Category: Movies

The Digital Archive Project

Hey Loyal Readers. I was looking at the server logs and noticed I had 15 people active on the site that were not web robots. Which I thought was pretty darn cool considering I have been failing as a blogger lately.

Honestly I have just been feeling a bit overwhelmed and I just need to rearrange parts of my life to get into the swing of things. I really want to get back into the gym thing but life has made that hard. But lately I have been working on archiving the media that my family has created over the years. It can be a long process to watch a tape and sit there with a notepad and mark the parts of the recording that I need to fix later. So I do a tape or two a weekend and almost have all of the tapes recorded that are worth saving.

I am going to work on a bit of a clip show and post it on my personal blog. But again all of this requires time and I don’t find myself wanting to spend it on my laptop as much as I used to. So I will make a clip show a priority of mine.

I also would really like to get back into podcasting again. Get a few other guys or maybe some girl to get on Skype with some microphones and beat out a 30-40 minute show maybe twice a month. Doesn’t really have to be about by dating life as I have had a serious girlfriend for almost 3 years now. Again just more time.

So look forward to a clip show and will see about starting up a podcast again. I stopped at 12 episodes and recently just got delisted from iTunes.  Sad times indeed. But please follow me on twitter if you want to keep up on the pulse of Tristan. http://www.twitter.com/tristanpipo

Hope to hear from you soon.

Viva the Digital Overlords

I was sitting here at my desk working on building an HTML version of a digital scoreboard to show who is awesome at Air Hockey. I used to play with my coworker Greg and we both just got extremely busy at work. So we are going to start it back up again. When we left off I was ahead like 131 games to 126 I believe. We would play 3-5 games a day.

But the title of this blog post doesn’t really mean anything. I was listening to iTunes and had it on Random and Octopuses Garden came up on iTunes. For some reason it inspired me to open up MarsEdit and write a click little blurb.

I have been working on converting all of my families home video tapes to a digital format. I must say it has been a rather intensive process. A bit more expensive then I imagined.

The first expense was the Elgato Video Capture device. Scored that for $84 off Amazon with the free 2 day shipping ala Amazon Prime. Another expense was actually getting a VCR. My girlfriends mom had one to lend me. It works pretty well. It has some tracking issues so I ordered another VCR off ebay and now have two VCR’s on my desk.

I remember being a kid and thinking VCR’s could possibly be the coolest thing ever. Now they are just large annoying black boxes on my desk. I picked up the other VCR for $30 from eBay. The lady that was selling lied to me on its condition. But it works as expected.

Also I needed a place to save all of this video as most videos come up after compression to be 2-3GB of data. Then a DVD version ends up being another 4GB or so. Then I make 2 different formats m4v and Divx AVI. Not really sure how my family is taking this. But oh well I am happy to have digital copies of all the tapes. But this all takes up space so I now have 2 1TB Firewire 800 HDD. I have 2.5TB of data hooked up to my laptop for all of these home movies.

Good times. Well I better get back to work. Just thought I would blog some random thoughts.

A new project and a rant.

So over the past year I have been trying to bridge the gap between my family and technology. I can hardly get my family to do a thing in regards to technology. Send them an e-mail I never get a response. They seem to want to use technology but don’t want to put the effort into learning how to use it. The other day I got a call from my mother saying “I lost everything on your stepdad’s user on Windows Vista! HELP!” I don’t know anything about Windows Vista. It’s the operating system I totally skipped over. I could probably do some navigating and figure it out. She hadn’t backed anything up but luckily a reboot solved her problem.

This prompted me to write up a long detailed e-mail on good backup tips and some free tools and general good advice about saving data. I didn’t get a thank you. I didn’t get one response.

E-Mail is my thing. I love e-mail I find it 100x easier to solve problems with an e-mail then a phone call. I am always on e-mail. You send me an e-mail it gets forwarded to my Mobile Me account which instantly puts it on my iPhone and boom I know you sent something and i will get back to you ASAP. To make things easier for my family I setup a Google Group so that you can just send an e-mail to 1 address and everyone gets it. But people seem afraid to use it.

Here are the current stats on the group.

185 Tristan
118 Mom
49 Aunt
31 Grandpa
31 Uncle
27 Cousin
20 Family Friend
20 Alex
15 Family Friend Old Account
14 Grandma

This has been up for over 2 years and doesn’t seem like it’s getting that much use. Getting people involved in the discussion on things like planning birthday’s is near impossible. My girlfriend her family seems to have e-mail and planning family events in the digital realm down. I don’t get why it’s so hard to reply to an e-mail or click a link and fill out a form.

I finally got my grandma hooked up with a Jitterbug cell phone. That is the oddest phone I have ever seen. Only cell phone I had ever used that has a dialtone when you flip it open. And that everything on the phone is either “Yes” or “No” Do you want to call Tristan?

My family has a ton of videotape so I got the means necessary to work on converting them to the digital format.  My desk is kinda loaded at the moment. Two Apple laptops got some VCR’s going here and just piles of technology at the beck and call to get all this done. Here is an picture of my desk at the moment.

Sent out an e-mail for that no response not a person in the world seems to care. I tested out the technology with my High School Senior Slideshow. I wasn’t in it but it was the only video tape I had around the house.

You can view that at the following link North Kitsap High School Graduating Class of 2001 But I would be careful. It’s 46 minutes of a slideshow of people you probably have no clue about. It was really just a visual test to see how well it worked. I also changed the audio to be a bit better quality.

But I hope to get on this project there are tons of funny. (Well I would find funny) videos that we recorded over our childhood years. That I would like to convert to a digital format. I don’t think I would want to convert them to DVD. Since would be easier to grab a video file and make a DVD if you so choose.

But anyways I guess I just wanted to rant that my family doesn’t use technology in a way that seems to be the most productive. Or seem to care about any of the efforts that I put forth into helping them. But what do I know. It’s late I am going to bed thanks for reading.

Lately

I have been working on “June Vacation Part 2 ” since those stories tend to be a great deal more epic I like to put more effort into them. Making cheesy pictures and finding related links, etc that takes a while and only work on those in my freetime. This is a blog post that I decided to start at 10:37pm at night and just a bit of free form thinking composed into the digital realm.

I purchased a new MacBook Pro and have found myself undertaking other projects mostly cutting together videos for mostly personal use. Things I have captured for my family etc and been publishing those internally. I miss the blogging realm when I felt like I had a bunch of people reading. But lately I feel like my blog has become a lost cause in some ways. They say that a place with people in it attracts more customers. I tend to think a blog is like that as well. The more people read it the more people want to read it. Currently my RSS feed has 26 subscribers by my count and my Podcast still has 16. It was recently removed from the Apple Store since it hasn’t been updated in two years. But I like the thought that 26 people still subscribe to the blog.

I feel like since I finished school and got an internship that turned into my full time career I have been shoved into what the American Adult should be. I have a career and I get up at the same time every day and go to work and find myself learning and pushing myself constantly. Working in the IT world is always interesting I must say. It never stops evolving. I love my job and happy to be employed but sometimes a bit more variety would be nice you know. But work is work and you can’t really expect things to be different all the time. But it’s like I never expected being an adult to be the same all the time. I was never warned of this and none of my previous jobs gave me any clue since they were always rather free form. You are doing Job A today and Job B tomorrow under the same roof. But who knows maybe this is a bit of a slump.

I have been in a relationship for two years now. She is a wonderful and amazing girl. But we have our moments like everyone does. I remember being single and going on all these dates with women that didn’t really fit me. I think it was more about finding some female attention then a real companion. A great deal of women I found to be rather insane. But I was also a great deal younger then and it seems like as I age women also begin to make a bit more sense. I had a few do a bunch of mean stuff to me and I got to do that to one woman. I felt like a dick about it afterwards then she did that typical thing that women do say some mean things about me and life went on. I still have yet to figure out why women always need to have the last word in every argument. But I am happy now and I try to make my girlfriend happy.

Friends seems to be an odd topic as well I think that goes along with the adult thing. Most of my friends all live at different distances and it makes it hard to go and see them. I still chat with them online or via SMS or phone but face to face contact it all has to be scheduled with everyone now. It’s not like the days of old where I could call a few people and say lets hang out. I kinda miss those days but kinda don’t. Like it used to be “Hey I’m Bored Fix It” sent off to a bunch of people in my phone. Group used to get together and just hang out and it was great. I just don’t find myself doing that lately. Most of the people I hang out with and call my friends are coworkers. Which is great but at times I miss my other friends. There are internet friends as well they can be cool the people that follow me on Twitter and my Facebook friends they are cool and all. But again the whole internet thing can be scary for some people. I send out a twitter update “Anyone wanna go see a movie” I don’t get many responses and if I do they are things like “I would but I am in Spokane” the thought it nice but I also don’t see the point in responding if you can’t go. That is a bit of a mixed bag and would love to dive into the social networking trend of quizzes later.

But as with all things this post must come to an end. Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope everyone will continue to do so.

It’s Still March!

Hello Everyone!

Thanks for taking the time to read this amazingly awesome blog post. I have been getting reports that if you come to tristanpipo.com and then refresh the page that you get an error. But if you just visit the page this doesn’t happen. So my advice is don’t click refresh. This is due to the nature of calls that the website makes if a few people do it at the same time it can push me over the amount of connections I am limited to at any given second and clicking refresh will resolve the issue. With that said On with my life.

So since my last post was in the beginning of March. So you need to be caught up. Two Thursday’s ago my foot started to hurt. It was just a slight pain not a big deal. But the pain started to get more intense. Like to the point where I had to throw up the pain was so intense. I could hardly walk and this was annoying me so I was cursing a great deal and keeping Raleigh up.  So on Friday I was late for work because I had to go to the doctor. They told me it was some tendentious action and take some Aleve and my foot would be all good. It took almost 24hrs for the pain to go away but it did.

That weekend I really don’t recall what happened. I don’t remember it being very exciting. I have noticed that as I grow older it seems that most of life gets over run with sameness. I get up same time. Walk out the door at the same time. Catch the same bus. Sit in the same seat. Get off at the same stop. Go to the same job. Fix different things. Come home and do the same thing but with slight variations.

I guess this is the human condition since we don’t need to be constantly hunting or finding drinking water. I can see why some people go nuts. But I also see that we have the methods to keep people that are nuts still around. For example you have some guy who isn’t all that bright. Chances were higher that a Puma would find his stupid ass in the woods and idiot wouldn’t be around to breed anymore. Most idiots don’t get attacked by Puma’s anymore. Since they can get all their resources for living without having to deal with Puma’s. Seems like a good idea to me is to have a city surivial force of Puma’s and other various vicious animals around just to get that fear going. If moron A can’t make it to the bus stop without a Tiger attacking him odds are he won’t be breeding.

But I always have ideas like that. I mostly get told “Why do you waste time thinking of such things” or “You are such a dork” or “You are so weird” most of the people that get past this initial shock value of being around the Tristan of the Pipo find me to be an overall good guy. Took my current girlfriend a long time to realize this and pretty much everyone I have ever known.

So anyways week went on and I felt very productive. Friday came around and I didn’t really do a whole heap on Friday. Went home and chilled. Saturday was an interesting day. The Nick and J-Monster came over from Kitsap. I got to meet Justin’s new girlfriend. I will not butcher her name by typing it but she was cool in my book. She is very social and that is the type of person I dig because you don’t have to say much and you can be interested and make their day. So went and hitup SushiLand on Queen Anne Hill. I have seen one of these in Portland, OR as well. I am sure the Junniper will chime in and have many awesome things to say about me.

What has been interesting about Junniper and her blog and my interaction with her.  We exchange the occasional e-mail. Most of the time it’s like “Hey look how Portland messed up” or something I find about garfield. I have spoken to her on the phone once. Caught me off guard when I was hanging out with the KGB Mafia Man. She was at the SeaTac airport. I think she was trying to stalk me. What is also rather funny is how the times I am in Portland she is out of town. I can picture being 89 one day and getting on my floating wheelchair disc and going down to Portland and being like “Ah Ha! We finally meet!” Then that being it I go back to my Evil Mountian of Power in Seattle.

But that was a random tangent. I really have nothing to say just kinda doing a brain dump so there are probably tons of spelling and grammar errors. It’s never been my style to really fix them either. If you would like to make an attempt at being me in a funny manner. You could shoot me an e-mail and your parody post. I would be happy to give it a post.

So Saturday some friends and I went to Sushiland and then went and saw Watchmen in IMAX. What is awesome is that a standard movie ticket at a theater costs $10. The IMAX films cost $11. Plus you don’t have to deal with stupid public fuckers and them using cell phones. The most annoying movie theater people that need to be locked in portable toilets filled with bottle rockets and kicked off a building are the ones that keep their Bluetooth Headsets on. So you get that blinking blue light. They look like annoying ass cyborgs that ruin the movie. I wish someone would kick them in the skull when they walk in with those things.

After that we went to some bar called Pesos for like 15 minutes and then left and went home and passed out.

Sunday I went to my Grandpa’s birthday brunch came home and was tired.

I have no ending for this post so I place a few random periods…   .. ..

50 Things

I saw this on YouTube where you just post 50 random things about yourself. Since I don’t feel like counting dots these are going to be numbered but are in no particular order.

  1. When I was a sophmore in High School me and my best friend got in trouble for spamming the Traffic Education Teacher. Cops were involved and everything.

  2. When I was  a child I had a goal to dig to China in my parents side yard. They kept refilling the hole every few months. I learned everything was an uphill battle.

  3. I tend to be very incredibly anal.

  4. I enjoy doing dishes when I am not being told to do them.

  5. I am constantly afraid of getting addicted to something. So I try to moderate everything.

  6. I try to keep my DVD’s in alphabetical order.

  7. I get a kick of doing things that keep peoples perception of me off balance.

  8. I don’t keep many friends just a select group of close ones.

  9. I really can’t stand myspace and prefer facebook.

  10. I enjoy Thai Food way to much.

  11. I drink maybe 2-3 beers a month.

  12. I have never tried any drugs or smoked anything.

  13. I dug my parents first pond when I was 12 for $20. I didn’t realize that 6hrs of work for $20 was getting shit pay.

  14. I really enjoy the MacOS but got tired of pushing it on people.

  15. I have this constant feeling that I never successful at anything but I like the fact that it drives me to try harder constantly.

  16. Almost every girl I have ever dated I have met online.

  17. I listen to podcasts all the time. I hardly ever listen to music.

  18. I once gave two underage girls a ride home because they asked me to. I was freaked out the entire time that I would get called a pedophile for just driving someone somewhere.

  19. I try as hard as I can to be a great guy.

  20. I am fairly quite and don’t say things unless need be. Which usually leads to people thinking I don’t care about them because I tend not to ask questions about people.

  21. I tip way to much because I feel bad. I never tip at coffee shops though. I feel $4 for coffee is enough of a tip. But I will tip $20 on a $30 haircut.

  22. I used to have this dream about how I was trapped in a Winnie the Pooh Scuba suit. I sometimes still have it and freak out every time.

  23. I sometimes get frustrated by people who don’t check their e-mail as often as I do.

  24. I really enjoy Amazon Prime.

  25. I hardly talk on the phone and try to use most of my communication via e-mail and SMS.

  26. When I was 4 years old my family took a trip to Canada and I fell out of a Van in a pancake house parking lot and had to get my head wrapped up like a mummy.

  27. I really dislike having to answer peoples questions that could be resolved if they just performed a quick google search.

  28. I am never sure how long to hug someone that I am not dating.

  29. I have a huge collection of socks that I never wear.

  30. I feel pretty good about not having any negative feelings about anyone.

  31. Whenever an HBO show comes on and does the little “Awwwww” I always do it to.

  32. I get stuck on sayings every now and then. “Delta”, “Pinner” and always feel stupid when people don’t get it.

  33. My current girlfriend has played enough Abba to make me never want to hear them ever again for any reason.

  34. I was really happy to break it off with an ex via SMS. Made me feel pretty good about getting revenge on the opposite sex for all the crap they have done to me over the years. I feel bad about someone having to face that though and would like to apologize.

  35. I update twitter frequently but I always get the feeling nobody cares except when it updates on Facebook and people comment on it.

  36. Growing up my house was the most popular place to be on the street. We had Swings, Tree House, The Digging Spot, We built forts on the rockery. Sometimes I miss being the popular kid.

  37. I chopped wood for 8hrs a day for 3 days in a row for the neighbors to buy a $10 marines hat when I was 11.

  38. I can’t mow the lawn because it will swell me up due to allergies.

  39. I am allergic to most pets. Cats at the highly allergic end. I am allergic to most dogs as well. But I like dogs.

  40. I caught Mono in the 8th grade and missed 2.5 months of school. I almost failed the 8th grade.

  41. I failed Spanish II on purpose because I really didn’t want to take that class.

  42. My favorite soda is sprite.

  43. People who text in movie theaters are probably some of the most annoying human beings alive.

  44. I always enjoy being around people. I am not much of a fan of being alone except when I am feeling burnt out.

  45. I have never really traveled that much.

  46. I always put the peanut butter and the jelly on the same side of the bread then add the dry side on top of the middle. I developed this habit to annoy the crap out of my ex girlfriend. It doesn’t seem to annoy anybody now.

  47. I save everything. Every chat, e-mail everything.

  48. I am really good at playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

  49. The sexiest part of a woman tends to be their legs.

  50. I am honestly shocked I came up with this many things. That I wanted to write something cliche about how I am shocked I came up with this many.

Hope you enjoyed reading this. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. If you come up with 50 things let me know in the comments and post a link to your 50 things.

Christmas List of 2008

So this year has been one amazing year for me. I have seen the purchase of many toys. So I thought I would write up a sane Christmas List. These are in no particular order so her goes what I would like for the Holiday Season.

I can’t really think of much else. Trying to keep things simple these days where life can be complicated. If you were thinking about buying me a tie as something cliche may I recommend This Tie!

Okay there is the list. It might be updated but we shall see how the Holiday Season moves forward. Hope everyone has a wonderful thanksgiving and I hopefully will hear and talk to everyone soon. Next Blog Post will be # 1000. Hooray for me! And Hooray to any of you that have read all 999 so far.

Edit: Fixed the Amazon.com Wishlist. Having Multiple List Catergories Seemed Confusing to Many.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/106QBBPP7L7DZ

Edit January 2009 – Crossed off the items that I had recieved.

The Christmas List – 2007

Well it’s 2007 and people are asking “Tristan what do you want or need for the Holidays?” So I figured I would lay it out for the people that care to know. I also have an Amazon.com Wishlist if anyone cares to look for that you can just search for Tristan Pipo.

My Amazon.com Wish List

Note: I have multiple wishlists setup for different groups. So it’s not empty on the right hand side of the page you will find the multiple lists.

Okay so lets kick off the list for this site in no particular order. If you are a reader from the intertubes shoot me an e-mail and can exchange mailing information.

  • Ocean's 11,12,13 HDDVD Box Set Image Ocean’s HD-DVD Box Set (Oceans 11, 12 and 13) Buy.com $55 Link

    • My favorite set of movies makes the jump to HD DVD what is not to want. I think my Ocean’s 11 Disc has been watched more then anything time to upgrade and replace.

  • Zelda The Phantom Hourglass Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS $33 Link

    • I can always use a new game to entertain me while on the ferry. Currently have conquered all my DS games at the moment.

  • KitchenaidCookWare Kitchenaid Gourmet Essentials Hard Anodized 12 Piece Cookware Set $199 Link

    • Note: Now this was the best reviewed set on Amazon.com Feel free to change the brand up if you desire. Could not find on Buy.com.

  • Fiestaware Fiestaware 4 Piece Table Setting $20 Link

    • I will admit it I need some more plates. Raleigh recommended Fiestaware and I made mention to my mom and she was like that is what you should get. Now a multiple of 4+ would be nice. You can also get get different colors which is the appeal of Fiestaware I suppose. Link from Amazon.com Wishlist

  • The Orange BoxThe Orange Box for XBOX 360 $59.99 Link

    • I waited 8 years for Team Fortress 2. I can wait a little longer.

  • LED Faucet LED Enabled Faucet$12.99-$19.99 Link via ThinkGeek

    • I ran this idea past Raleigh and she seemed cool with the idea. But it was one of those things “That’s nice Tristan, Here is something to distract you and hope you don’t remember this later” Well that didn’t work. So here it is now on the list.

  • Guitar Hero II Game OnlyGuitar Hero 2 Game Only $39 Link

    • Can always use more songs for this long winter indoors. Me and Raleigh have already gotten down the mastering of Guitar Hero 3.

  • Edit: Old School on HD DVDOld School on HD DVD $22.95 Link

    • I was recalling a conversation I had with Raleigh over the weekend that she has not seen Old School. The copy I have on DVD is scratched to Hell. Figured it would be a time to upgrade. I loved this movie it was totally hilarious. I was told to cross this out. Not sure why. 😉

  • A Mountain of Happiness.

    • Not sure anyone I know can afford this one.

So that is a quick little rundown of a list. I am not exactly sure what I want since this year has been rather fulfilling. A great deal of things happened but without a doubt it has been Raleigh.

I have felt incredibly lucky to find a Woman that I can connect with and be myself with and just accept each other for who we are. It’s odd to finally be understood by someone and understand them back. I will be writing a year in review coming up when the year is done and ready to be reviewed and we get to add another month and year to the blog archives.

I won’t be breaking 1000 posts in 2007 but it has been a fun one. Much love to you and your family this Holiday Season. I say Happy Holidays if this bothers you. Well you can…. It’s the Holidays I will keep it clean.

Oh and as the reindeer fly.

Hi Marcia. =)

P.S. Raleigh made me do it.

Brain Vomit in the Form of a Blog

So blog updates have been few and far between. Have I died? Have I lost the urge? Nah life has just came around and blogging isn’t priority #1 so much anymore. I enjoy it and always working on some scheme to get things updated and easy to use. So I guess what have I been doing lately.

Well Halo 3 came out on September 25th and I find myself playing a great deal of that during the week. If you want to hop on and say WTF?! You Suck. Well come find me on XBOX live.

So I guess I haven’t done a weekend update in a while so lets kick one off for no particular reason.

Friday – So Friday was a rather nice Seattle day. A few weekends ago I had given Raleigh a key to my place and she wanted to head over there when I was at work. That evening we were supposed to go have dinner with my Great Aunt and Uncle who were in town from Chicago so I got off work an hour early. But the ferry was delayed nearly an hour and that wasn’t exactly a smart plan since I only saved approx 10 mins going home. I left a card of sweet nothings on my coffee table with my car keys and Raleigh met me at the ferry.  Then we went back to my place to pick up a new shirt and head out to dinner. Nothing real exciting to report on that front.

Saturday – Slept in a while and then went and had Break-unch. Then we went and did some shopping and picked up some things and then we hit up a corn maze. The crew that arrived were Nick, Audrey, Gerene, Justin, Abbey, Jon, Sean, Sean’s Friend, Raleigh and the coolest guy ever( Tristan). It took us about an hour to get through the Maze. Then we went to dinner at Red Robin. It seems like most restaurants in this area blow. But I had a Banzai Burger and life was good.  We had to ditch out of dinner fairly early to go catch a movie at the old movie theater on Bainbridge called the Lynnwood Theater. They play Indie Films and Documentaries. We caught the 9:30 showing of In the Shadow of the Moon. I am a total Nasa and Apollo fan and dig this kinda thing.

So the movie overall was great I was slightly tired and had a few nod offs that resulted in getting elbowed in the stomach from Raleigh. I ponder if it was a “You took me to this film you are going to stay awake for it” But I would recommend it if you are interested in this kinda thing. I would recommend a rental. Since I doubt it’s playing in many theaters in your vicinity.

After that we just went home and passed out.

Sunday –  Well Sunday was an interesting day. Walked around downtown Winslow for a bit found some breakfast and came home. Hung up some pictures and cleaned a bit. Raleigh cooked an early dinner that was awesome. For some reason sitting in my computer chair watching her cook is just a blast. I wish I could have helped more but spending time with Raleigh is one of those things I enjoy more then anything. It is always hard to drop her off at the ferry even though I know I will be seeing her again soon. After I dropped her off I went to my parents house for dinner #2 and watched Field of Dreams. Came home played Halo 3 a bit and then passed out.

Monday begins and here I am saying thanks for reading. Heroes tonight. Boys Night. Hugs to everyone and I need some coffee to wake up. It’s 12:30 and I am still beat for some reason.