new montage page

the development version of my plugin has a random detail function that will pull out a part of an image. I am using this right now to add a recent images montage page to the Notebook.

I like the juxtaposition of pieces of each image. Some nice shapes are showing up.

DIY green screen

I finally got around to building myself a small green screen. Here are the materials I used:

• 1 piece of plywood (free scrap)


• 1 gallon of primer ($8)


• 1 quart of Melon Green Glidden paint from the home depot ($8)


• 1 roller ($4)

Total price: $20.

Here are some pictures and links to the first video that I shot with the screen. Juliana took direction pretty well and had a blast helping me make the video. :)


Step 1: Prime Board


Step 2: Prime Board Some More


Step 3: Bloody Toe on Palette at Home Depot


Step 4: Paint with Melon Green


Step 5: Paint with more Melon Green

Step 6: Shoot video. :)

Here are 3 states of the video we shot last sunday.
Basic Clip, Unaltered,
Clip #1,
Clip #2

auto thumbnailing for MTRecentImages

I have wrapped up v1 of the auto thumbnailing feature of my MTRecentImages plugin.
You can see the new thumbnails in action on the homepage about halfway down the right hand side.
Thumbnailing is only turned on if you specify the new thumbnail attributes in your MTRecentImages tag.
This also will only work for stuff on your server, and following a pretty straightforward file structure. By this i mean that if you have fancy apache rules for where things are, the thumbnailing is probably not going to work for you. But that is OK. This can't be all things to all people. I just wanted something simple that I could use.

free wifi in daley plaza

life is good.

80 degrees, sunny, sitting in the shade at daley plaza in downtown chicago after having lunch with some friends. Oh, and the free wi-fi helps, too. :)