Seattle

Looking for Work

5 Comments / art, development, flicks, geek, Seattle / By

For the first time in nearly seven years, I am now unemployed. Yesterday, along with several other people, I was laid off from my job at The Omni Group, and I’m now looking for new work. UPDATE: Here is a link to my resume PDF and my complete CV.

First of all, thank you to all of my friends and colleagues at Omni for being one of the best groups of people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. I’ll be forever grateful that taking a job at Omni is what got me out to the West Coast, and to the lovely city of Seattle. I learned a lot there, and they believed in my abilities enough to give me some truly interesting challenges, including some professional development that was rather tangential to my scope of video production, in the interest of seeing it enrich my work in unexpected ways.

I won’t go into what happened at Omni in much detail (if you’re interested, my fellow layoff-ee Brent Simmons has more to say about that on his blog). Suffice it to say that with a spouse who is an essential employee at a bakery, I never suspected that an economic cascade leading to this layoff would be the way that the COVID-19 pandemic affected our family. Omni are doing everything they can to make this necessity a little less harsh, and I’m certain they never would have laid people off if it weren’t truly necessary for the company’s survival. I wish them the best, and hope that they come out of this stronger than ever.

But still, I am out of work. Do you have work? Hire me!

People probably know me best for my video production work — please see the output of my last seven years in The Omni Group’s video archives — but I have also done a lot of related development work, and would love to push my career in that direction. Here’s a quick list of some relevant skills:

  • My biggest area of experience: video production, post, editing, and motion graphics. 24 years and counting.
  • I’ve produced two long-running podcasts, The Optical, which I also host, and The Omni Show.
  • For the last 13 or so years, I’ve been working on my programming skillset.
    • I write scripts to automate my video production workflows in Python and JavaScript/ExtendScript
    • I’ve built websites with a Django back end, and I have a working knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and REST APIs
    • Just about a month ago, I took a Swift + iOS Development Bootcamp at Big Nerd Ranch, so I’m continuing to refresh my skills
    • I developed and published an app guide to Star Trek for the iPhone, for The Post Atomic Horror Podcast (no longer in the App Store)
    • I was a founding member of NSCoderNightDC, collaboratively learning Objective-C, Mac, and iOS development, and am a member of Xcoders in Seattle, keeping in touch with the local community of Mac and iOS developers
    • I’m currently in the process of learning Unity and C#, so that I can build a virtual map of Scarecrow Video, the largest publicly-accessible film archive in the world, where I volunteer on a regular basis. I suppose Unity is useful for other things too.
    • For my own themed tiki bar space, I’ve become very familiar with Raspberry Pi and Arduino programming, to control lights, smoke, and (in progress) animatronics for an immersive themed experience.

Making Tiki Mugs: Seattle Pottery Supply

art, howto, Seattle / By

My goal is to have made at least one tiki mug for my home tiki bar, by the end of the year. I’ve been poring over Tiki Central’s forums to learn more about the process. I have also picked up a couple of books on it, and have been creating a big workflow list of all of the tips and tricks I’m finding so far.

The Really Big One

Seattle / By

When we moved out to Seattle two years ago, we knew that earthquakes might be a thing we’d have to worry about, but it hadn’t really sunk in how real of a danger that might be. A recent New Yorker article got my office buzzing about the possibility of a Really Big One occurring on the Cascadia fault, which runs right under Seattle. So, for my own edification, here are some facts, and what we can do to prepare:

The original New Yorker piece

  • “The Really Big One” by Kathryn Schulz — a dramatic look at what could happen, if (apparently) a bit hyperbolic

Some facts

  • We are earthquake experts. Ask us anything about The Really Big One coming for the Pacific Northwest. (AMA) — with questions answered by John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, Debbie Goetz of Seattle’s Emergency Management Office, and Sandi Doughton, science writer at The Seattle Times and author of Full Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest
  • Cascadia’s recurrence interval — the average time between subduction-zone earthquakes — is 243 years. We are currently 315 years since the last major Cascadia earthquake (M9.0) at 9pm, January 26, 1700.1
  • “Overdue” seems a bit of a fear-mongering word to use here. The pressure in the fault is still slowly building, but thanks to how complex the probabilities are, that could mean any number of things. The current thinking is, “For the M9 [earthquake] along the coast, the best estimate is 10 to 15% chance per 50 years, or 1 in 300 each year.2”
  • There is also a chance that when “the big one” happens, only part of the fault will slip at first, increasing chances that there will be another major earthquake soon after to relieve pressure on the rest of the fault,3 in addition to expected aftershocks.
  • The shaking will be much more devastating to Seattle than any risk of tsunami related to this event. “The tsunami won’t really be a factor in Seattle or Puget Sound. By the time the swell gets here, it will be pretty small.4” In my neighborhood specifically, “You might see a little coastal swell in Ballard, but the tsunami will not be a major factor there.5”
  • There is an early warning system in testing, and John Vidale (and a neighbor of mine that works for him) said testers have it on their phones right now.6 However, it needs more work to be tuned to our region’s specific seismic activity so it doesn’t give false alarms to the public.7
  • Sandi Doughton says, “I live here, and I personally wouldn’t advise anyone to stay away from this beautiful region because of earthquake risks. Some things you might consider […], make emergency kits for home, work and car, and a plan for contacting family members (designate an out of state contact everyone can check in with). My philosophy is be prepared, not paranoid – and enjoy the spectacular landscape provided to us by tectonic forces.8”
  • The Seattle Times has an article with more links, and the first chapter excerpted from the Full Rip 9.0 book

Preparedness

  • Make It Through (local) and Ready.gov (national) have information on making an evacuation plan, a communications plan, and lists for what should be in your disaster kit.
  • While preparing a kit with 3 days of food/water/etc. is the usual recommendation, Debbie Goetz said in the AMA, “We recommend people prepare themselves for 7 to 10 days vs. three. For a major quake, life won’t be back to ‘normal’ after just three days. I’ve got enough at home to make it through a week, and also keep a stash of stuff in my car as well as at work. Beyond supplies, I always encourage people to talk about their plans — especially around communication, which we know will be affected. Where will they be? How can they get back together? Where could they meet if not at home?9”
  • Seattle Disaster Readiness and Response Plans
  • The Great Washington ShakeOut — a state-wide drill to learn how to drop, cover, and hold on, instead of heading for a doorway
  1. “The Really Big One” by Kathryn Schulz, in The New Yorker July 20, 2015 Issue (retrieved from web 2015-07-13) ↩
  2. John Vidale, 2015-07-14, Reddit AMA ↩
  3. Sandi Daughton, 2015-07-14 Reddit AMA ↩
  4. Sandi Daughton, 2015-07-14 Reddit AMA ↩
  5. Sandi Daughton, 2015-07-14 Reddit AMA ↩
  6. John Vidale, 2015-07-14, Reddit AMA ↩
  7. John Vidale, 2015-07-14, Reddit AMA ↩
  8. Sandi Daughton, 2015-07-14 Reddit AMA ↩
  9. Debbie Goetz, 2015-07-14, Reddit AMA ↩

Faith No More at the Paramount, 2015-04-16

Seattle, tunes / By

As my birthday gift this year, my good friend AAl took me to see Faith No More — which I think finally makes it all of the bands that I was really into in the 90s that I’ve now seen in person (with the exception of Curve, for whom I am no longer holding out hope that they’ll reunite and tour the US).

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Anyway, I got deafened in person by one of my favorite bands, got a killer sunburst T-shirt, and had a great time with a great friend. Can’t complain.

Faith No More Setlist Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA, USA 2015

ECCC Artist Alley Table Dimensions

art, geek, howto, Seattle / By

I’ve applied to get a table in Artist Alley at Emerald City Comicon in Seattle next year, for my VFX podcast, The Optical. So, before I helped my good friends at AAlgar Productions pack up their table this year, I took some measurements. Assuming I get the table, I plan to have an overhead display clamped to the table, and bins underneath. If you’re doing something similar, here are some useful dimensions.

ECCC Artist Alley Table Dimensions

Here’s a scalable PDF of the same dimensions, all released for you to use under CC BY 4.0 (tl;dr — give me attribution, preferably with a link to this blog post, then use it however you like).

Being Welcoming

geek, rants, Seattle / By

Since I’m still not terribly happy with Final Cut Pro X, I was looking to attend a meeting of the Seattle Adobe Premiere Users Group, and to do that, they want you to fill out a questionnaire first. The last question took the cake:

Do you think you could make a habit of attending on the first Thursday of every month from 7:00-9:00pm?

That would be a decision I would make after attending one or two meetings and determining what value they have to me, and I don’t think it’s really appropriate to ask when first signing up for the Meetup group. This question also feels very marketing-spammy to be required to answer to join the Meetup group, and sort of turns me off to the group before I’ve even attended a meeting.

Add to that, the organizer chose to change the default nomenclature of group “Members” to “Disciples of video editing,” and I am getting one big negative vibe from this group already.

I get that it takes a certain degree of self-assuredness to organize something like this, but there also needs to be some degree of self-awareness that not everyone enjoys that type of evangelical push, and if you want to be welcoming, you need to account for that.

Veruca Salt

Seattle, tunes / By

The missus and I saw Veruca Salt at Tractor last night, and it was a blast! I think I’ve finally seen all of my 90’s band obsessions live in person now, aside from Curve, which will be some crazy miracle if Toni and Dean reunite and decide to tour the west coast of the US.

If someone enterprising soul updates the setlist, you should see it below. Unfortunately, I was too busy enjoying the concert to write it down myself. I will say, though, that it was pretty cool that was the one that had been stuck in my head all day.

Veruca Salt Setlist Tractor Tavern, Seattle, WA, USA 2014