We followed the instructions from tommyandellie.com who got the idea from Ana White who got the idea from Restoration Hardware.

We made a couple small changes here and there with the measurements, where the aprons are located, stain and finish.

Took a couple weekends and was a lot of fun!

We used a RustOleum Kona stain that only needed to be applied once, and finished with 6 coats of a water based  satin Poly by Minwax.

Stain looks great, and although we haven’t put the finish to the test, so far so good.

It was very simple to make too!

I just cut up a 3.5″ x .75″ board. Used my pneumatic brad gun,to nail it together.

Stained it dark walnut.

Bought a vintage style plug, cord and socket from http://www.txlampparts.com/ Prices are good, but they charge shipping AND a handling fee. Also a wonky checkout process.

Got the nuts and threaded lamp rod from Lowes.

The bulb I got from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YO0LAI/ I bought 6 to keep the shipping down, extras, and other lamps I may build. Comes to $5 per bulb. They are rated at an average of 3,000 hours. Hopefully they last that long!

It’s a fun lamp for around $20. If you plan to build one just know it’s more ambiance and decoration than an actual light source.

I had an itch to try out a GoPro. So of course I bought a pair of them used on craigslist. With a newer version just coming out the week before I got a pretty good deal. In fact, I sold them back for more than I paid for them. They are amazing cameras for their price range and versatility. With attachments you can stick them on just about anything. Though quality is obviously lacking in some spots–mostly due to under-exposing the subjects–it’s a great buy. Can’t wait to find an excuse to buy the newer model with an updated sensor (old sensor sucks at medium to low light, and not as sharp).

I bought a harness for Bishop which I could easily gaff tape the GoPro to.  Also made a monopod out of pvc which made a great stick cam. My main goal was to get up close. This is very important as GoPros have very wide lenses, so objects will tend to look distant.

Everything was shot at 60fps and slowed down to 23.976. The super slow motion I got using Twixtor. I didn’t spend a ton of time with Twixtor, so you can see artifacting on some clips.

After spending a weekend writing the app I’m pretty happy with it. Works great! You simply type in the street number and name, hit enter and everything appears. No need for city or state since I’m only searching in Nashville.  It even works well on my Android phone! Perfect if we see a for sale sign while out and about. As of now it’s customized to our personal search, I may generalize the code later on. (and make the JS less awful).

Hurdles

Creating a Realtracs link Just an awful site all around, everything is just so difficult. You can’t directly link to a home for more than 15 minutes as it timeouts or confuses it with another home.  Took me forever to find the search by mls feature. Problem solved? Nope! Although GET substituted just fine for the POST search, there were 2 keys created at page load that needed to be submitted with the post. So when my app initializes, it scrapes those 2 keys from a realtracs page. To finish building the URL I just need the MLS number…

MLS#. The zillow API inspired me to start making this app. It provides tons of very useful information about a home. What it doesn’t supply is agent submitted data if the agent hasn’t allowed it (photos, description, etc). I didn’t find one home that allowed that info :(. Of course the MLS number is a part of this agent submitted data.  More scraping. This time using the home details link that is returned from the zillow property details call. While scraping pages may not be kosher for real life apps, this is mine, I do what I want!

JSONP. I tend to live in JavaScript land. The zillow API does not return JSONP, or even JSON. Just XML. Instead of using some 3rd party resource to convert the feed into JSONP I took at stab at it in PHP. So easy! To get the file, load it as xml, and convert it to JSON only takes ONE line:

echo json_encode(simplexml_load_string(file_get_contents('zillow query goes here')));

In part 2 I’ll write a little bit about using the new html5 feature localStorage. Super simple! In this case not quite  as useful as storing to a db, but not dealing with log-ins and keeping it client side was my goal.

I was very lucky to have Kyle and Jen ask me to creatively film their wedding. Not only was it a amazingly fun wedding, but Kyle and Jen are beautiful, loving and kind people to work with.

The location was the Aerial, a rooftop venue on Broadway in Nashville Tennessee.

The weather was perfect.

I shot on my Nikon D7000 as usual with a 50mm 1.2/f at 720 30p. During the ceremony I used my 70-200mm VRII. I had a second shooter who shot with a Canon 7D. She shot with an L series 35mm at 1080 60p (for slow mo). Not sure if the settings weren’t optimal on the 7D, but the D7000 had a much higher quality image. No contest.

If it wasn’t so bloody hot I think I’d keep doing this macro insect thing. By the time I’m done I’m SOAKED with sweat.

Would love to find a Mantis with red eyes…as this guy was so little (about an inch), I wonder if his would eventually turn.

Used my 50mm f1.2 in reverse, with and without extension tubes.

The clarity is great…but I think a really nice micro lens would take it up to the next level. (Nikon calls them micro, not macro, which is actually the correct verbage).

I’ve been meaning to get into macro cinematography and this was a great excuse (I’m actually not sure if that’s really a thing…either way it is now). I had to purchase a new reversing ring after upgrading my 50mm not too long ago. Got the ring in this week and took it out for a spin today. This is what I came up with:

I was surprised how much light I needed to make this work. With an aperture of f/16 and the addition of light robbing extension tubes I had to use a little bump in ISO here and there even on a bright and sunny day (shutter was 1/50). Also, since I’m not using bellows, my focus is controlled by BARELY moving the subject. I’m excited to try out other bugs, but with this setup the bug will need to be strapped down or dead. When filming nature this is probably not ideal.