photo credit: zappowbang

The Dvorak keyboard, one of those weird ideas that makes sense but no one in their right mind will learn. I mean, we have a layout that’s been used for a really long time, that’s a difficult habit to break! Well, let me just say this: I’m typing this in Dvorak, and I love it.

Yes, that weird layout is what I happily type in. In fact, I not only type faster in Dvorak than in QWERTY, which is kind of the point, but I find it a lot more comfortable as well.

Why Dvorak?
I’m lazy. I really don’t like doing something the “right” way if I can do it faster the wrong way. QWERTY is what I learned in school but they layout never quite worked for me so I looked into what people were using as an alternative and found Dvorak.

There’s a history behind the QWERTY layout and Dvorak layout that I really don’t want to go into, so I’ll sum it up: qwerty’s layout is random and Dvorak is based on which letters are used most for the home keys. I mean, no one thinks having the semi-colon on the home row is brilliant.  Ah, that useful semi-colon, comes in handy all the time!

How to start using Dvorak
This may come as a shock, but just start using it. Every source I’ve read says you can pick it up in a few weeks, it took me several months which leads me to conclude that I’m dumb and stubborn.  Go me.

I started with stickers on my keys but that didn’t work too well, the stickers had a habit of coming off. The reason I didn’t just pop the keys out and switch them was because the keys are not all the same shape, it was like typing on a keyboard that needed dental work.

After fighting with the stickers until I had a quasi-reasonable grasp of where the keys are, I then kept an image of the layout as a desktop background. If I ever forgot where a key was, I’d check the desktop. Throughout this, I kept doing typing exercises until I just remembered where all the keys were.

Do I ever use QWERTY?
Have to.  The login page for my iMac is set to qwerty and I haven’t the foggiest clue how to set it to dvorak.  To this day it drives me bonkers.

To make a long post short, I highly recommend switching to Dvorak if your wrists hurt and you want to start typing like you did when you first were allowed near a keyboard!

photo credit: nDevilTVx

So goes the gag.  Lately I’ve been concentrating on building an online social soapbox, so to speak.  I have a twitter account, a friendfeed account, facebook etc. but I’m not entirely sure where to take them.  This of course leads to the big question that I’m straining to answer: how do you make a movie utilizing all the new media options available to us?

The answer eludes me.  Are there opporitunities? Sure, but will they work and are they the best way of going about it.

I have several ideas of powering the creative process by utilizing social media, but how do you then turn that into a profitable film.  Micro financing is a great way of going about it and several sites exist that build on that premise but something that’s uterly web 1.0ish it.  It’s not an interactive social conversation, it’s using new ways of finding money other than picking up the yellow pages and calling doctors and dentists to bankroll your film.  Thats great and all but it doesn’t push the envelope far enough for me, it feels like we’re just slapping a new coat of paint on and calling it a brand new way to make films.

I hope to have several conversations in the coming week with people who are much smarter than I about such things.

Just something to chew on for a while.

So I finally finished my move into my new place.  Took a lot longer to get settled in than I anticipated but what can you do?

So far, I’m about ready to finish an illustration project which is now later than I wanted it to be (see above re: the move) and am still piecing together everything I need for a short I’m directing at the end of the month.

At some point in time, I’m really going to have to figure out how to be way more organized.  I’m having scheduling conflicts up the wazoo.

photo credit: lrargerich

Thumb-drives kick ass. Seriously. I always carry around my key no matter what, you never know when it’ll come in handy. 2, 4 or 8 gigabytes may not seem like that much these days but it’s still quite a bit of space. So, what do you put on it? I’ve experimented with a bunch of different ways of storing my information, applications and encryption and have come up with a system that works for me. What works for me may not work exactly for you but it’s a great place to start.

Encryption

While there are many great ways of encrypting your thumbdrive, I really don’t like the hassle. I keep my drive on me as a way of carrying or transferring files that I want access to as efficiently as possible without having to sign in. Of course, there’s always data I do want to keep encrypted, and for those files I use 7-zip.

Basically, I make one non-encrypted zip file in 7-zip (with a .zip extension) and this is where I want to keep my data safe. This zip file is located inside of a second zip file which is encrypted. The reason for having one inside the other is that winRAR allows you to see what kind of files and the names of those files are encrypted even if they can’t open those files. This way, all a prospective evildoer can see is the zip file locked behind a password.

Content

The main folder structure is broken down into 4 kinds of content: Data, Temporary, Transfer and Apps. This gives you a basic idea what my main folder structure is like. It’s a very simple structure but it works really well.

Data is where I keep my permanent data that I’d like to keep on my drive. Stuff like my portfolios and demo reels as well as some music. While I do carry my resume on me, I keep that with my encrypted files because it has my address. And my USB thumbdrive is on my keychain, not the best idea giving your address with your house key.

Temporary storage is where I keep, well, my temporary files. Files I may be working on that aren’t finished, files I want to show to clients or anything that really just has to come with me for the day or week (or sometimes, the month).

Transfer files are usually files that I’ve saved onto my drive to transport to another computer or for someone else. While very similar to the temp folder, I like to keep my files and the files for anyone else separate.

Apps is where I keep my portable applications. There are a ton of these now available and I used to carry a gargantuan amount, I’ve scaled quite a bit back to as bare bones as I can get. More on this in the next section.

I also have an “If Lost.txt” file with my email address and phone number plus a reward for a USB key that’s has twice the space. And I don’t put my address on it because, again, I hand my thumbdrive on my keys.

Applications

There is a whole suite of portable applications. Bringing around your own Firefox app with your preferences and bookmarks sounds awesome in theory but the reality of running it off of a USB is that it’s really slow. I’ve never actually needed to use any of the portable apps I’ve put on my drive so I’ve scaled back to what I perceive to be the most useful. OpenOffice, a portable ftp client, VLC for video and portable 7-zip. I carry two versions of each, one for PC and one for Mac (with the exception of portable 7-zip).

So there you have it. This system may not work exactly for you, the same as what I’ve seen on the net hasn’t worked exactly for me, but this is a really good place to start! Change it up and make it work for your own unique needs.

I’m a huge fan of Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture. He argues very effectively against the current way copyrights are handled. Earlier I came across a discussion about piracy where the poster summed it up with something like this “pirates feel they are entitled to the content for free. But the creator of that work deserves compensation.”

It’s very easy for me to agree with that statement as a filmmaker who wants to make a living from his craft. However, fundamentally, what every director, producer or writer really wants is an audience to view their work. I have a desire to express myself in a visual form that is stronger than the need to make money.

If I wanted to make money, I would have been a banker. There aren’t any bailouts for filmmakers.

This is not to say I don’t want to make money from my film, just that if I had enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life, I would gladly do it for free and wouldn’t mind it played for free.

I’m not entirely sure what this means for me personally or for the future of the motion picture industry, but there must be a happy middle ground somewhere.