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

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 ;)

Interests Meme - take 2

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