Archives for category: family

Soccer Girl and DSLR Viewfinder Loupes

August 12, 2010 //

Very proud of the way my daughter is playing soccer these days. No lack of effort for sure. I shot a couple of clips the other night with my Canon 7D using my 75-300 lens and edited them up quickly using Blender 2.5. The original was shot at 1280x720 at 60fps in manual mode with an aperture setting of 1/60 (thanks to Troy for that bit of advice) and then slowed down to 24fps on output from Blender.

I’m really thinking about getting a viewfinder loupe for my camera. I always forget my reading glasses when shooting and even with that nice 3” LCD screen, focus is clearly guesswork. It wasn’t too bad on most of these shots, but it can be frustrating. I’ve been thinking about the Zacuto Z-Finder, Lcdvf or Hoodman products to help solve this problem (note: Hoodman’s site is well.. extremely jarring in terms of design. Think Geocities meets Schoolbus. You’ve been warned. ).

If anybody has experience with these things and how they perform, let me know.

No Lack of Hustle from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Categories blender, family, life, photography, technology, video, web

Hand drawn outline font… or true love.

December 29, 2009 //

Proof that if you spend your idle time sketching typefaces and logo wordmarks on enough scrap paper and notebooks, and if you leave enough notepads and pens lying around, there is a small chance that things will rub off.

We’ve had a great holiday season so far. Hopefully everyone else has too.

ps. Criticize the lettering forms if you must. But realize that as a father I cannot be deemed anything remotely close to unbiased here. Every counter, ascender, descender, and tail is absolutely positively perfect!

Categories design, family, graphics, life

Blender Editing Project – Park Visit

August 22, 2009 //

Recently I’ve been trying to expand my limits with Blender, video editing and more fluffy things like creative projects and how to drive them. While I haven’t produced a whole hell of a lot, I am learning at a good clip. It sure doesn’t hurt to have someone who will push you and force you to think in alternate directions. Find yourself one of those if you can, and thank him profusely.

Anyways, we’ve been chatting about editing and I was desperate to stop talking and start doing. Using what might be called Shakey-McShakerton handheld video I shot the other day, I spent approximately 4 hours editing it down to a 3 minute music video sort of thing. There’s no overarching purpose to it, no message per se (other than summer fun I guess), but on the way I did manage to hone certain skills I already knew (like cutting, ipo curves etc.), and learn some new useful things along the way like cutting to music, using markers, and using a few new keyboard shortcuts.

Clearly it’s amateur. Hardly better than a typical home movie. But it took effort and I learned a few things. A ramp to bigger, better and hopefully more interesting things:

Aurora Town Park - August 2009 from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Categories blender, family, video

Things to Do during a Power Outage. No, not that…

August 11, 2009 //

Last night we had a mean set of thunderstorms roll through our area - the worst we’ve seen in quite a while.

In the midst of trying to get my daughter to settle down (blackouts are tremendous fun don’tcha know), I decided to dust off the tripod and have a little bit of fun. We did some quick and dirty light-writing with our flashlight, something I’ve seen many times, but never tried. Needless to say we did not reach perfection. With a 25sec shutter speed and a slightly flexible floor, you ain’t gonna cut yourself on the sharpness of those photos. But hey, it was fun, which is the point no?

I also got a nice photo of my daughter reading by lantern light. If you look closely to her right you’ll find Jessie, our Westie. At over 15 years old, he’s mostly deaf and pretty tired these days. He used to freak out at the slightly rumble, but slept quite soundly through the whole thing.

Categories family, life, photography

Let’s ban plastic – not shopping bags, but sharpeners

February 27, 2009 //

plastic_v_metal

In the name of all that is good, can we just ban plastic-bodied pencil sharpeners? Please?

My daughter loves to draw. I have purchased several little sketchbooks and a multitude of pencils and pencil crayons to help feed her creative wants. Of course she also has the obligatory pencil case and a wide assortment of little plastic bodied pencil sharpeners. They come in loot bags, they find their way home from friends, they somehow magically appear in various places at various times. However I don’t think I have purchased a single one of them directly out of my own pocket. Why? Because I hate them.

Yes, hate is a strong word. The darn things are so colourful, they’re practical in that most of them provide a place for all those pencil shavings to go (although invariably they end up on the floor anyway when little one wants to empty them out). But still I hate them because they just don’t work.

Her own use of them always ends in frustration. She holds up the sharpener and the rounded, flattened or plain broken pencil crayon silently demanding some assistance. As the father-hero figure of course I try. I hold the pencil as squarely in that hole as humanly possible and slowly turn it. But it hardly ever ends well. The lead or pencil crayon core breaks off just inside the tapered wood end of the pencil or worse yet, a small piece of the lead gets stuck in the end of the sharpener itself.

If you’ve done this, don’t put it down to your own ineptitude. Yes, you were holding the pencil arrow straight. Yes, you were rotating it at a smooth enough cadence. Quit blaming yourself. The problem is not you.

I making a vow to fall off my wallet and buy ten metal-bodied sharpeners (maybe even Staedtler’s if I’m in an overly generous mood). I will sprinkle them throughout the house, and maybe keep two in the car (she’s got a sketchbook and pencil that stays in the car).

There’s even a good looking twin sharpener with a place to store and subsequently spill the shavings. It’s a Staedtler, so I’m assuming there are metal bodied sharpeners within it.

So let’s end the frustration and ban the plastic bodied sharpener once and for all. Let’s make the move to metal.

And listen, don’t even get me started on cheap pencil crayons…

Categories drawing, family, humour

Bed jumping.. slow-mo now included

February 24, 2009 //

Thanks to heathenx for pointing out that I could achieve slow motion on a single clip by adding a speed generator effect to it, setting an IPO curve for the speed gen effect and making sure the ‘use ipo as velocity’ button was enabled. It all sounds so logical to me now, but I was so befuddled and frustrated last night trying to achieve it. Isn’t that always the way? Things look impossible, and then you find out they’re much easier than you thought. That concept seems to pervade my life.

Anyway, I’ve replaced the original video with this one, slow-mo effect included. Thanks heathenx, you’re a smart guy.. despite what everyone says.

Bed Jumping - revamped from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Categories blender, family

More Blender thoughts and Bed Jumping

February 22, 2009 //

I’ve been battling what I’m pretty sure is strep throat for a day and a half now. Unfortunately a combination of extremely crappy sleep and my poor excuse for a desk chair have conspired to give me the gift of a major back ache at the same time. Oh joy.

Tonight I turned to Blender for a little distraction (do you know I have been able to go about 15 full minutes with nary a painful swallow?). One of the first things Troy Sobotka suggested to me was having a screencast to show how to set up the Blender video sequencer for more efficient editing, and in the process give people some insight into the customizability and power of the Blender interface. The main problem with that is I am not all that familiar with the Blender interface. So I’m trying to use it in more little projects and get accustomed to it.

I did manage to get it laid out somewhat like Troy had suggested to me, with the most frequently used tools in places that make sense:

I’m thinking that the next screencast I do will show the novice Blender user how to go from the default Blender Video Sequencer window layout into something like I’ve shown in the screenshot.

I’ve also posted up another little diddy using footage that I shot with my Flip camera on a tripod (although being a complete novice, I moved the tripod slightly during the filming duhhh). The one thing I was trying a few times to get right was applying slow motion to a single clip. I used this wiki page as a reference for achieving that effect, but I still kept having problems getting things to pick up full speed at the end of that segment. More to learn I guess… Anyway, here’s what I came up with very quickly. I didn’t include the slo-mo clip, I just wasn’t happy with it. It’s a short little flippy video thing. The sort of thing I wanted a video editor on Linux to do quickly for me. Blender is making me so happy these days. Now if it could only cure strep throat and massage my back.

Update: Video now revised to show one segment in slo-mo. Thanks heathenx!

Bed Jumping - revamped from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Categories blender, family, linux, technology, web

What Xmas and a reasonably fast (and cheap) prime lens will get you…

January 1, 2009 //

The holiday season always seems to give me the much needed opportunity to take a lot of photographs. Mostly they’re snapshots, but now and again you get something impressive.

Once again I implore any DSLR owners to go out and purchase a fixed length, fast 50mm lens. I bought a 50mm f1.8 lens for my Canon 350D a while back and it almost always brings with it some impressive shots. Just set it to Aperture priority and use the widest aperture you have. This lens cost me just over 100 bucks (brand new) and I know Nikon produces a similar cheap but very useful fast prime lens too.

For those who don’t know, a wide aperture can give you a nice shallow depth of field. This is nice for portraits when you want the subject in focus, but the background nicely blurred. By chance I got one of my niece with some nice blurring of the Christmas tree lights (the fancy term for this blur is ‘bokeh’ btw). She’s eating jelly beans if you were wondering. I really liked this shot and thought it was worthy of a post here.

Which reminds me how little I post about photography any more. In fact I don’t do nearly as much photography as I used to. I gotta get back in the habit. There’s a resolution for me I guess. Anyway, here’s the shot:

Categories family, photography

Astronomy trumps Sharks and Dinosaurs

November 25, 2008 //

This one’s just for posterity. A week or so ago, my 6 year old daughter completed her first ever school project. Her subject of choice was the origin of the universe. Needless to say there was not one right answer, but she’s darn interested in explaining to me (and anyone within earshot) that our sun is one of billions of other stars, and that we live in the Milky Way galaxy. Sadly, that was news to my Mom.

Personally I spent my elementary years doing projects on basically two things: sharks and dinosaurs. But hey, astronomy is a-ok with me too.

Categories family, life

I Might Even Be A Rockstar

November 7, 2008 //

Someone decided on Sharpay / Hannah Montana for this past Halloween. I thought I’d spruce up the original pic using.. you guessed it.. Inkscape.

I dare not show her the final product or she’ll be wanting to dress like that every day!

Here’s what I started with:

Categories family, graphics, humour, inkscape, life