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For the past couple of days the site has been down, but if you haven't visited during that time, good for you! Apparently my domain registration expired, and I didn't get a notice like I usually do, so it went lax. However, since you're reading this, I'm up and back! Never fear, I'm still here.
Wow! It's been almost two months since my last post! And yep, it's been pretty busy. During those months, I've finished a 9-1-1 show, taken a three week vacation, and started a new website. Over the past couple of months, a friend and I decided to start an online company. We approached our current employ, to make sure that what we did was at least legal, and segmented from their own revenue stream.. We received exemptions on our contracts to allow us to work on this website. That was in June/July. We then talked to a CPA about corporate formation, which we are in the midst of doing. I've also touched based with a finance lawyer and have legal counsel, so we're starting out protected, especially in this day and age of frivolous cease-and-desist and random lawsuits.
The website is VFXWages.com. We have started a private beta, to allow professional and freelance users access to add job titles and companies we may have missed, and to get in on the ground floor of something big. Hit the link above to read more about it, but here's my description, in a nutshell.
We aggregate wages and salaries from users, both freelance and professional, and allow them to anonymously compare themselves to their peers. We don't show individual salaries or wages, and the salaries and wages you do put in are encoded and used as part of a whole (so no one sees individual wages, ever). While this is similar to what some other sites do, notably salary-scout.com, salary.com, payscale.com, glassdoor.com, simply-hired.com, et al., none of them have someone that has been in this industry for a while that knows your needs. We cater exclusively to the creative arts community. I've got a lot of tools planned that relate to wages in our field that will help immensely, from CPI comparison, trends, standard of living, and more! We also have a job listing mapboard which is in its infancy, but it's going to be much more powerful than the current ones out there. We will be going public, that is, a general open beta with no activation keys, in January 2009. So we have a lot to do in our spare time away from real vfx work. If you have any comments or critiques, check vfxwages.com out, and contact bothofus at vfxwages.com with your comments or inquiries!
I spent most of my time during my three weeks off working on this, but when I wasn't doing that, I was relaxing! We ended up going camping for the first time in ages, up at Leo Carillo State Park, north of Malibu. We could almost see all the stars! We're going camping again later this month in Joshua Tree, that'll be great. We also had a chance to hit the Wild Animal Park just outside of San Diego. I had never been, but it's a short drive, about an hour and forty, depending on traffic. We ended up getting a year pass for two for $79 (for SoCal residents)! That's for both of us, to both parks, the SD Zoo and the Animal Park, for the next year. It's a great deal, especially since a one time entry into one of the parks is around thirty bucks.
Over the weekend the Creative Arts Emmys were held here in Los Angeles. Like last year, Battlestar Galactica took the Emmy. This time around, it was not the local Vancouver team that won. Here were the nominees.
Battlestar Galactica • He That Believeth In Me
Heroes • Four Months Ago
Human Body: Pushing The Limits • Strength
Jericho • Patriots And Tyrants
Stargate Atlantis • Adrift
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles • Pilot
Congratulations to all the nominees and winners! For the category of Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Movie, Miniseries or Special, the team that completed John Adams won. Here were the nominees.
John Adams • Join Or Die
Comanche Moon • Part 1
Life After People • History Channel
The Company • Part 2
Tin Man • Part 1
Unfortunately this year I was not able to help narrow down the selection nor choose a winner from the final five! Hopefully next year I will be available.
As a treat for all my hard work at Siggraph (ha!), I decided to splurge a little.. So I picked up an eeeBox yesterday, which came today in the mail. I picked the jet black one, and it's pretty darn sweet. While it is an XP Home box, I'm sure there'll be an Ubuntu distribution for it sometime in the future! There's also a wicked ExpressGate (linux) boot, it comes up pretty much immediately on turning on the box, which allows you to use Skype, surf the internet, browse photos, and chat.
It's easy to get set up, just plug in all the bits, and away you go! It even comes with a USB keyboard and mouse. No network cable included, but it's got 802.11b and n! It also has a 10/100base-T port (can't tell if it's GigE). The hard drive comes split between two partitions; when you check Windows Explorer, the C: drive is 39.9GB (8 used / 32 free) and a D: drive (31.3GB free). I quickly installed Quicktime 7.5, Firefox, and Opera, and I think I'm done for now (I might fool around with flock), but will continue to play with it as time goes on. It does only have 1GB of RAM, but I think I'll pick up another 1GB SO-DIMM and just toss it in, especially for XP. So far it'll play 720p QT movs. I haven't had a chance to toss any 1080p footage its way, but the monitor that I'm using for it is only 1280x1024, so it would have to rescale the footage down.
I'll probably toss some Python tools on it, as I'm starting to learn Python, all over again. Especially now that Nuke 5 can utilize python, I think it would be a smart move. I can also use Python to generate web pages, so I will use the eeeBox as a web development machine too. The django framework looks pretty promising.
One thing that sucks so far is that the VESA mount to attach it to an LCD panel only works if your LCD stand does not block the VESA attachments! Case in point, check the image below. Check your LCD panel, and tell me if its like the image below, or if the stand mounts and covers the VESA area. Seems like slight oversight there. It would have been nice to invert the bracket so you could attach the box over the existing mount.
Looks like I'll have to rig something up in the meantime!
Siggraph is over. What a ride. The last several days were hectic, yet fun. I met a lot of VFXTalk folk, and while I can't remember some of the usernames that go with the faces (except the obvious name-based ones), I can remember the real names. :) You guys don't always make it easy! The Wednesday Mummy comp presentation went a little smoother than Tuesday, and Thursday was even smoother. I have a tendency to just rattle on quickly. Case in point, Tuesdays presentation was about 11 minutes long. Thursdays was 16, even though the content was the same! I talked to our PR, and they mentioned that it may be quite possible that we'll be going on the road to the couple of schools in the area to repeat the presentations. Makes sense, since we worked on them so hard, only to present them three times!
I also ran into my VES student from earlier this year! She's doing well, on course to graduate later in the year. I also got a chance to catch up, albeit briefly, with some Tippetteers, and ex-Tippetteers. They have moved far and wide, from Blue Sky, to ILM, to Image Movers!
I not only got a chance to catch up with friends and coworkers, I also got to know my fellow DDers! Several I have never met since I started here two and a half years ago.. Most of them were in commercials and recruiting, but some were in features. How strange! Needless to say, Siggraph is definitely a place to network and make yourself known, and thank you guys for coming up and introducing yourselves. Here are some pictures of the booth, blatantly taken off of Flickr. The white circular banner is a remnant from last year, they may change it to black next year.
Until next year!
