dianaschnuth

Today is the official release date of Mur Lafferty‘s novel, Playing For Keeps. My husband, Aaron, was a big fan of the podiobook version, so I gladly purchased the print version today (published by Swarm Press).

Mur held a contest, asking all her fans to record a video clip for a portion of the book’s theme song by Beatnik Turtle. Alas, I forgot that Mur is a Mac girl, and sent my submission in WMV format, so my clip didn’t get included in the final cut:

I’d like to imagine that my submission would end up as an extra on the (fictitious) Playing For Keeps promotional DVD:

The Pop-Up Video version of my clip might include trivia such as:

• Diana recorded this in the evening in her basement, with ambient light. This is why the video is so dark.
• Diana moved the Rock Band drums into the basement specifically to record in front of her husband’s video game collection.
• Note that Diana is not actually playing the offbeats during the first half of the clip, but corrects herself after her “cymbal” crash. She did not notice this error until after the video was complete and submitted.
• Diana had considered tying a blanket cape around her neck to tie in with the superhero theme of the book. It’s probably best that she didn’t, as she had to do four takes, running over to her computer to restart the song each time.
• Watch closely, and you’ll see the drumstick fly out of Diana’s right hand at the very end of the clip.

As it is, I’m fine with the fact that my video didn’t make it into the final cut. It was fun, anyway, and I’m still looking forward to reading Playing For Keeps when it arrives.

Hey… maybe you should order one, too.

Time to post something besides Twitter updates, cool as they might be.

In my own inimitable tradition, I planned a luau in honor of a.) the onset of the first day of summer and b.) our Hawaii vacation last month. Parties are a great excuse to get everyone together and drink and play video games, and I’ve hosted a couple successful ones since we’ve lived here. (Aaron hosted a few successful New Year’s Eve parties at his apartments before that, too, but that was quite some time ago.) Our circle of friends hasn’t been as socially close as we were, say, eight years ago, and a formal invitation to come over and see everyone all at once seems to have appeal.
Continue reading →

Even if you already know the tune, watch the video. It’s a quicker tempo than the standard recording that all of us jazz / band / jazz band geeks know and love, and the drum solo? To die for.

If you don’t know the tune, shame on you! Watch this video and get your jazz on. (Non-music people: it sounds all groovy partially because there’s five beats to the measure — hence the title, “Take Five.”)

[thanks for the heads-up, Wil!]

New Year’s Eve 1999: Four couples converged at Kris’s apartment for a Y2K celebration of food, drink, music, and Trivial Pursuit. It’s fun looking back on these home videos and seeing how we used to spend our New Year’s. This year, it sounds like it’ll be Fries and Connie spending a little time with Aaron and me at our house. Any of our other friends are certainly welcome, assuming you don’t have a concert to attend, or you don’t live way far away, or you don’t have cooler friends than us to hang out with…

</guilt trip>

An example of fortuitous timing: I hadn’t realized that night how low my camcorder battery was, and ended up just barely catching the midnight festivities. That was a lesson to me to always charge my camcorder battery AND bring the adapter with me whenever I used the camera.

Please forgive the crackly audio — I could get it to export either with decent video and blown-out audio, or crappy video and decent audio, but not with both. Hopefully, I’ll get the hang of Premiere soon enough.

I bought a new toy this weekend: a Mini DV camera. Why Mini DV instead of some other format? For the express purpose of getting the above video out to the masses.

This was filmed and edited by Yours Truly during late July and early August of 2001. This video was to be aired on the closed-circuit campus cable channel during and shortly after move-in weekend, for the purpose of educating the on-campus student body Residence Life Staff about the purpose of Residential Computing Connection (RCC).

When I was done editing and distributing the finished product, I did two things. First, I created an “outtake reel” of all the funnies that happened during filming. Second, I output the final commercial onto the end of the source tape, and snagged said Mini DV tape for my own. I’ve carried that tape around with me for the past six and a half years, waiting to get my hands on a Mini DV camera (or deck).

The first thing I did when I got my new camera home this weekend was hook it up to the HDTV and watch ye olde RCC commercial. I’d forgotten most of the details of the filming, and it was great to see some of my old RCC friends as I remember them. It was also heartwarming to see the late Tim King again, and hear his voice.

I was disappointed to find that I had not, as I had thought, output the outtake reel to tape. Apparently, I only had it on the server, which has (hopefully) long since been replaced and put to pasture. I guess it’s a good thing I still have the source material… 😉

RCC folk, both old and new, are encouraged to comment here or on the Google Video page. I’d love to hear people’s reactions almost seven years later.