ZevEisenberg - iGeek Blog

I have successfully arrived at my new dorm, ready for my second semester as a New Media major at the University of Maine at Orono (in case you missed something). I’m rooming with Jeremy Swist, whom I befriended last year. You can check out his blog if you’re into metal music. We just moved in to our room in Balentine Hall, across the quad from Penobscot, where we lived last year. Pictured is our new room. It’s a tone-mapped High Dynamic Range photo because I wanted to give you a feel for the view outside, and it was too bright to capture in a single exposure. Click on the picture for a larger view. Jeremy is going to post an image of his site on his blog (and incentive to visit), and once I get the rest of my stuff here and some posters up, I’ll post a picture of my side.

Read on for information on my new classes.

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As you may be aware, I listen to a lot of podcasts. At last count, I’m subscribed to 34 individual audio and video podcast feeds. One of my favorites is a podcast out of Germany called Tips from the Top Floor. Its host, Chris Marquardt, is on his second annual workshop tour of the US, and his last stop is a studio photography workshop in little ol’ Portland! unfortunately I’ve already used up my photography funds on the Machias photo class, and I’m also in the process of moving back up to school, otherwise I’d be taking the workshop.

A photo from the Portland meetup, and my new hat, after the break.

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Yesterday I participated in a photo walk put on by Photoshop User magazine. It was an international, two-hour casual photography event, taking place semi-simultaneously on six continents. 50 photographers in each city met up, took pictures on their own in small groups for two hours, and then met up at a restaurant to ogle each other’s photos and cameras. My experience was no different. Details and my shots after the break.

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One of my projects during my internship at Navigator Publishing is the Chuck’s Corner podcast. We’ve been making great progress, and we just released the second episode, which covers AIS (Automatic Identification System), a technology for adding meaningful labels to the blips on a radar screen. You can subscribe to the podcast directly in iTunes here.

We just got a new microphone here at the Navigator Publishing Podcasting Studio (i.e. a closet downstairs): Blue Microphones’ stunning Snowball. It sounds fantastic (as you can hear on the podcast).

Pictured above is the logo we designed for the podcast. I came up with the basic idea, and then Kim Norton (fellow Peaks Islander and a designer here) told me how to make it look presentable. Please give the podcast a listen, even if you’re not interested in the subject. Episodes are around ten minutes, and we’d really appreciate any feedback you have. Leave comments here if you’ve got them, and spread the word on the podcast!

As some of you may know, I’m a frequent listener to This Week in Photography, an excellent podcast about the current state of affairs in photography. They cover tips and tricks, photo gear, software, and great photographers. They have regular contests, and the current one is “Fireworks.” I decided I’d give it a shot (ha ha), and I took advantage of the 4th of July to grab a few shots. Cheryl was visiting for the weekend, and I somehow managed to convince her to help out. Here are two of the best shots. Please let me know in the comments which one you like better.

(the pictures are after the “read more” link if you’re viewing this on the main blog page)

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Hello, world!

After a long hiatus (I had a lot of nothing to catch up on this summer), I’m back in action with updates from the end of the semester (that was a while ago, wasn’t it?), Machias, my summer internship, and more.

I’m experimenting with a new blogging setup, markdown, so if you start reading early enough you’ll see this post come together bit by bit. If you want to be notified while it’s being written, sign up as a user to the blog (I’ve mentioned how to do that in previous posts).

Update: the post is now complete.

Oh, and I started blogging this from a moving Amtrak train on their new Wi-Fi setup.

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My friend Dean Putney of MustardHamsters.com is creating a giant digital photograph, and he’s streaming the process on his site. Please check it out, and please Digg it! Also, read back a few posts, because he built an awesome robot to take the pictures.

Update: Apparently Dean had some technical difficulties, and decided to stop for the day. He says he needs to rework some of the mechanics before trying again. I’ll keep you posted.

read more | digg story

Some of you may have wondered why it’s been so long since my last post. I assure you that I have a semi-good reason, and I’m sticking with it. Please excuse me if it’s a bit technical. If you prefer not to read a gripping story about sending my computer to Apple three times in as many weeks, click here to skip down to news on some projects and classes.

It all started over February break. I turned on my MacBook pro one day, and nothing showed up on the screen. I plugged it into an external monitor, and still got nothing. It wasn’t just the backlight, either: the entire screen was dead. Luckily, I had set up screen sharing, so I connected to it from my parents’ MacBooks and discovered that the computer thought it had an Intel GMA x3100 graphics processor, which, of course, it doesn’t. Apparently, having lost touch with the graphics card, it was drawing the graphics directly on the CPU (yay, Apple). I called Apple, they ran me through a few tests, and told me to send it in. I did, and a day before break was over it came back, motherboard replaced and problem solved. Everything was all well and good until I put it to sleep. When I tried to wake it up, it refused. The sleep light went from pulsing to solid, drive spun up, but the screen stayed dark. I used the power button to turn it off, and when I tried to boot it, the hard drive spun up, then abruptly stopped as though power had suddenly been cut.

I waited until I got back to school before calling Apple, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. Sure enough, if I put the computer to sleep for more than a few minutes, it would consistently and categorically refuse to wake up, and it usually took about 15 minutes and some combination of rebooting, resetting the Power Manager, and plugging and unplugging things until it worked. I called Apple, again they ran me through some steps to troubleshoot it, reinstalled the operating system, and then they told me to send it in again. I figured they must have just put in a faulty motherboard or something.

Between the time that I called them and when the box arrived, another strange thing happened: the computer lost touch with its power supply. The default behavior in this case is apparently the safe one, because the fans ramped up from their usual 2000 rpm to a whopping maximum of 6000 rpm. I was only able to determine the speed based upon familiarity with the sound, because I opened a program that measures fan speed and temperature, and it told me that the fans were spinning at 000 rpm (no typo, that’s three zeroes) to cool a CPU running at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s freezing for you smart metric people). In addition, the battery wasn’t detected even when it was in. Strangely, the power supply clunked back into normal operation a day later, at no external bidding.

The computer went away again, and I had to put all my projects on the network or on Cody’s computer so I could work on them. Luckily, I work at a place full of computers and networks, so it was marginally OK. The computer came back three days later, and the repair slip had this to say:

The following services and/or replacement parts were used to service your product:

• 630-7933 PCBA,BANDCAMP,M75
• 632-0507 FLEX ASSY,LIO/AUDIO,M75
• 607-0608 FAN ASSY,LT,M75
• 607-0609 FAN ASSY,RT,M75

I assume that FAN ASSY means they replaced the left and right fans, which had undergone considerable stress. This generation of MacBook Pro has had some audio jack issues, so I presume that LIO/AUDIO means they replaced the left input/output audio—in other words, the headphone and mic jacks. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what BANDCAMP is, besides a special place in Sidney, Maine. None of the Apple people to whom I subsequently spoke knew either, for subsequently speak with them I did.

You see, the problem wasn’t fixed. I don’t know how brain dead the AppleCare guys must have been that day, but the computer came back with exactly the same problem as before. I turned it on, put it to sleep, tried to wake it up ten minutes later, and it wouldn’t. Slightly peeved, I called Apple again. More tests, more explaining, they agreed to take it back yet again, upgraded to same-day air shipping because it was the second time on the same issue and third time recently. I had the computer back two days later, with a new battery, of all things, and the SAME DAMN PROBLEM. Again, I redundantly reiterate: how brain-dead do you have to be to replace the battery, which is clearly working fine, and then not notice that the problem is still there?

I called Apple yet again, seriously peeved at this point. The MacBook Pro specialist I speak to says that he’s fixed this problem for many people before, and keeps going on and on about fond conflicts. We resolve font conflicts, delete caches, remove startup items, and nothing helps. He finally gives in and says that Apple will replace my computer with an equivalent or newer model (yipee!). Unfortunately, computer replacements start with me shipping out my computer, and end with them shipping the new one, and I can’t afford to be without a computer for that long, especially this close to the end of the year with project due dates rolling in. So I’m going to wait until after my projects and papers are done before sending it in. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

I’m working on a really cool project for ASAP. We have a server for New Media, and all the New Media students have accounts on it. It gives them 1 GB of space for miscellaneous New Media projects. Together with Joe Fasulo, I’m building a system for new users to sign up. It consists of an account request form, a confirmation email, a database, a web admin interface, and a lot of scripts to glue it all together. Joe and I are collectively learning HTML, CSS, and PHP (all of which I already knew in some capacity), Perl, MySQL, shell, LDAP, and OS X Server. It’s been a great learning experience. Even better, I’m doing it as my final project for NMD 102 (Fundamentals of Information Systems), so I’m getting paid to do school work and getting credit for paid work! It only worked out that way because my teacher is my boss and he said I could.

I’ve also got two papers due in a few days (I’d better get started!). One is for NMD 102, due around the same time as the project. The topic is emerging technologies and their relationship to New Media, so I’m doing a paper on multi-touch, the technology that brought you the iPhone and Microsoft Surface. The second is for Honors. I’m doing a (possibly collaborative) paper on God’s committing of the seven deadly sins and disobeying of the ten commandments in the Bible. It started as a short writing assignment, and my preceptor suggested that I expand it into my term paper.

I just signed up for a summer photography class. It’s Photo Reporting and Storytelling, a three-credit New Media class taught by Bill Kuykendall, my Intro to New Media professor from last semester. You can see a picture of him in the photo gallery here. The class is May 18–30 at the University of Maine Machias campus. It’s a two-week intensive and immersive photography class, and we need a few more people to sign up to take it. If you know anyone who’d be interested, please have them contact me or the New Media department!

I’ve also compiled my wish-list of classes for next year, and if all goes well I’ll be taking them. You’ll find out more when I do, but here’s a preliminary list:

• HON 211—the continuation of my Honors class.
• HON 180—A Cultural Odyssey. I go to arts and culture events throughout the semester, then write a short response to each one. I’d be going to the events anyway, so I might as well get credit.
• COS 200—Intro to C++ Programming. A staple computer programming class. It should expand my understanding of how application development and organization works.
• NMD 205—Intro to Variable Media. This is one of those wishy-washily-named New Media classes that could be just about anything. You’ll hear more next year.
• NMD-245—Film Criticism and Theory. Those of you who were fellow Film Club members at Portland High would fit right in. Apparently, we watch movies once a week, discuss them, and write criticism.

I’ll try to make the posts a little more frequent, but as I come up on the end of the year I’m going to be quite busy with projects, work, and packing (awk!). Next post, I’ll tell you about the soft box I built for my camera flash, a photo shoot that I did, and anything else that comes to mind. And for those of you who didn’t see it, I now have a system for notifying you by email when I write a new post. All you have to do is sign up for an account (details in the previous post, and I won’t give out your information), and you’ll be notified whenever there’s a new one.

At last, I’m writing about my new classes. About time, you say. I agree.

CMJ 100: Introduction to Mass Communication This class could be really interesting, but unfortunately it’s a little dull and redundant. So far, everything we’ve covered has been stuff we talked about in more detail last semester in Intro to New Media. I sit in the front row like I always do, and the teacher paces back and forth so much that I can’t look at him because it makes me dizzy, so I end up looking at my computer the whole time.

HON 112: Civilizations Past, Present, and Future (or something) This is the continuation of the Honors class from last semester. We’re reading books with much more Christian themes (Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Matthew), as well as the Qur’an. We’ve had some great discussions, especially when everyone realized that the Qur’an is exactly the same as the Bible.

MAT 228: Calculus III Nothing in New Media requires me to take math, and my Gen. Ed. math requirement was already satisfied when I got to UMaine by the calculus I took at Portland High. I’m just taking Calc III to stay in shape. Last semester, I felt like something was missing because I wasn’t taking math. The material we’re covering in Calc III is challenging but incredibly fun: it’s basically everything I’ve done already, but backwards and in heels (actually that’s what they said about Ginger Rogers regarding Fred Astaire).

NMD 102: Fundamentals of Information Systems Pay no attention to the name of this class. It’s just there because it needed a name. The class is taught by Mike Scott, my boss at ASAP, and it’s split into two parts. We spend half the class reading and discussing the past, present, and future of human/computer interactions and New Media (whatever that is). Our main textbook is Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge. This fascinating tome (which you can read and download at the website) covers the history of modern computers and computer interfaces. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in such things. The other half of the class is spent learning three different programming environments: PHP (server-side web programming), Processing (a Java-based programming language), and Max/MSP (signal processing—lacks a good paradigm, but you can do anything with it). Last semester I took a class called Intro to Problem Solving Using Computer Programming, but it was a misnomer, as we didn’t really solve any real-world problems. This class, however, is all about solving problems. There’s very little actual instruction; instead, we’re supposed to work together as individuals to achieve such problems as “build a word game” or “make something interesting.” For example, I just finished creating a program that teaches you to type the whole alphabet with just five keys.

ART 110: 2D Design Finally, the art side of New Media! This is a traditional paint-and-paper art class. Our teacher, R. Ed Nadeau, is a painter who’s starting to learn digital tools, while I’m a digital tool artist learning to paint, so it’s a very symbiotic class. We’ve been working with blacks, whites, and grays to create a variety of images from value studies to copies of real works of art (see below). After Spring Break we’re starting on color.

Here’s a piece I did in Art 110. The small image at left (click for full size) is a Gerhard Richter painting called Lesende (Reader or Reading—couldn’t find an accurate translation). The assignment was to pick an artist out of a hat, find a book on said artist at the library, write a one-page bio on him, find a color painting we liked, sketch the painting in pencil, and then recreate it in black, white, and gray. The image at right (click for full size) was my offering for the assignment.

New Servers Some exciting new developments have come up at ASAP. Along with my high school buddy (that’s buddy from high school, not to be confused with school buddy who is high) Joe Fasulo, I’m administering five Apple XServes at ASAP, including the ones that house all the New Media files. We’re in the process of upgrading them to Leopard (Mac OS 10.5) and setting up podcasting, blogging, and wikis for use within New Media. I was brought in as a Mac person, but I didn’t know anything about server administration, so it’s been a tremendous learning opportunity for me.

Spring Break I might as well mention my Spring break now, so that when I get back to school I’ll be caught up. It’s fairly uneventful and relaxing, with one major exception: I traveled with the Portland High School drama club to the regional one-act festival. As you may recall, I was a member of the drama club last year and co-directed our one-act, a charming John Cariani play called Almost, Maine. We surprised ourselves to no end last year by placing second. This year went pretty much the same, with three important exceptions. 1) As a graduate, I wasn’t allowed to actually help at all. I was stuck sitting around catching up on old times, eating candy, taking pictures, knitting, and watching plays. Ouch. 2) Our play was 12.5 minutes long (15 with laughs). This was a stark contrast to most of the other plays, which often just missed the 40 minute time limit. 3) we won. That’s right, for the first time ever, Portland High School took first place at the regional one-act festival with the short play/long scene Small World, and will be performing it again in the state competition in Camden Hills in two weeks. You will have two opportunities to see the winning scene and two more shorts in the intervening time, and as soon as Nathaniel reads this post he will add those dates to the comments.

And finally, my family welcomes my paternal grandmother, Mickie, who just moved from Atlanta to Portland. Soon I’ll be teaching her to read this blog, so she can speak for herself.

Oh, and one more thing: I know lots of you are using RSS to keep up with the blog, but I’ve just added the option to subscribe by email, so you’ll be notified when I make a post. To enable it, you first need to sign up for an account on my blog. Here’s how:

1. Click the Sign Up link on the right hand side of the post (if you don’t see it, go to www.ZevEisenberg.com/blog and do it).
2. Enter a username and email address. You will receive a confirmation email with a new password. Use that password to log in, and you can edit your personal options and change your password from there. Please write down your new password, as I can’t look it up for you.
3. Once you’ve created an account, you should receive an email every time I make a new post (and you can unsubscribe at any time (I think)).
4. That’s it! If you have any questions, post them in the comments or contact me.

By popular request, I’m going to stop ignoring the blog and actually write something.

Much of my Christmas break (gee, that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?) was spent filming with my good friend Mitchell Murdock, a senior at Portland High School this year. I actually spent the last two weeks or so of my vacation at Portland High, usually for the equivalent of a school day.

Over those two weeks I was finally able to finish something started about two years ago: Mitchell’s ambitious, epic, two-hour film, Monument. Riding the coattails of his wildly successful graphic novel Hero Guy from a few years ago, Monument promises to be a thrilling tale of action, adventure, comedy, and quite possibly the biggest cast ever in a film. I believe that the list of major roles has been expanded to cover four major land masses. The film features Aaron Peisner and Mitchell himself, and the cast includes just about all of Portland High School (students and teachers), as well as real actors such as Josh Mostel (Zero’s son—Mitchell vacations next door to him) and my dad.

I play Harold Kaufman, and that’s about all I know about my character. We started filming near Mitchell’s house two summers ago. I was wearing a blue plaid-ish shirt, tan trousers, L. L. Bean hiking sneakers, a bluetooth headset, and a goatee. Because that’s what I happened to be wearing, I kept those clothes and that haircut pretty much intact for the entire two years.

The first scene we filmed took place near the Peaks Island School, and it began with me running from somewhere and diving behind a bush for cover (mind you, this was filmed during the summer). About a month ago, I filmed the beginning of that scene. A year and a half later, in the middle of winter, surrounded by deep snow, Mitchell sent me out with my own camera to get some shots of me running from the ferry to that earlier scene. For the moment we shall ignore continuity and accept the discontinuous, cyclical nature of time.

Over the course of filming, I juggled a diabolo, solved a Rubik’s Cube, tied someone to a chair, pretended to be chased all over Portland, and got very, very cold.

The film is premiering at the Portland Public Library on Thursday, February 21st at 6:00 PM. Unfortunately, I can’t attend because I’m at school, but I urge everyone in the area to check it out and then post a review here (Mitchell reads the blog). At some point I expect that I’ll be doing a website for the movie. In fact, right now I need to stop blogging so that I can remotely record some last-minute (and I do mean last minute) voiceovers for a scene for Mitchell. Ain’t technology something?

Coming up next: I’m nearly caught up to events that are actually happening now!