Author: Dave Farquhar

Looks like Premiere 6.5 will be a keeper

Dave Farquhar Video

Adobe announced Premiere 6.5 yesterday, and it’s got just about everything that should have been in 6.0.
It promises to work better with native DV (which will alleviate the need for hardware like the Pinnacle DV500 card), provides native tools for exporting your video to DVD, VCD, and SVCD, and a titling app, a busload of fonts, better audio tools, and real-time effects and transitions. That’s probably the most important thing; it’s annoying to apply a bunch of effects and then to have to wait a few minutes for it to render all the frames, only to find it wasn’t quite what you were looking for.

I guess it’s like the difference between a film camera and digital. Read more

I think I need to learn about VCD

Dave Farquhar Video , , , ,

R. Collins Farquhar IV, before seeing my new video:
You don’t call art a “video” or a “movie” or a “tape.” You call art a film.

R. Collins Farquhar IV, after seeing my new vi… whatever:

Yes, that is definitely a video. Read more

Words to live by

Dave Farquhar General ,

I do what I do, and I don’t plan how I ought to do it. I never have. I don’t believe in being rigid about anything. If I see an opportunity, I will drop all the rules, even when doing so is probably a mistake. –John Cocke, inventor of RISC
I’d never heard of John Cocke until he died, but that figures. Since I didn’t major in CS or EE, there are a lot of important people I’ve never heard of. But the father of virtually every non-x86 CPU still standing died this past week at age 77. Like many geniuses, he was eccentric and didn’t like to be bothered with mundane, everyday stuff. And like many geniuses, he didn’t think about his methods much. Read more

Where does faith come from?

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , , , , , ,

Following closely on the heels of the question of how to pray, people often ask me where faith comes from, and where they can get more of it.
The best response to that question, usually, is, “Why do you want more faith?” Read more

A class act

Dave Farquhar Baseball

The Royals–mired in an 8-game winning streak that has them within striking distance of third place–are more than just scrappy. They’ve got some players who are big-time class acts.
There’s superstar Mike Sweeney, who’s missed the past seven games because he strained a back muscle climbing into the back seat of a pickup truck and hunching down so his mother could sit in the front seat. Of course Sween would get hurt doing something nice. He’s always doing something nice.

Then there’s Paul Byrd. Read more

What’s the matter here?

Dave Farquhar General , , ,

I remember when the stock market crashed in 1987. I had to inform a 16-year-old that 1987 wasn’t “a long time ago” the other day, but that’s another story. So, in 1987 after a crash, who’d CNN talk to? Sam Walton. Makes sense. Sam Walton owned a lot of stock.
So, when the Dow dropped 390 points on Friday, who’d CNN talk to?

Billy Joel. Read more

Must… sleep…

Dave Farquhar General

Video editing melted my brain. My project is so close to being done I can taste it. My brain is dead tired but my body wants to keep on going–it’s used to playing softball doubleheaders Thursday nights, after all, and nobody told it the season’s over–so I’m sitting here listening to Joe Jackson and typing this.
I find I can’t watch TV for enjoyment anymore. Any time I watch (which amounts to minutes per week), I spend the whole time trying to figure out how you’d do the same thing in Premiere. It’s no great loss though. I haven’t been able to watch TV for enjoyment–aside from a Royals game or the World Series–since Quantum Leap went off the air. That was nine years ago.

I know that this is not goodbye

Dave Farquhar Personal ,

I just heard a name I didn’t expect to ever hear again, because it had been almost 15 years since I last heard it. And in this case it wasn’t good news.
The name was that of a classmate from grade school. His name was Geoff. His kid brother, Danny, was getting married this past weekend. After the rehearsal dinner, Danny and his two brothers and four friends piled into a Jeep CJ5 and went driving around in the boonies in the dark. What they thought was a clearing in the trees turned out to be a 30-foot cliff. Read more

Why I stand by my Royals

Dave Farquhar Baseball ,

A friend asked me why I stick with my Royals yesterday. Actually he pointed at my Royals hat and scoffed, “Why would anyone waste money on that?”
I thought about that a lot.

He’s a New York buy-whatever-it-takes-to-win-the-pennant Yankees fan. He’s not even from New York. He grew up in Iowa and Texas. What’s the fun in rooting for a team when you already know in Spring Training what will happen in October? Read more

I know better

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

I went to polish up my video last night–it needed a soundtrack and some title screens, and a couple of scenes flickered so I needed to fix that–and I found a nice black Plextor 40X CD burner sitting on the Darth Vader-colored Dell workstation we use to edit tape.
I’ll bet you already know how this story ends. Read more