Before my 4-month hiatus, I had between 9 and 12 regular readers…   As of yesterday’s post, I have 8 remaining.  Thanks for not hitting unsubscribe guys!  That’s far more loyal that I thought you’d be!

So, at least something to share with you, THE INVISIBLE CAMERA.  This clear camera body takes pictures that end the pixel wars by shooting at ISO 1/500 on film that can be exposed to normal light without penalty.  Unfortunately, the field test is already closed.

Since I was a young child watching The Price is Right with my grandmother, I’ve wanted to be a game show host like Bob Barker.  Well, my friends, it is my pleasure to introduce you to a little YouTube series put together by my main man, Producer Dan called Washington @ One.  You can watch my first episode here, and there are several more episodes out there that I’ve helped from the sidelines.

For me, the W@1 shoots are a great way to get out and meet real people, when they aren’t hiding behind a uniform, suit-and-tie, or company affiliation.  It’s also been a great chance to get to know each other a little more, which will pay off in dividends when the new podcast launches in a few weeks.

Finally, rather than writing a blog about not blogging (which I hate), I’m just going to be straightforward and honest.  I haven’t been writing much because I’m working on too many side projects.  When I first launched the Wautier Entertainment website, I was DJing twice a week, with a whole 5 days between jobs before I got busy again.  Since I’ve started up the site, I’ve had a lot more requests to help with video projects, photo shoots, live events, Android development, and more.  I haven’t stopped DJing, I just don’t have much time to write about it while I’m spending 3 hours a night working on other projects.  Hopefully, I’ll wrap a few projects up and make some more time for my readers here, but I’m not planning on turning down any potential work either.

I’ve been taking a lot of pictures at my recent events. If you’re looking for pictures, click over to my Facebook page.  If there’s a picture you’re in that you don’t like, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll take it down.

Thanks!

Nick

I’ll be at Paradise Cove in Dyckesville tomorrow night for some NRG Karaoke.

Time for a Camera Corner question response…

@pwllem writes:

@CameraCorner what do you think? RAW, RAW + JPEG or High JPEG for weddings. My workflow is good with high jpeg but always looking…

Whether you should shoot RAW, Fine JPEG, or RAW+JPEG all depends on your final output.  Generally speaking, JPEG is the quicker, smaller file, and RAW is for fine tuning…  Here’s a quick rundown of when each format edges out the other.

JPEG is helpful for:

1. Handing over digital files quickly. (Leave behind CDs or Memory Cards)
2. Printing on the spot (PhotoBooth or SnapLab)
3. Retail kiosk printing
4. E-Mail Delivery
5. Quick editing (Photoshop or GIMP)

RAW

1. See EXACTLY what the camera saw
2. More dynamic range (extra data in over & under exposed areas)
3. Precise exposure and white balance correction (using editors such as LightRoom or Aperture)

Many purists will say working with JPEGs is like working with a scan of a print, and in one respect they are correct.  Much of the image file’s fidelity is lost when the camera converts to a JPEG, ESPECIALLY at the extreme edges of the histogram.  But if you value delivery speed over edit-ability (I just made that word up), I PERSONALLY don’t feel there is a compelling point to change how you do your job.  RAW processing software can be expensive, but every computer can read a JPEG natively.

That being said, if you have plenty of memory, why NOT shoot both RAW + JPEG?  Sure, your camera may take a split-second longer between exposures, but memory is cheap, and you’ve got an automatic backup and the best of both worlds right away.

While, I always try to celebrate a good month-day, I noticed that today, 10/1/11. is a valid binary number.  Going forward, I will be celebrating every “binary day” that occurs, probably by posting a tutorial of how to convert that date into a decimal.

Here’s the short example of why 10110₂=22₁₀ is a true statement.

When you look at typical numbers, in the decimal system of (base ten) the actual number 10 as written on paper isn’t really one number. Go back to kindergarten, and sing it with me, “There’s a one in the tens place and a zero in the ones place!” My teacher taught counting using small buckets and marbles. The buckets were only big enough to hold 9 marbles, the tenth would cause the bucket to fall over, dumping the marbles, back into the tray, and causing one to fall to the tens place. It worked similarly to the Time Machine clock.  One ball stays, and the others get dumped.

This is, by far, the greatest way to teach number systems of different bases.  If you’re working in decimal, your bucket holds 9 marbles, hexadecimal buckets can hold 15, octal buckets hold 7, and binary buckets hold 1.  I keep a little chart by my desk to help me out, just in case a binary question would happen to pop up throughout the day.  It’s simple enough that most people can commit to memory, but I like it handy just in case I forget.

The list is: 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1

Just line up the date underneath, and add up all the numbers that have a 1 below:

0-128

0-64

0-32

1-16

0-8

1-4

1-2

0-1

16+4+2=22!

Perhaps next binary day, I’ll share the secret of how the boxes are labeled.

I may have tonight off, (except for programming JaquePot) but tomorrow you can catch up with me at Camera Corner, check out Monty, myself, and NEW talent Sarah Rejak, at Milke Theater for Secrets Of The Portal, and come out for Karaoke at Black Forest.  DJ Aro & Friends will be there to kick off the night, and I will take over when I catch up after the Magic.

Thanks for the ad credits Facebook!  Due to your generous contribution of $25 worth of free advertising, 800,000 people saw an add that links to a blog, that WASN’T PUBLISHING FRESH CONTENT for the entire run of the add…  Smart move Nick, real smart…

Anyway, I hate writing these “sorry I haven’t been writing” blogs, but this time, I actually have some REALLY good reasons why I’ve been slacking…  First and foremost, I bought my DREAM DJ controller, the Numark NS7FX.  Expect a rather lengthy article about it in a few weeks, but in a nutshell it’s a fancy MP3 Player…  A $1300 fancy MP3 player.  I’ve been spending a lot of time practicing and learning the turntable side of the DJ craft, and have been ignoring much of what gets in my way.

Also, I’ve been playing a TON of weddings the last few weeks.  Since the last time I wrote, I’ve played in Florence, Iron Mountain, Green Bay, Sturgeon Bay, and Appleton, more than once each.  It’s been a fantastic wedding season and I feel that I’ve really caught on to this year’s big trend (another blog that I have already started writing).

Monty and I are preparing for the September 25th premiere of Secrets of the Portal at Mielke Theater in Shawano.  We’ve added some new material and have been training some additional helpers, not all of which will be seen on stage.  This will be a larger production than I’m used to, and it’s certainly a show I’ve been looking forward to for a LONG time.  He was on the radio promoting the show this morning, so we should have a decent crowd in attendance.

My EVE Online friends at Cha0sTheory have escorted me to my first PVP kill ever!  Sure, the victim was on autopilot in low-sec, and yes, I stupidly allowed gate guns to take my ship, BUT I’M ON THE BOARDS BABY!  The Simplistic Syndicate and the Cha0sTheory alliance are rapidly expanding and need to make some money quick so we can build our outpost, so I crunched some numbers and will be starting a PowerBall-esque lottery in game.  As simple as this sounds, I’m expecting tens of thousands of players every week and I won’t be able to handle all of the transactions without a fairly decent system to manage the process.  I’m in the process of writing a program that will handle all of the busywork associated with the lotto.  Full details will be available when I launch, probably sometime in November.

And finally, I’ve been trying to find contacts that would be willing to speak at, and attend a TEDx event in the Green Bay / Appleton / Neenah area.  I’ve been a fan of the TED Talks YouTube page for years, but only recently found out about the TEDx program that allows smaller scale events to be managed independently.  I’d love to find or built a community of thinkers that share their ideas, and give them a forum to do so.  Right now, I’ve got an event nearly ready to put on the calendar, but I’m waiting for TEDx to reopen the application process, sometime around October 11.

OH, I almost forgot about the Greg Jennings benefit at Oneida Country Club, Touchdowns for Hope!  Greg has pledged to donate $1000 to House Of Hope for every touchdown he scores this season.  I was invited to assist my good friend Steve Richer on the photography front.  If you’d like to see the pictures our team took, you can do so at http://www.imagequix.com.  You’ll need the following login info as well.  Feel free to order a few prints, all proceeds to back to House of Hope.

• http://www.imagequix.com
• photographer ID:  D9NK69K
• Event ID:  Greg Jennings Foundation
• Pass:  gopackgo

So back when I was at the Outagamie County Fair, I met Miller and Mike, an amazing comedy duo with experience in The Greatest Show On Earth.  While I could sit here writing for hours on end about their show, I think I’ll just recommend for everyone to come out to Jones Park in Appleton this Sunday, August 22 to see their performance AND witness the totally legitimate setting of a new Guinness World Record.  Otis Miller, among several other talents, is an accomplished Yo-Yo trickster and will be attempting to set several records at the event.  The fun starts around 3:00, and you can find more information on his website.  I will be there to document the events on video while state assembly candidate Howard Miller is there to certify the attempt and ensure that there is no foul play.

It’s been a while since I’ve added any new content to my Flickr stream, so last night, I posted two of my older shots I took of a glass of beer at Black Forrest when I was waiting to start my karaoke gig.  As they say, “the proof is in the pudding” and BEER SELLS!

About 12 hours after posting these two pictures, they brought in 22 views each!  That’s huge considering my other pictures only have collected a total of 28 views!

Friday night, I played for the first time at Brett Favre’s Steakhouse.  I’m not sure if was it bad luck, or (NSFW) The Viking Curse, but for the first time in the 3-4 years I’ve been using it, my Numark CDN-88 Dual-Deck CD Player decided that it wanted the night off.  I couldn’t understand why, but songs would pause for seemingly no reason and with no warning, and the deck would totally lock up mid-song.  The only remedy was to eject the disc, and start over on the other side, which worked just great, until I tried cuing up another disc of course.  Normally, I would have caught something like this during dinner, when music isn’t quite as critical as it is at dance time, but I had been playing some CDs that the bride and groom made for me that didn’t require cross-fading between them, so the problem never had an opportunity to show itself.

The first time the system went down, I thought it was a fluke, figured out how to unlock the unit, and kept going, hoping it was just some mistake I had made.  Not 4 songs later, it happened again.  I rewired my electrical, checked all my other cables, and gave it one more run.  During that first song, it went down a third time.  I had enough.  It was time to call in for reinforcements.   I called Dave, and he left the job he was at, and ran me a Numark CDMIX-2 which is nice, but as the reviewers on Amazon will tell you, it has a few problems of it’s own.

The family had prepared an amazing video collage of various football players and coaches that used TV news footage out-of-context, offering the couple marriage advice.  This was, by far the most creative and elegant use of a projector I had ever seen at a wedding.  I did not, however, know how poorly the hall’s sound system would perform with the audio, making it nearly inaudible for everyone in attendance.  I was unprepared to wire in any laptop without an external audio interface, so we ended up playing the video without sound, which was a such a major disappointment to me, I can only imagine how the bride, groom, and creator felt.

After the grand march, when I had a working CD player, there were a few minor hiccups, admittedly due to by lack of experience with the player, but overall we rocked the party hard.  My confidence and heart were down in the balls of my feet, but for the most part, everyone who stuck it out with me seemed to have a great time.  I even got a few compliments on how quickly I was able to get up and running and how well the party went thereafter, but it couldn’t erase the deep disappointment I felt from the earlier issues.

One of the major disadvantages of my business model and exclusive partnerships (I only take jobs from Action DJs and Monty’s Magic, and I always rent equipment from Action DJs or Camera Corner as a backup) is that my hands are typically tied when it comes to “making it right”.  If the job was booked through Action, my preferred method, I typically don’t get paid until after I return the rented equipment, and as a general rule, I won’t carry cash out of town any time I’m traveling, business or not.  Regardless, I felt that I owed something to the bride and her family, whether or not the problems that night were the fault of me, Action, or the venue, or whether they were just bad luck.  Sure we made our best efforts to correct the problems, but that doesn’t change the fact that I couldn’t play music for 15 minutes, and someone’s hard work wasn’t given the time and attention it deserved.

In a feeble attempt to mend the wounds, I gave both the bride and her father my card and offered them 4 hours of my time at no charge for any future event, and I hope they take me up on it.  They were both courteous and assured me that they understand the problem wasn’t my fault and that I handled it well, but that just isn’t good enough for me.  I want them to be awed and amazed.

I left Bret Favre’s Steakhouse not knowing the cause of my problems, cursing the Vikings, and praying that my equipment would work the following night at Stone Harbor Resort.  ( to be continued… )

This weekend I have weddings tonight, (in an hour to be exact) and tomorrow, and I will also be working at Camera Corner. I plan on bringing the Playstation 3 to try out on the new 60″ 3D TV, a Sony XBR. Come on in and check it out.

Well, David Fincher is at it again, this time in the director’s seat for the October release of The Social Network, a story about the founders of Facebook.  While Jesse Eisenberg certainly makes a convincing Mark Zuckerberg in the trailer, I wonder how much of the movie is opinion, and how much of it is historically accurate.  I also wonder who the sources are.  On one hand, I feel sorry for Zuckerberg, as the movie won’t exactly paint the most attractive portrait of him…  On the other hand, I see a bit of poetic justice that his life is about to be shared with the world, just as his website has made the lives of so many others so transparent.  I’ll be looking forward to this one.

Just a quick note, I’ll be tied up nearly every Saturday morning for the rest of the year.  I will have my Action DJ schedule by the end of this week, and I have been offered some bookings with other agencies.  As always, feel free to contact me with any booking inquiries.

So tonight I have a wedding at Stone Harbor, tomorrow I’ll work my Saturday shift at CCCP AND play a wedding in Appleton.  Then, starting Thursday, I’ll be working with Monty at the Outagamie County Fair all the way through Sunday, with a wedding on Saturday night to boot.

Today I’ll be heading down to the main office of Cellcom to get my new BlackBerry Curve 8530, so be sure to fill it up with texts and tweets!

When I’m out on the DJ circuit, the majority of the music I play is still on the traditional, audio CD.  It’s not that I don’t trust a laptop, or that I don’t have my music stored on a hard drive, I just refuse to move to a media that doesn’t yet have an adequate control system.  I currently use the Numark CDN-88 to play my CDs.  It’s virtually skip-free, rack-mounted, and allows on the spot censoring, looping, same-disc advanced programming, and even some minor vinyl emulation features.  Each function has it’s own button, clearly labeled and conveniently located.  Besides, who can deny the utility of a real, solid mixer with EQ, volume, cross-fader, and monitor controls?  Sure there are products out there like Traktor Scratch and Serrato, but they seem to focus a bit too much on the turntablism aspect of DJ life, an area that I rarely get involved in.

I want the hot cues, memorized loops, and 1-to-1 control mapping of Serrato, the precision and latency (or lack there of) of Traktor.  Where both packages fall short is in library management.  Luckily, I have found Mixxx, an open source DJ platform.  Mixxx has a strong developers community, and a surprisingly large user base.  While it doesn’t even come close to fixing my library problem with the commercial applications out there, it is open for me to write my own additions and modifications, which I plan on doing.

I see major potential to grow the capabilities of digital media management programs, especially in the realm of music.  A library should do more than just display what is available, and it should be more than just searchable.  If my software is tracking my setlist, why can’t I make comments on the setlist?  As a wedding DJ, I frequently play the same or similar songs back-to-back, and rarely have the need to listen to a playback of the entire event.  A library program should be able to look at the song I’m playing, then back at previous sets to help me find the next track to play…  And it should prevent me from playing songs that frequently bomb.  The system could look at my ID3 tags, and help me with harmonic mixing, providing features similar to Mixed In Key…

The bottom line is, i have a few dreams…  Big dreams…  But, I may need some help along the way.  Mixxx, for the most part, is written in C / C++, a language I have not yet studied.  Also, the Mixxx project is about 8 years old, so I’ve got a lot of (poorly commented) code to catch up on.  Now, my first step is to introduce myself to the other devs on the mailing list, and see where they think I should start.

According to CNET, popular “filesharing” website The Pirate Bay has been taken down after falling to an SQL injection attack that leaked the username, password, e-mail address, and IP addresses of 4 million of their registered users.  The site went down today for about 2 hours, I assume to attempt to fix the vulnerability.

While this list of “the internet’s most wanted” would probably sell for several million dollars, a few sources (1, 2, 3) are claiming that the attack was meant to educate, and they have no intent to sell the information they gathered.

Leaving aside my opinions on file sharing and looking only at the legal ramifications of downloading copy written software, photos, and videos, you’d think that users would want to cover their tracks a little bit.  While I don’t expect everyone on the internet to understand how to set up a proxy server, or more importantly, how to build a proxy server…  but you’d think they’d be smart enough NOT to create an account containing personal information on a site that aids their illegal activity.  ThePirateBay is fully functional without creating an account, so somebody please tell me what benefits you get for giving away your information!  Even if there is a good reason, why wouldn’t you just use someone else’s password?

So Twitter has just dropped a bombshell, one that I should have seen coming long ago. I first found out about the @earlybird account from the writers at Twittown. They said it just as well, or better than I can, so I’ll just share their text:

Twitter pulled back the lid this week on their latest monetization mechanism, one that has bargain-minded tweeple all abuzz with excitement – a Twitter account, called @earlybird, which will tweet exclusive Twitter-only offers to followers about time-sensitive events, deals, and sneak previews. Twitter will be partnering with selected advertisers and channeling their Twitter-only offers, via retweets, through the @earlybird account.

… …

It’s important to note that Twitter itself isn’t playing a part in crafting any of the deals offered through the @earlybird account, and they’re not originating any tweets themselves. It’s not a pay-per-tweet system, but rather, a system in which advertisers, if chosen by Twitter, can choose to pay the microblogging platform to retweet tweets that they’ve already made. Twitter isn’t creating any content here, and they’re barely doing any heavy lifting to get @earlybird up and running, yet it’s likely that they’re going to be raking in some serious cash.

No crap they’ll be making some serious cash, I WANT IN THE PROGRAM! Deal hunters will be in love with this account and (depending on pricing of course) business would be unbearably short-sighted to pass up an offer for this system. Whether trying to clear “stuck” inventory, to discounting a typically high-margin product, a single RT by @earlybird could rake in 20,000 impressions BEFORE considering search traffic, web-page imbeded tweet streams, and potential RTs from users. The key, however; to the success and proliferation of @earlybird will be in their ability to provide quality content to their followers. Just because the account is run by twitter doesn’t mean it’s above the guidelines of any other account. If they send out too much garbage followers will disappear, effectively destroying the value of placing adds with @earlybird.

I had previously written, I’m getting a little annoyed with the strength of the push for 3D within the last year or so.  My proposed “$100 device” is exactly what Sony is selling, which makes the true cost of 3D much more transparent than I had previously stated.  And, they’re doing it for HALF THE PRICE I estimated!  In my previous article, I made SEVERAL errors in estimating prices, including the fact that I compared two TVs that weren’t exactly comparable…  In fact, the 3D Samsung, is the THINEST TV I have ever seen.  I know, because we had one at Camera Corner, which is why I’m writing this rebuttal to begin with.  If I had really done my homework, the price difference between 3D and non-3D (assuming that it’s time to upgrade your current system) is closer to $400 vs the $1500 I had estimated previously.

Normally, I’d be the guy to save the $400 if I didn’t really need or want the feature, but after USING 3DTV with a PS3, I am hooked!  It actually made a few games EASIER to play!  This is because, unlike movies, cameras in video games don’t need to be focused.  I, as a viewer, am free to look at whatever I want, and will see it clearly and precisely, exactly in the location I expect it to be in.  And I forgot to mention, you can ALWAYS turn the 3D features OFF, so you won’t be wasting money on extra glasses for your friends.

Here’s a 8 minute video I came across proposing a new, multi-touch, desktop computer interface, dubbed “10/GUI”.  While 10/GUI does sound exciting, there are a few small drawbacks that I see in the concept.  The operating system uses a 3 and 4 finger drags and pinches as a core means of navigation, sometimes even requiring both hands.  While I love the idea, how do we make this work for those who don’t have 10 fingers?

I recently attended a photography seminar titled Eleven Simple Secrets to Better Pictures, led by John VanSteenberg of Tamron USA, Inc. and learned a great deal about taking pictures intended for sale.  I would HIGHLY recommend Mr. VanSteenberg’s class to any newcomer that aspires to sell their prints or photography services.

One of the first, and most poignant points of his discussion was the separation between Snapshots, and Photographs.  While it may be fun to take a bunch of quick snaps with your camera, people typically buy and frame prints that speak to them.  This is exactly why many of my photographer friends still buy simple, point-and-shoot cameras even though they already own several, far superior, SLR cameras.  Snapshots are quick, fun, & easy.  Photographs take time, reflection, and a creative eye.  To paraphrase Robert Hughes, for every photograph you take, there were 14 billion you didn’t.

VanSteenberg also made a solid case for shooting in RAW rather than JPEG, which I’ve been doing for a while, simply because I could.  RAW images have much more room to correct exposure at the high end, and with a proper workflow program like Aperture or LightRoom, they’re nearly as quick to modify and print as their compressed counterpart.  While this seems obvious, it made me realize that there must be some compelling reason for the RAW format.  I’ve been reading The Raw Pipeline to educate myself and it does an excellent job of explaining how image sensors work, and why JPEG isn’t necessarily bad, but falls far short of the abilities of RAW.  It also pushes the use of a particular color calibration chart, which I never have used, but I plan to start using after reading why I should.

The most important things I learned out of these endeavors:

• Take a shot, then walk away, zoom in, and take the same shot…  Notice the subtle differences between the two photographs.
• There is a difference between looking at an image and seeing it.  You must take time to process an image and give it the consideration it deserves.  A poor exposure can be corrected on the computer, a poor composition can’t.
• The pros DO use PhotoShop, but keep it subtle!

So after nearly a week without my website, http://www.hostmds.com has restored my service and ALL files (even the ones I have cleverly hidden from the web).  While I could sit here and write a scathing review of their slow response and lack of customer notification, I remind myself of the old adage: “you get what you pay for.”  Considering there is no limit to how many databases I can host, the amount of data I store, or the amount of data I transfer, and factoring in that I am able to host multiple domains on the same server without making it blatantly obvious to the visitor, I think I’m getting a fairly good deal.  Since I know 95% of my visitors are led here by my RSS feed, which is hosted off-site, I can easily redirect my traffic to another, temporary location.  If this site were actually generating revenue for me, I’d be hosting somewhere more reliable.

My apologizes for the outage and lack of updates while I was down, but it led me to a few great writing ideas I’ll probably take up in the future.

• My week without a website
• My week without a phone
• My week without e-mail

Hopefully next week, I’ll be writing a couple new articles I’ve had in my head for a while:

• My 3DTV Reprise
• Twitter Contests — Just Do It Yourself!

I was taking at some software packages on Amazon today, and came across the Leica m9, a $23,000 SLR that is apparently capable of selling out…  I mean…selling through all of Amazon’s inventory…  Why so expensive?  My guess is the 37.5 mp sensor, fantastic if you plan on printing everything as a 16″ x 24″ poster or coping away 3/4 of the image before printing.  I thought that the megapixel war was over LAST YEAR already, but apparently I am wrong.  I suppose, with prices already dropping to the level that has turned point and shoot cameras into a commodity market, the cameras companies need to find a new way to keep their prices up.  I personally, would like to see more development in low-noise high-iso censors.  What would you like to see?

So a couple weeks ago I went downtown Green Bay with my friend Dan to learn about how my new camera & lens behave in low light.  The photos (as previously stated) are on my Flickr account.  While I think most of these pictures are fairly decent, and I am proud of them, I cannot and will not refer to myself as a professional photographer.  Sure, I now have a “professional” camera, but calling me a professional photographer is like calling every guy with a singlet a WWE Superstar.

A few weeks ago, I was playing a wedding in the valley where they had the most unprofessional photographer I have ever seen.  I don’t want to go into too many specifics and end up pointing her out, but for one, she didn’t have an off-camera flash, an essential for any dark room.  Without it, all of the pictures are going to have a nicely or overexposed subject, and a dark, unrecognizable background.

While I can understand cost containment or issues with lost or broken gear, she didn’t even look like she was trying.  Durring the dance, she took several pictures without looking through the viewfinder, on a camera that doesn’t have a LiveView feature!  She literally, spent 2 hours walking circles around the dance floor, taking pictures that she didn’t even frame.  I’m not just speculating here either, we talked earlier in the night, and she showed me her Nikon D80, the same camera I have!

Now I understand cutting costs and sticking to a budget…  Heck, I’m usually trying to apply myself to the low-budget market because it is both large, and low-maintenance.  Photographs can only be taken once, and on an important day like your wedding day, you should have someone who will at least try to capture some of the memories.  For that unfortunate couple, they paid someone who claimed to be a professional, who carried semi-professional equipment.  They would have been better off buying a few dozen disposable cameras and letting their guests, take good pictures.  (or at least try)

My first NIGHT shots with my new-to-me camera are up on my Flickr page.