Scooter Du 5 Pix
Craig over at neongreen posted a few choice shots from the recent scooter rally in his photolog pages. You should check them out.
posted by jeremy at 07:57 AMCompressor Fix
Ever get the dreaded "Can't Submit Batch: Unable to connect to background process" error when working with Final Cut Pro and Compressor? Well, it cropped up on my machine the other day and NOTHING would get it working again. Apple and all the FCP forums had several suggestions that had no effect whatsoever. I got it solved by going into the command line (Terminal) and typing:
sudo SystemStarter
This apparently relaunches all your Startup Items (again) and voila! -- Compressor is back in action, much to my relief. I posted this on several forums so hopefully it helps people fix their system.
UPDATE: Sometimes simply turning off your network will work as well and no command-line access necessary.
Skooter Du 5
Still recovering from sleep dep from last weekend's Skooter Du 5 scooter rally here in the Twin Cities. Man, it was a good time. I shot 4.5 hours of digital video to combine up with video from the past four years and we had a spectacular weekend of fun and riding. We had something like 180 people and 125 scooters on the big Saturday ride. Amazing to see all those scooters tooling around town - I swear it stretched on for miles! Craig also came out for the weekend and I look forward to seeing his photos.
posted by jeremy at 10:51 PM | comments (2)Actiontec DSL Webserver Fix
I recently got a new DSL Gateway (modem) from Qwest, the Actiontec GTW701-wg with 54 Mbps WiFi, USB and Ethernet. It is a pretty nice little box so far and gives me over twice the DSL speed I had with the old Cisco 675! So I like it. BUT... it turns out this Actiontec box does everything except allow me to see my own webserver on my internal network. Anyone outside my network can see my webserver, but not me. I just get the modem's configuration screen! Not so convenient. I called Qwest and got the "we don't officially support that" answer (even though I have static IPs) but they put me through to "Nick" in India who checked into my question and finally replied "I'm sorry, the Actiontec cannot do that." Right. Thanks, Nick. Undaunted, I forged on, googling like a mad man... until I figured out HOW TO FIX THE ACTIONTEC DSL MODEM TO WORK WITH A PERSONAL WEBSERVER...
Finding tons of people with the same problem on tons of forums (well, it seemed like it), I found little good information. Most people resolved themselves to having it not work or buying different routers, switches, modems, etc, to solve the problem.
It initially appeared that editing the "hosts" file on Mac OS X would be a fix and a few people recommended using NetInfo in the Utilities folder to create a new Machine entry pointing my domain to my private IP address. That did not work. I tried editing the /etc/hosts file by hand. That didn't work either. I kept looking and looking and reading and reading and the hours went by...
Finally, I came across a page in Google's cache that I had previously discounted and re-read it again. It seems that Mr. Dennis Cox had a similar issue and came up with a fix. Nothing else had worked at this point so I plunged it with his intructions. Voila! It worked like a charm! And it was pretty simple to implement as well. Thanks, Dennis Cox!
Here's how to do it:
1) Edit your /etc/hosts file to include your private IP address and your domain name. For example "10.0.0.1 yourdomain.com"
2) Create a file called "lookupd.txt" in your /tmp directory with the following content:
/___start_below___/
{
"LookupOrder" = ( "FFAgent", "CacheAgent", "NIAgent", "YPAgent" , ');
"name" = ( "lookupd" , ');
"MaxThreads" = ( "12" , ');
CHILDREN = (
{"name" = ( "groups" , ');
"LookupOrder" = ( "FFAgent", "CacheAgent", "NIAgent" , ');
},
{"name" = ( "users" , ');
"LookupOrder" = ( "FFAgent", "CacheAgent", "NIAgent", ');
},
{"name" = ( "hosts" , ');
"LookupOrder" = ("FFAgent", "CacheAgent", "NIAgent", "DNSAgent", "NILAgent" , ');
},
{"name" = ( "netgroups" , ');
"LookupOrder" = ( "FFAgent", "CacheAgent", "NIAgent", ');
}
)
}
/___end_above___/
3) run this command from the terminal: "niutil -create . /locations/lookupd"
4) run this command: "niload -r /locations/lookupd . < lookupd.txt"
5) type "lookupd -d" to get a prompt and then type "hostWithName: yourdomain.com" and see that the results match your domain and IP.
6) Reboot your Mac and enjoy!
Hopefully this helps all you Mac OS X with Actiontec DSL users out there. It sure would have saved me a ton of time to have this info right from the start. Huge huge thanks to Dennis Cox.
And I'm sorry, but no, I won't provide any assistance to you with your machine. I simply don't have the time. The solution above will work for you.
Brown Bunny
So we (craig, meghan and I) just got back from an advance screening of Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny, the controversial new film that had audience members at Cannes (including Ebert) booing, walking out, cheering, etc. It officially opens in theaters in a few weeks. What was super cool about this screening was that Vincent Gallo was in attendance and did a very interesting Q&A sessions afterwards (the movie was at 7:30, so you can see how long it lasted).
Here are my thoughts on the film/evening (some minor spoilers ahead):
The film: as I said afterwards, "It's like he remade Aguirre, Wrath of God as a new American road movie, but without all the suspense." I got a few incredulous looks and questions on that one. "Yeah," I said, "A lot of long drawn-out scenes where nothing much happens and the main guy is really deep inside his own mind, sort of wacked out." Which is kind of what it is...
There are looong jerky shots of just driving, looking through a bug-splatted windscreen. Long shots of Gallo's face. Looong shots of more driving. No dialogue. Just tortured looks. And the climax (no pun intended)? The oral sex scene? Yup. Full on. Not quite so controversial as I expected. The scene that follows, however, is the one that got me.
Technically, this film sort of sucks. Out of focus scenes, very shaky camera work, lighting issues, low audio levels. But this is all part of his plan so can I really say it sucks?
But if I or anybody else made this film, it would never get shown. Because Gallo has a history and a mildly successful prior film (Buffalo 66), he can afford to take this risk, this approach with The Brown Bunny. It doesn't hurt that he's made money from real estate, either. He can afford to do it his way, and his way only. Which is good, really. That should be the goal of any artistic endeavor.
The thing I would hope that arises (again, no pun) out of this movie is that other filmmakers are inspired to make their own film, their own way. Real life, subtlety, nuances. I still think story is essential. Characters you feel something towards are good, too, and I really hope people don't just take their miniDV cameras out and record their road trips and then tag on a shocking scene at the end and call it a movie. That's no Aguirre... and it will get the wrath of me for wasting two hours of my life.
Ultimately, this movie is not a "great" movie, but, I would hope that like Figgis' Timecode, it will open doors to different approaches at narrative and structure.
The Q&A: very good, quite entertaining. Gallo's neuroses and mannerisms are very enthralling and he's got a lot of good ideas, good approaches, theories, standards. He's uniquely his own person. I could listen to him espouse on life, art, film, music, actresses, media, etc, for quite some time. He's got passion, he's got creativity, he's got opinions and he's got history. I like him.
posted by jeremy at 11:56 PM