|
About...ASDHollywood.com
About...Dalinka.com, Dalinka.net, About...AlanDalinka.com and AlanDalinka.us About ASD's images, photos, videos, web pages, etc. |
|
All of the videos and photo-based images on ASD's web pages (including the composite images) were created by Alan S. Dalinka, and they are his original works. Unless otherwise noted, every video and photo was created by ASD personally on a visit to the place indicated on a specific page. (Pictures of ASD were taken at his request and sometimes by him.) For the most part (and except for the "scanned" images), the oldest videos and images on ASD's web pages were created using a Sony HandyCam Video Hi8. From the creation of the first webpage that is now part of this site in 1995 until early 1998, images were digitized by attaching the HandyCam to an Apple TV/Video Card in an Apple Macintosh Performa 630CD with a S-video cable. In early 1998, the Performa 630 was replaced with an Apple Power Macintosh G3 (original edition) which also had a built-in video card. In early 2000, ASD switched to digital with the purchase of Sony HandyCam DCR-TRV750, a Digital8 camcorder which has NightShot and Digital Still functions. The digital camcorder purchase was quickly followed with the purchase of an Apple iMac DV Special Edition. The digital camcorder connected to the iMac by Firewire where images were captured by iMovie. (Some digital still shots were downloaded to a PC by a separate serial connection). The iMac connected to the old G3 and PC by Ethernet. Spring 2002 brought the addition of a flat panel iMac G4 running at 800 MHz and Fall brought a new Digital 8 Sony HandyCam DCR-TRV840. Like the TRV750, it connects to Mac by Firewire. The TRV840 camcorder also has a 1 megapixel still Digital Still function and saves the photos to a Sony Memory Stick which then downloads direct to a PC or through a SanDisk adaptor by USB to iPhoto on the flat panel iMac. The flat panel iMac connects to the others by Ethernet too. In Spring 2003, real Mac mobility was discovered with the purchase of the 12-inch PowerBook G4 running at 867 MHz. With an AirPort Extreme card installed, a wireless network was established using a Linksys wireless router/hub (the iMac DV Special Edition got its own AirPort card as well). The PowerBook G4 was of great use in travelling throughout 2003-5 -- regular downloading of images from the MemorySticks allowed for more and more stills each day (see, for example, the LasVegas Christmas 2003 photos). As 2003 came to an end, higher quality digital stills became possible with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P10, a 5.0 Mega Pixels digital still camera. It connects by USB to any of the Macs (but usually the PowerBook G4) for fairly quick downloads to iPhoto. Of course, since it uses the Sony MemorySticks, those can also be ejected and downloaded through the SanDisk adaptor. Before the end of 2005, an adapter allowed portable downloads of photos from the camera to the Video iPod, to save at least one trip back to the room here and there to free up MemoryStick space. Also by the end of 2005, a new PowerBook G4, this time the 15-inch running at 1.67 GHz was added to the Mac collection for travelling. In the Spring of 2006, at home, the HP 7410 Office Jet (all-in-one) allowed for yet another way to transfer photos off of Sony MemorySticks (as well as more kinds of media that I don't even recognize). The next tool added to the mix was the 8.1 Megapixel Sony DSC-T100. The 2007 Disneyland Photos were amongst the first shots taken with it that have been added to the site. It uses the smaller-sized Memory Stick PRO Duo which provides a huge 4 GB of storage -- that's more than 1000 photos at full resolution! And it has a rather complicated looking USB connector that (of course) is not compatible with anything else but this camera.... Being a steady Mac-user over the years, naturally the next device was the iPhone in September 2007. While its camera is only a 2 megapixel, it is great for on-the-go uploading. Until the beginning of 2009, the preferred uploading location was Flickr and from there to a Blogger.com-created photo blog. The photo blog went live on the site in time for the 2007 end-of-year trip to Walt Disney World. (Because flickr ended free Pro accounts for AT&T customers, after January 2009, no new photos have been added after January -- the photos are now often direct-uploaded to the photo blog. Starting in late 2008, facebook.com became a new favorite place for uploading photos both by iPhone and regular upload.) Indeed, before that end-of-the-year trip, a 2.2 GHz MacBook offered new mobility and a new iMac home-based computing (though because of some hardware problems, the iMac didn't really become functional until Spring 2008). The iPhone was upgraded to iPhone 3GS in June 2009 (which includes a slightly better camera which also shoots video and can upload it directly to YouTube). With the price of 1 TB drives really falling into the reasonable range in late 2008 and 2009, a few have come in handy for digitizing all of that old video shot starting back in the early 1990s. Nearly all of the videos displayed on the site are hosted on ASD's YouTube Channel. Videos over 10 minutes are hosted on Facebook. Starting in the summer of 2009, my preferred method for importing digital video shot 2000-2008 is to connect one of the old Sony Digital 8 Handycams to the Mac Mini and use iMovie HD 6 to save the files to a 1 TB external drive. Then on the MacBook, I use the DVRecordingDate application to rename the files to correct the capture date information before importing the DV clips into iMovie '09. Right before the April 2009 Walt Disney World Trip, true HD videography became possible with Sony's HDR-XR520V. It has a 220 GB hard drive and also uses the Sony Memory Stick PRO Duo for additional storage (right now, there's an 8 GB stick installed). The still function on the camera takes 4 megapixel stills -- even while shooting video! For some samples, check out the photos of The Festival of The Lion King and Finding Nemo: The Musical in the April 2009 Photo Blog Archive. You can spot the stills taken with this camera because they are 16:9 aspect ratio, just like the HD video the camera shoots. ASD's YouTube Channel also hosts HD video as well! Several different graphics software programs have been used to capture, crop, and convert the images to JPEG or GIF format for uploading to the website over the years. The capture of most of the older photos was done using Apple's TV/Video software. The newest photos, as described above, are began as true digital stills downloaded from a Memory Stick. A lot of the others (and particularly photos where a great deal of optical zoom was done to get the image in the first place) were captured with iMovie. The larger hard drive capacity on the newest iMac (along with the 1 TB drives) has allowed for editing of a great deal of video -- mostly with iMovie (with some light experimentation in Final Cut Express) -- these days, using the version in iLife '09. Some of the video includes experimentation using several applications in the iLife '09 suite. As noted above, nearly all of the video on the site is hosted at YouTube. Some of the images are scanned still photographs -- particularly the panoramic photos and the images pre-1996. ASD used the UMAX Astra 610S color scanner for many images in the early days of the site. A few of the still photographs were digitized by videotaping a still and using the video capture technique described above (see, e.g., ASD at the podium on Dalinka.com - ASD's Home Page). More recently, scanned images added to the site have been done using an HP Officejet 7410 All-in-One (which, fortunately, connects to everything else using WiFi). I have also used the Kodak rapid-scanner at a couple of Jewel-Osco stores to mass-digitize old stills. From 1998 to 2001, most of the images were edited using PhotoMaker 1.0 (by MacSoft), Adobe PhotoDeluxe, Adobe PhotoShop LE (both of the latter titles came bundled with different hardware). From 2001 to the present, most images were edited using iPhoto and Adobe Photoshop Elements (v4.0 and v6.0). Some photos have been edited using tools available at flickr.com. With the changes at flickr, some photo hosting -- and, particularly, many slideshows, are now hosted at slide.com. All composite images on ASD's pages were created using original images created as described above. The composites images are possible thanks to the various graphics software titles described above and the newer ones, in particular, Adobe Photoshop Elements. The web pages themselves have also been created by ASD. Since ASD was an early member of the website-creating public, most of ASD's pages have been created the old-fashioned way: coding the HTML and javascript without the use of web page design software or web sites. ASD's HTML and javascript skills are entirely self-taught. Since 1998, references consulted for creating these pages included HTML 4 HOW-TO by John Zakour, Jeff Foust, and David Kerven (1997 The Waite Group, Inc.) for the latest in HTML tags and javascript tips. Additional credits may be found by viewing the SOURCE code of some of the pages. Finally, FYI, ASD's pages (and Disney vacations) represent no more than a hobby. You now also can read about another of ASD's hobbies - improv comedy performance and comedy writing on this page. ASD makes no money for posting the images or webpages, in fact, this hobby has expenses for the domain registration and webhosting of asdhollywood.com (for years paid to Yahoo! and then switched as well as annual domain registration fees for dalinka.com and alandalinka.com -- now, thanks to 1and1.com that price is a lot lower and the domains more stable (and other domains like dalinka.net, dalinka.org, dalinka.us, alandalinka.us became part of the family). The threat to go off to become a driver of one of the parking trams at the Walt Disney World Resort ("don't forget, you're parked in Goofy") remains in place during each and every typical Chicago winter day (and especially after trips in December, January or February)..... More images, photos and videos get posted as ASD finds the time. Is there some public area at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida or the Disneyland Resort in California that you would like to see some photos of? Suggestions are most welcome. Spam is not welcome. Slide.com now hosts many of the slide shows on the site. | |||
| |||
| |||
Also visit ASD on MySpace and |
