Today is Mike Wallace’s 90th Birthday. The 60 Minutes star has done more for television news than anyone in the history of the medium. I hope I look half as good as him at his age and I’ll be thrilled if I’ve even accomplished 1/100th of what he has accomplished in his life. Take a look at this column to see who he has interviewed the last 60+ years.
Mike still goes into work everyday (at 60 minutes) and still gets some of the biggest interviews in the business. Take a look at the video below to see what his pal Andy rooney has to say about the guy and for a quick retrospective on Mike’s life. It really is amazing.
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Well, I’ve been a very bad blogger recently… hardly writing much of anything… so I thought I’d post this interesting bit about Epson’s new Disc Producer system. It’s a desktop CD/DVD disc publisher that is designed to burn and print up to 100 customized CDs or DVDs on demand. And, with one set of high-capacity ink cartridges, it’s reported to create over 1,000 discs, which is a lot more than I get with my current sytem. Discproducer features a built-in 6-color inkjet printer, with Epson’s MicroPiezo® technology, and Total Disc Maker software that lets you format data, edit labels and control the production process all from one application.
1. Ink level status LED
2. Six separate ink cartridges
3. Three media trays for runs of up to 100
4. Robotic arm
The Epson Discproducer™ is the only product of its type (that I know of) that shows ink status for each individual color using LED. It is said to have a street price of around $3500 when it starts shipping in quantity later this month. While I find that price a little high for a unit that doesn’t have a computer built it (most do in this price range) it will be interesting to see if it can live up to it’s promise of printing 1,000 discs with only a single set of ink cartridges. I’m on a waiting list for a review unit with a tentative delivery date in about 4 to 6 weeks.
You can get the datasheet and the press releases here. After the jump I have a very interesting Flash video file that gives a complete workflow of the unit. Definitely worth clicking through to watch…
…read full article…
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I’ve still got a bunch of video clips from Photoshop World in Orlando that I haven’t uploaded yet. One that my buddy RC asked me to post (that I’m doing now) is the incredible drum solo by Scott Stahley during the Photoshop World Party that took place at B.B Kings. Scotty, as he’s known to his friends, is a former advertising executive at Kelby Media and currently works for the Computer Graphics Society. He’s also the drummer for Big Electric Cat, Scott Kelby’s band. During the band’s one hour concert, Scotty got to do his trademark 2 minute solo and it blew the crowd away. Check it out:
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As the title says, NAB was a B E A S T this year! The toughest training schedule I have ever had, by far. All of my class attendees were great! They were all very relaxed and jovial and we had a good time discussing 100 different topics in the Adobe CS3 Production Premium suite. As the week went on they could tell I was starting to wear down and they would bring me peanut butter crackers or a cookie or an energy bar or a bottle of water and they would say things like, “You can do it!” (with Cajun accent - Adam Sandler movie line reference) and “I know you’ve got another one in ya!”. It was all very positive and uplifting and I appreciate every single person that came up to offer an encouraging word.
The NAB Conf and Expo had 105,259 registered attendees this year. I actually kept a little worksheet/journal with me at all times to keep me on schedule and to track how I was spending my time. Here’s how the week broke down for me.
I did:
- 24 hours and 15 minutes of classroom training in both the NAB conferences and on the show floor.
- 4 hours and 30 minutes of answering questions and providing free consulting services outside of class time.
- 28 hours of preparation and practice time between classes.
- 4 hours and 21 minutes of sleep (on average) across 7 nights.
- 8 hours commuting between the hotel and the Las Vegas Convention Center (and that’s fast compared to most people’s experiences)
- 2 hours and 20 minutes commuting between my classes on the show floor and those in the North Hall conference center.
- and only 2 hours looking at exhibits in the Expo (this makes me want to cry!)
Besides all of the wonderful attendees, I’ve got to thank my good buddy Richard Harrington for sharing the training experience with me along with some of his files to make my classes even better. Rich is one of the best trainers in the business and is absolutely selfless when it comes to sharing of himself with others.
I also have to thank one of my best friends of the last 20 years and current DVPA President Benjamin Weeks for being such a Godsend on the most stressful days. Benjie (as he’s known to his close friends) brought me lunch on days I didn’t have time to eat, took me to dinner on my birthday (which always falls during NAB), even trekked with me off-strip (to the scary parts of Vegas) looking for affordable drinks and munchies I could stock up on in my hotel room. There’s no one I’d rather do NAB with than him.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting numerous items related to NAB (video clips, class notes, project files, additional tutorials, things you might have missed, etc). Scroll on down to the post below to get notes from my Photoshop CS3 Extended for Video class.
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Scott Simmons, who was in at least one of my classes at NAB, had a nice little quick post on his blog called 5 Things I learned at the Photoshop for Video class conducted by Rod Harlan. Besides Scott having excellent taste in Photoshop instructors, he also has a very interesting blog that covered a lot of the NAB show from an attendees perspective and a lot of great information about the RED camera and all of their new announcements. It’s definitely worth taking a few minutes to run through his posts.
Also, here are the class notes for the Photoshop for Video class. Actually, they’re the exact same notes from my Photoshop World sessions, but we covered the same material and this is the quickest way to get them into people’s hands. It’s 9 pages total.
ps_cs3_-extended_for_video.pdf
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At Photoshop World, the students from Valencia Community College did Sketchnotes of what went on in each of the classes they attended. They’re AWESOME! One of my favorites is viewable below (since it was about 2 of my classes!) but you can see more by reading the complete story here.
Tags: PhotoshopWorld, Rod Harlan, Sketch notes, Valencia Community College
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Greetings from Las Vegas and the NAB Show! As usual, they’re expecting over 100,000 people at the show and all my classes have been packed with people looking to expand their skill-set to better serve their company and/or clients. In the six hours of training I’ve done so far (out of 28 total hours I’m doing in 7 days) attendees have asked really insightful questions and have really contributed to everyone’s learning experience… including my own!
But before moving on completely to NAB, I need to finish up some Photoshop World housekeeping. Here are the notes for my first 2 classes at Photoshop World in Orlando 10 days ago.
psw_orlando_08_class1and2.pdf
I did a partial After Effects class at Photoshop World as well, but I’m doing a lot more indepth AE training at NAB… so I’m going to release more detailed notes for After Effects after NAB. Until then, say a small prayer that I get more than 4 hours sleep a night… since that’s what I’ve been averaging since I got here! 
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From Photoshop World Orlando, shot from my Director’s perch. The talking and beeps you hear are me calling cues and Chris changing slides. It’s a little hard to hear, but you can hear it better by using earphones.
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From Photoshop World Orlando, shot from my Director’s perch. The talking and beeps you hear are me calling cues and Chris changing slides. It’s a little hard to hear, but you can hear it better by using earphones.
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This is shot from my Director’s perch at Photoshop World Orlando. The talking and beeps you hear are me calling cues and Chris Main changing slides.
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