scale, flatland freestyle is dominated by a younger crowd.

it's funny when you meet people who share the same interests as you. there's this phenomenon that occurs where you seem to do better at executing moves in the presence of others than alone. or perhaps it's just me trying to impress them, and i just got lucky. either way i felt as if anything can be possible so long as i practice with a peer group.

for example, i've been trying to nail down a pedal kick tail-whip (non-foot jam style). on rare occasions alone i'd get it, but it's mostly a miss. but in front of these guys i was able to get it down no problem. it even seemed like an effortless move. last night i tried several attempts of them in my "backyard", and damn it if i couldn't get it at all. what happened?

well, back to my story...

so i brought along my camera in case i had the inclination of recording my experience there. the guys seemed pretty cool with me taking some videos of them. so i started shooting manually, following them around trying to get some good angle shots. these were nothing but random videos that were taken of any riders as they rode by me. a few times i mounted the camera on a tripod provided by another rider name Rich (the second rider to show up at the rink). this way i could be in some of the footage.

after spending 5 hours with these guys, i decided to retire, go home, and review all of the videos taken that day. i recorded about 5GB of MPEG1 video, 640x480 @ 3000kps on my Sony DSC-H9. what was i going to do with all this footage? put it to music, of course. i told the guys that i would most likely make a music video out of them, and post it on Vimeo and YouTube. no one objected to the idea.

so i spent that week importing all these videos into a Final Cut Xpr project, picking and choosing which clips of footage i liked best. tried to keep all the riders well represented throughout the project while at the same time maintaining the actual time line of recorded events. i added a few scenes of myself, but mostly focused on the more experienced riders.

once i had initially selected all of my clips, i began to think about the music i wanted to use. like most of of my projects i was going to pick one song and use that, but i didn't have anything that would cover the 8 minute run-time. so instead i decided to use multiple samples of songs about 1~2 minutes in length. i'd mix up the tempo and style using Drum n' Base, down-tempo, and hip-hop tunes. i chose six song from my iTunes library i felt worked well in in certain portions of the video. the end result was a nice mix that, not only would keep the viewer entertained, but seemed to play well with the video.

later i started to notice moments in the video where some unintentional choreography took place between the riders and the songs. this gave some ideas, and decided to rework the video to get more of this incorporated.

i don't know why i never though of this before. that was one of my intended design for my AMV, Dyson's Revelation.

so i continued with the process where it started to take me into a different direction. more editing was done, and more thought went into the presentation.

in the end i took it about as far as i was willing to go. this video project almost became an obsession. i wanted (almost needed) to complete it by the end of the week; no more. it took some good time away that could have been spent riding. especially now that time is becoming so precious cause the air is getting colder, and i don't have a place to go ride during winter season when the snow starts to fall.

i've posted the video on both Vimeo and YouTube. so far the responses have been positive. and though this project took time away from riding, it was a lot of fun to work on. it left me thinking that i'd like to do more of these kinds of videos. perhaps i will, if the guys let me. and who knows, in time i may get better and have a nice featured moment in one where i'm doing more than a mere pedal kick tail-whip.

all-in-all meeting these guys was a good experience. one i hope will continue as i practice the discipline of flatland freestyling. global-flat.com is a great place to meet other riders in your neighborhood.

peace,
@riel

Memories of Mountain Park, Holyoke

"This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down."

this quote is from the book "The Hobbit" by JRR Tolkien. it's a riddle posed by Gullom to Frodo, who responded frantically with "I need more time!" TIME being the answer.

I open this blog entry with this because over the summer - during a week vacation in the month of august - I made a pilgrimage to Holyoke, MA to bask in the presence of a childhood memory taken away by the hands of TIME. that memory was an amusement park called Mountain Park.

Mountain Park (MP) [1, 2] was once situated on the side of Mount Tom, Holyoke. it opened in 1890, and it had been there nearly 100 years. but due to financial difficulties, and perhaps a lack of interest in keeping the park operational, then owner, Jay Collins, decided to shut MP down in 1987. that was my freshman year of high school. not once did it ever occur in my mind to think that it would ever be closed for good. in fact the decision to close was quite fast and without any warning.

during the mid to late '80s MP wasn't the most elaborate amusement park around compared to other amusement parks like Whalom Park, Canobie Lake Park, Rocky Point, and Riverside (known today as Six Flags New England). but it wasn't without its charm. MP was decorated with aging art and decor from the early life of the park (circa 1897) to designs from the late '70s ~ early '80s.

the park's carousel - dated from the earliest years of MP - carried with it beautiful artworks that would serve just as well as framed paintings in a museum.

after the closing of MP, the carousel did survive extinction. it was moved to the town center of Holyoke where it operates to this day as one of the oldest carousels in the U.S. now known as The Holyoke Merry-Go-Round.

most of the coolest (and darkest) artworks, during the later years of MP, were found on two specific rides; the Pirate's Den, and the Dinosaurs Den.

these rides are (or were) called "dark rides"; a completely enclosed passive coaster ride that moves slowly along a track from one darken room to the next, bumping through double doors, taking left or rights turns. the riders would observe spooky animatronics and visual effects over haunting soundtracks.

i grew up always having an over-active imagination. the hellish and dark images depicted on the outside of the buildings that housed these rides were enough to keep me from riding, but not enough to keep me from standing outside fixated on the artwork with my curiosity wondering what i would see inside.

both the Pirate's Den, and the Dinosaurs Den were two of three rides i never rode until the final days of the park. in the summer of 1986 when i was 12 years old, i finally decided to ride them both. i remember feeling pretty anxious simply because i didn't know what to expect during the rides. it turned out to be quite fun, and i can't remember how many times i went back on each ride.

another ride i waited too late to truly enjoy was the main roller coaster, the Mountain Park Flyer [1, 2].

a wooden roller coaster that stretched alongside of the park. as a kid i had a fear of heights that kept me off the Flyer, but in the end i managed to get over it. getting on the Flyer that first time would begin of my love of roller coasters.

most of the rides in MP were pretty standard rides you'd find anywhere else, even today. recently i visited Canobie Lake Park, and was surprised to see a hand-full of the same kinds of rides that i remembered as a kid at MP still employed today.

though MP is gone, it seems that it may make something of a come-back. Eric Suher, a native of Holyoke, and owner of the Iron Horse Music Hall, the Pearl Street Nightclub and the Calvin Theater in Northampton, bought the property of MP and wants to "bring Mountain Park back to what we remember it being." i'm not sure exactly what that means, but the current plan is to hold outdoor concert venues [1, 2] there. i guess time will tell as to whether or not this memorable mountain site will ever be rebuilt to its old glory, though i'm sure it won't have the same charm i remembered as a kid.

the land where MP once stood - what little trace of the amusement park that once existed - has now been cleared and renovated to accommodate these concert venues. but before the bulldozers and the hardhats, all that remained of MP was nothing more than a desolate land [1, 2]. a ghost town with the remnants of corroded lumber and rusted steal beams of building structures hardly recognizable. vegetation's growing with the dominating force of nature within areas where concrete once paved the way from one enjoyment to the next. the tall iconic skeletal frame of the Flyer torn down succumbing to the will of gravity as its coaster carts once did.

my pilgrimage to the land of MP was short lived due to the construction activity. but from the little i was able to see the only thing that was left was a sign posted on one of the utility poles at the parking entrance. it was difficult to read the faded words "The Great Slide Show". the paint had very little life left.

"This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down."

this quote is from the book "The Hobbit" by JRR Tolkien. it's a riddle posed by Gullom to Frodo, who responded frantically with "I need more time!"

TIME being the answer.

the very TIME that faded Mountain Park into our memories. :(

peace,
@riel

iPhone Video Test Shots

here are a few video test shots i tool using my iPhone's video capture feature.

enjoy,
@riel

Geek Combo: OLED & BMX.

the following YouTube video combines two of my favorite things in the world.

first, the video is demonstrating a technology called OLED. a new type of display where the individual pixels (the little dots that make up the picture) are self illuminating. that is to say that they do not require a backlight, and therefor require less power than an LCD display of the same size. the future may have this new tech as the standard display panel for all TV's, laptops, cell phones & other small gadgets, and perhaps outdoor signs.

second, what is that being displayed 10 seconds into the video? why, it looks to be a BMX rider pulling off some half-pipe moves.

nice.

peace,
@riel

17 Years of Absence... I Have Returned.

back when i was 12 years old (1986), i discovered the joys of bmx riding once i mastered the art of bunny-hopping. i was able to clear side-walks, small obstacles, or just simply hop in one place to see how high i could go. it seemed just a simple concept, and yet not many of the neighboring kids could do it. the most some could do was lift the front tire up. then, one day that summer, a group of guys rode through the neighborhood on these wicked cool bmx bikes pulling some amazing tricks. it was called flatland freestyle, and i was hooked. i tried to emulate those tricks, and as a result of constant stress on my bike's frame it cracked completely.

my dad realized how much i enjoyed bmx riding, so for my 13th birthday he bought me a Colombia Freestyle bmx from Toys R Us. i knew back then it wasn't a "real" freestyle bmx bike like GT or Haro, but my dad couldn't afford one of those. no matter. the bike was well equipped, and i was looking to start freestyling right away. so during my high school years i rode throughout my neighborhood and around town doing street and flatland tricks, i made a few new friends in the process, and always thought i'd never get out of it. i went so far as to upgrade from the Colombia Freestyle to a GT Aggressor in 1990 after saving $500 working at McDonald's after school, weekends, and during the summers.

but after graduating high school, joining the military, attending college (then dropping out), joining the workforce, getting married, and going back to school, i found myself with little time and/or little to no motivation to pursue my enjoyment of bmx. i did make an attempt to get back into it after selling the Aggressor and getting a GT Tour 2 in 1999, but it wasn't long after purchasing it the bike ended up in the basement collecting dust.

these days i'm still working full-time and attending school, but now i'm divorced and living on my own. this school semester will end in a matter of weeks. the summer approaches and i need an out-door activity to enjoy the coming of sunny days, and not spending them within the confines of my apartment. i have seen 80's films on bmx (Rad, BMX Bandits) and watched tons of videos on YouTube of old-school and todays bmx riders. it's these reasons i decided to return to bmx for nostalgia and as an activity.

at the risk of embarrassing myself, i have shot and edited a video of one of my practice sessions. i'm so rusty, but i have to start from somewhere. this video will serve as my base-line. i can only get better from here.

17 years of absence since my last good session, but i have returned, and i have a lot of catching up to do.

peace,
@riel

Joseph Acaba, NASA Astronaut

NASA shuttle Discovery STS-119 crew member and mission specialist
Joseph Acaba is the first American of Puerto Rican descent
to fly into space.



God-speed, Joseph.


@

So they finally got to me.

part of my daily routine is to log into my YouTube accounts and check to see how my videos are doing. so what did i find the minute i logged into my aclion account? the following message:

Rejected
(blocked by content owner) | Matched third party content.

click on the pic below to see the screen capture.


so they finally got to me. but i wonder why they stopped there and not block any of the other related videos. perhaps it's because the title contained the name of a certain song by a certain 80's british pop-star.

in any case, the video had been blocked, but only on YouTube. apparently the video can still be accessed on my media site. so it's not completely gone.

i'll keep an update on this.

peace,
@riel

*** update *** Jan 20 2009 ***

i have chosen to mute the audio just to keep the video playing. if you happen to have the song, just play it along with the video.

Christmas LEDs in my room!

please note this entry is NOT intended as a set of instructions to be mimic by anyone else. it is NOT advertised as a D.I.Y. (do it yourself) project. if you decide to mimic this project, and the end result is you becoming homeless cause your house burnt down, I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE!!!! the intention of this entry is simply to share my experience of this project. nothing more.

LED technology has penetrated into the Christmas landscape with many vendors providing LED alternatives to the typical Christmas lights we are used to. LED lights have their advantages that can't be ignored. besides the fact they are energy efficient, the bulbs last much longer, and they can take more abuse than typical bulbs.

this year i decided to look into LED Christmas lights, not for decorating my tree (i didn't get one this year, but then i never bother to get one), to illuminate my room with. you see many years ago (actually just last year) i noticed a porch with these white LED Christmas light hanging above and providing a very soothing ambient lighting. i thought to myself that this could look pretty neat in my room. so this past monday i stopped by at a Target store which was having 50% off clearance sale on all Christmas related items. i bought the only white LED icicle lights they had available and a set of plastic clips to attach them to the wall. the brand i bought was a Philips LED White Dome Icicle lights. contains 70 bulbs per set. total wattage input per set is 4.8W at 0.04A.


when i came home to set them up i loved the result. the light emanating from the LEDs gave my room an eerie but cool ambiance. even better when i realized that they were dimmable with a sliding dimming switch.


then i decided to get another set to hang them on the other side on my room to balance the light out. i had visited a different Target store in the hopes of obtaining and purchasing one more box. when i got to Target, it took a while to locate another set. at first i thought it was too late, cause i didn't see any along with the other Christmas lights. then i found three boxes in another isle and decided to get all three. by this time the clearance sale was up to 75%. with the regular price of $14.99 the whole set cost my less than $13. at first all i needed was just one, so driving home i was thinking of what to do with other two. then it dawned on me - why not use them in my floor standing lamp. all i would need is the right attachment to convert the incandescent socket into a 120V outlet. so i stopped the Home Depot and got an incandescent socket extension and a small converter.


the idea was simple; remove the 40 watt bulb from my lamp, replace it with the incandescent socket extension, insert the 120V socket converter, and attach the LED lights to the lamp via the socket. check out the video below to see how everything came together.



so my little project worked out better than i expected. and the total wattage = 14.4W (19.2W if you count the set on the wall). the light output isn't as luminous as a typical incandescent or compact florescence bulb, but i wasn't trying for that kind of output. all i wanted was enough light to give my room a cool and calming ambiance. even though i used all three LED Christmas light sets, i may decide later to pull one set out and hang it up on the opposite end of my room as i originally planned. until then i'll enjoy this for now.

video info:

this video was shot using an XBOX Live Vision webcam
and software app Crazy Mirror v2.2

music info:

Song:
"Chrono Trigger" (track 01)
Album:
Chrono Trigger: The Brink of Time
(album and song copyrights are properties of Square-Enix)



peace,
@riel

Dyson's Revelation, The Final Cut, The Final Word.

a good deal of time, energy, effort, emotion, and money was spent to edit the final cut version of Dyson's Revelation, but i'm happy to say that, not only is it finished, it is ready to retire. i have entered my AMV in two contest - both Anime Boston 08', and Otakon 08' - and though it never made it to either finals, i'd like to believe those who attended the overflow video rooms did enjoy it.

i have uploaded the final cut to my alternate YouTube channel, Arielistix, which includes the new animated logo tagged in the beginning. with this addition, i have removed the version i submitted to the Anime Boston 2008 AMV contest from my YouTube channel aclion; no need to flood the site with multiple copies of the same video.


soon i will upload the video to my account in AnimeMusicVideo.org after i add the credits at the end. once this is complete it will mark the end of this chapter, but not the book (i know, its cheesy).

i have started on my new project. its not anime related, but it is something that i thought i'd try out. hopefully i'll have a rough cut ready within the next couple of months. i may decide instead to place it on hold and work on a anime related AMV in time for next years Anime Boston 2009 as the event will fall on the same week as my birthday, and i always take that week off from work. its not too far away so i better get planning. until then i hope you will and continue to enjoy the final cut of my first AMV,
Dyson's Revelation.

peace,
@riel

Upbeat with Apple's GarageBand.

here is the second tune i was working on.



right-click on the following below and use the "Save Link As..." option to download my tune,

AAC (.M4A)
MP3 (.MP3)

or head over to my media site ARIELISTIX Media!

peace,
@riel

Chillin' with Apple's GarageBand

so last night i was a little bored and decided (for some strange reason) to play around with Apple's GarageBand (GB) app. somehow i started with a project with a tempo setting of 128bpm and ended with this 89bpm chill piece. and i have to say that working with GB became a little addictive once the arrangement starting to take shape.

i'll write more about it later, until then enjoy.



right-click on the following below and use the "Save Link As..." option to download my tune.

AAC (.M4A)
MP3 (.MP3)

peace,
@riel

It Is Finished!!!

here it is; my entry to Otakon 2008 AMV contest - the second (and quite possibly final) edition to my Macross Plus AMV, "Dyson's Revelation". this edition feature some new enhancements to the existing video. along with the changes mentioned earlier, i managed to learn how to use to the Motion Keyframe feature in Final Cut Express 4 (FCE4) to add movements to the most of the still video sequences; which i think helps to add some much needed "flow" to the video. i mean there were scenes containing motion and some that were at a stand still. it kept bothering me that whenever the video transitioned from a motionless scene to one with movement, i felt like i was in a car that kept stopping and going, stopping and going, stopping and going.

my other problem was trying to get the video to the specification required by Otakon. they "STRONGLY encourage" all participants to enter their video as a 720x480 MPEG2 video with AC3 or mp2 audio. and though they are willing to convert the video for you if you can't, i didn't want to take any chances on my video looking bad. so i decided to tackle this myself. it took me over a week to get my video to conform to MPEG2. i did eventually find a solution; it is as follows:

01. exported my project from FCE4 as an uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 quicktime movie.

02. imported the quicktime movie into iDVD, authored a quick and simple DVD image, but saved it using the "Save As VIDEO_TS folder..." option.

03. opened the saved VIDEO_TS folder with Handbrake (HB) to remaster the video using it's deblocking & denoising features along with other advanced settings. the resulting video file would then be MPEG4, cleaned and polished.

04. used Burn.app to create the final MPEG2. set Burn.app to write video to DVD, then imported the MPEG4 file. Burn.app automatically converted the MPEG4 video to MPEG2.

with MPEG Streamclip i was able to confirm the specs on the final video using its "Show Stream Info" feature.


unfortunately FCE4 does not export video to MPEG2. i was hoping that MPEG Streamclip would easily convert MPEG4 video to MPEG2, but it doesn't work that way. i tried using FFmpegx to transcode it. it worked, but for some reason the resulting video didn't playback well enough. it was jumpy and contained weird anomalies like distortions and pixelations. i wasted a great deal of time re-encoding my video over and over again - hence why it took me over a week - until i figured out what the problem was; it turned out the MPEG4 video was encoded @ 23fps (frames per second) instead of 30fps. that was my fault. apparently i didn't force HB to encode the VIDEO_TS files to MPEG4 @ 30fps as one of its compression parameters.

a quick comment about FFmpegx: it took a while to get used to using the app due to its multitude of features and settings. at first use it seemed a little overwhelming. at every attempt to convert my MPEG4 to MPEG2 i experimented with different features enabled/disabled, and settings at different adjustments. and though in the end i went with using Burn.app, FFmpegx is a really good tool to have in my arsenal. i honestly like it, and will most likely make further use of it for future projects.

this was a rough road to travel on cause it led me to so many dead-ends. but this is a good thing for me. at least now i know how to over come this problem for my next project. in any case it'll be on its way to Edison, NJ soon enough. i just hope it make it by the 7th as that is the deadline.


i'll be attending Otakon 2008 with some friends. i'm looking forward to seeing my video on display. perhaps with the changes i have made it'll make a better impression this time around. if it doesn't make it as a finalist, i'm hoping that it'll still get showcased somewhere along the weekend. i plan on taking video of the crowd's reaction to my AMV. this is going to be sooooooo cool.

one more thing, i plan on posting this final edition of Dyson's Revelation on my alternate YouTube site Arielistix along with a video of the project through the eyes of FCE4. also seeing is that this is the final edition, i'm finally going to post my final video on AnimeMusicVideo.org, finally. it's long overdue.

peace,
@riel

Oh, I can certainly feel it in the air.

we are getting closer to Anime Boston (A.B.) 2008, and quite possible the big premier of my AMV. it’s been almost 9 months since i engaged on this project to make this AMV, and it’s been a great hobby to get into; so much so that i’m looking forward to the next project. i won’t go into any details about my next project until i know for sure that it has yet to be done by anyone else. but just in case, i did start it up. perhaps in the coming months i’ll have a rough cut ready to post on YouTube. until then, i’m continuously looking at my current AMV (Macross Plus AMV, In The Air Tonight) under a microscope – looking to see if there’s any required fine tuning, or perhaps scenes that could be altered. i’m not a perfectionist by any stretch, but if this AMV is to be uploaded to AnimeMusicVideo.org, i want it to be at its best. i still need to give it a title.

peace,
@riel