Category: confessions of a pixel pusher

job offering

confessions of a pixel pusher

Los Angeles based high end commercial editorial/VFX boutique seeks
passionate, experienced engineer. Must be forwarded thinking with a love
for technology and sharing that it with the creative staff and producers.
Experience with networking, unix and OS X would be required, some working
knowledge of video systems helpful. Must work well with others and be able
to clearly define goals and implement them. We have a great team and looking
to build a stronger one. If you care to push pixels better than anyone,
then we can offer you some of the prettiest pixels in town to do so.

Please send resumes to:
techjob0603@andreaswacker.com

VES Awards

confessions of a pixel pusher

The VES Awards were tonight at the Palladium in LA. There was allot of work out there last year. Nice to see that Framestore got an award for the Chemical Brothers ‘Believe’ video. DD got one for the NIN Video “Only”

The one-shot-4400-frame minivan sequence out of “War of the Worlds” got recognised twice. Well deserved I think. Most credit should go to whomever had the idea to realise a scene like this in this way.

Two awards were actually for work in video games. A bit eerie: The audience knows all to well that video games will take some of the money away from the movies that would have gone to visual effects as well.

The ‘bag-o-swag’ was actually pretty nice. Four DVDs and PC game. Do I need to buy a PC now??

Like in all these events it was nice to see so many people again.

And then there is one more thing. I will be writing about that shortly.

samba samba-3.0.14a-2 and OS X 10.4 wont work

confessions of a pixel pusher linux OSX

If you try to mount a samba 3.0.14 volume from an OS X 10.4 client then the mount will never finish / connect and you will get an entry in the syslog of your server like:


smbd[30115]: [2006/02/14 18:15:46, 0] rpc_parse/parse_prs.c:prs_mem_get(537)
smbd[30115]: prs_mem_get: reading data of size 2 would overrun buffer.
smbd[30115]: [2006/02/14 18:15:46, 0] rpc_server/srv_pipe.c:api_pipe_bind_req(919)
mailhost smbd[30115]: api_pipe_bind_req: unable to unmarshall RPC_HDR_RB struct.

The fix is easy: just upgrade samba to 3.0.20 and things work again. Fedora Core 4 comes with
this ‘bad’ samba, and only OS X 10.4 barfs on it according to the net. 10.3 is supposed to be fine.

bad memory on a Mac and how to spot it

Apple confessions of a pixel pusher technology

If you machine freaks out at really random points then I would recommend testing it’s memory. The “Techtools deluxe” you find on the CD with the red edge you got from Apple appears to be pointless. Duing 15 minutes of beachballing I was able to click on 3 different messages, but it never worked. At least on the G5 that was broken today it was a complete waste of time.

I downloaded this very very nice memory tester
it it worked right away. Found the bad memory and that was that.

Here a little how to:
1. Install the program
2. Reboot your mac and hold command/apple S while the machine is coming up
3. You will be in the text based single user mode. Don’t be scared
4. type /Applications/memtest/memtest
(tip: hit tab or ESC twice to auto complete the command)
5. see what the test is saying: bad memory kicks out lots of error messages

web interface for exabyte LTO tape robot

confessions of a pixel pusher linux technology

When you buy the tape robot Exabyte Magnum 1×7 you can download a command line tool called
libTool to control it.

Since command line is not everybodies most favorite interface I wrote a little web interface for it.
It will show you which tape is where and can move tapes betweens slots, the drive and the door.

Drop me a line if you could use this. I wrote it, since there was nothing out there. It requires the libTool linux command line application and a webserver.

my clients and the superbowl

confessions of a pixel pusher marketing media

In alphabetical order:

A52, West Hollywood
Honda “Mudflap”

Brickyard, Boston
Mobil ESPN “Sports Heaven”

Mac Guff, Los Angeles
Nationwide “swing” “gondola” and “proposal”
Hummer “urban techno”

Mass Market, NY
Sierra Mist “Scanner”

Method Studios, Santa Monica
Budweiser “Wave”
Toyota “Tide”
Hummer “Monster

R!ot, Santa Monica
Ford Escape Hybrid “Kermit”

Nice lineup of work. Congratulations to everybody!
No, I did not work on anything directly. My job is it mostly not to get in the way of the real work and to provide the tools so that the work can get done.

Sony’s clock is ticking

confessions of a pixel pusher history marketing media Sony technology

Sony makes amazing technology. Their professional Broadcast division did a great job with the HDCAM SR. Only the name was a gigantic mistake: Much like a Porsche competitor would call it’s car a ‘Yugo RS’.

Branding for the “bravia” seems to be working ok as well.

But: There is no Playstation-3. And there will be none that you can buy this year.
Blueray sounds like Betamax.

Sony was always bigger and more important than the other consumer electronics companies in Japan.
It will have been this size difference that led to their demise: They are not what IBM was to computers in the 70s
or Apple is to the mp3 player market. Still they are big enough to think that they can push their own formats
alone: Betamax, Minidisc, MemoryStick, iLink (only the name was different), and now blueray.

Sony leaned out of the window last year with the Playstation-3 Presentation. They would need to deliver
this year. And I am taking bets that they can not.

Sad really: I loved those Trinitron TVs in the 80s. Nothing came only close.

the AACS keeps 75% of your image by closing the ‘analog hole’

confessions of a pixel pusher media technology

What is it with four letter acronyms?

RIAA
MPAA

AACS

The last one I had never heard of. The “Advanced Access Content System” is a brainchild of everybody who is involved in either one of the upcoming HD disk systems.

DVD came with DSS copy protection. Since 1999 it has been hacked. DVD was a success for everybody involved. Despite the fact that it’s copy protection wasn’t working.

The job of the AACS is to make sure that this will not happen again. The digital connector for both Blue-Ray and HD-DVD are HDMI which is more or less DVI with added copy protrection via HDCP. Yes: 4 letter acronyms spell TRBL.

Since there are no actual devices yet to hack the xxxx institutions still live in the the phantasy world that their content will be save and their maginot-like system will work this time. For the first time.

But then there is the ‘analog hole’. They feel they need to close that one real fast.

According to this press article the solution will be that all players will down sample their analog output to 960×540. That’s a quarter of the original 1920×1080 resolution. Many existing HD displays don’t have digitally-kosher-drm-compliant HDMI inputs yet. That’s what you get for being an early adopter: your image will be downsized and then upconverted in the display again. Yes this probably much like a normal DVD at that point. But since you are an early adopter you gonna buy a HD DVD AND Blu-Ray player anyway. Right? Hey, come back here. Early adopter: your friends in the industry need you now more than ever …

The real tragedy is, that this crippling will not cure the issue. There will be hacks for HDCP. And pirated content never cares about quality in the first place. People will continue to ‘get’ a pirated movie. Maybe those four letter institutions should have a look at their enemies first before they punish the people that pay their bills (again). Pirated content exists because it is easy to access and/or cheaper. NOT because it features more pixels or samples. Most of the time it does not.

So our friends at the AACS just made the whole thing more complex, added a little bit to the price of the every player and made probably lots of people with non HDCP screens pretty unhappy. For zero gains. Brilliant!

Ars Technica comments on the same matter.

six years later

confessions of a pixel pusher history internet

Afer six years I updated the method software site. It is interesting how times have changed. Back in the day I put allot of efforts into navigation and menus. There was allot of content.

It all is gone. The world is full with plugins. Now I believe that you can sell software easier if you cut to the chase. All that thoughtfull navigation and documenation seemed not to help it seems. I still have to answer emails about details when people want the software.

So in case you happen to have an image integration system from the Autodesk Advanced Media Devision aka Discreet aka Discreet Logic flying around in your backyard: Now you can purchase software much quicker.

Sponsored is the whole update by the nice person that leaves his Wifi open so that T-Mobile can shove it.
Or maybe it’s my local Starbucks itself is providing this: They certainly would make their 30 US$ a month for the DSL
back on extra lattes that they can sell since Wifi is free and not stupid in the store.

linux

confessions of a pixel pusher linux

Installing fedora core4 on a software raid1 with two disks.

Running yum update.

grub will get stuck in ‘stage2’

rinse – repeat.