howie’s halfpipe

Just hired series one of Water rats, its good stuff.

I have been watching a lot of slight of hand magic on the internet lately. I love it, it keeps me entertained for ages.
tonight i thought i would give it a go myself. And i must say i did a pretty good job.
I was scooping out my ice cream for dessert and, well lets face it scopping ice cream isnt normally all that entertaining. So i set out to make my ice cream disappear. I knocked the bowl on to the floor, smashed it and abra kadabra my ice cream was gone infact so was the bowl, i turned it into 2 small bowls.

these guys do a pretty good job too.

I had a post up yestersday with a top gear video about the worlds smalles production car, this post broke my blog so i had to take it down but here is a link to the video if you didint get to watch it

http://youtube.com/watch?v=patvUFyIa1I

Now i just watched all of this years tropfest finalists. I really enjoy tropfest and short films, I havent been to tropfest itself for a few years but i do enjoy the free dvd from the paper.

Anyway thought i would share my thoughts on this years films.

The best film for me was ‘Made in Australia’, it was clever and full of little subtle references to things only aussies would pick up, but the stand out for me was the look of this film, i really enjoyed all the shots and editing and colours, lovely little film.

‘White line’ was another little ripper, it was a bit preidctable but i dont think the director was trying to avoid that, it was a great spoof and well made with cool shots and editing.

The crappest film for me is a toss up between ‘Beggers Relief’ and ‘fault’

you should watch the dvd if you got th paper or borrow it from someone who did.

Today was a day of geekness and square eyes.

After the first half of the day at work I then headed into the city to go to ENTECH, its an entertainment technology expo thingy  Itss cool, so much lights and speakers and mixers and projectors and staging and rigging and all that cool stuff. I had fun. Then I headed back to the office in hornsby and came home with wife.

Monday nights is quality tv night. Top gear, and good News Week. Both of which were fantastic. The love birds came and watched them too.

now its time for bed and hopefuly some sleep. took me 4 hours to get to sleep last night.

this evening wife and i went to the taping of the first new ‘Good News Week’ shows.

The ticket info said to be there at 5:30pm at the ABC studios in Sydney.
From experience of watching show tapings we knew it would be best to get there earlier.

We go to the ABC at 4:30 and went in to the main foyer. We sat down on some couches and commented on how empty the place was. After about 30mins of sitting we realised that we must have somehow slipped in at just the right time casue the rest of the audience members where lining up outside the building and the doors were locked. Every now and then a security man would walk past us but say nothing. At 5:30 the crowd outside was quite big and inside they had set up the holding pen for the audience around the couch that jenny and i were sitting on.
Eventually a man with a swanky pass asked if we were there for GNE, we said yes and he walked off. We got to sign our names off while everyone else was still locked outside. It meant that when they opened the doors to the building we were already inside and not just that but we were at the very front of the line to go into the studio. There was a lot of waiting infact we didnt all get ushered into the studio until 6:30pm.

As we were the first in we picked some primes seats in the front row right in the middle. A camera lady told me she might sit on my feet every now and then and an explosivs man told us there was a cannon beside us that was going to fire paper into the air and ver quite loud. It was a damn cool seat.

I love watching television being made. I guess thats why I studied TV production for 2 years, every time i’m in a studio i want to be a cameraman.

GNW was really good, Paul was funny, mikey was funny and all the guests were funny except pat cash he was a little quiet.
I think good news week will be much better this time around compared with its last stink on 10.
There was however some shameless cross promotion with the show ’supernatural’ which was a bit blerk….

It took 3 hours to tape the 1 hour show and was a pleasure to watch.

The guests are

Mikey Robins
Cal Wilson
Pat Cash

Claire Hooper
Frank Woodley
Craig Reucassel

9pm monday night, channel 10. I feel like a promo!

You may even see my beautiful face on camera!!!

What you should buy me for christmas:

but if you think spending $8990 is the cheapscate option then buy me this:

Its only $1000 more!!!

Oh and this

This morning wife and I went and saw death at a funeral. it was quite funny.

5 / 7

then this afternoon / night I was at impact07 a dance thingy put on by some buddies, I was a cameraman for a 3 camera live mix. It was a bit of fuin although my camera was in a crap spot casue at the last minute i had to moce becasue the OH&S nazi came and shafted me. which was  a poo casue all the cables had been taped down and i couldnt really move far. so now i have a sore back. Not really sure if the mix will be good, have to ask tom he was mixing.

now i’m tired.

thanks bowen

So damn funny!

Kind of like this, but with better asthetics

Today wife and I finished off season 3 of ‘Las Vegas’.

Season 4 only just finished on TV in the US so it will be a bit of wait til i can get stuck into season 4.

what series can i get addicted to in the meantime?

finally after months and months drowning in a deep emotional pool of dispair, I can finally find out what happens in series 3 of ‘Las Vegas’.

I finished series 1 and 2 ages ago and no video shops seemed to care about getting series 3 on dvd. In the shops its $64 so i’m not going to buy it.

BLockbuster Pennant Hills has come to the rescue, and now i’ve watched 8 episodes in the last 2 days. 16 episodes to go!

well no need to fear, i have rectified my home theatre dilema.

Once again i’m watching crisp clear picture through my over priced HDMI cable.

i just needed to fiddle with the output settings in the set top box, some how the settings got reset and it was only outputting through composite outputs or s-video. i’m so clever i fixed it i fixed it i fixed it.

I love having a HD projector with my HD digital TV reciver.

But tonight i’m angry. I’m watching my HD projector, but i’m only using a S-Video cable betwwen the reciever and the projector. Normally they are connected with an HDMI cable, but either the HDMI output on the reciever or the HDMI input on the projector is broken. SO damn anoying, and i have no way of checking whihc one has gone to the dogs, i’m hoping its the reciever casue i can live without tv while its off getting repaired but if its the projector i’ll be upset, panasonic outsources all their repairs to these places that take so damn long to fix stuff.

The good thing is that all our gear is still under warranty.

But you dont understand how hard it is for me to watch HD tv through a S-video cable.

Todayis a saturdayand i had to get upat 4:49am how friggenpainful.

Was helping the breathru artz peoples on their film shoot today,I enjoyed the day it was hot in the sunbut it was good to be involved in film making again. I was only camera assistant but still fun, i think Tom really enjoys making me do stuff that is below him in the film making food chain. But today i didnt mind, i’m not even going to whinge about it after this post.

We were filming in a street in newington, man this is an ugly sterile suburb.

now i’m at the commy house in newtown.

rigged up the old VHS player to the home theatre set up tonight.

Boy oh boy does VHS look good when its projected this big.

We are watching ‘Good News Week, Unseen and Obscene” which is damn funny.