My old university once cooled the main server room with water from the fountain outside the building....
Worked fine until a particular group of students decided that it would be great fun to make a big bubble bath out of the fountian... several gallons of 'joy' soap later, and the server room was overheating a bit, and the pumps were burning out.
Bah Cinerama. If you want to get into a format pissing war. SHOWSCAN was it. glorious 70mm print, at 60 frames per second. Want to talk about stunning? Dude who designed showscan sat down and figured out how much information it takes to saturate the optic nerve. showscan looks so real it seems almost 3D. Virtually no flicker, perfect motion smoothness, and detail to spare (think HD times 10).
As for what HD does for directors stories? it creates a more immersive environment. SD shows nothing. All those little details in the sets, nuances of movement, realism in makeup, etc are lost in SD. go to a theatre, watch a good print. Then watch it projected in the same theatre in SD. Tell me the experiences are anywhere near the same, and you sir, need a pair of glasses. HD works better for viewing because it is closer to the director's ideal - a good 35mm print.
There is a reason for the two holes.. it's to tell the deck that there is a quality tape in there...
When your crappy svhs tapes don't work and have dropouts when recording in DVHS mode... don't complain to the company.. you bought sh*tty tape!
it was the same with floppies... I never trusted any floppy that some moron punched a hole in.
This is not feature restriction, the manufacturer is not trying to screw you... They put an extra hole in the tape to tell the player that this tape will actually work with the deck properly!
I work in the movie biz... sometimes I'm lucky if my 'contract' lasts until the end of the week. (commercial shoots are typically two days long) So, while it's not related to software, I know a thing or two about contract work.
Expect to work longer hours, and charge more than you think the job is worth - companies place 'contractors' on a different column for accounting use, so the money comes from a different, and often less used (read bigger for you) pot. If you think the job is worth $40 per hour, ask for $120 and see what response you get... you may be surprised (in a good way), but let them know you're 'negotiable', so they are not frightened off by a unexpected rate.
You also have to be 'wired' for contract work... if the idea of not knowing where your next job will be coming from next week or next month scares the hell out of you, you probably won't do so well. If you are laid back, and trust that you have the skills and ability to get another job once your contract is up, then go for it.
Lastly, if it's what you really want to do, don't let a contract stop you. Doing something you like or love is truly something few people can say, and you will have no regrets.
Wehn I was in High School, I had a co-op job fixing ICONS. Built like tanks they were. The ICON 1's had usually 512k of ram, but it was all socketed, so after alot of turning on and off, they'd quit working and you'd have to open up the beast and push down the chips. The 1's could also accomodate a 5.25" floppy drive, but it heated the thing up like a boiler, and usually it would fail in a year or less unless you added a second fan to it (not officially supported by CEMCORP / Unisys).
Also, the keyboard controller chips were socketed, and built in VERY cheap sockets - they'd crack from heat changes, so we usually desoldered the sockets and soldered the chips right onto the boards. The keys themselves also failed fairly commonly, and had to be replaced.
The other big problem was the trackballs... They were in their own sealed "cube" inside the chassis, and the dirt would just build up inside. They were a wheeled optical encoder type, so the dirt would eventually obsure the sensors and they'd stop. Fixable with some compressed air and a q-tip usually. It was connected with a ribon cable that was a pain in the ass to un-hook if I remember properly.
The install of QNX was also really buggy... little to no security, and there was a really cool trick I discovered once that was a huge security violation: after someone logged out of a station (it wouldn't work if the station was power cycled) and the login: prompt was sitting there, you could hold down the control key, and press the keys ASDFGHJKL one at a time, and then go to the next row with ZX and then C it would drop you back into the previous persons account, at the familliar % prompt! once word of that got around, the staff became VERY paranoid...
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My old university once cooled the main server room with water from the fountain outside the building....
Worked fine until a particular group of students decided that it would be great fun to make a big bubble bath out of the fountian... several gallons of 'joy' soap later, and the server room was overheating a bit, and the pumps were burning out.
Oh well...
Bah Cinerama. If you want to get into a format pissing war. SHOWSCAN was it. glorious 70mm print, at 60 frames per second. Want to talk about stunning? Dude who designed showscan sat down and figured out how much information it takes to saturate the optic nerve. showscan looks so real it seems almost 3D. Virtually no flicker, perfect motion smoothness, and detail to spare (think HD times 10).
As for what HD does for directors stories? it creates a more immersive environment. SD shows nothing. All those little details in the sets, nuances of movement, realism in makeup, etc are lost in SD. go to a theatre, watch a good print. Then watch it projected in the same theatre in SD. Tell me the experiences are anywhere near the same, and you sir, need a pair of glasses. HD works better for viewing because it is closer to the director's ideal - a good 35mm print.
Cheers,
-ben
There is a reason for the two holes.. it's to tell the deck that there is a quality tape in there...
When your crappy svhs tapes don't work and have dropouts when recording in DVHS mode... don't complain to the company.. you bought sh*tty tape!
it was the same with floppies... I never trusted any floppy that some moron punched a hole in.
This is not feature restriction, the manufacturer is not trying to screw you... They put an extra hole in the tape to tell the player that this tape will actually work with the deck properly!
Cheers,
-ben
I work in the movie biz... sometimes I'm lucky if my 'contract' lasts until the end of the week. (commercial shoots are typically two days long) So, while it's not related to software, I know a thing or two about contract work.
Expect to work longer hours, and charge more than you think the job is worth - companies place 'contractors' on a different column for accounting use, so the money comes from a different, and often less used (read bigger for you) pot. If you think the job is worth $40 per hour, ask for $120 and see what response you get... you may be surprised (in a good way), but let them know you're 'negotiable', so they are not frightened off by a unexpected rate.
You also have to be 'wired' for contract work... if the idea of not knowing where your next job will be coming from next week or next month scares the hell out of you, you probably won't do so well. If you are laid back, and trust that you have the skills and ability to get another job once your contract is up, then go for it.
Lastly, if it's what you really want to do, don't let a contract stop you. Doing something you like or love is truly something few people can say, and you will have no regrets.
Cheers,
-ben
Wehn I was in High School, I had a co-op job fixing ICONS. Built like tanks they were. The ICON 1's had usually 512k of ram, but it was all socketed, so after alot of turning on and off, they'd quit working and you'd have to open up the beast and push down the chips. The 1's could also accomodate a 5.25" floppy drive, but it heated the thing up like a boiler, and usually it would fail in a year or less unless you added a second fan to it (not officially supported by CEMCORP / Unisys).
Also, the keyboard controller chips were socketed, and built in VERY cheap sockets - they'd crack from heat changes, so we usually desoldered the sockets and soldered the chips right onto the boards. The keys themselves also failed fairly commonly, and had to be replaced.
The other big problem was the trackballs... They were in their own sealed "cube" inside the chassis, and the dirt would just build up inside. They were a wheeled optical encoder type, so the dirt would eventually obsure the sensors and they'd stop. Fixable with some compressed air and a q-tip usually. It was connected with a ribon cable that was a pain in the ass to un-hook if I remember properly.
The install of QNX was also really buggy... little to no security, and there was a really cool trick I discovered once that was a huge security violation: after someone logged out of a station (it wouldn't work if the station was power cycled) and the login: prompt was sitting there, you could hold down the control key, and press the keys ASDFGHJKL one at a time, and then go to the next row with ZX and then C it would drop you back into the previous persons account, at the familliar % prompt! once word of that got around, the staff became VERY paranoid...
Good times.
-ben