God bless Alabama.

It looks like my ring finger, middle finger and pointer.

On my right hand, I type with my Thumb, my pointer and my middle finger. I am noticing that I use my pinky on my left almost exclusively for holding the shift key and on my right hand I use my ring finger for holding down delete, and my pinky for pressing return.

So, really it’s only my left thumb that doesn’t get any work. It just hovers there.

Still, this isn’t quite how they taught me touch typing in high school.

Studio Neat has a short little video that demos the minimal (but effective) feature set and controls. I watched it, clipped it into my Glif, and gave it a go. The following little video (85 frames in total) took less than ten minutes to make and upload to YouTube.

Frames allows you to set the focal point for the entire video before you take a single frame of video. This prevents your camera from changing focus from frame to frame. It also has an “Onion Skin” mode, which let’s you see a ghost image of the previous frame over the frame that you are currently setting up. You can save your work, take a look at it, adjust your frame rate and come back to continue working on it later. Then you can export to your iPhone’s camera roll and upload it to YouTube. All without leaving your iPhone.

Overall, I found Frames really easy to use. It’s simple and uncluttered, but get’s the job done really well. You can tell that time and love was put into the app, and it’s quite polished. Lot’s of fun!

Anyway, big news is that Neil Hope, the actor who portrayed Wheels on Degrassi (one third of the Zit Remedy) died in 2007. His death isn’t so much the news, but that the family kept their personal loss to themselves until this time. Good for them. Unlike the death of Whitney Huston this week which is all over the place and probably makes things all the more tough for the grieving family and friends, Neil Hope’s family were able to grieve in peace. Now, many years later, the family can share the news and fans know.

So, here’s a link to Neil’s obituary on CBC.ca and a video news segment for the full story.

And here’s Neil Hope as Wheels with Joey and Snake on Degrassi…

Heartbreaking, I know. First off, do you really think they could capture those sounds with those microphones as they passed them? At best, the sounds was beside the mics, at worst, it was behind them. And I don’t care how much furry stuff you’ve got on them, there’s going to be a lot of wind noise at that speed.

Then there was the whole, smacking the pianos thing. No way you’re going to hit the right keys, even if you’ve got the pianos height adjusted. There’s just to much variance in driving and bouncing around. And strumming the guitars at that speed. You’re going to be ripping strings off, that’s what you’re going to be doing. It was nice of them to throw in some faked missed notes and stuff though. I could go on, about other instruments, things that break, vocals, impossible camera shots, etc. But I won’t.

Instead, I’ll humbly admit that I was wrong. This was another legitimate (and brilliant) OK Go performance, and here’s how it was done. For those who don’t want to read the whole article, the video was edited, the sound was massaged (like when a piano or guitar was missed,) and they lip-synched it. But that’s okay.

They drove the course, they modified the car, they smacked keys, strings, bottles, tin and pulled 180′s to play the music with the car. Then like any recording, they fixed things up in the mix. Totally legitimate.

And for good measure, the making-of video.

Now, is it just me, or do the actors playing those two guys (the smoking guy and Dr. What’s-His-Name (“I’m a wanted on eight systems.”) look a lot like they did back in the 1970′s? Great job!

Gosh, I sounded nasty up there, didn’t I? My appologies.

So, while you should go and watch the entirety of Star Wars Uncut, I heartily recommend that you spend some time at Malcolm’s site and check out his videos. I really dig his style and wanted to share a couple highlights here.

Some of his Star Wars Uncut stuff…

The Astronomer’s Dream trailer…

via: Serious Eats