Originally designed as a theme for Wordpress by Chris Murphy, LemonTwist is now a free Pligg template released by myself. The template is currently being developed for the next Pligg version (9.9.6). LemonTwist currently is designed to work with Pligg SVN revision 55 current as of August 18, 2008. Please DO NOT redistribute this template or any variation of it without getting my permission first.

For those who want to use a logo image with their site rather than a text name in the top left corner, please download the logo file attached to the official thread. It contains a .psd file for the logo image, you should then read NOTES.txt for more information about how to use it.

Differences from Yget:

LemonTwist does not fully support the five star voting method. I decided that it’s not something I was interested in writing extra code to add in since very few Pliggers make use of voting method 2.

Version:

Version numbers will be updated with each SVN revision commit that modifies this template.
To receive the most up to date version of this template please download it from the Pligg SVN under the /templates directory (not /trunk/templates).
It’s brand new and still needs a couple final fixes (see below bug list), but I consider this template to be quite stable. I should have a rock solid version of this template ready for inclusion with 9.9.6.

If you would like to contribute some help I would be glad to have the assistance. I would also greatly appreciate a donation using the Chipin widget associated with the forum thread. I invested a lot of time developing this template and I could use the money to help support me creating more free templates.

Support:

Limited support will be offered from myself once I finish this template. If enough users begin using this template I will create a new forum for bug reports and help requests.
Please check the README.txt and NOTES.txt files for more information about the LemonTwist template.

Download:

Download the latest version available from the SVN or the most recent forum release through the official LemonTwist thread.

Several months ago the Pligg developers started tossing around the idea of providing a free hosted service for users to try out Pligg on their own subdomain. We named the project Fraxi and announced that it would be open to the public “soon”. Well, soon eventually turned into later and it’s something that has been on the back burner for the past few months while we work on other things at Pligg.

I designed a couple concept web pages for the Fraxi project that thus far haven’t seen the light of day. The first concept page is a registration page for signups, the second is a homepage design that was meant to explain what Fraxi is. You can download both of these web templates for free in this post.This first design (pictured at the top of this article) uses more graphics than I typically include in my templates. It’s rather simple looking at first, but when you select a field javascript pops up a field hint to the right. The Fraxi Registration Template (36) (Demo).

The Fraxi homepage design was inspired by many web host websites. I added three columns at the bottom where it would one day aggregate content from some of the Fraxi subdomains. I borrowed some of the copy from MediaTemple’s website to fill in some text. You can download the Fraxi Homepage Template (37)(Demo) and use it as you wish. A lot of the images and copy in this design were put in place as a temporary solution, so I suggest you replace icons and images with your own to avoid any licensing or copyright issues.

I think that we will eventually use that registration template for Fraxi sometime in the near future, but the second template will probably just sit in the web design graveyard. It’s always sad when you aren’t able to complete a concept, but I’m glad that I can share it with others who might take it to the next level and make good use of it.

As usual I am applying a Creative Commons based license to both these works. The only exception to the license is the logo design, I reserve full rights to the Fraxi logo.

This evening I was experimenting with some of my audio equipment to get some hands on experience with Pro Tools, which is the audio equivalent to Avid. While working at Avid Technology I purchased a lot of equipment from Digidesign and M-Audio, who are subsidiaries of Avid, so that I could learn more about audio production. In college I had a couple classes that gave me experience with audio editing, but I didn’t commit a lot of the information to memory back then.

So while playing with the new keyboard I let the computer record everything in case something interesting happened. I ended up playing a few chords that reminded me of Michael Giacchino’s compositions for the television show “Lost”. So I layered a few more tracks to the two-minute song and decided to post it on my site so that film students and independent film makers could use the song in one of their productions. I licensed it under a Creative Commons license, which gives you full permission to use it in commercial work and make modifications to it. You can listen to the song below or download it from the license box at the top of this article.

An interesting sidenote. While working at Avid I had a chance to meet the editor for the television series “Lost”. Steven Semel ended up playing a small role in one of the episodes as one of the “others” on the island. He was on set in Hawaii considering directing a future episode when he was asked to read for the small role while overseeing a casting session.

Download audio file (lost-tribute.mp3)

Two years ago I co-founded Pligg.com, both a popular open source content management system and a website for support. The site began as a simple forum for users to report bugs and bugfixes and slowly evolved into today’s Blog, Wiki, forum and Shop.

Founded on December 17, 2005 by Damon “AshDigg” Wirth and I, Pligg began as an English translated version of the popular Spanish website Menéame. Over the two years since the founding of Pligg it has gone through drastic re-designs and added functionalities. What had begun as what some call a “digg-clone” has developed into one of the most social content management systems available.

The Pligg Blog (pictured above) is where Pligg announces new products, development status, special announcements concerning the site, and other information that Pligg users and admirers want to keep up to date on. The blog runs on a Wordpress installation, with a custom template design by myself.

The Pligg Forum is divided into several sections that organize a large amount of data into a small amount of screen space. The forum is based on vBulletin (commercial license), uses many free mods from vBulletin.org, and was designed by myself with the assistance of Moonrank.com for vBulletin templating. The forum also includes a Wiki area, which is integrated into vBulletin and based on the commercial product nuWiki. The integration allows users to use their vBulletin accounts to submit and edit articles and creates pop-up definitions for words in the forum that have a matching wiki definition.

The newest addition to the Pligg site is the Pligg Pro shop. Pligg pro was designed as a way for users to purchase premium Pligg content directly from the developers of Pligg. This content includes modules and templates that enhance the functionality and give some unique abilities and looks to Pligg sites. Pligg Pro is based on Sunshop (commercial, $249.99) and the template was made by myself in a three day period.

I spent four years studying film and nonlinear post production in college. My college only taught one product for editing in the film department: Avid. We had state of the art facilities with a range of Avid products that would suit everything from the beginner filmmaker to the most advanced color correction labs available on the market. All of the hands on experience with Avid products made me comfortable with dealing with editing films and that resulted in me specializing my studies on post production my senior year.

My personal relationship with Avid Technology began in Spring 2007 when I had a chance to be an Avid student representative at NAB 2007. I was selected as a student representative for Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) along with three other SCAD students. About twenty students from 5 other schools were invited to be a part of the Avid NAB experience, and during this time we were asked to video blog about the show.

I was later selected to be an intern at Avid during the Summer of 2007, where I was part of their Marketing department and worked on several projects. Two of the project were websites based on open source technologies that were designed to help market Avid to a larger audience. One site targeted users who were familiar with Apple’s post production software and were making the switch to Avid. The website template was designed to mimic the look and feel of a Macintosh operating system and feature videos designed to familiarize the user with Avid software. Another website was designed to appeal to groups of Avid users who organize monthly events and meetings. The difficult part about this project was creating a site that was easy to use on the front end and back end, where administrators could learn to enter their data effortlessly to update the site.

Put Him in the Ground is a film written and directed by Daniel Vang, a fellow student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The film is about a young African American male rap artist who is about to make it big, but struggles with conforming to the more popular violent lyrics in order to succeed. The film finished primary post production in November 2007 and is currently retouching the music score. It should appear in a few film festivals in 2008.

I worked on this film through all three stages of production as an editor. During preproduction I was used for camera tests with the Panasonic HVX-200 and Redrock Micro lens adapter. The HVX shoots on P2 cards, which was something new I picked up on. I actually own my own HVX camera, but I have in the past always tethered it to a laptop with a firewire cord to record straight into Final Cut Pro. This option works fine if you have a speedy hard drive with plenty of free space, but if you don’t have that you will end up getting the occasional drop frame. Another downside to the tether mode is when you have a dolly shot where you need to keep the laptop close and hold it steady so the hard drive doesn’t lock up. The P2 cards offered typically 20 minutes of storage on a 16GB card recording 720p at 24 frames. While I’m speaking about these two recording modes I would like to mention a third method that I tried out at NAB 2007, the Firestore by Focus Enhancements. I had such a horrible experience using this product with a Canon camera at NAB, even with representatives from both Avid and Focus Enhancements there to help me out.

The project was in the production phase for two weeks in late spring. Each day I would assist on set and log the footage to my Macbook. I used Final Cut Pro to test the P2 footage for immediate playback for the director. At that point Apple’s Final Cut Pro software offered a significantly better tool for importing P2 footage into the workflow or preview. Since then Avid has made a few improvements, but I haven’t been able to test it out since I haven’t shot another P2 project.

The biggest problem that I came across initially was dealing with upside-down footage. The Redrock lens adapter flipped the image 180 degrees, causing everything to be recorded upside down. Having to deal with this problem was a huge headache when I was testing on Final Cut Pro because I would need to apply a 180 degree rotate effect and then render the timeline whenever I made an edit. Avid handled it pretty well since their “flip-flop” effect can be applied to a video track and every track below that will be rotated 180 degrees. Avid also doesn’t require rendering nearly as often as Final Cut Pro when trying to play things back. I think that the best solution would be if Apple or Avid were to add an option to apply an effect such as the 180 degree rotation during footage import. Since a lot of independent and student filmmakers use the Redrock Micro adapter I’m sure there are a lot of independent and student editors who have shared my grief at some point.
Update
I have written an article detailing HVX200 workflows that can be read on my other blog. It outlines Firestore, P2 and laptop recording methods.

I founded the video game news site Yankidank.com a few years ago when I was frustrated with existing game news and review sites that were littered with advertisements and lacked quality content. There were few sites in existence that seemed to run the gamut for video game industry news. I took it upon myself to start my own site and aggregate content from various sources to edit together articles that I felt were both entertaining and important.

Soon after starting the site I took a leap from written editorial writing to starting an audio podcast. Podcasting was a new concept at the time that few people had started to get into, this was long before Apple endorsed the idea through iTunes. I hosted a weekly show featuring the latest news from the video game industry and would give my impressions of the latest games and demos. The podcast grew in popularity and I quickly became one of the most recognized podcasts at the time, and probably the best known video game podcast.

Unfortunately my spare time used to add content to the site ran shorter by the day during the Fall 2006, so I decided to sell the website since I was no longer able to keep it up. I miss working on the site now that I look back on my time developing and producing content for Yankidank.com. The topic was something that I was always interested in and receiving feedback from listeners and community members was great experience.

Purgatory, Inc. was a short film written, directed and edited by myself two years ago. I wanted to wear as many hats as possible for this project so I ended up working all the way from pre production to post production. The story is about a man who shows up for a job interview, but ends up visiting the wrong office which ends up being purgatory. The film uses a lot of filming techniques that I had never tried in one of my own films before, including two dolly shots and a green screen segment. This was probably my favorite film to work on because I’m proud of being able to take on so many roles and try out new things.

Almost all of the sound effects are from the Call of Duty audio files, the only exception being the sound of leaves rustling and the clang of an iron for the slow motion segment. It’s amazing how many audio files are included with a video game, especially a game three years ago. I hope this might inspire someone else to try to recreate some of their favorite television or movie scenes using a similar method.