Just like the title says, I haven't blogged for about seven months. In my blogs, just like on my website, I spend most of the time talking about my hobbies. My hobbies tend to go in cycles. Currently, I would have to say that I am spending the most time with my computer programming hobby and my videography hobby.
My hobbies are intertwined though. For example, when I am doing computer programming, I am typically programming something with an amateur radio influence. I am presently trying to learn ASP.NET 2.0, which is a Microsoft technology. Once, I have some of the basics down, I hope to develop a page on my website where people can type in a ham radio callsign and get results such as name, address, license class, and so on. That type of page, however, is nothing new. There are probably a couple of dozen "lookup" pages on the web, but I want to develop a lookup page that is accessible from a web-capable cellphone. I think that there is currently only one other lookup like that in existence. Together our lookups can share the bandwidth for that sort of lookup. The other thing that I hope to develop is a web service for this lookup. That, I believe, would be unique. A web service gets its name from the fact that it uses the world wide web to communicate the data (specifically the HTTP hypertext transfer/transport protocol), but it doesn't necessarily use a web browser. Another programmer, could design a Windows or Mac OS application and call the web service to get the license details about a particular ham. Perhaps that functionality could be added to a contact logging program.
Videography is the other hobby near the top of my list currently. A couple of weeks ago, Adobe just announced their new Production Studio bundle. I think that I am going to upgrade my individual Adobe applications to the new versions. My videography pursuits many times are related to amateur radio, but I haven't been involved with any amateur radio events lately to videotape. The most recent videotaping that I was involved with was a acquaintances' wedding. Now I have volunteered my services for another wedding in June ('06). Actually at the upcoming wedding and the recent wedding, I was shooting the pictures and my best friend was shooting the video. In either case, however, I am processing the video afterwards. Mainly I am bringing the video into the computer and then burning it to DVD. With the pictures, I am copying them to the computer and tweaking things such as brightness and sharpness and burning them to CD. After this wedding in June is complete, I think that I am going to concentrate on organizing a portfolio of my work. I don't plan to quit my day job, but I think that I could make some extra money on the side by shooting weddings. I have come to realize that good money can be made once a creative effort has been put forth. That is where I need to concentrate. I seem to be able to understand how the software works (Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing, for example), but I am not very good at making a decent video. My videos will look good from a technical standpoint (low noise, little to no artifacting from the MPEG compression), but I won't have the appropriate transitions in the video, or use the right music (of course, you have to be careful about the music you use in a video). I need to work on my creativity.
That's all for now. I hope to blog again soon (less than seven months).
Good luck on the wedding video. I've been developing my own videography hobby as well. You probably already have, but do some searches on videography forums. You will find tons of info out there on how to shoot wedding videos. You'll also find some heated debates on music copyright issues. I'm just getting into the blog and online community aspect of videography, but have been a "vid-enthusiast" for a couple of years now. I've started blogging my cam equipment builds. Basic generic stuff, but perhaps it will help, or at least inspire. Take care!
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