I decided the project was no longer worth spending my life energy or monies on. We called up Junkmycar.com and it was picked up the next day, no mess or fuss.

I’m not sad to see it go, because I know that someday I will have a beautiful fully functioning VW Rabbit Convertible.  But now is not the time!

It’s high time for some other projects to shine through and be heard and seen. Stay tuned for more updates as the cold dark winter continues.

Here is a screenshot of what I was just working on:

Right away, really trying to use the Professor puppet, I find the mouth very tiring to operate, something is definitely amiss with the design (not that I had plans to go by). But I could tell while building it that the fit was a little tight and awkward.

Not much to do about it now, I will make it work until I make another puppet, with a more generous hand/mouth space. The opening motion is what really takes the effort, I feel like I have to fight the puppet to open its mouth, maybe he’s a bit shy, we’ll see.

Anyway, back to Vegas, the movie editing software, for those just joining us at this paragraph. Coming only from OpenShot (rock on dudes, open source) and Windows Movie Maker (bleh), Vegas is a welcome change. You can already feel the level of detail this software allows you, I know I will make higher quality movies right off the bat with this.

I just did a whirlwind tour, diving in to try to render something (which is going on right now, at this very moment, and my computer is suuuuper slow). Getting up and running this fast is nice, and it didn’t even crash (yet).

It’s a very quick video, but I also tried a little bit of green-screen action, which kinda worked as you will see. Each puppet was filmed separately, then “combined” magically with the green screen. Still looking for a good green screen setup, I’ll get there.

Here is the finished video:

Here is the almost-finished puppet, I call him:  Professor!

I’d love to show you how I made him, but in all truth, I totally winged this project.  No patterns, no mock-ups, just cut and go.  Very happy with the way everything ended up this first time around.

I did a nice bit of web searching before I even attempted to make this foam puppet.  Here are some of the sites I visited:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/06/foam-puppet-making.html

http://puppeteersunite.com/

http://www.projectpuppet.com/

Here is a rough sketch of the pieces I cut out of the foam.  The main head parts were a little bit more egg-shaped (pointy side) on the tops and bottoms.

Here are some things that I’ve learned while making the Professor:

1. Making puppets is fun!
2. Always have lots of hot glue sticks ready
3. Use razor blades to cut foam and use with caution
4. Keep a sharpie handy
5. Save the scraps, at least the bigger ones
6. Be patient, especially if this is your first puppet!

Getting the “skin” on the Professor wasn’t exactly easy.  Since I didn’t start with a pattern, I wasn’t sure what size pieces to cut.  Also, cutting pieces of fabric to fit over rounded foam heads is tricky!  The Professor has a bit of a patchwork look because of this, and a few small spots that are made up from the scraps.

All in all not bad, the hot glue keeps it all together nicely.  Speaking of materials, all of the fabric for this project came from the 1/2 off remnants at our Jo-Ann’s fabric store, so the total cost of this puppet is probably somewhere in the  realm of $15 or less.  Not bad I say, not bad at all!

I will post more when the arms are finished, and if any accessories are made, I’ll let you know.  Just wanted to share this new project while I’m making it!

My needs are pretty straightforward in most cases, I record mostly mono sound using one microphone.  See my setup below, I’m using the Blue Yeti microphone as the recording device, and same for the playback (listening) device.  The recording mode is set to mono (one channel of sound).

The control buttons are pretty easy, the red circle starts recording, the yellow square stops the recording, and the green triangle plays back what you’ve just recorded.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see some audio that I’ve recorded, represented by the blue wavy line that follows along the track.  The bigger the line, the louder the audio!  Getting your sound out of audacity is a snap, you can go to File – Export, and the sound clip will convert into the format of your choosing.  I stick with WAV files mostly, to preserve the quality of the audio until the final processing in OpenShot (if I’m making a video).

I encourage you to try out Audacity, especially if all you’ve ever used is the Windows sound recorder.  Let me know how it goes!

I’m a big fan of Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com), a popular free open source Operating system, and I’ve used it on and off since version 4.  They’re up to version 11.04 now, wowser!  They have a neat utility called WUBI that lets you install Ubuntu inside of Windows, so things don’t get too messy with your system.

After installing Ubuntu onto my computer, I sought out some of the free video editing tools that are available.  One of them Pitivi, comes with Ubuntu by default but didn’t seem to have enough features, kind of like the Movie Maker for Windows.  After a quick google search I found OpenShot Video Editor.  I’ve been using it for all of my little movies so far, and it’s great!

It uses multiple tracks to let you merge multiple audio, video, and graphics streams at once.  Take a look at the screenshot below, this is the latest project I’m working on, Friends Group Episode 4.

making a video in open shot with multiple tracks

You can also see in the screenshot the export process.  This is where the magic happens!  When you add all the clips, audio, and graphic slides and overlays together, the export encodes your video into one continuous file that plays each clip exactly where you placed it on the mixer.  For overlays, like a graphic that you want to appear over some video, it goes in a layer above the video, so that it isn’t covered up by the video.

Now, I can’t do everything in OpenShot.  The graphics I create are mostly made in InkScape, a very fun program to use for making vector based graphics, also Open Source (free!).  And the audio I create is done in Audacity, another super useful Open Source program that lets you mix multiple tracks together and export into many different formats.  I’ll have plenty of posts about these tools coming up, as they are crucial to making the whole process work together.

I’ll go into more detail about the editing process, but wanted to introduce you to a great software tool that I’ve been using quite successfully!  Thanks for reading.

I have the video bug right now, and it is really good to be making something for a change, instead of just watching things.  The old consumer vs. creator struggle.  It’s great to be a creator again.

I’m going to be posting  what I learn as I make different kinds of videos, and do the voice work as well for those.  So you will see some of the videos I make posted here, along with some of the work that doesn’t quite fit the bill, but that I learned something from.

It’s a fun journey, and I’m enjoying it immensely, and using open source tools to do it to, which I will detail in future posts.

Thanks for reading, and here’s a little stop motion I did the other night, using some figurines and tums (I love tums, as a prop, and simply for what they are).

Stopped over at the local Advanced Auto Parts, which was air conditioned, thank goodness.  Had them look up the part and they found this, a Bosch oxygen sensor for 63.99.

It was pretty easy to reach down from the hood to get to the oxygen sensor, but it seemed a little tight with the wrench.  Actually, practically unmovable so I cranked up the car on jack stands outside on the parking area/road and crawled underneath.  Loosened it up with a couple sprays of WD-40 and it came free just fine using a nice BIG wrench.

It looked pretty yucky, here’s a pic:

Then I put the new one in, all shiny and ready to go, with the slightest bit of anti-seize compound on the threads (pre-dressed by Bosch, thanks!).  Sanded the metal terminals on the connector coming from the car due to some corrosion, and dabbed a little dialectic gel on them to prevent any corrosion in the future.

Set everything back in order on the car, reconnect battery, hood down, jack up, remove jack stands, jack down (sloooowly) and try it out!

So far so good, no check engine light after driving 9 miles, give it a few days before we really know if this fixed it or not!

I decided to check out home depot, and you can buy 4 gauge for about $2 a foot, and the connectors for a reasonable price.  I bought about 12 feet to redo the battery to frame, battery to transmission, battery to engine, etc.

I found out later that you can buy a complete earthing/grounding kit online for around $20.  Probably should have looked more before I jumped into Home Depot, but my solution is pretty cool too.

So, this hasn’t solved the no-start problem, but at least I can rule out the main grounds.

This clamp has seen better days.

Ground cable to frame with paint.

Ground cable on floor, very corroded!

I’m not sure whether or not to replace the 30 year old ground cable, I think it would make good sense from what I’ve read on the forums I’ve been scouting.  They say good ground connections can make a big difference.  And they really do, when I took out the main ground to transmission/engine cable, I was unable to get any response from turning the key in the ignition.  I’ll look around and see what my options are for a replacement.

Took the air ducts off the throttle body, and the air regulator doo-hickey.  Removed the lower part of the housing where the air filter is supposed to live.  Cleaned up the housing with some sun and earth cleaner and few paper towels, it was pretty gross.  Put the new air filter back and (after some initial frustration) got all the clamps back together to keep everything shut up tight.

Oh, and here is a picture of the Auxiliary Air Regulator I had taken out and reinstalled the other day:

While I was working near the throttle body, I took a peak inside to see it in action, I’ve took a little video while working  on it.  I cleaned it up with some carb cleaner like I’ve seen done in many many videos online, and I just generally cleaned around that area.  I also ‘shortened the leash’ on the accelerator cable a bit, I may have to re-adjust at some point.