What have I been doing lately?

April 17th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

I can’t say that I haven’t been busy since I left Extended Results in January. I’ve used some of my free time to get back into photography, I’ve focused quite a bit on writing new music, and I’ve been learning some new fun skills.

The Gear Addicts Show

Always one to try new things, I’ve spent the last several months developing a project that brings together my love of music with my love of technology. The Gear Addicts show is to Music as Top Gear is to cars. The goal is to have a little fun, some very casual conversation and learn about new gear and what gear our favorite musicians love to use.

It’s been a fun challenge to learn how to plan, shoot and edit video myself. As you might expect, I’m a Mac guy in the video world as well. The show is shot on Panasonic AG-AC90 HD cameras and edited together in Final Cut X with a little help from Motion here and there. It’s been shooting at the Hard Rock Cafe in Seattle and it’s a lot of fun to drink beer and talk gear.

Look for more news on the Gear Addicts show coming soon on the Gear Addicts Show’s Facebook page.

Seeing Hendrix

Never one to sit on my laurels too long, I’ve also decided I would like to make a documentary someday. This will be a long project in the making and require a ton of planning, budgeting and eventually fundraising, but I’ve got a great start. If you’d like to read more about the story, visit http://seeinghendrix.com

I’m fascinated by the idea of doing a documentary and I think I’ve come up with a creative idea that is compelling to both fans of Jimi Hendrix and people (like me) never quite “got it.”

 

Change is in the air

January 8th, 2013 § Comments Off § permalink

I know it seems like I just posted that I had left Microsoft yesterday, it was a little over a month ago. This week, I’ve decided that Extended Results wasn’t a great fit for what I am looking to do. They are great guys and are doing some very cool things, but they were a little more interested in me as a developer than me as a designer and that’s not what I really love to do.

I am not one to be half into something and didn’t want to come to work while I was actively seeking another opportunity, so I resigned my position with Extended Results and am looking for something that’s going to be a great long term fit for me.

If you know anyone who needs a technical program manager with a diverse set of creative and technical skills, a lot of energy and a passion for the customer, be sure to share my details with them.

www.linkedin.com/in/philoking

http://www.philoking.com/resume/

Thanks!

Get video in focus when shooting yourself

September 16th, 2012 § 2 comments § permalink

I’ve been working on video a lot on my other site http://projectk2r4.com and my YouTube Channel. One thing I have quickly learned is that when you are both operating the camera, and starring in the video, it’s pretty hard to make sure you are in focus. I came up with a handy way to solve this problem and am now sharing it with you.Focus Card-8

This handy focus card has a mic-stand adapter on it so I can place it where my head is going to be for the shot, focus on this card to ensure I have it razor sharp, and then move the tripod and start shooting.

Here’s how you can build your own, download a PDF of the focus card first.

Video Focus Card

Materials:

Focus Card-1

  • Foamcore Board
  • Electrical Tape
  • 2- Printed Focus Cards
  • MXL Mic Stand Adapter
  • Laminant

Focus Card-2

First we need to cut out the two printed focus cards. I use two so I can have it two-sided, just in case. I bought the self laminate at Office Depot and put a piece of laminate on each one before I cut them out, that way they won’t be susceptible to moisture or fading.

They are 8” square, so you also need to cut out an 8” piece of the foam core to mount them to.

Focus Card-3

Use the electrical tape to bind them in place. The tape is just the perfect width to cover the black bar on both sides. You can see in the above photo that it’s holding both the top and bottom with one piece.

Focus Card-4

Tape all four sides this way and the card itself is pretty much done.

Step 3:

Focus Card-5

We need a way to mount the focus card to a mic stand. I found that the cheap MXL Mic adapters are easy to take apart and the resulting gap is just right for the focus card.

Focus Card-6

Slide the mic adapter base onto the focus card and mark the hole.

Focus Card-7

Use a hole punch to knock out the hole you just marked.

Focus Card-8

Put the screw back in the adapter to hold it in place and you are done!

Fix iPad Background Scaling issues with webkit-background-size

July 22nd, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

When completing the design work for my the website for my new band All With Time, I noticed the WordPress theme I had chosen to base my site design from (FoxHound’s Wonderful Dark n’ Gritty) had an interesting visual bug on iPads.

The iPad, being the “best way to browse the web” *sarcasm* decides it is smarter than your site’s design and resizes background images that are larger than 1024px to fit.

The result is that all of your site content is scaled to be viewed in the viewport, and the background is not:

2012-07-22 11.59.37

Well, your old buddy Philoking loves you and wants to save you the time I spent searching for and understanding the solution!

There are two variations of logic here, and I went the cheaper route.

Webkit Background Size

Webkit has a handy CSS override that you can place right your existing tag, div and ID style declarations to tell the iPad not to resize your image. In FoxHound’s theme this is declared in grey.css (or blue.css, red.ss or green.css if you have changed the theme color setting) and it’s simple to override:

body { 
    background: #000 url(images/background.jpg) center top no-repeat; 
    -webkit-background-size: 2000px 1175px; 
} 
#wrapper { 
    background: #000000 url(images/background.jpg) center top no-repeat; 
    -webkit-background-size: 2000px 1175px; 
}

I chose this fix because it was exceedingly simple to implement and was fast to test.

Alternate iPad CSS and Images

The second approach, and probably the right approach, is a bit more time consuming. It involves the following:

  • Create alternate style sheets for different devices/orientations
  • Create new artwork that is scaled and/or cropped to fid that devices
  • Test Test Test…

The Result

That seemed like a bit more effort than I was willing to go for at the moment, so I chose option 1.

2012-07-22 12.00.58

The result is obviously great. While we are on the topic of WordPress and themes, I’d like to add that outfits like FoxHound provide some really great themes at a great value. While our nature lends us to go for the freebie themes or even worse take premium themes without paying for them, I’d like to add my perspective.

I think I paid $70 for this theme when I bought it. I’ve now used it for two sites that both look completely unique simply by creating custom graphics. With a solid foundation to build your site from, you can create something compelling very quickly. I have about five hours of time in developing this entire site.

Hope this helps!

Keep your Spyder2Express working in OS X Lion

April 12th, 2012 § 1 comment § permalink

I’m working from home today, and I have some sensitive graphics work for my Microsoft job, so I have to make sure color is dead on. I pulled out my trusty Spyder2 to calibrate my monitors on my Mac Pro as I haven’t done that since I got new monitors and hit an immediate fail. The Spyder2Express software is PPC only, no Lion! What to do?

Well, with a little bit of research, I found out that DataColor was nice enough to allow us Spider2 users to download Spyder3Express for Intel and I am happy to say that it worked flawlessly. I still had to do my dual monitor hack to do both monitors, but it worked flawlessly. If you have the Spyder2 and OS X Lion, head over to DataColor and download the new software.

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