At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with the ancient piece of technology. I began by dusting away what appeared to be months of lying without use. Then, I did what many would have done. I took a drill bit to it and carved it into a useful iPad dock.

It would have been more aesthetically pleasing (and easier) if I would have used a dremel head rather than a drill bit, but I was using one at the time for building my dining table..so why not?

All of the tech is in working order, even the audio out function.

I feel like there is an amount of charm with it being so beat up vs. the usual cookie cutter sleekness with apple products.

Again, not very pretty, but functional. Took around ten minutes. Enjoy.

That being said…I was very underwhelmed after the announcement and demo of the iPad.

On release day, so many of my friends waited in line to get theirs as soon as possible. I was underwhelmed, yes, but I totally saw a use for the product and understood those who wanted it…I was just sure it wasn’t for me. Simply put, people were raving about the device.

I lasted a few days. I made the decision during a meeting with the student casting crew for a film class I’m instructing. I was having a hard time paying attention to scheduling of details, and did some browsing on my iPhone. I’m not sure why I made the decision so abruptly.

Either way, I looked to my co-instructor Brian and said, “dude I’m buying the iPad.” His reply was an excited, “dude, you should.” So after finishing, we tromped over to the Apple store on campus and I bought one.

I decided on the 16gb. The wifi model is the only available, but I will probably upgrade to the 3g when it is available. The size was a choice that I don’t feel like I will regret. I’ve had an iPhone since 07, and I’ve never had over 8gb of media on it at a time. The truth is, I stream most of my content. I looked at this product as a replacement for my kindle, which I was able to sell an hour after I bought the iPad (sold it over twitter, very quickly).

I’m absolutely in love with it. The iBooks application alone has made it worth the purchase. It destroys the kindle. The immediate options for brightness control and text size are extremely useful. No need for a book light with this, unlike the kindle. I like to read before sleeping, and it’s super functional to have a backlit device. The click to get back into your table of contents with direct click navigation to bookmarks and chapters in the book is awesome.

My bookshelf here is filled with free books I’ve gotten from the store, and with converted pdf books I transferred over in like…5 minutes. Awesome.

The twitter application I’m using is Twitteriffic. So far, it’s the best designed and most functional. I think they did an awesome job, and kudos to the iconfactory team for having it available on launch.

To comment on the wifi or 3g + wifi debate, I will have to say that the wifi model has been all that I need. Oddly enough, it has turned out that any circumstances where I’ve been able (and it has made sense) to use the iPad, there has always been wifi. Situations where wifi is unavailable will probably be only iPhone appropriate. If you think about it, it makes sense. But, with the no contract agreement for 3g, I will probably be picking up the 3g model. A month with travel and airports alone make it worth the purchase (so you can get around paying $9.99 a day for wifi access).

Like I said before, I was one of the “haters” of the iPad, initially. I’m very happy I gave it a chance. I am constantly on the go, both in work, school, teaching, etc…and has been amazingly useful. I haven’t touched my laptop since the day I bought it. It’s the kind of product that you need to see and FEEL before you make any kind of decision. A friend of mine, Dan, was very vocal about his hate for the iPad. After playing with mine for about 3 minutes, he had changed his mind. I do really feel like this is the beginning of a movement into a new kind of computing. The iPad has made the simple, non media work things I do on a computer possible on a beautiful completely touch interface. The convenience of having a battery that virtually never dies is such a game changer for me. The iPhone comes nowhere near the functionality of the iPad. I for one, know users like my Mother for example, will use this and only this once they have it. When you are directly involved with your browsing and not using something like a mouse and a keyboard separating you…it’s just…easier. I find it really hard to describe.

It’s only been out a week. I’m excited to see what innovation applications and uses come forth for the iPad in the near future. When 4.0 becomes available, it’s going to make the iPad even more useful for many, many people.

Oh, and the screen looks amazing.

I’ve finally got around to listing out my resolutions for 2010. I said it, twenty-ten. After several long-winded discussions with my colleagues and peers, I decided to tweet about my dismay over how to actually say the year we are now living in. Just as expected, twitter fired back with a snarky reply coupled with a direct link to an article that would teach me the correct pronunciation. To all of you who haven’t yet been so informed…twenty ten.

I have big plans for this year. Not necessarily professionally, but personally. I’m never the type of person to get incredibly personal on any sort of blog post situation. My theory on the subject is: although we are internet friends/etc, you probably aren’t interested.

My friends have been inspiring me with their awesome lists of resolutions, so here is mine.

Take my vitamins
Triple my physical therapy/more strength training
Create a log of all new food/drink I try
Finish the screenplays I have in the works
Guest host /filmcast
Subscribe to more magazines
“If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”
Execute web projects in the works
Compliment often
Random acts of kindness
Learn to run/ride a bike again
Perfect my 4 shot consistent
Help others when I know I have the means to
Finally watch “Best Worst Movie”
Read more books
Undertake more creative film projects other than work
Design/build more furniture
Reply to every email/tweet

If you haven’t watched the video, the song is played over a story depicting a young man that, instead of giving his lady the obligatory ring in a box, gives her a key. This key (we discover after the video progresses) happens to be the key to a brand new house he is building her. The band is playing inside of that same house skeleton the whole video.

Again, I had a good time with this shoot. It was actually spread out from one light evening/late night and an afternoon some weeks later. The afternoon shoot was fresh after another late night shoot (blackout) which I’ll be writing about soon.

I have a ton of technical questions thrown my way from fellow filmmakers here online, so here are some tech specs:

-Canon 7d
-24p, 30p
-(differing frame rates + 125%, 250%, and 100% speed shooting + overcranking)
-Canon 35mm F1,4L
-Cinema shouldermount steady rig
-An array of lighting (as you can see)
-Final Cut Suite (Pro, Color)

I could go on and on about the tech side, but if you have any direct questions, just leave them in the comments.

Cold winter nights often bring issues with the equipment, as well as yourself. Be sure to stock up on Nivea hand creme. It saves the focus pulling hand.

The band was awesome enough to supply everyone with water and a late late late clutch coffee run. Both, are also very important.

After weighing the pros and cons (aka listening to gq/men’s health), I settle on a purchase. I had been hearing great things about the Aquafresh Iso-Active toothpaste. I could write on and on about its foaming technology that goes beyond the normal realms of ordinary toothpaste, but who wants to read that? Go on, get your google on.

The toothpaste itself worked fine. I’ve been ok with that…although I’ve fostered a very primal hatred toward its packaging.

After dispensing the amount desired, I put the can back into my mirror. There should be some kind of writing on the label warning about its tendency to leap out of perfect stable shelving, but I digress. When grabbing the can out for your next brushing situation, you will notice that the can leaks extra paste out over time…that paste in turn becomes crusty and consistently creates an unwanted mess.

Needless to say I won’t be buying this product again. I’ll be sure to post my newfound (hopeful) upgrade sometime in the future. After proper testing, of course.

The more work I did with the Canon 7d and other high definition captures, I came to realize that my current setup wasn’t cutting it. The macbookpro I was using had historically been a workhorse for me. I loved the face that I could do the bulk of my media work on this extremely powerful notebook. At the time, it was priced at $2799, and it has been well worth it. The sad fact is, uncompressed HD and unconverted ProRes files were a nightmare to edit on that machine. I had to upgrade.

Fast forward to more recent time. I had obviously been in the market for a mac pro. I had already acquired a 30inch Apple Cinema display, and I wanted to match it with the tower. When the new iMac line launched last fall, I wasn’t too excited. I feel as if pro users have been conditioned to believe the iMac wasn’t a serious machine to be doing loads and loads of production work on. Rather than write on and on about my debating process, let me throw down some facts about the current iMac line and the current mac pro line.

I love this image

With the i5 and i7 iMac sporting Intel’s new turbo boost, it’s almost a no brainer.

Now of course, this is not the case for everyone. There are certain setups that demand the fibre channel or raid card arrangement. In that case, the mac pro is obviously the setup for you. As a professional that relies on local/external storage solutions, the new iMac is doing wonders for me.

I’m going to lay out a few price comparisons. The quad core mac pro beings at $2499, while the 8-core beings at $3299. Let’s focus on the quad. The basic setup is a 2.66ghz nehalem processor, 3gb ram (three 1gb sticks), NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB, and a 640 gb HD. While on the other hand, the base iMac (sporting the quad core i7 Nehalem architecture) begins at $2,199. It comes with 4gb ram, 1tb HD, and the ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics with 512MB. Not the mention the entire machine is BUILT INTO A 27inch DISPLAY. You could go a tad thriftier and pick up the i5 machine and only pay $1,999. If we break this down, it’s almost as if you’re getting the computer half off. A 30inch display can cost anywhere between $1,000 and $2000, with the 30inch Apple Cinema Display selling for $1,799. This is the best display Apple has ever produced. Their heavy investment in the new LG display technologies have definitely paid off. This screen is gorgeous.

Not only does this iMac outperform the current mac pro, but it is priced incredibly better. To boot, it’s built into its own display, which means I can now dual screen with 2 large monitors. To quote James Galbraith from MacWorld, “With the new 2.66GHz Core i5 iMac and the 2.8GHz Core i7 iMac, Apple has not only blurred the line between consumer and professional systems, it’s darn near erased it. “

Let me reiterate, this isn’t the best option for every single setup. There is a host of different situations that demand different types of machine setups. You must also take into account the i9 technology that is rumored to be in the new mac pro lineup. This is an even more impressive performance boost over the i7 tech, but will most definitely be very costly (in comparison).

The current mac pro can most definitely be upgraded to kill the current i7 iMac, but that would cost double the current mac pro price. At the time, I paid $2799 for my workhorse of a notebook. That was ages ago it seems. For me, and for many others, this i7 iMac has given us the most bang for our buck. (and it’s damn pretty on my desk)

I’ve been working to relaunch zackluye.com to a more eye/user friendly design. I hope you like. In the mean time, enjoy this very empty blog post as I debate whether to import my old blog’s content or start fresh. Thoughts?