I am attempting to cram in as much relaxation as possible into the final eighth or so of the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. Which isn’t to say it’s been overwhelmingly busy, but I’ve been out for a lot of it, and it’s nice to chill at home and take some time to do things like update this journal.
A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to do something fairly unique by guest-filming in Night Zero, which is a photography-based comic book about the zombie post-apocalypse. The shoot took place at an outdoor warehouse facility full of shipping containers… that alone was kind of cool, getting a glimpse inside Seattle’s large industrial zone. It was raining hard and extremely cold, which made for a very physically uncomfortable experience, but it was a lot of fun in spite of that and led to some terrific-looking shots.
I have no idea when the episode is coming out on their website, but we’ve been sent some early returns that we have been given permission to share, and they are in my gallery:
They are shot using a technique called HDR, and I think the photos look pretty awesome. My character is named Hoolie, a low-level grunt for an organization that collects bounties on zombie-heads, and (sadly) does not live past the episode in which he is introduced. I might have an invitation forthcoming to come back to shoot the cover (!) though, so that would be exciting.
My new job is going well. I didn’t have to travel much at first but last week I had to spend a couple of days out in Portland, and later this week I will be flying to San Jose again. I take the train when I go to Portland and it’s quite comfortable for about 3.5 hours, although I expect in the future I will pay the extra $14 or so for business class seating on the Cascades train, as you really take your chances with the quality of seating that you’ll get. I also need to make sure to take the Cascades train and not the Coast Starlight whenever possible… the Cascades is a shorter trip and each row of seats has an electrical outlet you can plug your toys into. The Coast Starlight is a double-decker which is kind of neat, but there’s no extra outlet so it’s easier to get bored, especially considering the trip takes an extra hour.
I also went a little crazy on my way to the station because it was my first time staying overnight in Portland, and there is no long-term parking to be had anywhere near the Seattle train station. That, to me, defies all kinds of logic and business sense, and I spent the trip quite anxious my car would be towed from the lot I parked in by the time I returned. I was relieved when it wasn’t, although the overage fee was hefty.
I’ve never been much of a Black Friday shopper, but I did take the opportunity to invest in a couple of ReadyNAS Duo units: one for myself, and one for my parents back in Toronto (whenever I can get it to them). I’ve been a fan of network-attached storage for quite a while, because you can access your stuff from any computer on your network and even across the Internet if you’re clever. These devices are the next step up, though, because they actually permit access and modifications to the software running on-board of them so you can have your device do much more sophisticated and even more clever things, like host web pages and download files for you from the Internet while your computer is off. My ultimate plan is to have my unit at home and the other running at my parents’ place, and have mine periodically back itself up to theirs over the Internet such that if there were ever to be anything catastrophic at my place there would be backups readily available 2000 miles away.
Sometimes it’s nice to be living in the future!
Dan.
