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Last week I had to go to New Orleans for some pickup interviews and b-roll. I booked a reasonably priced ticket to fly out on Sunday, got to the airport early, paid my $140 for luggage. Let me stop there. In an effort to keep ticket prices down, US Air now charges $15 for the first bag checked, and it goes up from there. Excess baggage fees have always been a staple of travel. Back in the 90's when I was flying with my herniacam and sciaticapod, 3 to 5 checked bags was the norm. These days with DV and HDV cameras, we check a golf club case (tripod, cables etc) and in this case a light kit and small luggage cart. I stuffed my change of clothes and toothbruch in the tripod tube. But $15 for the first bag? This will only dissuade people from flying.
Traveling anytime soon into or out of the United States? Homeland Security is now authorized to detain your laptop for a "reasonable amount of time" with absolutely no warrant and no suspicion whatsoever. From MSNBC.com today:
WASHINGTON - Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Wow, can't wait to travel out of the country again sometime soon. This is just getting ridiculous.
Not all travel is by aeroplane. No sometimes we need to drive. If you do mostly local production, you are always driving. If you are like me, your gigs are anywhere and everywhere, although we do have a lot of shoots in Boston, NY and Philadelphia.
A big concern at the moment of course is the high price of fuel. I can't take a long car trip without adequate fuel in my tank, and one must make this a priority, or you might not get to your destination. I am of course talking about coffee and the very best gas station sandwiches money can buy.
Memorial Day weekend arrived in the US, indicating my 4th annual trip to Cape Cod for a much needed vacation. The weather was pleasant, the roads were relatively empty and my brain appreciated the chance to recharge.
I set out this year to take fewer pictures than usual, but make them more interesting as a result, and I left my video camera at home, forcing myself to relax a bit more. I also rented a bike and took some nice rides along the Cape Cod National Seashore.
I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro User's Group Supermeet at NAB. They appeared in the SuperMag magazine(which I named btw). Here's part two of the first article looking at an Apple network system that is being used at the Beijing Olympics this summer in China. For part one click here.
Simplemente chose to work with Gallery Software, a UK-based company that has been making QuickTime-compatible applications for over a decade. For the Beijing project, Simplemente selected Gallery’s SIENNA, a complete integration suite for connecting Final Cut Pro workstations to the traditional newsroom broadcast workflow. SIENNA was developed in response to the huge demand for Final Cut Pro integration from the world's leading news broadcasters. It brings compatibility to existing newsroom equipment for workflows based around native QuickTime and enables single media shared storage with Apple's Xsan.
I wrote two articles for the Final Cut Pro Supermeet at NAB this year. Here's part one of the first article looking at an Apple SAN network system that is being used at the Beijing Olympics this summer in China:
Last NAB, we visited Simplemente, a production/post-production house and Apple Authorized Training Center/Dealer based in Mexico City. They’ve been working hard alongside one of their biggest clients, Televisa, the world’s largest Latin American broadcaster. This year Simplemente embarked on its most ambitious project yet, a complete post-production solution for Televisa’s coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.
Twice a year we face "Convention Season." I doubt this would make an interesting documentary, such as Bee Season, but it defines work schedules, deadlines and Yahoo Travel's bottom line.
Every October I attend the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, as an exhibitor, along with my boss and other colleagues. our goal at this NAB of Surgery, if you will, is to exhibit our medical education products, to network with clients, future clients and to support the AV needs of still other clients.
Every 3 years this meeting is in either San Francisco, Chicago or New Orleans.
I have a favorite activity in each of these three cities:
San Francisco - discover new restaurants.
Chicago - Discover new restaurants
New Orleans - Discover new restaurants
In San Fran, I usually head to the North Beach section, which has some great Italian restaurants. However right around the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Union Square there are a few good restaurants as well.
My job entails the following types of trips. I will describe each one in brief and include some memorable experiences.
Overnight Trips
These are generally trips somewhere to shoot one or more surgical procedures. I leave Hartford or LGA mid-morning, or at the crack of dawn if it is a cross country flight. We used to travel later in the day, possibly doing some work on the ground before leaving. However,lately the airlines seem to have improved their baggage losing capabilities, probably due to some new bar code software, so I like to allow extra time should a bag become lost.
While I have never traveled as much as I did in 2000, my job continues to send me on a few different kinds of trips.
Recently I received a new laptop, with the hope that time spent locked in a metal tube 5 miles up could be a bit more productive than reading the latest Harry Potter book. Oh yeah, we are out of new Harry Potter books, which is a good thing because those things are heavy.
OK, I found it. Yup, I found Lindeboom Beer in Amsterdam. I asked for it at nearly every restaurant I went to and no one had it. Heineken could be found EVERYWHERE. And one of my new favorites, BAVARIA, was in a few places, but Lindeboom beer was a rarity.
Was this due to the fact that it is a really good and rare beer? Maybe. I am not a beer connesieur, but when I DID find it, and buy one...it was pretty good!
Where did I find it? At a bar just a couple blocks from the Red Light District...and within sight of Central Station and the main street that leads to DAM Square. They had all sorts of signs indicating that they did, in fact, serve Lindeboom beer.
I leave Tuesday for Amsterdam...I will be attending IBC. I am heading out a week early to bring the family along and do the tourist thang. Then I will be at IBC, working at the CalDigit booth as their "expert who uses and likes the product." So if you are a follower of my blog, and happen to be in Amsterdam and HAPPEN to be at IBC, that is where you can find me. I will also be checking out the RED camera (finally shipping) and see if I can find the MOTU booth and look at the V3HD.
And I will no doubt take advantage of the town to do a little partying.
I'll blog if I happen to find internet cafés and have the inclination after working and partying.
Well, to be precise, Jeff Bezos has a rocket. He's the founder of Amazon.com, and he's apparently been working on this for a while. It's not a big rocket, but it's really, truly a rocket. Its first successful launch was in November.
He's got pictures and a movie at the project's website, Blue Origin.
