teyla | Interests Meme

tli wanted to know what I had to say about:

Icons:

Interests:

horror
metallica
vidding

- Toilet Icon:
This is Calvin. From the comic series Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Waterson. Calvin is this insane, sociopathic six-year-old monster who lives completely in his own world. He has a stuffed tiger, Hobbes, who is his trusty companion. Together they go on countless adventures which usually involve breaking things, annoying adults, and teasing the girl from next door, Susie. I'm terrible at describing things so they sound interesting, so if you don't know Calvin and Hobbes, then check ::this:: out, or, even better, go buy one of the books, because they're hilarous.

- Wilson's ~~straight~~:
Heh. I made this after watching "Act your Age". House: "Just be straight." - Wilson: "I don't know what that is." I don't even know where I saw that caption first. I didn't come up with it myself, anyway. But I do like the icon ;).

- The Turtle:
This I made after watching "Fetal Position". I didn't particularly enjoy that episode, but when House made that crack about his uncle being a giant turtle, I almost pissed my pants. I think it's my favorite funny line from the whole show.

- Horror:
Don't ask me why I enjoy horror. I always have. As a kid, my favorite author was Roald Dahl, then I switched to Stephen King when I was 14. I also like Kafka, Poe and Wells. (There are more, can't think of them right now - oh, right. I went through a Lovecraft phase at some point). I've always been intrigued by how that genre developed, and how many sub-genres it sprouted (science fiction and fantasy, to name two). I like reading about the supernatural, especially when the supernatural infiltrates everyday life (like Stephen King likes to write about it ;) ). I enjoy horror movies; the bad ones because usually they're hilarious to watch, and the good ones because - well, because they're good. I can't really give you a reason. It's just one of my favorite genres :).

- Metallica:
I saw them live about a year ago, and ever since, I'm hooked. Their songs are just so addictive! The early stuff is pretty bad, especially since Hetfield couldn't sing for shit when he started out. But he worked on his singing, and the rest of the band worked on their technique, and by now, they're making songs like "Shoot me again" and "Some Kind of Monster" that just blow me away (yeah, I liked St. Anger. I know, I'm pretty alone with my opinion on that, but I think it's one of their best albums). I like the work they do with the rhythms section (bass and drums), and I like that they also do melodic stuff, but not solely (Hammerfall, for example, is way too melodic, and thus melodramatic and borderline ridiculous - Korn, on the other hand, has almost no melodics in their songs, which gives me a headache after one album. And they're a completely different genre, but I'll just ignore that fact for now ;) ).
I also like Metallica's lyrics - many of them, anyways.

- Vidding:
Ah. Vidding. Love/hate ;). Music inspires me, which is why I have written a few songfics (I admit it. Go on and burn me. I enjoyed writing them ;) ). When I listen to a song often enough, I usually start to associate it with scenes or characters from a show - a phenomenon which is more commonly known as vid bunny ;). I have tons and tons of vid bunnies. However, the process of actually doing the vidding irks me. I hate working with programs that either die on you every other second (Movie Maker), or are so sophisticated that you have to use up all your HD space only to save the unencoded clips which are the only ones the program will work with (Sony Vegas), or have some other annoying habit. Word is safe, Word always does what I want. Sony Vegas usually doesn't ;).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I like your explanations and I like Calvin and Hobbes. It was over years a strip in the newspaper. I agree with you about metallica and in the moment I enjoy the silence. Boss left the office!!!! Whoa my boss is .... a pest today, okay most of the time he is but today it´s horrible. It´s one week before the next session and now the madness goes harder, stronger, wilder, bigger and I´m in the middle of the madness. Great. But it´s nice to read something like your entry. I do it all the time (reading something else as the work-stuff) between the madness-seizures from everyone here at the floor. I hope the one cell in my head will still be healthy, if that thing is still healthy. I don´t know! MADNESS!!! All over all madness. I´ll better get my stuff and go home. Maybe there is less madness and I can do my work a little faster. Oh, I hear him. He comes back. I´ll better leave this place.

I'm sorry I've so completely ignored the comments to this post... I don't even have a real excuse. Sorry!

Since you only have three user pics, I'm picking those three ;). Interests: House/Chase, Wilson/Chase, Robert Sean Leonard

I hope the madness has worn off a little by now! Tell your boss to leave you alone... reading LJ is good for the soul, and he should want his employees to be relaxed and well-adjusted! ;)

Cool. Knew about Calvin and Hobbes, just never made the connection between it and your icon for some reason!

Vidding. Love/hate ;).
Couldn't have put it better myself. I'm listening to the angsty Wilson song at the moment, and it's bugging me that I could probably put the vid together in a few hours if it weren't for WMM's tendency to... crash. Crash and burn and take my laptop down with it... Don't get me wrong, I love Pinnacle, but I'd love it so much more if it accepted clips at 23fps.

Here's a stupid question for you :)

It occurs to me, reading what you've written, that I have no idea how many fps the AVIs I'm using with Ulead are. I just download them and then import them into Ulead.

Should I be looking for something? Or is it not an issue with AVIs? I know that when I come to save I'm given a number of options re: frame rates for saving to .wmv.

The reason I'm wondering this is that on a couple of occasions the AVIs have seemed a little jumpy in Ulead, and I wondered whether some of them were of higher quality than others.

Here's a stupid question
Not stupid at all :) I've only been figuring these things out since Christmas, the last couple of weeks especially.

I've found that as a rule, all ripped American TV episodes that are AVIs are 23fps. Also as a rule, anything ripped either from TV or DVD in the UK is 25fps. The frame rate is purely a quality thing as far as I can tell (and as far as I can tell, there's little difference between either). If you right click a file, go to 'Properties' and then to the 'Advanced' tab, it should tell you near the bottom of the pop-up window what the frame rate of the clip is.

Since you can use your downloaded episodes in Ulead, I can only assume that Ulead makes no distinction between 23 and 25fps (or any other fps, for that matter). Pinnacle, on the other hand, is absolutely fine with the 25fps of my ripped DVD episodes/movies, but pops up a warning when I try to import episodes that I've downloaded (eg, S3 of House or SGA), because it can't (won't? who knows!) handle the different frame rates (for AVIs at least. It won't import Windows Media items, so I have no idea if it applies to those/any other formats as well). WMM ~~the little slut of a program that it is~~ takes any fps under the sun, but in return... yeah ;)

on a couple of occasions the AVIs have seemed a little jumpy in Ulead
Short of actually taking a look for myself, or looking at Ulead's specs in great depth, I'd have to stay firmly on the fence and say it could be an fps issue, or it could be something else altogether. I recall you saying something before about ripping clips from S2 DVDs, so if you've got a mix of rips and downloads in there and the finished vid is okay, then I can't see the fps thing being a problem for you :)

If this helps you in any way at all, then yay, if not then just ignore it as the witterings of my over-caffeinated state of mind ;)

Now that's enormously helpful! Thank you very much for explaining :) I'm relieved to hear that there are fps in the things I'm d/loading. I'm aware that I've only picked up just the tiniest little bit of info about vidding -- just the bare essentials of what I need to make one -- and sometimes the depth of my ignorance feels almost overwhelming :)

Very cool! I've just been into Explorer and discovered, in a/c with your instructions, that the House Training I d/loaded is indeed 23 fps. Thank you :)

Hmmm... a further discovery is that a bit I clipped out of Act your Age to make an animated icon has been saved by Ulead as 30 fps, even though the original AVI is 23 fps. I saved it as a very small ANI. Perhaps there are settings in Ulead about this. I'll have a look over the weekend.

WMM sounds like a real pain in the bum. I only opened it briefly, because since daasgrrl suggested Ulead I started using that from the start and have stayed with it. Actually, my free trial has only a couple of days to run, so I'll buy it this weekend.

Thanks again for that - it was very helpful indeed :)

saved by Ulead as 30 fps, even though the original AVI is 23 fps
WMM is the same. I've made music videos in the past using AVI eps at 23fps, but the finished WMV has always been 25fps. The only difference is a tiny degradation of quality, but in the case of your animated icons, because they're so much smaller, there would be little to no visible difference between the AVI clip and how it looks embedded into the icon at 30fps.

WMM sounds like a real pain in the bum
It is the bane of my fannish life, but works wonders as an anger management tool ;)

Finally getting around to answer this :).

but I'd love it so much more if it accepted clips at 23fps
*nods* I'd have a lot more love for Vegas if it accepted Xvid and DivX, too. Thing is, it did accept .divx files for a few weeks when I first installed it. Then I changed something about my codec configuration, and... poof, nothing but unencoded avi's anymore.

When I listen to a song often enough, I usually start to associate it with scenes or characters from a show
hehe, I know what that's like. Now multiply this by a thousand and toss in everyday-situations and you know what my life is like. Everything I see, hear, smell etc. evokes (is that the right word?) some kind of scene/phrase/sound I heard/saw/read somewhere.

I wish I could make vids... or better not, I've got to start studying for my exams.... pppfffffff

Making vids isn't all that hard. It's just terribly annoying to work out how to make the vidding progs do what you want.

Heh, yeah, my mind constantly associates random stuff with fandom stuff, too. Sometimes it's embarrassing, because you see something, it makes you think of something, and all you can do is giggle hysterically, but you can't explain what's so funny, because everybody would just look at you like you've lost it and not understand ^^.

associates random stuff with fandom stuff
ohhh that bit sounds good, almost poetic! I love English... :-)

Lol, yeah, English = best language ever. I need an English-worship icon. *ponders*

I need an English-worship icon. *ponders*
wonderful idea! I might make one tonight and if I manage to get internet at home (see my new whining-post) I'll post it tomorrow!

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