Here is a quick video of our setup for the Pepsi spot.

Location

About a year ago my good friend Nate Heck asked for some help filming a pilot episode for a children’s art education television show titled: Artrageous with Nate. I had recently got my brand new Canon 7D and was excited to try out the video capabilities  of the 7D. So that is what we did! We rented a bunch of gear from borrowlenses.com (lenses, fluid tripod head, Merlin Steadicam <– a giant pain to set up,  audio equipment, etc) and filmed 90% of the episode on one long weekend (3 days).  Over two more evenings we wrapped up with a few more shots in front of the green screen and then it went to post production.

The result

Despite several very long days of hard work, making episode 1 was a lot of fun! So much fun, that we are at it again…

Meanwhile

I know a year between episodes is a long time but during the last year a lot has been going on.

• Sarah and I had our second child, Henry
• I got a promotion in my day job to Software Architect (w00t!)
• Team Artrageous has been formalized
• We’ve begun seeking funding for more episode

That last one has been the toughest for Team Artrageous. It is a long and slow process, but we are making some headway. Our current focus is on the Pepsi Refresh Project.  We are submitting Artrageous for the month of November. That means our grant submission is due at the beginning of October.

Tune in

To stay up to date with the project as a whole:

• visit: http://www.artrageouswithnate.com/
• find us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/artrageouswithnate,

With all that said, I am making it my goal to share with all of you the behind the scenes of how we are doing all of this. In future post I will be:

• posting on set videos
• showing you what equipment we are using
• rigs that we’ve built
• sharing our mistakes and our epic wins
• who we look to for inspiration and knowledge on these intertubes

So that is it for now.

Cheers,

Joe

Director of Photography Artrageous with Nate

That’s right Canon announces their “SECOND GENERATION EF 70-200MM f/2.8L IS II USM LENS”. I first heard about it on Scott Bourne’s blog this morning.  Looks like it won’t be available to US dealers till April.

If you can’t wait these 4 months and need a good 70-200 zoom, you can get the first gen here:
Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

Oh, and remember it’s not too late for you to send me a birthday present. I’m not a generational discriminator.

Cheers,

Joe

public static Item FindById(Guid id)
{
    Item item = (Item)DataCache.Get(id, Region.LinqItemManager);
    if (item == null)
    {
        item = DataContext.Items.Where(i => i.ID == id).FirstOrDefault();
        DataCache.Put(id, item, Region.LinqItemManager);
    }
    return item;
}

“Man that was easy! So clean and simple, man I’m a good dev! Test it? What? Why? That is some good stuff right there!…..Oh, I didn’t see that coming…”

As it turned out in the DBML Item has many properties and a few associations, one of which is an association to Catalog. Well during a certain code path when we call FindById() and cache that Item, we never referenced Item.Catalog. On a subsequent call to FindById() for the same ID we pulled the cached version  and tried to reference Item.Catalog and it was null. Okay I seem to remember something about serializing a linq entity will cause it to become disconnected from its original context. And that makes a lot of sense in a web app where the context only exists for the life of the request but the linq object is living in a cache. Okay, so I need to re-connect it to a context so the associations will work again.  Attach() is your friend, but your friend is a snob.

public static Item FindById(Guid id)
{
    Item item = (Item)DataCache.Get(id, Region.LinqItemManager);
    if (item == null)
    {
        item = DataContext.Items.Where(i => i.ID == id).FirstOrDefault();
        DataCache.Put(id, item, Region.LinqItemManager);
    }
    else
    {
        DataContext.Items.Attach(item);
    }
    return item;
}

Cause that doesn’t work. You’ll get all kinds of exceptions. Like “Cannot add an entity with a key that is already in use” or “Attach or Add an entity that is not new, perhaps having been loaded from another DataContext.”  The answer: If you don’t have a “fresh” context you will continue to get exceptions like those. So just get a new context instance and it works just fine.

public static Item FindById(Guid id)
{
    Item item = (Item)DataCache.Get(id, Region.LinqItemManager);
    if (item == null)
    {
        item = DataContext.Items.Where(i => i.ID == id).FirstOrDefault();
        DataCache.Put(id, item, Region.LinqItemManager);
    }
    else
    {
        WebDataClassesDataContext context = new WebDataClassesDataContext();
        context.Items.Attach(item);
    }
    return item;
}

Cheers,
Joe

Cheers,

JB

So back in August Sarah and I bought our first house. The house was built between 1913 and 1919. Yeah its old but filled with charm and coolness. With the old comes things to fix/add/redo.  I tend to be brave/naive when it comes to fixing things around the house. I would say I’m a pretty good at DIY just inexperienced. Lowes, Home Depot and DIYNetwork are my good friends right now.  But I’ve got a new best friend Home Spot. HS is a great way to stay organized with projects and regular maintenance around the house.  Even if you are not into DIY stuff, HS will help you remember to change your HVAC filters, batteries in your smoke detectors, clean your garbage disposal, drain your water heater, and what ever else you want.

Hmmm, with a title like that shouldn’t I have talked about code? Oh well.

Okay, that is good enough for now.

Cheers,

Joe