Work Updates

My video editing work is usually done on a very tight schedule which means that sometimes I sit at my computer and work around the clock for days on end. Clients are masters of complex revisions, changed direction, and last minute changes so we use all the available hours and minutes before a deadline to polish a project. There is always something to make better, prettier, smoother, or sexier even on projects that have been signed off by the client. Tweaking is endless and complete only when the project is delivered to the client. On the world stage these projects are utterly inconsequential, but in that editing suite they assume epic proportions.

Even working at full tilt 24/7, we used to get breaks - sometimes even a few hours for napping - while video and effects files rendered. During renders the computer is locked into using all its processing power to crunch bits so there is no option to multitask. Render-enforced breaks are critical because if the computer isn't making you stop, you just keep editing until you fall over. The deadlines loom, other projects are waiting in the wings, and there is always something more to do.

So it may be that new technology is killing me. Our massively multiprocessor machines have reduced renders from hours to minutes. "Ah, it's too quick," Rob lamented as an After Effects projected finished before he had fully stretched his back. And forget about working all night, starting a render at 5 am and catching 40 winks until computer finishes and the new business day begins. Our computers are just too darn efficient.

Fast processors should be a blessing but if a 1 hour break is cut to 20 minutes that means no real rest for the brain or body. I can enjoy a cup of tea in 20 minutes, but I can't take my mind off work. And when the mind wanders, that is when creative ideas percolate. I must to try to find a new working pace that combines endurance, speed and time to refresh, too.

Rob & I have had many late night discussions about the merits of going home and sleeping in bed vs crashing out on the floor of the office. We have come up with the following points:

• Sleeping in your own bed is more restful than the floor.
• An ideal night is 7 hours or more; an acceptable night is 5 hours. Less than 3 hours is bad news.
• Commuting cuts about 120 minutes out of the sleep window, including ablutions and breakfast.

So if work begins at 10 am, you must leave the office by 1 am to get 7 hours sleep. 3 am is the cusp. Leaving much after 3 am is generally not wise, unless you have run out of underwear and socks at the office. If the sun is coming up, brew coffee.

I can survive a week of five hour nights, and a few days on less than three hours of sleep, but if the short nights add up, I go crazy. So the nearer a project is to deadline, the more likely I am to sleep at the office. Like tonight. When my render finishes in 10 minutes, I am going to have a kip in my sleeping bag.

Yesterday, Rob asked me how many videos I was working on. I was a little bit surprised to answer nine. Eight of them have to be shown to the client on Friday. One was completed yesterday. I completed a tenth one the day before yesterday, and the numbers add up the further back I go.

Here is a description of the projects I am currently working on:

• 1 awards ceremony video featuring footage of the award winner
• 4 photo montages set to music - the other award winners at the ceremony above
• 1 high-energy, yet inspiring and aspirational, sports-themed video to open a conference
• 1 consumer style video to define a target market for summer sales
• 1 product launch video to be shown in supermarkets

The one I finished yesterday was subtitling some Japanese news clips; the day before I completed a converting a 7 minute video to English using reworked telops and a new script and narrators.

Work is fun but frantic. Most of these videos are for a conference on the 18th; I hope things will slow down after that.

For three of the past four nights I've napped on the floor under a desk in the editing suite. With deadlines tomorrow morning at 7 and later in the day, tonight promises to be another long one.

Since I never seem to leave, I'm slowly transforming the office space, which is a converted apartment, into a temporary home. I have my sleeping bag, camping mat and pajamas for after hours kips. I've scoped out the nearest sento so we can bathe from time to time. Rob & I ordered clothes from Uniqlo to be delivered later this week so we will have something clean to wear.

And today I bought a nabe to cook in. This crosses the line into "probably not ok with my boss" (as would clearing out the boxes in the bathroom to have a shower) but honestly, I cannot stomach another restaurant or delivery meal. Having a covered ceramic dish means I can bake casseroles in our oven or simmer soups and stews on the range. Tonight we're having kimchi nabe. Healthy food!

The shop where I bought the casserole dish is just around the corner from here on the forgotten stretch of Roppongi Dori where the highway blocks out the light. It's an old place chockablock with dusty kitchenware, vinyl slippers, and coils of rope, garnished with a scattered assortment of tools, bath supplies and other household necessities.

I was digging through the pots looking for one the right size when I heard a creaky voice calling from the corner, "Customer! Customer!" It wasn't directed at me, but about me. An extremely old woman bundled up in a purple wool shawl and quilted pants was sitting with her feet at an electric hearth calling her son to come attend me. He scampered over and helped me find the nabe and was impressed that I could cook Japanese food from scratch. I was shown off to Grandmother as a foreigner who could cook. She nodded at me and went back to her heater.

And I went back "home" looking forward to good food cooked from scratch.

I celebrated last year's birthday by working all night, and enjoying a surprise cake and gift from Rob in one of our less frantic moments. Today, I am returning the favor. Rob's been so busy that until a friend reminded him, he didn't even remember it was his birthday.

Sometimes work takes over too much of our lives. Good thing we like our work.

A snippet from the new org chart at Tod's office

When Tod's boss unexpectedly left the company last week, the Prism team were left adrift in the midst of a lot of work. Tod took charge to make sure everything continued smoothly, and now it's been made official - he's a manager with two people reporting to him.

Tod always swore he didn't want to move into management, preferring his purely technical role, but he is truly excited about this. Managing the Prism team means he gets to set the direction for the project, something he is eager to do as he sees more potential for it than his recent managers have done.

He must quickly learn the ins and outs of all the people management tasks, too. By the end of the month he's got to come up with annual objectives and a review plan for his two engineers. I know he'll manage.

Congratulations, Tod!

The studio setup glows with light in the otherwise dim room

Yesterday I went to Araku to take photographs for their new menu and signage. Ashley poured drinks and styled the food while I "pressed the button." It's been a long time since I've done any real studio shooting, so I was nervous about the results, but I think I managed pretty well.

Tequila with lemon; Campari soda

Next time, I want even more light and a proper lightbox, rather than the on-the-fly one I made with Jim's big light table, a portable light table, and some translucent plastic. The light wasn't even enough in my setup. The grey background I acheived is OK, but I'd have preferred pure white.

My first attempt at lip synch animation

An ongoing project of mine is a little documentary film about world population. I started it more than a year ago, then dropped it when I couldn't figure out how to illustrate some of the points. Well, I'm back at it now, having rewritten the script with renewed ideas about what needs to go into the film, and I will be illustrating the points by actually illustrating the points.

I've been testing out this tool called ToonBoom Studio. Based on the sample above, I need a lot more work on my illustration skills, but the tool itself does everything I need. It's going to take me weeks to really learn it and to get into the groove of animating, but I enjoyed what I did today and it's been a long time since I've challenged myself with new software.

So I think I've finally found the right way to go with the the population film: part animation, part archival footage, part maps and charts. Look for a completed project in...oh, another year or so.

My life and technology
I've been using Internet technology to mediate communication for so long that it hardly seems novel: chat in various forms since 1988 (18 years!); e-mail, telnet & FTP about as long; web sites starting in 1992; video conferencing from 1995; VoIP telephony from last year.

But today in the middle of a three-way video conference, I paused a moment to marvel at how far technology has taken me. My work and social life are increasingly performed with people scattered around the globe. No technology I use is cutting edge anymore. Without it, I'd have no work and far fewer friends.

I keep up with friends in the US, India, Canada, Australia and Japan via iChat. I have a phone number in Adelaide and free calling to the US. My weblog has been around nearly six years. I am a member of several online communities and volunteer projects. Friends know how to reach me online.

I am a partner in Collectik, along with Chris in Sydney and Hugh in Montreal. We work collaboratively using Basecamp for general messages and Mantis for bug and assignment tracking. Once every couple of months we hold a conference call via Skype or chat in iChat.

And I'm working with Jez at SegPub in Sydney on another project. We use Basecamp, too, but chat and video conference almost every day. A new guy, Tim, joined the company last week and now we're starting to feel like a real team, rather than Jez & me blabbering to one another while we write, code and plan stuff.

If only there were an online espresso maker...

For the past two months, I've been working on a site which should be launching soon. My role on the three person team is user interface and graphic design.

Today I started reworking the site, based on comments from the alpha testers. These 11th hour changes aren't a little tweaking here and there, they are a full-blown "hey, nobody gets this; we need to really explain it better" mandate. As one of the team commented, our current site is good at the how-to, but not so good at why; we say "Shovel - hold by handle, thrust, lever, pull" but we need to be saying "Shovel - move dirt!"

So we reconsidered. We changed the language. We shifted focus from "flexible" to "narrowly defined." We added features. And if I have my way, we'll axe some features, too (though I haven't presented that to the team yet...).

Afterwards, I redesigned the front page of the site. It started out with 11 features. Now it has 12. But I think it is better organized and easier to understand. It also suits smaller laptop screens much better.

I color-coded the sections to highlight for myself where things moved to, what gained emphasis, where I had reduced or increased real estate. It's pretty to look at, even if you can't see the details underneath:

Doing this lets me see that I still have a few things to change. Based on the importance of the content, that reddish section in the lower right is probably too big; the blue area next to it needs more space.

But I will do that tomorrow. For now, sleep!

Is video editing a glamourous job? You tell me.

On Wednesday, I arrived at 4 pm to do some video editing of corporate conference highlights. By 6, I was dashing back into a smoky, burning room for the third time to save the computers, decks and tapes. Someone should have had the camera rolling, because I think our behind-the-scenes fire was more exciting than anything else happening at the hotel during the event.

The hotel staff didn't call the fire department but investigated the fire themselves. The cause was obvious to me. It was a short in the coffee warmer and inadequate electrical outlets in a room full of gear and devices. They apologised and gave us ham sandwiches to replace the deluxe delivery dinners that had been ruined by the smoke.

My colleague & I had to wait for an uncharred room to open up so we could set up our workspace again. 'Til 10 pm, we hunkered over laptops in a corner of the lobby - homeless editors surrounded by tangled cables and uncertain equipment.

When we set everything up in the new room, we were fortunate not to have too many problems. Only one disk had errors and they were repaired quickly enough. Everythign else was covered in grime, but in good working order. I was up until 2 getting ready for the next day's footage. Rob stayed up all night to complete the module that would open the morning's session.

At 8 am, after a quick breakfast of sandwiches, pickles and yogurt, and some further edits, all my plans changed. The president of the company had literally dreamed up a great idea and wanted us to implement it for his closing video, the one I'd been working on. So I scrapped what I'd done and reworked the whole thing for a 3:30 deadline.

At 2:45, one of the managers came to see what we'd done. He found it unsuitable and requested three different versions with footage we simply didn't have and could not get in time. I'm glad I got to sit there quietly while my boss explained reality. I turned around and started doing what I could to satisfy the client. I managed two different versions in time for the deadline. The president was pleased.

At least my job is never boring.

A good friend who's been in business for herself for over 30 years revealed her decision process for accepting clients. She has two scales: "Kick Me" and "Cringe Factor."

The Cringe Factor is measured in time. "For how many years after the job will I cringe when I think about it? If it's more than three years, I won't take the client."

And the Kick Me scale is measured in pain. "How many times will I kick myself after the first meeting? If it's more than five, I can't afford the bruising and there is no deal."

She recently turned down a job she described as 15 in Cringe Factor and 25 on the Kick Me scale. That was a good decision! I think I might try these scales next time I have a client I'm not so certain about.

I'm awaiting a delivery by "bike-bin" --known outside Japan as motorcycle courier messenger service.

After the messenger arrives with a hard drive named w00t I've gotten rather friendly with this past year, I'll have a frantic two and a half days to edit together three videos. I should be trying to relax in these last moments before I get started, but somehow I just can't seem to stop thinking about what I need to do.

Ah, there's the doorbell. The fun begins...

A few weeks back, I was thwarted when trying to make a recording on my computer. Again this week, my computer failed me when I wanted to do voice overs for a film I'm working on.

After a lot of searching around on forums and websites, I figured out that I need a mic pre-amp or something to boost the mic to line level. The Griffin iMic should do the job, but it doesn't work for me. Maybe mine is busted...

So today I went out and bought myself some proper gear. Now I can record voice overs and narrate stories to my heart's content. This setup works great.

What did I get? A Behringer Eurorack UB802 8-input 2-bus mixer/preamp, an M-Audio "Nova" condenser microphone, an indestructible mic stand/murder weapon, various cables, and a "popkiller" screen (much cheaper than elocution lessons to correct my aspirated p's).

And didn't cost as much as I thought it would--under 30,000 yen for everything. If you're in the market for audio gear, go talk to Honma-san at Music Community Miyaji in Awajicho. He's knowledgeable and very patient.

Content management systems are a necessary part of website development for most organizations. They provide a platform for consistent design, interactive tools and, as the name implies, managing content of the site. They make it easy for non-technical people to contribute to a website.

But for me, a semi-skilled web worker, choosing the right CMS is a challenge. CMS Matrix can help to narrow the field of options to just the CMS that have your required features, but a checklist isn't enough to make a decision.

You really have to try them out.

I already have good knowledge of Xoops, PHPNuke and Movable Type. But none of these is right for the project I'm working on now, redeveloping the FCCJ website to make it easier for staff and club members to contribute to the site.

So I've been experimenting. Today I ruled out TYPO3. Although it was relatively easy to install and offered a good range of handy modules, the template system is horrid and the user interface for infrequent contributors is entirely too complex.

So now I'm playing with DruPal. Then I'll try out Expression Engine & WebGUI. I may have a look at WordPress, too. In a few weeks' time, I will have a good knowledge of quite a few of the free and low-cost CMSes.

And in the end, I have a feeling I'm going to cobble the site together with a bunch of mismatched pieces and a lot of SHTML.

Clips from Hello Tokyo November 2003

title sequence Hello Tokyo 0'46" .mov (6.2 MB)

chapter 1 Figuring Out a Few Words 1'58" .mp4 (1.2 MB)

chapter 4 Entertainment 1'12" .mp4 (923 KB)

TICAD Opening October 2004. (2.2 MB MP4) duration 0'22"
Opening sequence for a World Bank speech (cut)

Andy July 2004. (1.2 MB MP4) duration 0'34"
A clip edited for a Nike marketing research project

Let's Make Ume Shu May 2004. (29.7 MB MP4) duration 4'38"
How-to make Japanese plum wine

9F, East Tower January 2002. (76 MB Quicktime) duration 5'25"
Perot Systems Japan reviews 2001 and previews the coming year's goals.

What is e-commerce? May 2000. (5 MB Quicktime) duration 0'30"
This clip is the opening sequence to a 15 minute educational video for UBS Warburg Japan.

31 May 2000. (98 MB Quicktime) duration 6'03"
This is a personal project, capturing a day's events and filmed on my husband's birthday.

Perot 1999 January 2000. (78 MB Quicktime) duration 5'45"
An end-of-year celebratory video premiered at Perot Systems Japan's annual party.

WriteHire (336 KB RealMedia, 312 KB RealMedia) duration 0'30"
Two 30 second promos for a freelance writers' job service.

Househunting in Tokyo (16 MB Quicktime) duration 1'00"
Setting to music the frustrating and complex experience of househunting

Feature articles
Managing Designer Expectations Todeco
The Parent Trap Tokyo Classified
The Hunt is On Tokyo Classified
Get a Move On Tokyo Classified
Robotops Metropolis

Travel pieces
Niijima: Exiled to an Island in Tokyo Tokyo Classified
Meguro River Walk Tokyo Classified

Technical writing
HTML workshop
Wire Tap Metropolis

Wireless Watch Japan site development using PHP-Nuke
Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan site architecture and project management
Kristin Newton, glass artist site design and implementation, including Flash
Right Brain Research site design and implementation, including mailing list and weblog
Wordpainting site design and implementation; content coordination

The whole point of work is to be productive and to enjoy it. I love jobs where at the end of a long, arduous day I can say Look what I did today. I made this.

When 'this' happens to be a well-crafted communication, whether it's a corporate newsletter, a video presentation, a feature article, a user's manual or a play, then I'm most content. But at various points in my career 'this' has also been a workshop, a class syllabus, or a swatch of handmade felt.

Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Masters' degree coursework. 1996.
Pittsburgh Filmmakers'. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Coursework. 1996.
Pennsylvania Institute for Culinary Arts. Pittsburgh, PA. Coursework. 1991.
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. B.S. 1988.

Videography and non-linear digital editing. Grammatically correct, engaging, written communication. Multimedia and web interface design. HTML, Front Page, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Image Ready, Fireworks, Premiere, After Effects, Quicktime, Toast, PageMaker, Authorware, ColdFusion, PHP.

Self Employed. Freelance Writer, Videographer and Web Designer. March 1996 to present.
Perot Systems Japan. Tokyo Test Centre. July 1998 to June 1999.
Perot Systems Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific Test Centres. April 1998 to June 1998.
Duquesne University. Multimedia Consultant. October 1996 to January 1998.
Chicago Kent College of Law. Manager, Computing Services. August 1995 to March 1996.
Duquesne University. Educational Computing Consultant. July 1993 to June 1995.
Telerama Public Access Internet. Director, Telerama School. March 1991 to May 1995.
Foxholly Studios. Graphic Designer and Copywriter. March 1991 to July 1994.
McCrerey Farm, Inc. Vice President. September 1992 to June 1995.
EMCO Foodservice Systems, Inc. Marketing Assistant. August 1989 to February1991.

DigitalEve Japan. International women's IT organization. Co-leader of national chapter: February 2001 to May 2002. Technology Team Coordinator: February 2001- present
Japan Webgrrls. Volunteer trainer, November 1999 to February 2001. Annual Event Coordinator, July to October 2000.

• Contributor to Todeco. 2004.
• Contributor to Four Corners. 2004.
• Enhancing your Computer's Performance in Number 1 Shimbun. September 2004
• Upgrade is an Uplifting Word in Number 1 Shimbun. August 2004
• Backup is Not a Four Letter Word in Number 1 Shimbun. July 2004
• Gaining a Creative Perspective in Design-in-flight. July 2004.
• FCCJ's Untapped resource in Number 1 Shimbun. April 2004
• Metropolis' twice monthly Tech Know column. February 2001 - June 2002.
• Robotops in Metropolis Issue 417.
• Knowledge is power in Tokyo Classified Issue 368.
• Exploring Mac World Tokyo 2001 in Tokyo Classified Issue 364.
• What's Myline? in Tokyo Classified Issue 361.
• Kiku Matsuri in Tokyo Classified Issue 343.
• What's Up Pussycat? A Day with Hello Kitty in Eye Ai. September 2000.
• Craft Experiences in the Shikoku Region in Eye Ai. August 2000.
• The Parent Trap in Tokyo Classified Issue 325.
• Big is Beautiful in Tokyo Classified Issue 320.
• All Tied Up: Shibori in Eye Ai. June 2000.
• Get a Move On in Tokyo Classified. Issue 319. 6 May 2000.
• Meguro River Walk in Tokyo Classified Issue 318. 29 April 2000.
• Tachikui, Feats of Clay in Tokyo Classified. Issue 312, 18 March 2000.
• The Hunt is On in Tokyo Classified Issue 311. 11 March 2000.
• Disclosing Yourself in Japan in Regans Annual Report Review. March 2000.
• Blossoms, Petals, Posies in Eye Ai. March 2000.
• Historical Yokohama in Eye Ai. January 2000.
• Mochi Celebrates the Season in Tokyo Classified. Issue 300/301 25 December 1999.
• Niijima, an Island of Calm in Tokyo in Eye Ai. October 1999.
• Exiled to an Island in Tokyo in Tokyo Classified. Issue 280. 7 August 1999.
• Life in Japan travelogues. Spring 1999.
• Yamada Reizouko Ou review in Arsenic.net, Spring 1999.
• Portrait of a Kissaten in Epicure Exchange, Spring 1998.
• Spending an Allowance on the Internet in Big Blue Box, Volume 4, Number 2. Watertown, MA. 1997.
• Chatting with Cyberfriends: Conversing a New Way in Big Blue Box, Volume 4, Number 1. Watertown, MA. 1997.
• Cutting to the Cutting Edge of Fashion in Big Blue Box, Volume 3, Number 3. Watertown, MA. 1997.
• Canned! Vending Machine Coffee in Tokyo in Epicure Exchange, Fall 1996.
• Teens and Telephony in Tokyo in Big Blue Box, Volume 3, Number 2. Watertown, MA. 1996.
• Safer Surfing: the Influence of Filters and Blacklists on Web Development in Big Blue Box, Volume 3, Number 1. Watertown, MA. 1996.
• Impulse Freak comic collaboration. SITO, Omaha, NE. 1996.
• Using the SamplePrep Web Service in Analytical Sample Preparation and Microwave Chemistry Research Center in Microwave Enhanced Research. Skip Kingston, et.al, editors. American Chemical Society, Washington, D.C. 1996.

• TICAD reception background, World Bank GDLN. October 2004.
• CocaCola Japan Bottler's convention modules. Media Sense. October 2004.
• NIke marketing research project. Ministry of Culture. August 2004.
• CocaCola Japan "People Day" modules. Media Sense. January 2004.
• Subtitiling project. The Innovation Group. May 2003.
• Hello Tokyo. November 2003.
• 9F, East Tower. Perot Systems Japan. January 2001.
• Two promotional videos. WriteHire.com. November 2000.
• E-lifestyles promotion. Japan Webgrrls. October 2000.
• Househunting in Tokyo. June 2000.
• TK2K. June 2000.
• What is E-commerce. UBS Warburg. May 2000.
• 31, a film. May 2000.
• Millennium Party. Perot Systems Japan. January 2000.

  View samples in my video portfolio.

• October 2004. Writing Menus. (lesson 1, lesson 2). Media Tinker.
• January 2004. A Brief History of Zero. Media Tinker.
• November 2003. Tokyo, Japan. VideoCrown multimedia presentation. Design Festa.
• August 2003. Illustrated MT Templates. Media Tinker.
• May 2002. Tokyo, Japan. Managing Sites with Dreamweaver. DigitalEve Japan.
• November 2001. Kamakura, Japan. IT Careers for Women.
• November 2001. Tokyo, Japan. Digital Video Workshop. DigitalEve Japan.
• September 2001. Tokyo, Japan. Women in IT (panel moderator).
• June 2001. Tokyo Japan. Usability and User Interface Design. DigitalEve Japan.
• December 2000. Tokyo, Japan. Digital Video Workshop.
• August 2000. Tokyo, Japan. Web Publishing for Japan Webgrrls.
• May 2000. Tokyo Japan. Intermediate HTML for Japan Webgrrls. A half-day workshop for web page creators.
• March 2000. Tokyo, Japan. Hajimete Internet, A half-day seminar for International Women in Communiction.
• November 1999. Tokyo, Japan. HTML Workshop. A half-day workshop for beginner web page creators.
• December 1998. Studio Infini, Tokyo, Japan. Travelogues : Monologues. A one-woman, multimedia exhibition.
• August 1997. Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA. Opportunity Knocks 97. A five-day student employee training workshop.
• June 1997. Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA. Summer Institute on Teaching with Technology. A week-long multimedia development workshop for university faculty.
• December 1996. CAUSE Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA. "Support Models for Faculty Development" poster session.
• November 1995. EDUCOM Annual Conference, Facility Design for Teaching, Learning and Technology poster session.
• June 1995. Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA. Summer Institute on Teaching with Technology. Three, week-long multimedia development workshops for university faculty.
• April 1995. Faculty Development Resource Association, Pittsburgh, PA. Navigating the Internet workshop.
• September 1994. PREPnet Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA. Internet Basics workshop.
• April 1994. Faculty Development Resource Association, Pittsburgh, PA. De-Mythologizing the Internet workshop.
• March 1993. Council of Independent Colleges, Pittsburgh, PA. Hands-On Internet workshop.

Freelance Writer, Videographer and Web Designer
March 1996 to present
Noteworthy Projects and Publications

Perot Systems Japan
Tokyo, Japan. July 1998 to June 1999.
Tokyo Test Centre Manager

Duquesne University
Center for Communication and Information Technology.
600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh PA. October 1996 to January 1998
Multimedia Consultant/Webmaster

Chicago-Kent College of Law
Center for Law and Computers.
565 W. Adams Street, Chicago, IL. August 1995 to March 1996
Manager, Computing Services

Duquesne University
Center for Communication and Information Technology.
600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh PA. July 1993 to June 1995
Educational Computing Consultant

Multimedia Project Manager/Designer

Telerama Public Access Internet.
301 Shiloh Street, Pittsburgh, PA. March 1991 to May 1995
Director, Telerama School.

Foxholly Studios.
25 Dilworth Street, Pittsburgh, PA. March 1991 to July 1994
Graphic Designer and Copywriter.

McCrerey Farm, Inc.
Claysville, PA. September 1992 to June 1995

EMCO Foodservice Systems, Inc.
1910 Cochran Road, Pittsburgh, PA. August 1989 to February 1991
Marketing Assistant

• Founded and managed a group of desktop publishers and graphic artists in the marketing department of this foodservice cooperative.
• Wrote and produced two nationally distributed newsletters.
• Worked under tight deadlines to produce print materials for internal and external clients.
• Responsibilities included conceptualization, copywriting, graphic design, training staff and negotiating with vendors.

In mid-July I ordered a new dual processor PowerMac G5. Just the thing for editing video--a lot of power in one box. I also splurged (after a bit of debate with Tod) and bought the 30" Cinema Display.

Delay, excuse, delay, excuse, delay...but it finally arrived today.

I will never have to scroll my timeline ever again. This monitor is just humungous. It going to take a little while to figure out where to focus my eyes and how to arrange my application windows to use screenus maximus.

When pulling an all-nighter for work, one must have the proper supplies to ensure continued productivity through the long night. I've done enough of these for clients this year that I've got my supply list sorted. With sufficient caffeine and protein, I can do anything.

1. Cold tea - green or black, unsweetened. Coffee is too strong for hour after hour of sipping.
2. Onigiri. For when you get hungry at 2 am.
3. Jerky - beef or squid. Great for chewing on while thinking.
4. Yogurt - plain. Protein for stamina.
5. Chocolate with nuts - Meiji Almond (Beckham's nuts!) or Snickers. The protein from the nuts balances the quick lift you get from the sugar.
6. Chips. Something loud and crunchy to keep your ears happy.
7. Gum. Satisfies the chewing urge, but be careful not to chew too much and cause a stiff jaw.
8. CocaCola's Royal Milk Tea, hot or cold. The perfect emergency hit of caffeine, sugar and fat.
9. Toothbrush. To remove the fuzzy film after all the snacks.
10. Lip balm and eyedrops. Combat the dry office environment.

If you need supplies for all-nighters of a more recreational sort, I refer you to your spam.

I'm on a short deadline to get a 60 second "power module" video done before tomorrow night. After the briefing yesterday, I put myself into high gear and laid down the basics before bedtime.

This afternoon I received the product footage and I captured it. Now things are going more slowly because compositing the footage--matting and masking off sections then arranging the shots on top of one another--is painstaking work.

But it's fun and I like my results so far.

Next week I get to edit on-site at the convention where this module will be shown. Even more fun!

Something I've hankered to do is voice-overs and recording work. There's something appealing about being a disembodied voice.

"Next station: Willowdale. Please mind the gap."
"Press 9 for Customer Service."
"The show will begin shortly. Please turn off your pagers and cell phones."

It's a desire dating back to junior high school when I was selected to make an announcement over the school PA system. I later overheard a classmate say "Who was that, she had a great voice." Preteen ego puffed and latent wish born.

So when a colleague contacted me yesterday about doing a quick recording for a project he's working on, I grinned. Of course!

I sat in a cleverly constructed recording booth tucked into a corner of an office. Ensconced at a small table behind layers of cotton quilting and heavy metal doors, I could hear myself breathe through the monitor.

15 minutes later, I stepped out having done a few takes of the short script. As I emerged, the sound engineer told me that the microphone loved my voice. "Right in the range," he said.

Middle-aged ego boosted. That should last me 'til the next recording gig. I'll probably be 60 by then...

Q & A
Who are you?
I'm a kindergartner who was excited to learn that she'd be a grown up in the new millennium.

Why do you live in Japan?
It was a six-month job assignment back in 1998. Japan suits me so well that I haven't left yet and don't intend to.

Why do you have a weblog?
I use my weblog to entertain (and sometimes enlighten) friends and strangers. It also anchors me to my computer. I started out with a regular website (1994) and a mailing list (1998). When weblog software reached my radar in 2000, I converted.

You come across as such a know-it-all sometimes...
I used to be a know-it-all but now Google knows more than I do. Fortunately, I'm only one search away from knowing it all again. Don't ask me for facts when I'm not at my computer.

What do you do?
I make videos. I write stuff. I do web things from time to time. I'm for hire, so please take a look at my resume and portfolio, then contact me if you're interested.

What else do you do?
When I drag myself away from the virtual world, I am usually swimming, cooking, taking long walks, scratching in notebooks, or reading. I also run around doing stupid things with my very smart friends.

What do you like?
Vanilla. Strong coffee. Black. Good words. Water. The sound of wind through pines. The night sky. And Tod--I like him very much.

Can you recommend what to see in Tokyo?
Yes, I can. Check out the Hello Tokyo page. Buy a copy of my DVD. Please.

Can I send you an e-mail?
Of course, but no guarantee of a reply. kristen@mediatinker.com

About Mediatinker
It's been more than ten years since I helped to found Telerama, one of the first public ISPs in the US. I answered phones, offered tech support, wrote documentation, taught online classes (using IRC and Screen!) and was general dogsbody to the tech boys. Good times with lots to learn--in those days, the Net was new to almost everyone. But being excluded from the hard-core tech back then, I've never considered myself much of a geek.

In the mid-nineties, I was working for a university, teaching faculty and administrators how to use e-mail, ftp and telnet with lots of time devoted to writing how-to manuals and tip sheets. Eventually, I became university webmaster and launched into developing online instructional materials, video, audio and interactive tutorials.

A three month trip to Japan in 1996 ushered in a new era of international living. In 1998 we moved to Singapore for six months, followed by a move to Tokyo and a short term assignment as Year 2000 Test Center Manager for Perot Systems Japan/UBS Warburg. Going on seven years later, we're still here.

These days, I sit at my desk in Tokyo in front of a Mac G5, a PowerBook G4, and several Unix boxes. My work is more diverse, with several corporate videos under my belt, a year of leading an IT non-profit (DigitalEve Japan), assorted classes and workshops taught, and lots and lots of writing. In addition to the paid work, I've drafted a book which will probably never see the light of day and written a play that I hope to produce someday.

I chose the name 'media tinker' because I can't decide what I am--writer, filmmaker, photographer, web guru, general know-it-all, or empress of everything. I work with media of all types, and maybe not always successfully, so media tinker seemed most fitting. And a bit of self-deprecation is always good to keep the ego in check. (If you know me, you are laughing right now.)

Another two-man video crew in town, so another odd job for Mediatinker. This time I'm logging LA interview tapes and rounding up Japanese women for interviews about personal style, "transculturalism" and shoes.

Thanks to all my J-girlfriends and their friends who've responded. I hope you have fun.

Oh, and a tip for your interview: pause before answering the questions. The person who logs the tapes will love you for that.

I'm enjoying a new project today. I'm writing an illustrated Movable Type manual for non-native English speakers who will be contributing to a weblog.

Tech writing is always a pleasure. Over the years, I've honed the art of distilling complexity into easily followed directions and explanations.

My first tech writing was back in the early Telerama days--circa 1992--when I was helping our customers use FTP, telnet and Pine. In 1994, I wrote the oft-quoted Gentle Introduction to the Internet. Reading it ten years later is quite amusing, but at the time, these were things everyone was wondering about.

Work always goes in waves. Right now, I seem to be cresting a "words and writing" breaker.

In addition to the quarterly newsletter that I do for a client, Todeco gave me a forum to publish a pair of articles on project specifications I wrote in late 2002, and a short essay will appear on 1000 Words soon.

Reprints seem to be a popular request. I've granted reprint rights to a law firm for The Hunt is On and Moleskinerie is republishing an entry from Creative Perspectives next week.

Plus I've got new work in the pipeline for Design-in-Flight, Number 1 Shimbun, and Four Corners.

I'd better sharpen my pencils.

In 1998, just after arriving in Singapore, I wrote a play. I never tried to produce it so it's been sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to get back to it. Finally, it's seeing the glare of the CRT again. I've decided to take a shot at turning it into a screenplay.

Stage plays and screenplays are entirely different. Characters do a lot of talking in a play. Actors have to describe events that take place offstage. The audience at a distance can't read their subtle expressions so they even talk to themselves from time to time. But in film, you can get close. The actors show their emotions instead of telling them.

Another difference is locations. My play takes place on one set. In the film version Annie and Fran eat lunch in a restaurant, instead of Annie's apartment. Annie and Rob will argue have their argument in a car. Sean flashes back to an embarrassing moment in his childhood. Fran delivers flowers for a living, now you'll get to see her do it.

It's quite an interesting exercise to adapt from one form to another. One downside is that the budget increases with every change I make!

Today I'm taking the Neon Chopstix scripts and doing the breakdowns to make our production boards. I've been looking forward to this for months, but it's turned out hte be more of a challenge than I expected.

A breakdown is when you go through the script and list, scene by scene, all the actors, props, effects, crew, equipment, sounds, costumes, and locations needed to film the scene. Once you have the breakdowns, you can budget and schedule the production--the production board is all breakdowns organized into shooting days.

Making the breakdown lists is lots of fun. I'm using software called FilmMakr, essentially a complex Excel macro, to do the breakdowns so they look pretty and can be neatly organised. Look at all the colors:

What's difficult is deciding where to break things up. A scene might be only two pages long but could have cutaways to objects or other people, might have a section that involves a special effect, or multiple cameras. Each cutaway or effect requires a different location, setup, equipment, etc. but they aren't separate scenes. I just don't know quite how far to take the breakdown...

Usually my documentary productions aren't this complex. New things to learn. Yeah!

Hello Tokyo plays at this weekend's Film Marmalade film jam:

Sunday, February 8
8 pm -- late
Pink Cow, Shibuya [map]
Admission: 500 yen

Film Marmalade is a loose confederation of independent filmmakers in Tokyo.

As you might expect, it's intimidating to screen my work to an audience of fellow filmmakers. If you're free on Sunday evening, why don't you come and keep me company? Otherwise, I'll have to hide in the bathroom until it's over.

Filmmarmalade vol.10

1. Jack Woodyard 
   “Don’t call me sensei”  15 min  Fiction Japan

2. Alvarez
   “Sobre la Tierra” (Upon the Earth) 8 min Fiction Argentina

3. Shannon Winnell 
   “Flow” 5 min  Experimental    Japan

4. David Roy 
“Modius-Café: The Uniclone Conspiracy” 3 min Flash Japan

5. Kristen McQuillin
“Hello Tokyo: Puzzles of Daily Life” 14 min  Educational Japan

6. Steve Ryan  
“24-hour bowling channel”  1 min  Documentary Japan

7. Steve Ryan  
“the love story of Lulu Belle” 4 min Fiction  Japan

8. Mifumi Obata 
“Unusual” 5 min Documentary    Japan

9. Jack Woodyard  
“The B”  1 min Fiction  Japan

10. Toowa II 
“no title” 5 min Animation/VJ Japan

It's been almost 5 years since I worked in an office. But for the past couple of days, I've been editing video at a client's Japan headquarters during regular business hours (and late into the night as well).

I'd forgotten the efficient bustle of paper and people through corridors and cubicles. Everyone is active and moving around.

The office is quite posh and lovely with modern furniture, red doors, grey carpets, tasteful signs, and free drinks in the fridges.

Compared to my quiet studio, it's an assault on the senses. All day long there's copiers swish/whip paper into trays; closed door meetings rumble and laugh; phones jangle non-stop. The air is super dry, the fluorescent lighting harsh. The scent of lunch is replaced by citrus-fresh cleaning products as the janitors wipe down the kitchenettes.

Having a change of scene is always good for me. I'm getting a kick out of the comparisons and I love the challenges of jumping into a new environment and figuring out the equipment, people, politics and the tasks at hand. I'll be full of new ideas when I return to my own office next week.

My desk glows sunset colors. It can't possibly be time for twilight.

Didn't I just sit down to work 10 minutes ago? I've been hammering away at things since 8:30 this morning, but only one item on my To Do list is actually completed. Every thing else is in progress or in suspension.

Good thing I have an electric lamp on my desk.

I just completed my first screenplay. It's Neon Chopstix episode three, "Confidential."

I definitely have a lot to learn about where to put in scene and shot notations and how to differentiate action from general comments and scene settings. But it's roughed in and now John, Kimura and I can polish it. I'm looking forward to learning more about the process from them.

Say hello to Neon Chopstix, former known as the production-that-had-no-name. Thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions. We decided the name after a long walk around Harajuku scouting locations on New Year's Eve day.

The next hurdle is auditions. We need more people to audition this Saturday.

We've got four Japanese female roles to cast and only a few Japanese actresses auditioning. You wouldn't think it would be so difficult to find Japanese actresses here in Japan, but here we are running a bit short of them.

If you are a Japanese actress, or know one, who is looking for something to do on weekends between February and April, drop me a line for an audition time on Saturday.

Audition info is in Japanese at http://www.neonchopstix.jp

We have scads of eager foreign men and women competing for 2 parts. Their enthusiastic applications have been heartening. Even though only two will be cast, we'll need plenty of folks for smaller roles, so we're looking forward to seeing everyone this Saturday.

Three hours, four brains, 257 ideas. But still no title for the new project.

I'm sure we will come up with one but nothing we've conjured so far is quite right. We do have two or three acceptable, but not brilliant, "runners-up" if we really get stuck.

So, help me out. What would you call a show about a group of creative people (foreigners and Japanese) in Tokyo? The story follows their relationships as they move around the city and pursue their creative interests: making music, acting, dancing, taking photographs, drawing, being beautiful, getting famous.

UPDATED SCHEDULE AND DETAILS

Saturday January 10, 2004
For more info: casting@mediatinker.com

New serial drama seeks Japanese and foreign actors. The auditions will consist of two cold readings; you do not need to prepare a monologue. Headshots and resumes are appreciated, but not necessary. In addition to the roles listed below, we need people of all backgrounds and ages for smaller parts and as extras.

Production is planned for weekends from mid-February through mid-April. Not all characters will be required for all shooting days.

Actress “Yoko”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: Japanese
Language: Japanese or bilingual E/J
“Yoko” is a stunningly beautiful actress with lots of talent, however, she's also a kind, sincere, humble person. Although she knows she is beautiful and is confident in her acting ability, she is very shy off-camera, and a bit insecure and awkward when interacting in the "real world." She is genuinely a kind-hearted person who is torn between following her acting career and pleasing her parents.

Actress “Tomoko”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: Japanese
Language: Bilingual E/J
“Tomoko” is a beautiful and feisty actress who hasn’t achieved the success she wants. She's known as a busybody who knows everyone’s business and gossips behind everyone’s back—therefore, she's a troublemaker.

Actress “Junko”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: Japanese
Language: Japanese or bilingual
“Junko” is a quiet, insecure, and introverted young woman who works behind the scenes. She is sort of plain and the outgoing actors and actresses forget to invite her along to social events. Junko speaks but she has emotional depth. She's quick to try to please, but her eyes reveal sadness.

Actress “Miki”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: Japanese
Language: Japanese or bilingual
“Miki” is a young actress who is always late for rehearsals and meetings. Although she is a fine actress, she is a prima dona who reacts badly to criticism.

Actress “Anna”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: European or British
Language: English or bilingual
“Anna” is a photographer who has been in Japan for just a few months. She has an outgoing personality and is trying hard to make friends and get her career going.

Actor “Sean”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: UK, Australian, or NZ
Language: English or bilingual
“Sean” is a comic artist and English teacher. He is the comic relief in the show, (ala Kramer), offering wisdom in a friendly manner.

Please pass this information to anyone you think might be interested

NEW DATE: Saturday, January 10, 2004
For more info: casting@mediatinker.com

New serial drama seeks Japanese and foreign actors. The auditions will consist of two cold readings; you do not need to prepare a monologue. Headshots and resumes are appreciated, but not necessary. In addition to the roles listed below, we need people of all backgrounds and ages for smaller parts and as extras.

Production is planned for weekends from mid-February through mid-April. Not all characters will be required for all shooting days.

Actress “Yoko”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: Japanese
Language: Bilingual E/J
“Yoko” is a stunningly beautiful actress with lots of talent, however, she's also a kind, sincere, humble person. Although she knows she is beautiful and is confident in her acting ability, she is very shy off-camera, and a bit insecure and awkward when interacting in the "real world." She is genuinely a kind-hearted person who is torn between following her acting career and pleasing her parents.

Actress “Tomoko”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: Japanese
Language: Bilingual E/J
“Tomoko” is a beautiful and feisty actress who hasn’t achieved the success she wants. She's known as a busybody who knows everyone’s business and gossips behind everyone’s back—therefore, she's a troublemaker.

Actress “Junko”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: Japanese
Language: Japanese or bilingual
“Junko” is a quiet, insecure, and introverted young woman who works behind the scenes. She is sort of plain and the outgoing actors and actresses forget to invite her along to social events. Junko speaks but she has emotional depth. She's quick to try to please, but her eyes reveal sadness.

Actress “Miki”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: Japanese
Language: Japanese or bilingual
“Miki” is a young actress who is always late for rehearsals and meetings. Although she is a fine actress, she is a prima dona who reacts badly to criticism.

Actress “Anna”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: European or British
Language: English or bilingual
“Anna” is a photographer who has been in Japan for just a few months. She has an outgoing personality and is trying hard to make friends and get her career going.

Actor “Sean”
Age: 20s-30s
Nationality: UK, Australian, or NZ
Language: English or bilingual
“Sean” is a comic artist and English teacher. He is the comic relief in the show, (ala Kramer), offering wisdom in a friendly manner.

Please pass this information to anyone you think might be interested

This morning I am filling in the ISBN and JAN-code applications for Hello Tokyo. I've been putting this off because the forms look so intimidating. Actually, they're pretty simple and it's mainly filling in names and addresses.

But there are some slightly confusing areas:

Current stockpile amount: ___ items

As I'm just applying for an ISBN now and it makes no sense to print a book before you have the ISBN, my inventory is 0. I wonder how many applications have a number other than 0 in this blank? ISBNs aren't required in Japan, so maybe some publishers apply after the fact.

And on the JAN code form, it asks you to enter your ISBN publisher code...only I haven't got one yet since I'm just applying now, so what do I put? The instructions don't really cover that but they do say to submit the forms together.

Maybe I should have a Japanese native reader help me out just a bit on these points. I don't want to have to apply again; it's not cheap.

Ah, bureaucracy.

Each of my major projects has its own ring binder to help me keep organized.

Something about putting together a new one fills me with happiness. Maybe shopping for the supplies reminds me of every new school year in my childhood--crisp sheets of blue-ruled filler paper, tabbed dividers, the selection of binders. Do I need a new ruler? New pens, definitely.

Or maybe its the hope and promise that all new endeavors bring. Heading into unexplored possibilities is thrilling. So many interesting experiences ahead and obstacles to be overcome. Ideas will overflow these pages, I'm sure.

My Hello Tokyo production book was once shiny and new. Now it's a well loved, battered, and filthy collection of notes, scribbles and memories of frustrations and triumphs.

Today, the production book for "the project that will not be named" is pristine like freshly fallen snow. Tomorrow, I'll start making tracks in it.

The new serial drama production (still unnamed!) is looking for people to fill positions on-screen and off-screen. Are you interested in any of these, or know someone who might be?

* Music Coordinator: scouts local music, categorizes it, obtains rights or agreements with local bands. Someone bilingual with a wide knowledge of music is best.

* Sound Engineer: Handles the audio mix and sound quality of the production.

* Foley artist/editor: Sound effects.

* Camera operator: experienced in a variety of styles; ideally with Canon XL-1.

* Makeup artist: puts on the pancake.

* Hair stylist: keeps the tresses tamed.

* Production assistants: angels who do a little bit of everything--from calling the cast for shoots to standing in for a missing crew member to dressing the set to carrying equipment to running off for more batteries. PA is one of my favorite things to do on a shoot--it's never boring. The more PAs the merrier.

* Location coordinator: finds places to shoot; helps obtain permission, arranges schedules, etc.

* Cast: some roles are filled, but we're looking for people in their 20s or early 30s: a foreign man (Aussie, Brit, Kiwi); a stunning Japanese woman; a French woman; and a variety of foreign and Japanese men and women. Bilingual is great, but not necessary.

* Other: just want to help out somehow? Let us know what can do. There are scads of odd jobs and things that aren't listed here!

Production will run February through June (probably). We're planning a production meeting for everyone who is interested next weekend. Please e-mail for details.

Fifteen years ago, I was a print designer. I created utterly glamourous things like wholesale food flyers and 2-color advertising for clients who really liked red and black. I cut my teeth on Windows 3.1, Corel Draw, and PageMaker. I knew WordPerfect inside out.

I didn't have a lot of room to be innovative, so I made a point to be technically skilled. Before the days of computer-assisted image resizing I could use a proportion wheel in my sleep. Printers liked working with me because I understood how to format graphics for print and I always gave them files that output correctly.

Then came the web. It was a whole new paradigm in preparing graphics. Where print wants lots of pixels and consequently big files, putting images on the web means low resolution and smaller file sizes. I figured it out quickly and soon I was doing most of my design and graphics preparation for Internet publications.

This month I find myself working on a project that's smack dab in the middle of print and web. I'm doing the layout for a book that will be presented as a PDF on CD-ROM. It's neither print nor web, but something in between.

Considering that it might possibly be printed out by the readers, I've created margins to allow for single sided printing with hole-punching and to accommodate either A4 or US Letter paper.

But it's more likely that this will be read from the computer so the images, mainly b/w photos scanned from various news sources, are 72 dpi screen resolution.

Acrobat encourages you to 'downsample' images during the PDF conversion to make the file size of the finished document smaller, so I've taken matters into my own hands. I want to control the results as much as possible. With nearly 500 pages and over 350 images in a single PDF, I've got stay sharp and find ways to reduce the file size so that it can be opened in a reasonable amount of time.

Oh, by the way, the colors for this book? Red and black. Some things never change.

Well, no reason to take a breather on the film front; now that Hello Tokyo's done, I've got two fun things lined up.

First is an entry in the Gershwin Showcase for the Vail Film Festival. I've got the idea and I know the music I want. Now I need to write the script and find a cast and crew to shoot it. Anyone want to help? I'm looking for a 30-something salaryman and a housewife for my cast.

The second project is much more involved. John Locke, an indie filmmaker (Sursum Films) sent me a mail on Sunday describing a project he's developing--sort of a serial drama involving a group of creative people. We'd talked about it a few weeks back and I hoped to get involved in the production and post-production.

Sunday's communique included more details and a draft of the first episode, plus this:

"...now here's the pitch. Would you like to not only participate in the production aspects, but also play the role of "Filmmaker"? I think you'd be great at it...and the role will tie in exactly what you do--someone who uses the internet to communicate, is creative, is an indie filmmaker, and who also has a network of creative friends and is motivated to do something. (How's that for YOU in a nutshell?)."

With a pitch like that, how could I say no? The draft script even named the filmmaker Kristen. Expect to see me on-screen as well as appearing in the production credits. I hope "Filmmaker" doesn't have too many lines; I'm crap at memorising. MJ can attest to that.

In the theater world, a bad dress rehearsal indicates a great opening night. If that translates to the theater of dressing up and being silly at Design Festa, I'm in for a fantastic show.

Today was one mishap, misadventure and misstep after another: loaned equipment was unloaned, schedules buckled, nothing worked quite the way I'd hoped and some things didn't work at all. It seems like half of what I'd planned for Design Festa fell apart today.

I felt the crushing weight of defeat mashing my mood into the ground. Tod told me I looked nice and I replied that his compliment was a consolation prize, a year's worth of Creamettes macaroni to the losing contestant.

But I'm kinda sorta back on track with a more flexible plan for the weekend and even though the nuts and bolts continue to loosen and drop off from my carefully laid plans, I'll deal with it.

I wonder how many other DF participants are going through the same thing right now?

Meet the videocrown.

It's constructed of perforated aluminum sheets, 6 strips of dichroic acrylic, 4 short brass tubes, and 38 bolts. A wireless video camera is fixed to the inner front with its lens peeping through one of the perforations.

As I wander around Design Festa, the video will be projected back to my booth.

I've just about finished my costume--a short black and maroon leatherette dress. I'll wear it with my Doc Martens boots and lots of eyeliner. I never did get over my goth phase, though it's pretty well hidden now. But costuming occasions bring it out again and I'm looking forward to playing dress up this weekend.

It's done. Hello Tokyo is completely edited. No more tweaking for fussing allowed. This morning I finished off the last of the final touches and exported the project with chapter markers. I'll burn the DVD later this week and then send it off for duplication.

I hardly express how totally excited and relieved and elated I am right now. This project has been in the works since last summer and it's been a long, slow road to completion.

And naturally I'm a little nervous about the next phase: marketing and distribution. I hope to work with Caroline Pover at Alexandra Press on that aspect, so I'm sure it won't be as worrying as I think...

I must come up with some cover art tout suite!

It's been quite a while since I put together a plan for replacing computers based on their depreciation cycle. But that's how I spent part of my day today: chasing down inventories and filling in blanks, so that we can draw up a schedule and a budget.

This isn't a necessity but the FCCJ budget review is coming up in December and it would be smart to have a rational strategy rather than guessing how many things might break next year.

So I'm taking it upon myself to detail and review our equipment--about 100 workstations, servers and peripherals. Yoshida-san, the IT manager, and Mr. Yoda, the general manager, are helping me to gather all the necessary data. I'll analyze it, find out replacement costs, and make some recommendations for a five year plan to cycle through all of the hardware.

Although accounting's not my favorite task, I enjoy making plans. I get to exercise my brain in a different way and it's sort of fun, in a bean-counting way.

What I see when I am editing. AVI (556 Kb)

How my computer sees me.

How anyone else present might see me.

I am making good progress today, after nearly a week filled with other tasks and social events. By bedtime tonight I will have the entire shopping segment done and probably the entertainment section as well. That will leave only the hefty transportation segment and the credits to do. My goal is to have this wrapped up, mastered and in the hands of the duplication company before I go on vacation later this month.

Every day I learn something new about FCP4. Last night, I read the manual aloud (to my ever-willing audience, Tod and Zousama)--Chapter 10: Audio Basics--and figured out some ways to approach my really grungy audio. This morning I put into practice what I read and, wow, it really made a difference.

This afternoon, I mastered the "Color Correction 3-way" filter. Another "wow, how useful!" moment.

I'm now 30 seconds shy of being halfway finished. I'll do these remaining seconds before I go to bed tonight because tomorrow I'm taking a day off to celebrate the autumnal equinox. After that, back to the editing grind. (Which isn't such a grind after all. I'm pleasantly surprised.)

My goal is to premiere Hello Tokyo at Design Festa on November 15th. Want to come see? I'll post more details soon.

FCP may have deflated me the other day, but I'm back on top. I've figured out how to do most of the basics I need to do to get Hello Tokyo edited again.

But there are a lot of little quirky things I haven't sorted out yet and I keep having to think hard to do the basics. Still, I've made big progress over where I was two days ago and I should have the title sequence, the most complex part of the project, edited by the weekend.

Now I have to remember to mail in that rebate before it's too late!!

Final Cut Pro is stressing me out. It's so different from Premiere that my firmly embedded paradigms don't work and I can't figure out how to do anything. 1200+ pages of manuals don't make things any easier.

So I'm feeling a little negative and I need to turn my thinking to the positive. Rather than talking trash at FCP when it doesn't behave as expected, I've come up with some code word equivalents:

complicated = comprehensive
confusing = full-featured
exhausting = exhilarating
frustrating = challenging
impossible = inspiring
stressful = stimulating

I'm not as good at political correctness, obfuscation, and double speak as the US government or George Orwell but then they aren't trying to master Final Cut.

Final Cut Pro 4 is packaged in a big, black box with a multi-hued eye staring out from the side. Ominous. Weight: 5 kg, at least, and it's all manuals. I'm terrified.

"I'd be halfway through the first book by now," said Tod as he hefted the box. "But I bet this will sit on your desk for a few weeks before you install it. I know you."

He may be right.

On the other hand, maybe I'll whiz through my To Do list and install FCP4 later today. Tod says it will be an "exhilarating effort" to get it up and running and to learn the program inside out.

We'll see...

No, it isn't finished, and my computer is being increasingly recalcitrant which make me doubt I'll ever get it done. Today was spent recovering from an overnight disaster that destroyed the entire project. I found a backup and sweated most of the day bringing it back to where it was last night at midnight. I've just gotten it squared away now and I'm ready to try to render again.

I'm sure we are all tired of all the dull and gruesome details of making Hello Tokyo, so consider this the final post in the saga. When it's done, I'll let you know.

And in other news:

I noticed yesterday that the Reference Kitten is now half price. That means my personal economy has just undergone a big devaluation...inflation...deflation? I don't know. If I understood economics I wouldn't calculate in kittens, would I? No matter what the right word is, everything costs twice as many kittens as it did last week. Except the reference kitten itself. I guess you can't sell a teenaged cat at kitten prices.

We had the most horrific thunderstorm this evening. The sky was red and there were five strikes that were near enough that I felt the electricity on my skin. I tried to sit out on the veranda to enjoy it, but it was too scary. After I turned off most of our valuable electronics, the Zous and I hunkered down in the living room and read aloud from The Complete Plain Words--guaranteed to calm the jumpiest elephant in half a page.

I captured some video of the cloud-to-cloud lightning and the moon peeking out as the storm moved away, but I won't have time to process it until Hello Tokyo is out of the way.

Disk space is sorted. I went through and carefully checked, double-checked and then deleted all the unused clips. I deleted about 180 that I'd captured for consideration but didn't put into the final cut. There are 247 video, audio and still files in the project. That's 19 clips/minute. It's not as overwhelming as it sounds.

So that housekeeping has cleared up enough space to move things around and give me room to render and compress. I'm feeling much relieved now. Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions on the weblog, in e-mail, and offline.

I'm at the stage in the project where the computer is maxing out its usually overspec'ed and rock solid capabilities. I've rebooted iru three times today when I pushed just a little too hard. Twice I've corrupted the Premiere preview files and had to re-render. And once I had to boot into OS 9 so that I could run Disk Warrior to fix suru, the SCSI disk where the project lives.

Digital video is a demanding task for any computer and this old G4 450MHz has seen its day. I'm looking forward to buying myself a new G5 early next year.

Input
I'm tired of eating alone. Tod, dear, please come home. Today I had yogurt, 4 cups of coffee, three cookies and dinner at Ampresso.

Today is Wish for More Disk Space Day. To fully render the project in uncompressed QuickTime so that I can pull it into Cleaner 6 to compress as MPG2 (using Cleaner's nice gamma adjustment and sound leveling features), I need 22 Gb of disk. I only have 19GB. Argh. I have three disks in varying degrees of fullness. Must figure out out whether there is any way to move things around and make just a little bit more space...

It is also Order Final Cut Pro 4 Before the Half-price Offer Runs Out Day. Since they won't ship to Japan, and Apple Japan doesn't sell the English version, I have to "game the system" and lie about where I live, have them mail it to my mother, and ask her to send it along to me.

And in the US, it is Labor Day. I'd completely forgotten.

Input
meusli with tofu milk, cheese toast, 2 cups of coffee, banana-peach smoothie, karaage, rice, simmered eggplant, salad, 2 glasses of water.

The TV test: looking at your work as your viewers will see it.

TV uses an entirely different color space than computer monitors, so what you see is not always what you get when you're making digital video. On top of that, the TV screen is larger and magnifies minor problems.

Really, checking the output on a TV is something that I should have been doing all along. But I'm not an eXtreme Programmer sort when I'm doing video work. I'm "in for a penny, in for a pound", so I save the big test til the end. But this evening I dumped the whole project out to tape and played it back.

Did Hello Tokyo pass the test? Not entirely, but the problems are solvable. I need to retinker the clips I had filtered to compensate for uneven lighting--I think I compensated too much on a few of them. And I will adjust audio levels in one section, which may mean recording the voiceovers again.

Input
2 slices of genmai bread with butter and 2 with peanut butter, a banana, 2 cups of coffee, a chicken pie, salad and a beer.

Today, a break. The video needs a rest and so do I. I kicked back and did some paying work, read Wired and had dinner with my friend Mike. Plus I gave Tod the lowdown on things to do in Zurich this weekend: maybe he'll go to the Lindt factory, or take the planet walk around Uetliberg.

Input
Two slices of toast, 3 cups of coffee, tuna and crackers (one of my father's favorite snacks), vegetable juice, samosas, murgh lajeeg, vegetable korma, garlic naan, saffron rice, chai, two beers and two absinthe with water. Some chocolate. (Tod will know exactly where Mike & I went for dinner, I'll bet!)

Done! Although there may be a few tweaks remaining, the fully edited 12'55" video is compiling even as I type this. I am ecstatic that the editing is finished. Next challenge, burn it onto DVD and get it duplicated/replicated. Oh, and find some people who are interested in buying it.

I celebrated by going out with MJ, Jo & someone named Kana. Kana was entirely too energetic and wore me out with incessant chatter about her love life and lifestyle in California. But I enjoyed Jo and MJ's somewhat calmer and more intellectual company. We went for karaoke (how intellectual is that?) and left just before midnight...I missed my subway connection at Nagatacho by 90 seconds and had to taxi home. (despite the 8/29 date on this post, it's really 1 am on Saturday the 30th)

Input
yogurt, 2 cups of coffee, 4 glasses of water, fried rice I made badly, garlic bread with gorgonzola sauce, some salads and stuff, 2 Campari sodas and a gin & tonic. Bad diet today, but I remember to take my vitamins. I will eat better tomorrow.

Closer, closer, closer. Today I went through the Getting Around, Entraintment and Conclusion/Credits sections and whipped them into shape with tighter transitions, music and overlays. I rewrote and re-recorded all the voiceovers, too. Plus I took a couple of final b-roll bits. It looks like I'm all poised to get this done in the next two days.

So the project will have taken just about a year from start to finish. And most of that was me sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting to "find the time" to do the edits. (More like getting over the fear of doing it and maybe failing.)

Is it perfect? No. There are lots of things that I would fix if I could. But I can't, not without better equipment, sheer editing brilliance and an actress who delivers her lines more evenly. So I am going to be happy with what I have. If the production value isn't 110%, well at least it's done and I think it will be useful to people coming to Tokyo which was the whole point in the first place.

Input
toast, 4 cups of coffee, cheese-ham-pickle toast, girl scout cookies, 3 glasses of water, crab shumai, white rice, vegetable juice. Not a very healthy diet today...

I made small steps today. I shot, captured and edited in the cooking footage, and did some voiceovers I don't like. I'm finding it challenging to get the right levels. Some of the video was shot outdoors, some of it indoors and doing voiceover recording directly to my hard drive instead of to tape just isn't getting me the same crisp sound.

I should stop being lazy and do it the hard(er) way--record to tape using the same wireless mic setup I used before, then capture and edit from there. More steps but better sound. Pffft.

I picked at the shopping section, too, getting things into a better order, but haven't tried to redo those voiceovers yet. The temporary ones I did for the rough edit are really bad. I have a terrible tendency to aspirate my Ps. Must practice sucking them in when I say them.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll do a marathon of voiceovers. Get them out of the way. I'd better write out what I want to say, so I can read directly from a script. That will make it much easier to get the right tone. If I work extemporaneously, I tend to forget where I'm going, which leaves weird little gaps as I try to think of the next word.

I will never work as on-screen talent again. Or not until I've gotten some "talent" lessons under my belt. Or at least have someone else to direct me!

Input
Leftovers from last night's deli shoot, 4 cups of coffee, a lemon water, some chocolate, and a dinner of swordfish on a bed of spinach and mushrooms. Wasn't as good as it could have been, because I put in too much wine. Wine evaporation looks great on-camera, though!

Today's goal was to get the food section reorganized. I added an entirely new bit about deli food, as well as pulling the footage out of the shopping section, recording more b-roll and voiceovers. (Thank goodness for b-roll and voiceovers!)

Except for a little bit of missing footage that I will shoot tomorrow at dinnertime (I want to show a plate full of home-cooked food on the dinner table), I've reached today's goal. The food section expanded from 45 seconds to about 2'15". I think that's a much better length for such an important topic.

Tomorrow I will work on the newly shortened shopping section. MJ laughed and grimaced at all the shopping footage we shot last year, but it's really coming in handy now...it's in so many of these sections!

Hey, if anyone knows of a good short-run DVD duplicating service, please pass the details to me. I don't think I want to pay for 1,000 replicated DVDs (even though they would be better quality) because I'm not confident that my market is that big...

Input
Yogurt and muesli, 5 cups of coffee, a peanut butter sandwich, and "deli items" that I taped for the food section.

I re-edited the Food section today. It looks good, but it's very brief and really only touches on eating out.

I managed to get it donw so speedily that I opened up the Shopping section this afternoon. On review, I decided that I really ought th move all the bits about shopping for food and deciphering labels into the Food section following the eating out information. That will even out the times a bit and it just makes sense.

So I'll be staying up late tonight to rewrite the script, see where I can use stock footage I have on hand to fill the transitional gaps and to try to get the roughs done. There's still hot coffee in the thermos pot from this morning, so I'm all set.

Input
No need to worry about my nutrition or loneliness today. I met my social quota for the week by enjoying Indian lunch with MJ and running down to Zushi for UltraBob's homemade hummus at dinner.

P.S. Look up at the night sky to see Mars. It's that gorgeous, bright pink light. On Wednesday, it will be the nearest to Earth it can get--about 34 million miles--a once in 59,619 year event.

Tackling Movable Type templates and CSS for the first time can be daunting. The MT default templates contain four kinds of code: CSS, HTML, MT tags, and Javascript.

If you're new to all this, you're about to learn that it pays to make a careful study of the code. Once you understand the way it works together, it's pretty easy to modify your MT templates to display almost any design you want.

Understanding the Divisions

Let's start by taking a look at what the different sections are and what the code does. I've broken apart the default template in an illustrated way. This isn't exactly a Movable Type tutorial, but it does point out where the divs are and what the tags look like in code and rendered in the browser.

This diagram shows where the div sections of the MT index template begin and end. (Please click to open a larger version in a new window.)

Positioning with CSS

Want to move these three major sections to different locations on your page? Start by modifying the style sheet entries for #banner, #content, and #links.

Most of the positioning elements in this stylesheet are margins and padding. Note that when a margin or padding is specified with four values, the order is always TOP, RIGHT BOTTOM, LEFT. If only one value is specified, it applies to all four sides equally.

Almost anything on your page can have margins and/or padding added to it--images, forms, tables, paragraphs. Usually margin and padding are mixed in with the formatting elements that control color, fonts and so on. In the examples, I removed the formatting controls as they rarely cause confusion once you understand positioning.

Margins and padding are nearly interchangable. The main difference is that if you've specified a background color in your style, padding adds an edge of the background color, but margins do not.

There are several other positioning elements that are crucial to the overall layout of the MT default index page.

Position:absolute This is used by the #content element and it means that #content ignores where other things are on the page and puts itself where you specify based on margins of its "parent." In the default MT index template, the #content element is absolute in relation to the tag. It's 225 px from the left margin, which leaves room for the left-side links section.

Position:relative This is the opposite of position:absolute. Relative positioning lets you shift an element on the page in relation to the things around it.

Float:left Floats are a little confusing, but if you've ever wrapped text around an image in Word, PageMaker, or a similar program, you'll understand the basic concept. In CSS, anything can be floated--images, paragraphs, headings, divs. Float can create some surprising and bad layouts, partly because not all browsers (including IE6) support them well, so read up on float before you start using it. And be prepared to test in many browsers to make sure it looks OK.

Width:200 This is used in the #links style in the default template. It ensures that the links section doesn't overflow into the #content section (which is 225 pixels from the left margin)

One final note. The difference between # and .
#name -- ID -- used only once per document
.name -- CLASS -- used as many times as needed in the document

This is not everything there is to know about positioning. For more details, check out Eric A. Meyer's comprehensive (but a little daunting) CSS books. For up-to-date online help, Google for CSS positioning tutorial.

A Positioning Example

To move the "links" column to the right instead of the left (MT's default), you need to edit #content and #links in the style sheet. In #content you change the position to relative and add a float and a width. You also change the values for the margin. In #links, you remove the width and adjust padding:

Formatting the Blog Entry

After you have the major divisions sorted, you can focus on formatting your blog entries. Changing the way the blog entry looks requires a mix of the style sheet, special MT tags and HTML.

There are three things you might want to do to format your blog entry:

1. Adjust the text displayed (Format the date as 2003-08-14) - MT Tags
2. Change the fonts, color, spacing, etc., of the text - CSS
3. Move the text to another place in the entry - HTML template

All the sections of the entry (the date, title, body, extended entry link, posted, comments link, and trackback) follow a similar pattern: to change the text displayed take a look at the options for the MT tag and change the template; to change the way the text looks, change the CSS and to move the data around within the entry, cut and paste within the template HTML.

Let's take one section of the entry as an example:

Entry Date
To change the text of the date, you change the <MTEntryDate format="%x"> by substituting something else for the %x. All the date format codes are in the MT Manual.

To change the font and color of the date, you edit date in the style sheet.

date {
font-family:palatino, georgia, times new roman, serif;
font-size: large;
color: #333;
border-bottom:1px solid #999;
margin-bottom:10px;
font-weight:bold;
}

To change the location of the date within the entry, cut these lines from the HTML, and paste them where you want the date to appear. These lines must stay inside the MTEntry.

<MTDateHeader>
<h2 class="date">
<$MTEntryDate format="%x"$>
</h2>
</MTDateHeader>

More Study Examples

I took the screenshots from Jason Cha's Japan Blog, Philip Hill's Grandfather Philip, and my own Media Tinker weblog. Thanks to Bob McDonald, Rudolf Ammann, Gary Lawrence Murphy and Olivier Thereaux for their helpful suggestions.

Last night, I media tinkered for a friend who needed more hands and time than she had available. By taking on the content formatting tasks for a web project that's gone into overtime, I saved her and her team 13 hours. Time they used for tweaking the Flash files and hunting down the inevitable code gremlins while I formatted, copied and pasted English and Japanese text into their CMS.

It was refreshing to do a job that was so simple.

Don't forget that when you are running out of time and the To Do list is getting longer instead of shorter, there are helping hands right over here at Media Tinker.

(How's that for silly marketing copy? But it's true. I'm here. Use me.)

WWJ isn't World Wrestling Japan, but Wireless Watch Japan, a wireless industry publication featuring news and exclusive video interviews with the movers and shakers in the Japanese mobile phone markets.

I helped to revamp their website by implementing a PHP-Nuke content management system integrating e-commerce and customizations in a tight 3-week turnaround.

Congratulations to WWJ on the relaunch of their site today.

Way back when I started my career as a media tinker, I worked for a food service supplier. I spent my days designing sale flyers and advertising on early desktop publishing systems. Eventually, I left that job but food service design still comes into my life from time to time.

Recently, FCCJ asked me to redesign their menus. It's been ten yeas since I last did a menu layout, but I'm quite pleased with the results. This is the elegant dinner menu. There is also a more casual lunch menu that features an old fashioned typewriter theme--just right for a journalists' club.

If you're dining in the Pen and Quill from August when these menus make their debut, drop me a line and let me know what you think.

My current web development project, a PHP-Nuke driven site, is coming together very quickly and very slowly at the same time.

Most of the site is sorted out and for a three-week turnaround, it's been going pretty smoothly. Launch is scheduled for June 15th. The clients are doing double time on getting the content ready while I code. If we pull a few more late nights, we should make it.

But I'm currently tackling an 1800 line chunk of hellish code that manages the user accounts. The client requested a customisation that the system isn't designed to do at all. So I'm rewriting the module. Well, not really rewriting as much as mangling. Which is why things seem to be going rather slowly right now. I keep getting stuck, digging around for answers, reversing, trying again, getting stuck a different way (which I consider excellent progress) asking Tod for help, fixing things, breaking them again, and repeat ad infinitum.

Eventually, I will come out on the other side of this with a deeper understanding of PHP and MySQL. Not that I really want it (I'd rather be making videos) but I guess you get what you get.

When confronted with a mental challenge, my first instinct is to say no and run away. I don't think I'm entirely unique in that respect but it's something I really should stop doing.

"Oh, no, I can't do that. Beyond my ability. Maybe we can acheive a similar result in a different way that I already feel comfortable doing," I think to myself. Or maybe I just panic internally.

On the outside, my clients hear a lot of "I'm not sure, I don't know, and that's not as easy as you might think" as I scribble notes about what they want and how I might acheive it. It can't be a pleasant or confidence-inspiring meeting technique but I always promise that I will do my best.

Which is invariably better than I think it's going to be.

After a meeting with WWJ yesterday, I was in full panic mode. They wanted generally reasonable changes to the functionality of their site, completely within their business model. But they all involved custom coding the PHP. I'm a crap coder. How was I going to do any of this?! Yikes.

But fueled with coffee after dinner, I did most of it before I went to bed at 3. And I was up at 7:30 hacking away at PHP-Nuke again.

I've added access restrictions to the content, created a new block to display the top viewed articles, added teaser text to article listings, separated out content by categories and generally made innumerable little changes. Today I am working on the look and feel of the site. I will get this all done!

I've gotten work done on the entertainment section but not enough to show you. I need to do the voice overs but the circumstances were poor this week, even for sloppy ones. The destruction and construction are awfully noisy!

So instead, here's an image of my video editing environment. I use Premiere 6.5 on Mac OS X.

The entertainment section I'm working on now has 28 clips listed in the Project bin over on the left. To the right is the monitor where the video plays as I work with it. and to the right of that are some control panels for effects.

Down at the bottom is the most important section--the timeline. This is where I connect the clips, trim them, put them in order, add transitions, and get them just right. The yellow and pale green strips are the video clips in timeline and the powder blue box is a transition from one clip the other other. The jaggedy teal bit below is the audio waveform.

Editing is a lot of fun. I wish I had more time for it.

I'm becoming familiar with various content management systems (CMS) for websites. FCCJ uses Xoops, DigitalEve is experimenting with Zope, and WWJ is setting up a PHP-Nuke site.

All three do basically the same thing. They allow the administrator to post content, create user accounts, and manage forums. On top of that, you can install modules and add-ons to do other things--create polls, mange a FAQ, support weblog-like journals, display RSS feeds. You name it and someone has probably written a module to do it.

But all three have their own specialised jargon to describe what they do and myriad quirks in the way they handle even the basic functions. None of it is as straightforward as it should be.

My challenge today is to figure out the subtle differences between the various PHP-Nuke "blocks." How does Content differ from Articles differ from News? Sections relates to them in what way? What the heck is Ephemerids?

Once I've sorted that out to my satisfaction, I need to figure out how to display excerpts of articles on the front page, but to restrict access to the rest of the content to people who have registered on the site. Luckily for me, I have an entire community of Nuke developers to support me. I just have to figure out how to speak their language!

What a boring Sunday. I'd hoped to be outside today, but...

I'm inside at my computer, compressing videos. Such is the glamorous life of a media tinker.

Really, it's my own fault. I'm doing some subtitling work for an insurance company and the MPEG-1 files they gave me to work with have to be recompressed. This causes a loss of quality, similar to making a photocopy of a photocopy. The details start to blur and it's not as crisp and perfect as the original.

The client is aware of this; I did a test clip before I agreed to take on the job. In fact, I encouraged them to go back to the original post-production company. But maybe they wanted someone local or maybe I'm just very economical. I got the job.

But even though they think the test clip quality is OK, I'm not happy with it. So I spent Friday afternoon and most of yesterday tweaking and testing the encoding settings in Cleaner.

I even upgraded to Cleaner 6 to get access to 2-pass variable bit rate encoding. But the program is pretty buggy and I've had mixed results. Only 70% of the clips processed properly when I batched them overnight.

So I am fighting with Cleaner to get the last few done today. One sailed through with no errors. The other two...fail, fail. I've dropped back to Cleaner 5 to see if I can get them to encode without errors.

And that's why I look so bored. Encoding is a lot of waiting and hoping. The program's just signalled its completion with a cheery chime, so I'm off to see how it did. With fingers crossed...

[Update: 19:03. The last two clips are done and the CD is burning now. I'm ready to hand this off to the client tomorrow on schedule. Whew.]

It was a busy week with paid work and photography fun so I didn't make much time to work on Hello Tokyo. But I did manage a little progress. I have photos of conbini to slot into the empty space you saw last week.

And in my fridge I have the carefully wrapped last harvest of the strawberry season and some terribly expensive out-of-season mikan. I will film them tomorrow, then eat them for breakfast. Mmmmm.

More to show next week, even if it's just the gaps filled in on what you saw before.

I'm not sure if it counts as work or a labor of love, but this week I set up a Moveable Type weblog for my father. He's a stained glass artist outside Philadephia, PA.

Although he didn't persue it as a profession, he always loved art and his hobbies were creative. When I was growing up he did some rather odd projects, like hand painting (with a brush and enamel paints)our Jeep-like truck camoflauge. We lived in the woods and it was a little scary to drive it during deer hunting season. He also built furniture, dollhouses and minatures and Dad still draws the family Christmas cards every year.

But after retiring from a job in chemical R&D, he took up stained glass. His ability to combine technical detail with design, color and light makes his work excellent. He gets commissions and wins awards, so I think we'll count that as a success!

For the weblog, I set up category archives to make it easy to browse just the glass images and included his funny retirement story in the sidebar. Dad will never really retire, but he does wear the hat...

Grandfather Philip's Stained Glass

This might be the longest-running web project I've worked on. Maybe I should say have worked "on-and-off" on.

Kristin Newton and I met to discuss revising her site in spring 2001. I started logging hours on the project in August 2001 but it only went live last week. Needless to say, the site underwent a number of setbacks and changes in plan over the course of two years. There's still content pending but at least it is up and running!

The site is for Right Brain Research, an art and creativity school here in Tokyo--where I've taken classes, including the workshop on creative problem solving last week. If you're looking for a way to jumpstart your brain or train your eyes and hands to draw, this is the place to come.

Moblogging, sending entries to your weblog via your mobile phone, is all the rage in Tokyo right now. With camera-equipped phones it's easy to capture the essence of an event and post about it "live." Or maybe just bore the pants off your readers while you amuse yourself taking photos on the train.

Regardless of what content you offer, you need a gateway to take the mail from your phone and get it into your weblog. Kevin Cameron wrote one called Mfop - Moblogging for Other People.

At last week's Webloggers meetup, Kevin asked if I'd do him up a button that people could use to link their Mfop sites back to his.

I'd just finished a quickie logo/button for Stuart Woodward's Japan Bloggers mailing list and was in the spotlight as the Queen of Ten Minute Logos.

For Mfop, I created the button using one of Kevin's awesome bird photos, and threw in a page logo and design ideas as a bonus. Kevin implemented the design to match another one of his pages and now Mfop is looking pretty stylish.

Tonight I attended a creative problem solving workshop at Right Brain Research. Kenji Konishi showed us his three step technique for breaking through tough problems. And it worked!

My problem is an inability to finish my own projects. Client work, no problem. I always get that done on deadline. But my personal stuff tends to languish. Maybe I get bored or distracted or frustrated. Whatever it is, I'd like to get rid of this backlog of half-done videos, books, and other things.

So how did I come up with a solution? Well, after brainstorming a bunch of possible ways to finish my projects (everything from 'bribe myself' to 'hire an assistant'), I randomly selected two and tried to combine them. That was hard! How do you combine "stop sleeping" with "collaborate by breaking project into dependent tasks"? I did it, as you'll see.

I did this a combination step few times and entered the results on a mind map--a drawing of the main theme and ideas branching off, with sub-ideas and so on.

Then, once I was satisfied with my mind map, I wrote out a story using the mind map as a guide. While writing the story, all of the unrelated ideas on the map seemed to come together into an actual workable solution.

And the solution? Plan a pajama party where all the guests come ready to work on a project of the hostess' choosing (which would, of course, be one of my unfinished projects!). Divide everyone into teams and set them a task. Maybe it would be "create the title frames for the video" or "edit the soundtrack." Something that could reasonably be accomplished before everyone falls asleep. Before going to bed, we'd put all the pieces together to complete the project.

In the morning, after a nice breakfast, everyone brings out their own unfinshed project and gets to trade with someone. So MJ might have a Flash navigation she is having trouble with and Miki might be frustrated by setting up a postcard server. They trade, set a deadline to get the work done and voila! Hurdles overcome, new ideas and techniques shared and it's fun, too.

Now I just have to find enough willing people with similar skill sets. Anybody interested in a video editing sleepover??

Four years ago, I wrote a single sheet of info for friends who where visiting from the States. That sheet expanded into a ten page booklet for our visitors and recently became the basic script for the video, with some further additions.

Well, finally, I've turned it into a web page. It's imperfect, wanting more pictures and additional details. The stylesheet is broken (bad MT!). But it's a start. What do you think of the Tokyo Visitor's Survival Guide?

I'll fix the problems and address your comments and suggestions tomorrow; I'm off to bed with a pot of tea and a box of tissues to ease my stuffy head.

After I posted my toilet paper song, I received three creative musical inspirations from friends and strangers.

DKM Redux (1 Mb MP3).
Mike is from Arsenic.net and an old friend from Pittsburgh.

Toilet Paper remix (1.5 Mb MP3).
Josh is from Quibx and reads my site from Boston.

Pumice Warning Song (3.8 Mb Wav).
Jennifer runs Wordpainting near Wilkes-Barre, PA and has been my sister for a number of years. Helen (yelping "ouch" at the end) is my very cool niece.

Maybe this is a new career twist for me. Yesterday I worked on two songs about toilet paper.

Toilet Paper Song [604K, MP3]

It is uninstrumented; lyrics and melody by me. It's a little thin and at 38 seconds, it's really short. Anyone care to provide some accompaniment? :-)

The other toilet paper song is a collaboration and not ready for general listening, but as soon as we finish it, I'll put it up here for you to enjoy.

Stay tuned to Radio Kristen.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan website launched about an hour ago.

Still struggling with one issue--e-mailing all the members to let them know their user IDs is not working as advertised--but I hope to have it resolved soon.

In the meantime, enjoy the site and feel free to give your opinion in the comments here.

The January issue of the FCCJ's newspaper, No. 1 Shimbun, should be subtitled the "Kristen McQuillin Special Issue" or "All the Kristen That's Fit to Print." I wrote or co-wrote three of the 18 articles, my picture appears twice and there's a profile of me as their new webmaster that paints me in a very favorable light (thanks to Jon for the magic paintbrush!).

All in all, my name is mentioned ten times. If anyone at the club doesn't at least recognise my existence, it's because they didn't pick up a copy of the newspaper.

I'm sorry that I can't show you quite yet, but on January 28th all will be unveiled. Stay tuned!

Yesterday, I spent hours auditioning royalty-free music for the video. Choosing the right music is critical to the tone and feel of the project and it's one of the hardest things about the artistic process for me.

You may not ever have listened to royalty-free music on purpose, but I'll bet you've heard it. The background music of training videos, corporate ads, commercials, and TV news programs is the sort of music that can be found in royalty-free collections. Lots of this music is really terrible!

So why use royalty-free? Because getting the rights to songs people would recognise is expensive, time-consuming and complicated. I'm cheap, impatient and lazy. For the cost of a meal, I can download a royalty-free track; for a couple hundred dollars I can buy an entire collection of royalty-free music. Once I've bought it, I can use it as often as I want without paying another yen.

Although inexpensive sometimes means bad, there are some talented musicians working in the field: FreePlay has a good selection and so does Unique Tracks (formerly Loud Neighbors). I love the music at Future Web Sonics but it's not right for the Hello Tokyo project.

I'm not 100% happy with the music I've selected for Hello Tokyo, but I think it's 90% right, so I'm going with it.

Finished! I finally got through all of the tapes from September and captured the clips I need for Puzzles of Daily Life.

Now I get to edit. As much as I hate logging and capturing tapes, I love to edit. So I should be able to get this project done in the next couple of weeks, if my voice recovers from teh cold. I have to record the voice overs still. And there is some B-roll footage to take, but only a few minutes worth, if that.

The longer we work on the FCCJ project, the more details unfold and issues spring up. Our deadline for completing the coding is the end of this month. Our aim is to launch the site on 28 January.

The To Do list gets longer as the time grows shorter on every project, of course, but this time I'm not doing everything myself. There's a team of four of us. My job is mainly to test things as they are done, to find/report problems and to communicate between FCCJ & the development team at Blue Beagle.

I feel so fussy, though. A lot of the items on the To Do list are picky little details. Let's face it, I want things the way I like them. I'll have to maintain and support the system and its content after launch and I want to ensure I can do it confidently.

Yesterday's drama-in-minature was changing the color of an outlined box style. The true blue currently there doesn't match the palette of teal colors in the rest of the site. Picky point, right? It took four mails to convince the designer. What she doesn't realise is that I can go fix the CSS later myself if I don't like what she's done.

Today? Who knows...

Since early October, I've been project managing a big website redevelopment. The launch date is mid-January and today I spent six hours with the developers going over myriad details. Could we change the layout to highlight the event name, instead of the name of the person posting the event announcement? Will this module work this way or that way when it's finished? What happened to this thing we asked for two months ago?

It was interesting and we covered a lot of ground. But it was exhausting. The programmer speaks little English; I speak little Japanese. Our interpreter is extremely personable and works his ass off for us, but isn't as technically skilled as we are. So it was sometimes difficult to make my points understood--through interpretation of language and technical concept!

I know that the results of this project are going to be excellent. I can hardly wait for the unveiling in January.

MJ is soon to launch an online resource for Japanese and foreign web designers, programmers, print designers, information architects and other design and development professionals in Tokyo.

In addition to being an online resume database, there will be a collection of article son the in and outs of doing business as a designer. I spent my afternon drafting the inaugural piece, 650 words on four key responsibilities that clients and designers need to consider when project planning. I'll follow this up with some handy checklists for web project specifications and content.

So now that I've written the articles, MJ better get herself gear and get the site launched! (Right after this week's rush jobs, our trips to the gym and a little bit of sleep, naturally)

After discussing the prospect with Tod and sketching some designs, I went to Akihabara yesterday evening to look for parts. Two of the main components I need are 24,000 yen and 12,000 yen each--and I need them x 5. I could probably order one of the components online for considerably less than I found in in Akiba, but the other seems to be about 24,000 yen ($200) no matter where I look.

So not including the structural elements, wiring infrastructure, power supplies or tools to put this all together, I'm looking at a project that's going to run upwards of 180,000 yen. Add in the rest and it's going to be well over 200,000 yen (about $1600). For a project that is art, with no commercial potential, I'm not ready to invest 200,000 yen. That's almost half of a new dual-processor G4.

Maybe I'll have an unexpected windfall. Or I could try writing a grant to pay for this. I'll put "investigate grant options" right after "finish novel" on the old To Do list.

As year's end approaches, I am to getting a bit antsy (or is that ANSI?) because my "partially completed" project list is looking almost more impressive than my "completed" list.

In progress: 25,000 words of a novel, the video project, a few sections of zousan.com, a couple of collaborative projects and all the usual ongoing things that actually earn me money. The money-making projects will very soon reach the completed list.

As for the rest...they weigh on my mind. What to do first? Capture those remaining video clips and start editings? Pick up the novel again? Get cracking on the holiday cards?

Nah, I think I'll start another project. An idea that came out of my novel, actually, for some wearable technology. If I can get this done in the next couple of weeks, I will debut it at the round of holiday parties this year. :-)

I'm procrastinating. For some reason, I just can't get myself started on the video editing. So instead, I'm fussing with The Zous' weblog today. It's all converted to Moveable Type and I've added a new postcard to Zousan's Post Office.

Maybe tomorrow I'll manage to get motivated to start capturing from the tapes.

I've alawys loved walking through the warrens of Akihabara where stalls sell all of the bits and parts for building your own electronic gadgets. I've often thought that it would be fun to turn some of the pretty, blinky shiny things into art.

Well, I finally have a project idea that combines art and tech. Now I need to figure out how to wire minature TFT monitors together to work with a single video camera. Then I can put together a parts list and actually shop in the warrens, instead of browsing.

The first trick will be getting enough electronics clue to be able to detail the plans. Anyone have a favorite reference on how to build your own array of video monitors?

Props to Yoshi who is now featured in two sections of the video project. In addition to letting me bump into him on the street six times during retakes a few weeks ago, he let me and MJ film him ringing up my purchases at 7:00 this morning. I wonder if anyone (aside from you) will notice that he's an extra twice over?

The filming schedule is harried this week because I'm getting my hair cut on Thursday evening. So every shot that features me will be taken before then. And if I forget one or we have a production disaster, I'll just have to be creative with the editing and voice overs. The pressure to do it right is actually quite exhilarating.

I hate cataloging tapes. For me, it is the worst part of any video project. Yet it's vital, not only as a way to produce lists of what to sntach off the tape, but also production proofing. Did we get the shot we think we got? I have about two hours of tape to go through today. It's already 1:30 and I've put it off this long, but I need to get it done before 6 tongiht. So I'd better get the tape in, the logbook out and review, review, review.

More film in the can. On this sunny day, we hit Ginza again and got another 20 minutes of footage this morning. We're heading out in a few minutes to get some of the grocery shopping sequences.

When I'm home at my desk, thinking about this project, I hate it. Filming is tiring. Nothing ever goes quite right. I always flub my lines; the makeup is uncomfortable. Why am I doing this?

But when I get out there with the camera and equipment, I actually enjoy it. It's fun to solve problems on the fly or figure out the best angle to shoot from without getting in the way of traffic. If we set up the tripod and take a moment to get ourselves arranged, we always draw a crowd. Sadly, nobody applauds when I'm done.

They're done! The DigitalEve Japan workshop CDs that I've been working on since May are finally complete. I finished the cover art last night and we'll be taking advance orders for them on Saturday at my Digital Photography workshop. But only if the Steering Committee decides on a price...probably somewhere around 2000 yen.

I like the cover art. I did the tray inserts first with all the details of what's on the CD. The covers, which are simple, highly pixelated pictures of the instructors (me & MJ), were much harder to do. My favorite part of the cover and tray is the silly callout box. "4 illustrated lessons! 33 minutes of video! 15 exercises! 8 Internet links!"

I think the contents of the CD are good, too. We've covered a lot of ground. I really like the Dreamweaver one, which I taught to a live audience in May. I've refined what I covered then, adding some more detail and explanations. It's a useful tutorial on templates, style sheets and other handy features of Dreamweaver. MJ's audio CD presents a broad overview of digital sound for beginners then walks through creating MP3s and listening to Internet radio.

If you'd like to order either of these, please drop me an e-mail. I'll send you more details.

Don't I look like Mrs. Cleaver in my jewelry and apron? I'm showing off cleaning products for the video. These all have pictures on them, which are helpful for the functional illiterate who wants a tidy room.

Plans for filming yesterday were thwarted by road construction. My valiant camerawoman got no sleep because of all-night construction near her house. So we put off our reshoot in Ginza until the MJ gets some sleep and we have another sunny day. Tomorrow we'll shoot the grocery store and cooking scenes. It's coming together slowly, slowly.

Today I will work on animations. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do, but I need to make train routes somehow interesting. Little trains zipping around them? Maybe something simpler...

I've added a new page to my mediatinker site: Current Projects. I'll try to keep it up to date with the things I'm working on.

Describing my projects to an unfamiliar audience makes me realise that I'm doing some pretty interesting stuff. When I'm actually doing the work, it doesn't seem so interesting and sometimes it's frustrating. Yesterday's video shoot was a semi-success. We got a lot of scenes done, but a bad microphone connection (or RF interference) makes most of them unusable; we'll have to reshoot all of it after I fix or replace the wireless microphones. Or perhaps I can learn to lip sync voice overs...

The storyboards are done and most of the locations are figured out. Now I have to confirm a few minor points, get in touch with some people, call in favors, and get a haircut. Then I can start filming...

This morning I am sketching storyboards for a video project I'm planning. By the end of the day I will have drawn 137 frames. My sketches are cartoonish and probably not illustrative to anyone except me. How is anyone going to know that the green line on a grey background with three white boxes above is a train? Those red and black blobs are me, can you tell?

Despite the low quality of the drawing, the sketches help me to see where the action takes place. Even though I know what I think I want--the script is typed up and I've noted the general composition of each shot--actually drawing it helps to fix the details. I can do this shot at Iidabashi station, near the entrance facing the street. Then if I turn the camera towards the station for another scene later on, I have two "locations" but only one trip to the station.

I hope to get the pre-production planning done by next week so I can start shooting in early September.

The Global Cities Tokyo team (me, Fred, Chiharu, and Wilson) are smiling because the film is "in the can." We wrapped up last night at about 11 pm; Wilson and Fred are on their way back to Frankfurt today. At the end of the night as we said our thanks and goodbyes, it really felt like the closing night of a theatre production. Fred gave me his Kraffftwerk company jacket; Wilson told me I was as good an assistant as his son. Pretty gratifying...

Overall, being a production assistant was a great experience. I met tons of people with whom I hope to keep up personally and professionally, and went to locations I wouldn't normally. It was exhausting but exhilarating. Today seems so quiet in comparison.

I took plenty of photos while we worked. If you'd like to see some of the places I've been this week, take a few minutes to sit through the Global Cities: Tokyo slideshow.

Yesterday was a fun day of shooting at Togenuki Jizo in Sugamo, "Grandma's Harajuku." I'm too rushed to write more, but I'll be back tomorrow.

I have no idea how these guys shoot for 14 hours without stopping or eating. In this photo, taken yesterday at 17:30, I'm exhausted, sunburned, sweaty and starving after traversing Harajuku, Omotesando and Shin-Okubo from 10:00. They are taking shot after shot of Kabukicho's neon-covered porn shops & pachinko parlors. I'm cranky and at the point where I fail to see how 40 minutes of Kabukicho is going to tell their story, but whatever...I just want to eat...

Yesterday one of our filming locations was Tokyo Dome. We captured the Yomiuri Giants' batting practice and pre-game activities.

We attracted some attention from the press. I guess it isn't every day that a foreign film crew invades the regular reporters' turf. I fielded a bunch of questions about who we are and what we're doing. In fact, one of the sports writers phoned me later to ask my opinions on soccer. But that conversation was in Japanese, so if you see really, really stupid quotes from me ("Oh, yeah, Kahn's great.") in the Tokyo Sports , please be kind.

For the next five days, I'm on the crew of Global Cities as they shoot the sixth and final show in the series. It's a hectic schedule, but fun.

Yesterday we interviewed Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan; Yu Miri, a Japanese-Korean author; Jonathan Watt, a correspondent for the Guardian; and Ramesh Kapoor, who founded the popular Samrat Indian restaurants in Tokyo. In this photo, Wilson Ruiz, the creative director, consults with Fred Gattys, fimmaker. What are they shooting? The neon facade of a Roppongi karaoke bar.

Since we moved in February, I've not had any personal meishi (business cards), but while shopping the other day, I found some very interesting translucent stock that will work in my inkjet printer. So today I'm designing some new cards.

I forgotten how challenging it is to get a good balance of white space, graphic interest and all the contact details into a 91mm x 55 mm rectangle. But I think I like this design. Next time you see me, ask for a card.

A couple of weeks ago, I accepted a pro bono job to make a virtual banner to accompany the "With Africa Against Poverty" campaign that the United Nations Development Programme is running.

All of the footballers in Africa (along with some FIFA executives and the heads of several African nations) signed a huge, 7 meter long banner in support of increased aid to the poor in Africa. The banner is now on display in downtown Tokyo outside Nakata.net Cafe for the duration of the World Cup and will be shipped to UN headquarters later this year.

It's been well over a year since I registered my domain but haven't worked on a site for it...the shoemaker's children and all that. Today I've completed my professional website, to complement my personal site and this one.

I'm pleased to unveil media tinker. It needs some additional tweaking, but it's "done enough" for you to take a look. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

"Kristen, guess what," a friend from Perot Systems started. "We were on a little island near Hiroshima this weekend, and I saw someone reading one of your articles in Tokyo Classified."

It's neat to find out that my work is being read.

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I'm a writer. Inevitably they as what sort of writer or where I've been published. It's nice to reel off a list that includes a magazine people have heard of and maybe even read. At least in Japan.