Mastodawn

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Dec 11, 2024

I still plan to do more small experimental projects on a more-or-less monthly basis, but I decided to skip it for November when we had the 5th car problem this year, and I figured December was unlikely to happen to begin with. I'll probably do something in January (most likely "Crab Chorus").

It tends to be a lot easier to focus on creative work when the alternative is filing my annual tax paperwork!

https://lunaticsproject.org/2024/10/24/two-experimental-productions-for-october/

#XProjects #FilmFreedom

Two Experimental Productions for October – Lunatics Production Log

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Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Dec 3, 2023

After this, I got them running on my Dell PowerEdge R720 server, running Debian 11 (with no GUI installed). In order to get them all to work (using the standard download packages from Blender.org), I had to install six library packages:

For 2.71 (only):
libsdl1.2debian

For all:
libglu1-mesa
libxv1

For 3.6.5 & 4.0.1:
libxkbcommon0
libsm6
libice6

I then ran profile renders to figure out how much RAM each shot needed (and therefore how many parallel processes I can run with the 128 GB on that machine -- with Freestyle, it's pretty much RAM-limited).

It's currently chugging away on rendering parts of the "LA-Launch" sequence for the pilot. Seems to have no problem, so far. 🤞
#Blender #LunaticsProject #infrastructure #FilmFreedom

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Dec 2, 2023

Seven versions of Blender, open simultaneously: 2.71, 2.79, 2.83, 2.93, 3.30, 3.6.5, 4.0.1.

Testing to make sure they all still work. This is on Ubuntu Studio 20.04. Blender 2.69, did NOT work, by the way, but doesn't matter to my project.

#Blender #LunaticsProject #infrastructure #FilmFreedom

Space Catitude 🚀Jun 23, 2023

I know I want a copy on my shelf!

But it's also all online if you just want to read it:

"Community Media: A Handbook for Revolutions in DIY TV"
Andrew Roach
@ajroach42
2023

https://communitymedia.network

#FilmFreedom #Television #DIYTV

Community Media – A handbook for revolutions in DIY TV

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)May 19, 2023

Test of my experimental configuration for my disk duplicator control program -- I'm using Vokoscreen with my webcam setup not on my face, but capturing the disk duplicator.

And the application on the right is VSCodium, which I'll be using as my development and testing environment.

This way, I will be able to set up a test program to run in the terminal panel and have video of the device's response, captured together. This should be a perfect setup for reverse-engineering what the codes do.

I just set this up to do a proof-of-principle, but it looks like it will work.

The next piece I have to round up is my Python USB module -- I have one I downloaded from Adafruit a few years ago that should be perfect for this. I just have to dig around in my files to locate it.

#Bunsen #Experimental #Development #LibRay #FilmFreedom

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)May 16, 2023

We had a table read and location tour today for our latest project, "Field Trip". Looks like this might actually happen!

This is a short science-fiction piece about some travelers inadvertently crash-landing on a planet and then getting back off -- while being very dumb about planets.

The original purpose for this project was to have some live footage to demonstrate compositing, digital toning, and editing with Blender and Kdenlive (I can't remember if I've posted about this already or not).

This is a project I'm doing with some local college students. My daughter, Ariel Hancock is the producer, her friends from theater class are directing and acting in it.

I'll be doing the compositing and editing, and my son, Nicholas, will be composing a score for it.

The goal is to complete filming this month and work on post-production during the Summer.

This will provide a live-action workflow as a counter-part to the animation workflow, for which I will use a scene from Lunatics.
#FilmMaking #FieldTrip #FilmFreedom #Kdenlive #Blender

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Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Dec 13, 2022

Ansible and YunoHost are kind of an iffy combination.

YunoHost is based on a "continuous integration" model. So each time you run it, it tries to get the most up-to-date versions of the software. Sometimes this fixes problems, but other times, things break. There isn't a clean "release" or "version" schedule to stick to.

Which is in conflict with the notion of "repeatable installation" that motivated using a configuration management system like Ansible. Which is really closer to what I feel like I need as a DIY-maintainer.

The continuous-integration approach requires a larger risk of unpredictable demand for IT work. Any upgrade can result in breakage that is hard to recover from.

YunoHost provides a through-the-web GUI approach to managing the configuration, which eases the ongoing burden of the work, but it obviously can't eliminate it -- and apps will occasionally break.

And for my needs, YunoHost doesn't cover all the configuration: I still need to get in and make changes to configuration files. Ansible is handy for doing that in a predictable way -- so long as the configuration files don't change much.

I'm not sure there's a solution for this, other than acknowledging that IT work is an ongoing project expense: either in my time, or in money, if I were to pay someone else to do it.
#FilmFreedom #VirtualStudio #Infrastructure #Ansible #YunoHost

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Dec 13, 2022

So, after a few revisions, it looks like the new "virtual studio" will consist of a set of packages installed with YunoHost and Ansible. This is probably what I'll be starting 2023 with:

Wordpress : Blog & CMS -- hub site. 🆙
PeerTube : Video distribution. 🆙
Misskey, Pixelfed : PR, possibly team communications. 🆙 🆙 (But considering migrating from Misskey to Calckey).
Resource Space : Asset management. 🛠
Nextcloud : Production sources and office documents. 🛠
Collabora : Live online office documents. ⌚
Gitea : Software and website sources. 🆙

And possibly:
Galene : Videoconferencing. 🤷‍♂️ Untested.

Also static websites, like https://lunatics.tv

I have some other stuff installed, but I'm not seeing much use for it. I think I might remove the extras.

#FilmFreedom #VirtualStudio #Infrastructure

Lunatics Production Log – "Somebody has to be crazy enough to go first!"

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Dec 11, 2022

The Disc Duplicator M-Disc upgrade went well! Everything seems to work on a hardware level.

Next, I have to start installing and testing software:

I have a low-level USB library in Python that I got from AdaFruit that I'll be using to test the robotics codes I have in my notes.

I will have to find the instructions on installing the Lexmark Z600 driver that is supposed to work with this printer (and also understand how it works for disk printing).

And I suppose I will need some kind of python library for accessing the M-Disc burner, reading and writing media, and controlling the open/close of the disk tray from software.

Then I'll have to write the code to do the top-level control of those.

I'll first set these up to run from the command line (or the Python interactive interpreter). Ultimately, I want to be able to control it from a browser, so I can attach the duplicator to a different computer if I want to.

So after I get the low-level stuff working, I plan to create a little Flask web application. And it's a disc burner. Hence, my working project title, "Bunsen".

So, there's still many steps left. #FilmFreedom #Infrastructure #DiscDuplicator #M-Disc

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Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Dec 5, 2022

Have published the first two installments documenting my process on this. I've got the M-Disc writer for the upgrade ordered now. When it gets here, I'll write up the installation, and then it's on to the software testing.

https://lunaticsproject.org/2022/12/04/primera-bravo-ii-1-breakdown/

https://lunaticsproject.org/2022/12/04/primera-bravo-ii-2-usb-topology/ #Publishing #DVD #BluRay #M-Disc #FilmFreedom

Two Experimental Productions for October – Lunatics Production Log

Community Media – A handbook for revolutions in DIY TV

Lunatics Production Log – "Somebody has to be crazy enough to go first!"

Primera Bravo II – Breakdown – Lunatics Production Log