Month: December 2008

Motivation and Project Management

In the depths of an snow fall that is very unusual for Vancouver, I am continuing to work on the Live More Lightly Project.  The blog is more than a year old now and significant progress has been made on developing the project.

The Live More Lightly Workshop has been presented in an elementary school and a demo video has been produced. Unfortunately, due to completely justifiable concerns about putting images of children on the internet, I cannot post the demo. However, I do have a supportive testimonial from the teachers here.

The book project has been refined into three versions:

  1. The Live More Lightly Songbook and Workshop Guide
  2. The Live More Lightly Book of Choral Arrangements
  3. Study Guide for the Live More Lightly Workshop

The Study Guide is a requirement for ArtStarts in Schools Touring Artists and I have used the video (with permission) in my application to  become part of their booking program. I will have to produce Book #3 (Study Guide) first because there is a need for it to accompany workshops that I am involved in presenting. Book #1 is intended for use by groups who want to do a workshop without me and Book #2 (the choral guide) contains arrangements for organized choral groups who have some musical training and a conductor.

The book has been taking a substantial amount of work, but even more work has gone into the image capture and documentary part of the project. I have ordered the additional parts I need for the Blu-ray video camera and they should be delivered soon. My two Canon still cameras are functioning, but I really feel I need an upgrade so I can take better quality photos.  Shooting in RAW is a requirement and I have found a Ubuntu Linux program that claims to handle RAW formats. I have been studying photography by asking a lot of questions and experimenting with different techniques. Now I am about to begin with video again, not just editing, but shooting. As soon as I get the parts for the video camera I will start recording video from my propane powered van and start to coordinate the streaming concept.

It all keeps me very busy. My next post will contain photos of my Yamaha FJ in storage with the new Renntec crash bars and carry rack installed. Simon worked on my bike before it was parked and it rides like a new machine. Still working on the luggage problem, but now the carry rack should help with the planning.  A future post on the MPEG4 always-on low resolution camera system will be next because several new products have been recently introduced. I will not make a decision until spring as I expect that the latest technology will be the best choice.

A summer tour seems so far away on this solstice afternoon, but I know that there is a massive amount of work to do so that I can be ready for the journey. Sometimes it is hard for me to be strongly motivated to continue to work, but evaluating the progress thus far helps me re-group and continue onwards.

All the best of the holiday season to everyone. Drive carefully and Live More Lightly.

Blu-ray Camcorder Purchased

After all of my painstaking research I went and bought the new kid on the block, the new Hitachi Blu-ray DZ-BD7H high definition video camera. Hitachi does have a commitment to the environment in Japan, but is not as dedicated to recycling globally as Sony. They do have The Hitachi-zaidan Foundation, founded to advance environmental causes and they make environmentally friendly rapid transit and other industrial machines. They also support global initiatives and education. If their environmental record had been poor, I would not have bought the camera.

See my previous research on environmental initiatives by electronics companies.

I have not received any funding and I have been spending so much time on this and other music projects that I have not been making as much money as I should. So I tried to be frugal and bought this camcorder “open box” at Future Shop. It was missing some parts, the proprietary USB cable and the charging and A/C cables and transformer. This has made it difficult to use because I can’t download any video from the 30 gigabyte HD without the cable. The customer support at Hitachi, particularly Tina and Lorne have been very helpful in giving me part numbers and assisting with my problems. I have now ordered the parts and when they arrive there will be a lot more video on this site.

The camera captures video in High definition Blu-ray that can be burnt on to special disks (over $20 each) or downloaded to a computer. It also acts as a still camera saving on to a compact SD card flash memory. High definition and Blu-ray are new territory for me and I am sure I will have some difficulty as I don’t have a player or DVD in my computer that is compatible. It seems I always have to get more stuff, no matter how much I already have!

It will be fun to work with the video and to be able to document my progress on this and other projects. Now I need a wide angle lens, lights, tripod and protective case — at least I can start with the camera and get some video on the site.