I tell ya, this is Trey’s year. He’s been working for Oblong for several months and after his contract ended he took a trip to Rome. The PixelAddicts were deploying their media server that uses Trey’s software, Salvation, at a humungous party. It was called Dissonanze and here is a video from that night:
Then, when I came home from Rome, he stayed on to do some work with Microchunk in Geneva. He stayed there for the week, flew home Thursday night and then did the visuals himself for a Deadmau5 show at the Palladium. The place was packed and the age range was young but, you know what the music was really really good. And people showed up to this show like they had been planning their outfit since March, lemme tell ya. The scene was so funny to me but in a nostalgic way because I used to dress up just like that for shows and festivals when I was 21. I just had to put a video together about it:
I’m gonna have to skip around here because all my footage and pictures from the first few days in Italy were dumped on Trey’s laptop and he’s still over there until Friday. I will start with the day we left Rome=)
On our last morning in Rome we saw St. Theresa at the Santa Maria Della Vittoria and it was jaw-dropping incredible. I checked my email in the morning before we left and Tara had sent me a message saying it was a must see. She said,
“this is the sculpture - perhaps my favorite in all of italy and it happens to be in rome in a church called santa maria della vittoria - that i was telling you about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_of_St_Theresa called the ecstasy of st. theresa, please please please go see it. the story goes that she had delusional (or divine depending on how you look at it) visions quite often and she had one where an angel was stabbing a golden spear repeatedly into her heart…but she liked it. exquisite pain, moaning, sexuality…the whole deal. you have to see it. bernini is my fav baroque sculptor - well he’s everyone’s fav that’s not special but he is amazing.”
Trey worked out for us to go see it on our way to pick up the rental car. It really was amazing. Spirituality and sensuality overlap to a point of total eclipse.
Then we drove up to Assisi but stayed in a house called Casa Rosa, a few miles past the aincient town. The property was complete with olive groves, bright green grassy fields, a river, a waterfall, a swimming pool and an amazing vegetable and herb and flower garden. And it even came with an orange tabby kitty! Sympa was his name and like 17 years old but sweet as can be. Trey and I treated him like he was our own. And there’s high speed internet!! Seriously, we couldn’t find one thing to complain about at this place.
Never did get to see the wild boars but I guess there are like 10 little piglets playing and running around at dawn and dusk. I thought I’d seen or heard of most beautiful places in this world but Assisi is not one of them. What an amazing surprise. We hiked down to a waterfall and swimming hole one day, then laid by the pool and sang and played the guitar. Came in for a rest, drove into the ancient town, taught Trey to get a stick shift from stopped to first gear, and then went to the most amazing dinner I’ve had here.
The gardens are so beautiful and everything is so lush and green. Anyone would absolutely love Gay, the British woman who owns and runs this place. She’s retired, speaks Italian and is a painter and just lovely. She lives in a loft at the end of the property filled with easels supporting all her latest masterpieces and the apartments are decorated with her paintings on the walls and furniture. Here are a series of photos of the apartment:
And dinner gets better every night! Tonight was the simplest of salads; arugula (they call it "rocket lettuce" here), and tomatoes. The tomatoes in Italy do sort of a Ratatouille-like thing for me where I’m taken back to my Grandmother’s garden. I spent countless summers eating her tomatoes like apples. They were as sweet as fruit and the tomatoes here are no different.
We were so sad to leave Assisi and Casa Rosa. Definitely one of those places you tell yourself you will make sure to see again.
Just kidding, it’s Trey’s guitar and she twitted that she needed a guitar for a session to write a song for Brandy. Trey happened to be over and almost left his guitar at home but he brought it at the last minute. She has the guitar right now and is using it to record over at MTV for the weekend. So rad. And very scrappy and spontaneous on her part which I think makes for some of the best music=)
My systems for recording and editing audio and video are in need of a giant upgrade. I can come up with a fine finished product but the amount of jerry-rigs I had to do to make it happen is making me all around inefficient and slow at cranking out work.
My little sound booth sounds great for voice over work, but then when I plug my Mini-Me into my PC, the old fart of a machine doesn’t recognize the microphone. So I have a PowerBook G4 for recording, but I still prefer to edit in ACID. After I record them on my laptop, I save them to a flash drive and pull it up in ACID on my PC. It’s a GIANT pain to not be able to record directly into my PC and I think it’s cuz my PC is just flat out old.
Then there’s the fact that I love to travel and do voice over on my trips (then I can pay for the traveling!). My desktop machine is about as portable as a dresser and my PowerBook seems freakishly heavy when you add it to my mic and the Mini-Me.
And then there’s my world of video. Whether it’s a GadgetGossip episode, Travel episodes or any other bit of video, I’ve got a little Panasonic SD camera from several years ago. I’ve got to keep track of mini DV tapes, carry that stupid camera bag around and keep the battery charged all the time. Between, my desktop machine, my old lap top and my old camera, I have a faily wide load of aging electronics. But I think I’ve figured out the answers to streamline all the work I do.
I’m pretty sure a Netbook can run ACID and VEGAS smoothly and it weighs next to nothing. I could travel with it and be able to voice over work from just about anywhere. I can go to conferences and not feel like my back is slowly breaking from the lap top in my bag. I could edit video right after I shot it , while it’s still fresh, when I’m traveling. This is so appealing because I often have to wait three weeks before I can get home and even capture the footage.
And the Flip Mino HD is as small as a cell phone. I can and should have it with me at all times. No mini DV tapes, no battery charging all the time, no more “I wish I had my camera on me”.
They are such simple, reasonably priced solutions, but I think they might do the trick for all my current project needs. And it’s easier to stay motivated when your workflow is smooth and you don’t feel like everything is heavy and annoying to haul around.
Does anyone else have any of these devices? How do they work for you?
I went! And it was a wicked good time. And since I love to do hosting stuff, I took that opportunity to bring the camera and document the whole experience. I’m hoping to turn these videos into a little travel show for several reasons.
First, I love to travel and I love to do hosting and so I want to combine the two.
Second, it’s not about big expensive getaways. It’s two young, fun best girlfriends exploring a place on the cheap and having a blast. I’m hoping that can inspire more young people to travel. The travel shows seem to be often geared towards retired people and really wealthy people. If you’re between 20 and 40 or if you just have a youthful, adventurous attitude, you’re probably interested in doing completely different things on a trip than those other demographics.
And yet, it’s so easy for the 20-40 age group, especially in this economy, to get stuck in that grind and not feel like a trip somewhere is not an option. Well no more!! You can do it too. You just gotta make it happen. Hopefully these travel shows will inspire you or, if you detest traveling, you can still see faraway places from the comfort of in front of your computer.
Here is the first video (out of 5) of Our Costa Rican Adventure. Gracias.
These parties are usually open bar but the line is crazy and the drinks are never good. And I’m pretty sure the original idea was for networking but they crank the music so loud you can’t hear yourself talk, let alone someone you’re talking to. The worst part is when there is no where to sit down.
The Game Developer’s Party was the best party I’ve ever been to during any kind of conference. It was this year’s Fairmount Hotel. People were actually comfortable and having a good time. After years of going to dog meat GDC parties, Dave Taylor thought about who goes to them and what they would want to do at a party, and designed his own around that.
The drinks were UNBELIEVABLE. Seriously, I’ve worked in my share of bars. Nice ones. These drinks, sponsored by Bacardi rocked. They were fruity and tasty but somehow sophisticated at the same time. Now I’m no light-weight that has to have Appletinis. I can drink whiskey with the best of them but these drinks tasted sooo much better! The kumquats, fresh mint and essence of jalepeno weren’t there to mask the rum, they were there enhance it. There was even a drink with lightly whipped egg white on top! That might sound crazy but, trust me, it was good. The Mojitos were simple and perfect and the rest of the drinks on the menu were so unique and truly delicious. Not sure who’s idea that all was but it was genius. They were tasty, fun to try and a great ice-breaker for conversation. People were clearly impressed.
And then there was the food. Small fresh baguettes with carmelized onions and goat cheese. Yummy quiches, arugula and beet salad. Creme Brulee, fresh fruit and wicked good chocolate chip cookies. I think the company that did that was Crepe de Chocolate and I think they have a restaurant in the Bay Area somewhere. Or at least they really really should.
The last element for the perfect party was this, sort of, photo booth set up. Hal Bergman had a photography area with his strobes, camera and a back drop and people went nuts over it! If Hal ever thought the momentum was slowing down, he’d grab me and tell me to wrangle people. By then I’d tossed back so many cocktails, this was quite a fun assignment=)
I did manage to get a little bit of video from the night. It was at the Academy of Art which was right next to Moscone. I had this brilliant drunken idea to take some footage by the front door for some reason. This was followed by another great idea to video tape my cab ride home. Enjoy!
