I’m trying to do some pretty advanced things with Final Cut, and I can honestly say I have not been this ready to slit my wrists since I was taking a college course in COBOL when I was 13 using a PR1ME mainframe with dummy terminals.
Open Thread
This post is in: Open Threads, Previous Site Maintenance
General Winfield Stuck
Would you like a hammer?
Molly
But John, I just got to watch Tom Delay shake his bon-bon on Dancing with the Stars.
As a long-suffering member of his former constituency, believe me, this makes it all worth it. I am showing restraint and not sending this to all of my wingnut relatives, with my editorial comments.
Butch
OK, so how badly am I dating myself by admitting that I used to use a pencil to number the punch cards in my computer class because I would inevitably drop them and that way could get them back in order….it was an IBM 1108, which was cutting edge at the time. Yiiii.
dmsilev
So, you’re saying that the software was accurately named?
-dms
General Winfield Stuck
@Molly:
Better you than me.
Bill E Pilgrim
@General Winfield Stuck: Would you like a hammer?
Kirk Spencer
@Butch: umm, Hello Peer?
dmsilev
@Molly: I watched that clip. I’m going to miss those brain cells.
And what sick bastard decided that the appropriate music would be “Wild Thing”?
-dms
Catsy
Try Microsoft Project.
(Or Adobe anything.)
Butch
I think you got that right, Kirk.
Kirk Spencer
Fortran was the language used to teach the programmers humility. Cobol was the language they used when they got to Hell. (Humble programmers? Hello?)
General Winfield Stuck
@Bill E Pilgrim:
In the evening too, and then all over the world.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Butch:
I think if you paid for your dinner, stayed more or less sober, and avoiding hitting on any of your own friends then you’re doing a-ok.
licensed to kill time
I don’t know if the site redesign is still ongoing, but may I offer a gentle suggestion? The lines on either side of the comments make the site look kinda broken up into boxes; I liked the calmer effect before where each comment sort of floated on its own open-ended platform. Balloon Juice has always been soothing on the eyes and I think removing those lines would help return it to its Zen perfection.
mquirk
I’ve used FCP for years, and I’d be glad to help out if I can – what’re you trying to do? And are you using Final Cut Pro or Express?
Comrade Jake
Anyone tried the latest Fortran compiler?
rm -rf *.f
eastriver
Final Cut is annoyingly counter-intuitive. Good luck.
Betsy
@dmsilev:
Nice.
Chasm
What are you trying to do?
GReynoldsCT00
“And what sick bastard decided that the appropriate music would be “Wild Thing”?”
Maybe Cheryl Burke, trying to mock him. One can hope…
GReynoldsCT00
@Bill E Pilgrim:
WIN!!
Now I go clean off my monitor…
gnomedad
@Butch:
Silly, that why you numbered columns 73-80 — so you could run the deck through a sorter when you did that.
Also, I used to date myself but we broke up.
Corner Stone
@Molly: Fellow sufferer here.
I’m 100% with you on the DeLay.
But – I gotta give anyone credit that is willing to get out there and shake it. Either he’s gutsy beyond belief, or he’s too damn stupid to consider the outcome. Still, props to someone willing to go there. IMO.
John Cole
@Chasm: I’m taking an interview I shot of someone discussing a movie, and trying to add clips from the movie over the audio him. Biggest problem right now is that handbrake is not playing fair.
Also the fact that I have never fully learned Final Cut. I’m using express at the moment, because I am on the laptop. I have Pro on the desktop.
Corner Stone
@gnomedad: Too much in common, or not enough?
Chasm
Are we talking basic editing “advanced things” or multi-layered VFX? If either, I can help you out if you need it… I’d just have to fire up the Mac.
Jay in Oregon
Hey ho people.
I scored a small victory today.
This crisis all started around my wife’s birthday; as a result, I never actually got her a birthday present.
While we were out shopping this weekend, I found something that I knew she’d like and picked it up. I wrapped it, stuck it to a second birthday card (she got one from me on her birthday) and left it on her car seat to discover this morning.
She really appreciated it.
I know this doesn’t change much at the moment, but it’s nice to know that I can still make her happy.
John Cole
@Kirk Spencer: I took a class in fortran 77, too.
Fortunately I have forgotten all of that crap. Probably could have made a mint with the Y2K stuff if I had remembered how to code.
Betsy
@Corner Stone:
Hey,
My answer to your question from the Monday Night Open Thread:
Saw this late…
I am from Galveston, and I am the same Betsy talking about P-town dumplings. :) Unfortunately, I haven’t lived in g-town since graduating from high school back in 1998. I still have friends there though – I’ll ask around. :)
wasabi gasp
If all you’re doing is simple cut and join editing, FCP is extreme overkill. If video editing is something you plan to be spending more and more of your time doing, it may be worth continuing to learn FCP. If video editing will only be an intermittent activity, yet you decide to continue using FCP anyway, buy razor blades.
Nethead Jay
Aaaaiiiiieeeee, COBOL. Did you really have to bring up that accursed memory.
Bill E Pilgrim
I love this part. It’s an inevitable development in any moderately nerdy gathering.
Hard drive? Luxury! Oh we used to DREAM of working on a “hard drive”! We had to punch the holes in the cards with our teeth, do all of the calculations on an abacus, feed it BACK into the computer using stone knives and bearskins, then…
GReynoldsCT00
@Corner Stone:
I just hope the bastard gets eliminated quickly
LABiker
Have you ever used Lynda.com? When I was just starting out with Final Cut, I went through the online tutorials on that site. They were really helpful. I was trying to figure out how to do some stuff with titles and keyframes (to move words and shapes around the screen). I found that unit in the Apple-approved FCP lessons and just followed along, pausing the lesson along the way while I did the actual work. My work pays for the Lynda.com membership, but I think you can do it on a monthly basis for a pretty reasonable fee. Check it out.
gnomedad
@Butch:
Also, the gesture-based editor was pretty intuitive.
Corner Stone
@Betsy: Well, wherever your dumplings are – that’s where I want to be.
Of course I also respect you as a person. You’re not just a conduit for what I crave most. :-)
Shell
Any new news on Orly Taitz since she got that smack-down from the Judge on her lastest birther suit?
I loved how on her website she hinted darkly that Obama might be planning to send her to one o’ them Fema death camps.
How about Rock and Roll Fantasy camp? Where you can imagine yourself as Stevie Nicks or Hannah Montana, instead of pretending to be a lawyer.
Corner Stone
@Bill E Pilgrim: God dammit but I love you sometimes.
gwangung
@John Cole: You can’t extract the original audio track, paste that in as a second track, then drop in the examples?
gsp
you were taking a college course at 13?
gsp
you were taking a college course at 13?
Corner Stone
@Shell:
That reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon where the male engineers imagine themselves as pretty women.
People are friendly to them, open doors for them, just overall nice, etc.
“I’m never going back!”
Florida Cynic
PRIME made minicomputers, not mainframes. I was politely asked to stop running compute intensive programs as phantom jobs on the one I had access to (staff kid at a small liberal arts college.)
Chasm
i hate handbrake. sounds easy enough once you get your movie clips sorted. best to put the movies’ audio tracks on separate channels below that of your interviewer. allot of people also like to edit the ‘b-roll’ (the movie) on the video track ABOVE the main one, so they can move it around easier to see where it fits best.
being an avid guy, I prefer to put my position bar where I want to make a cut, then use the “insert” or “replace” buttons rather than trying drag and drop editing, which drives me nuts.
use the insert button to put your movie clips where you want them, then use the little trim tool to overlap your audio tracks a bit for a smooth sound.
Comrade Mary
@Bill E Pilgrim: Don’t forget that “Luxury!” is pronounced “Loooxury!“.
Corner Stone
@GReynoldsCT00: Personally, I’d love to punch him senseless. And then continue until he was in the hospital. And I’m not a tough guy or violent or anything.
I just want this despicable human being to feel a little of what he’s served out to others.
qwerty42
@John Cole: I took a class in fortran 77, too.
well, you should have tried PL/I or Assembly. Or (best of both worlds) Assembly subroutines called by a PL/I main. maybe some weird JCL too. i dunno.
Corner Stone
@Jay in Oregon: Jay, I wish you good luck man.
I’ve just seen too much I guess.
Nethead Jay
@Bill E Pilgrim: So basically “uphill both ways in the snow”… You know what I’m talking about ;-)
JK
@Shell:
Orly Taitz has the perfect voice for a GPS system. If Bob Dylan can have his voice used for GPS, surely Orly can do it.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Comrade Mary: That’s funny, I was actually just looking at that word and thinking the same thing, how to spell it to bring that out. I like your spelling.
Ah, the link. I think I’ll go watch it.
Mike P
We have to use FCP @ journalism school and while I’m a person who is generally good with tech stuff, FCP is beyond me. It actually makes me a little queasy thinking about using it (which is why I’m a print journalist).
Cain
Ugh. COBOL. You should scrub your eyes after reading any kind of COBOL source code. Yuck. Did it in college, and man what a pain in the neck.
cain
John Cole
@gsp: Yeah- grew up in a college town and took the classes during the summer for credit.
JK
@Corner Stone:
I want to see Tom DeLay in handcuffs doing the good old fashioned perp walk.
Mark S.
I didn’t really understand this article, but I found this interesting:
I have a feeling we’re in for another round of bailouts. (h/t)
JK
@Comrade Mary:
Thank God for Monty Python. One of the things that truly makes life worth living.
Comrade Mary
I want to see Tom DeLay as The Gimp.
OK, maybe not. Have to put a cold cloth on my forehead and have a nice liedown now.
Xecky Gilchrist
COBOL? Woe, I did that one in college too.
I’ve only just started admitting it in public, because I feared if people knew I knew it I would be kidnapped and sequestered in some grim government bunker someplace back East maintaining IRS accounting code first written long before I was born.
Jay in Oregon
@Corner Stone:
I know it’s going to take time and be an uphill battle. That’s what I’ve been coming to terms with this past weekend — that there’s not one thing I can do that will erase the past nine months.
All I can do is work on myself and keep reaching out to her, and hope that someday soon she’ll reach back.
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
This reminds me. On the commute home the other day, I took a bus that also had a number of riders coming back from a shift at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. While the guys looked typically nerdy, a couple of the women were seriously babelicious.
Who says that God does not like irony?
OT: The 2009 MacArthur Foundation Fellows have been announced. The local public radio station (the great KPCC, 89.3, give it an Internet listen sometimes, especially Air Talk) did a quick and brief interview with one of the award recipients, the remarkable attorney Elyn Saks.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-macarthur22-2009sep22,0,6924024.story
Tax Analyst
Bill E Pilgrim said:
“@General Winfield Stuck: Would you like a hammer?
Yeah, that way, you can hammer in the morning.”
But what if all you had was a stinking bell?
John Cole
I’m using Lynda right now. It is great.
Ash Can
@Shell:
She responded in writing to the judge that he either hadn’t bothered to read the papers she’d filed or was an Obama stooge.
This is going to end just swimmingly for her. She’d better be getting an awful lot of bankrolling from RWers, because the court’s going to take her pathetic ass to the cleaners.
PS: Her client in this case is now trying to get as far away from her as possible.
Colette
@Tax Analyst:
Is it a cowbell? This blog always needs more cowbell.
GregB
Mark Levin is the latest wingnut to launch a broadside against Glenn Beck.
Me thinks there is an intra-party civil war brewing.
Poor Glenn, beset on all sides.
-G
P.S. Orly Taitz is the new Linda Tripp. She’s been used for all she’s worth now she gets tossed aside like a used, ahem…. Besides there is now the lovely, young Carrie Prejean to worship now.
mquirk
If you’re using Handbrake, you might want to try out MPEG Streamclip from Squared5 software. It’s got a direct DVD to Quicktime DV export that has saved me tons of time.
For the editing, the easiest route would be to get your interview footage set the way you want it and then add the movie clips as a layer above the interview.
By default, your primary video and audio footage wind up the V1 and A1/ A2 tracks. Edit it as needed, and then lock these tracks down by clicking the padlocks on the far left of the timeline.
After that, just drag the movie clips into a higher video track and reposition it to where you want it. If you put it in the V2 track, any audio will go to the A3 / A4 tracks.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Colette: Is it a cowbell? This blog always needs more cowbell.
No no, I think it’s spelled C o b o l
Crashman06
@Mark S.: I’m not sure I understood it either, but it sounds like it could be horrifying. As much as I wouldn’t want to see 60 million people foreclose on their homes, if all their mortgages are ruled illegal, wouldn’t that snap the bank’s balance sheets clean in half?
J.
For those of you who missed Tom DeLay shaking his thang on Dancing with the Hasbeens last night. I believe it gives the phrase “Hammer time” new meaning.
Corner Stone
@John Cole: She’s a person, God dammit! Lynda doesn’t deserve your scorn or pity!
How can you be so nice to pets and treat this woman so poorly? *interrobang* ?
JK
@Brachiator:
That’s an incredible story. I see that one of the other recipents of the MacArthur “genius award” for this year is Deborah Eisenberg, the short story writer and girlfriend of Wallace Shawn.
jibeaux
@Ash Can:
Responded in writing to the judge, wow. Because legal proceedings are the same format as online flame wars. I hope sanctions are coming her way.
licensed to kill time
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s The Americano
Nice try, Gringo.
JK
@GregB:
I’m rooting hard for both of these lunatics to crash and burn
KevinNYC
Do you have a dual boot Mac or access to Windows PC? If so, the video editor I recommend is Sony Vegas. There’s have a few low-end editions starting at $40 and a high-end version. It’s a very powerful tool, but the learning curve is not so steep. You can do a lot of stuff right on the timeline without changing tools.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiohd/compare
For example, you have a clip of someone talking and you want to cut out a bunch of junk in the middle of the clip.
1 put the cursor at the beginning of the junk part
2 press s This creates a cut.
3 put the cursor at the end of junk part press S
4 Select the part to be deleted
5 Ctrl X or Delete
Now is where the interesting part is.
6 Drag the beginning of the second clip over the end of the first to create an overlap. This creates an automatic crossfade transition for both audio and video. The longer the overlap the longer the transition. The transition will continue to play right on the timeline, no need to render anything.
7 As the clip is playing you can keep dragging the transition longer or shorter to get the timing right. You don’t need to stop. In fact you get select a region of your timeline, perhaps five seconds before the transition and five seconds after and let this loop. The video will keep playing as you make your adjustments.
8. Say you don’t like crossfade, as your clip plays you can select a flash or a wipe, or any other transition and drag it to the overlap and the new transition works immediately without having to stop your video.
Video FX works this way too, you can make all sorts of adjustments while the video plays or loops and you can watch your changes immediately (unless you start to pile the stuff on). It allows your creative side to be continually working without having to jump through the hoops the interface puts between you and the timeline.
jibeaux
I can’t help but notice the dictionary appears to be at something of an impasse.
Betsy
@Corner Stone:
Ha! No, it’s ok, I understand. Some things are more important than others.
Betsy
Also, any academics (humanities/social sciences) in the room? I’m going on the job market for the first time and feeling panicky. I would be grateful for words of wisdom.
Colette
@jibeaux: As an attorney, she’s a pretty good dentist.
@Bill E Pilgrim: Ha! I took a course in COBOL, too, and I hated it so much it made me want to drop out of college. Then I came to my senses, remembered that I was actually a political philosophy major, and dropped the fucker. Best academic decision I ever made.
GregB
Levin is shrewd enough to maintain an orbit on the outer spheres of the wingnut nutteratti. Beck is destined for a meteoric flameout….He won’t take it well when he’s tossed into the ash heap of history by his former suitors.
-G
KevinNYC
John for the issue you are describing, it should be easy to solve if you use multiple tracks.
Set up Final Cut so you have
Video Track 1 Movie Clips
Video Track 2 Interview
Audio Track 1 Interview Audio.
You don’t have to edit out the Video of the Interview this way. Any time you put a Movie Clip on Video track 1, it will block the image from Video Track 2 and the audio will be uninterrupted.
If the movie clips have audio with them, use two audio tracks an mute the audio from the movie clips. Or you could have the audio from the movie play 8-10 decibels lower.
Using tracks in video editing is like using layers in photoshop, it really opens up a lot of possibilities.
jibeaux
@Betsy:
Erm. Good luck. Long view. I hear dental school isn’t actually all that bad, but anyway, good luck!
JK
Possible career paths for Orly Taitz
1. GPS voice
2. Successor to Don LaFontaine, the movie trailer voiceover guy
3. Successor to pitchman Billy Mays
Brachiator
@Bill E Pilgrim:
RE: Is it a cowbell? This blog always needs more cowbell.
More COBOL! I like it.
Richard Bottoms
I’ve learned both COBOL and Final Cut.
I make my living writing software and I’ve taken only two courses, one in COBOL and the other in CP/M both while stationed in Germany.
I still have a TRS-80 Model IV portable in the garage. One of these days I’ll find the OS for it.
r.b.
Va Highlander
PR1ME? That takes me back. It was a big improvement over the old HP.
Betsy
@jibeaux:
Ha, thanks. I think.
JK
John,
How much longer is it going to take for Democrats to persuade Robert Byrd to retire?
He’s been taken to the hospital after a fall at home.
h/t http://www.wcbs880.com/Sen–Byrd-Taken-to-Hosptial-After-Fall/5272828
You’re the expert here on West Virginia politics. Could the democrats retain Byrd’s seat in a special election?
R-Jud
Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. Yum.
cleek
88 comments and nobody has done this one:
so fuck all that
we’ve got to get on with these
cant stop lose job mind gone silicon
what bomb get away pay day make hay
break down need fix big six
clickity click hold on oh no brrrrrrrrrring bingo!
make em laugh make em cry make em dance in the aisles
make em pay make em stay make em feel ok
not now john
we’ve got to get on with the film show
hollywood waits at the end of the rainbow
who cares what it’s all about
as long as the kids go
not now john
got to get on with the show
hang on john
we’ve got to get on with this
i don’t know what it is
but it fits on here like this …
?
disappointing
Corner Stone
@jibeaux: Ouch.
Elroy's Lunch
COBOL, I cut my programming teeth on that language a long time ago. Hell, we had a punch card machine in the back room when I started.
We’ve finally eliminated all COBOL systems in our agency. And my teeth are just about gone too….
Corner Stone
@Richard Bottoms: Bring it my brotha! TRS-80 in the hizowse!
thomas Levenson
@Betsy: Me. I’m in the School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences at MIT — rather like being an antelope at a lion convention, perhaps, but I suppose I get to dress up in a lion’s mane some of the time given my disguise as a science writer.
Words of wisdom? Job hunting sucks — but it sucks for everyone. Don’t feel that you are somehow unworthy because you feel a bit panicky. If you get short listed/interviewed it is because the people in the room are genuinely interested in what you do. So enjoy the conversation, and try your best to convey why you love the particular work in which you are engaged.
One other note: do your background research before your campus visits. Know who’s in the department. Know something about what they do, so that if (and only if) your work overlaps or connects in interesting ways with that of those you are meeting, you can talk about it. I do know that you will have read/met people in your own immediate area. But those are the folks who likely have brought you in. The question is whether or not there are genuine points of common interest with some folks you may not yet have had much interaction with as you’ve made your way to job-hunt time.
That’s about it — and worth everything you paid for it. (Full disclosure: I’m a late-comer, entering the academy in my mid forties without benefit of Ph.D. or a real job search, so take the above with all the salt you have on hand.)
Fulcanelli
John Cole: KevinNYC’s advice above is about the best for getting your feet wet using Final Cut. I did a video project at our local Cox public access TV studio a while back and I used that approach, being moderately adept with P-Shop and it came out pretty good for my first attempt with pro video gear on a Mac, no less..
BTW, Mr. Cole, I am rather flattered that you thought enough of me to make me the first entry in the Official Balloon-Juice(R) Dictionary. {blushes}
Corner Stone
@JK: He’s only 91. C’mon man! Buck up!
(this post is humorous in nature, at least to the poster)
thomas Levenson
@John Cole: What kills me is that while I’ve produced/directed/written a bunch of hour long PBS docs, I fumble my way around FCP, cursing every third minute…while my students pick up the couple of books I toss at them, boot up the Mac, and go. Within a day or two they’re programming their keyboard shortcuts, mixing multitrack, layering video and tossing in effects and having a ball. Oh to be 22.
I have found that the Peachpit Press Apple Pro Training volume on Final Cut by Diana Weynand is an excellent volume. 16 lessons, well designed, taking about 60-90 minutes per. Worth the forty bucks.
Betsy
@thomas Levenson:
That is good advice, thank you very much!
BTW, when you said “and worth everything you paid for it,” my first thought was that you were talking about the PhD. (Which, of course, cost me nothing but 7 years of my life.) LOL
thomas Levenson
Did I say 40 bucks? Why for you, I meant 50.
Feh.
Comrade Darkness
@Molly: youtube lets you add editorial comments, on the fly, to video. Perfect for this. Just sayin’.
Origuy
Hey, stop the hating on COBOL and FORTRAN! Working on the compilers paid my bills for a long time. I was never really fond of FORTRAN, but COBOL does some things that are hard to do in any other language. I was even on the ANSI Standards Committee for a while. Never had to program in it much except for test cases, though.
jibeaux
@Corner Stone:
Well, I do wish her good luck, it’s just pretty rough right now, I’m sure she knows.
I have a law degree, hardly a month goes by that I don’t attempt to dissuade somebody from law school. They make the difficulty in finding a job pretty concrete for you, though, when you take the bar exam in a basketball arena. Stands AND floor. It’s pretty hard to picture that many new jobs coming open in a year.
My kids are too young for the job prep just yet, but I plan to come down on the side of “chase your dreams, but learn a skill.”
As a fallback, I suppose anyone could try to set the new frontier in wingnut performance art and get on the teevee, try to top Beck. I mean, remember when the gold standard for insanity for Coulter? You can always get more crazy.
JK
@Corner Stone:
I think it’s better for the nation that Robert Byrd retires ASAP rather than waiting for him to drop dead on the Senate floor.
If you’re looking for more movie quotes for future references:
Go home and get your fucking shinebox – Goodfellas
Coffee’s for closers – Glenngarry Glen Ross
I’d wish you luck but you wouldn’t know what to do it with if you got it – Glenngarry Glen Ross
Leave the gun, take the canoli – The Godfather
Only steers and queers come from Texas – Full Metal Jacket
Any fucking time sweetheart – Full Metal Jacket
I’m going to Lemkin – Glenngarry Glen Ross
Linkmeister
Reprogramming the IBM 360/20 the Navy used for message transmission between ships and shore every day at 0000GMT (or Zulu time) involved running a 500-card deck through its innards, just to change the date & time. We had nightmares about dropping that sucker.
I had to learn RPG II to run an IBM S/34 back in the 80s. That had the weirdest logic cycle you’d ever want to see.
Alan
@GregB: Conservatism and the GOP’s problems existed well before Beck became popular. It’s been Limbaugh driving the short bus all along.
Can anyone point out a single ideological difference between Alan Keyes and Limbaugh, and by extension Levin?
tamied
@jibeaux: I can think of a word that could be in there. Pie. I know what pie is, but that’s not what it is on BJ.
Betsy
@jibeaux:
Oh, I know.
As my advisor put it brightly a couple of months ago, “Oh, you probably won’t get anything this year. It’s the worst job market in two generations!”
On the bright side, if I don’t get anything this year, I can try hard not to take it personally.
thomas Levenson
@Betsy: Seven good years, I hope.
What’s your field?
thomas Levenson
@R-Jud: Ooooh. On the menu tonight….
t
Betsy
@thomas Levenson:
Modern U.S. history, with a focus on women/gender, feminism, and the history of social science
Linkmeister
@jibeaux: The most useful skill I ever learned was touch typing, an elective course my junior year in high school.
Betsy
@Betsy:
I’m actually just up the river from you.
Betsy
@thomas Levenson:
Oops, I meant I’m just up the river from YOU. Not from myself. Though it’s an interesting concept.
burnspbesq
@Nethead Jay:
Spoken like someone who once forgot the period at the beginning of a divison-name statement.
You think COBOL was bad for CompSci types, imagine how much we Econ majors loved it.
Corner Stone
@jibeaux: Don’t get me started. Beyond the top 5% out of the top 10 schools, pretty much all atty’s are fungible. I’ve been saying it for a while now.
The whole model is going to come down in the next 5 or so years and no one is preparing for it.
I feel bad for the people with $100K+ of debt after 3 years who are getting deferred hired or worse, .75 with shifting targets. If they’re lucky.
The partners aren’t in any position to mentor/teach, the clients refuse to pay for 1st or 2nd years on their case, and no one is making partner anymore so 6th, 7th, 8th year associates are all getting the work pushed down to them and partially written off.
As I said…
Corner Stone
@Betsy: Let’s explore the space…
(reference to more cowbell from SNL skit). Since we’re on COBOL and all.
It sucks to have to explain everything.
Comrade Darkness
@Betsy: Having been a bystander on these things for about 15 years, I can advise a few things.
Make sure your job talk works on multiple levels. Balance it on depth and breadth. Put in something for those with no background in what you are doing so they can frame your work and not just think, man, I don’t care about this person as a future colleague because I don’t know where they fit in. But also include some deadly drill down detail about your study/the analysis/something to make it clear to those familiar with your niche that you know exactly what you are doing. Make sure you can answer any question that comes up about your research. Especially be open about potential limitations of it. (Frankly, if you don’t have a slide with this title, consider adding one.) If you are trying to get into a research-oriented department, be certain you can articulate your future research vision. Make sure your vision IS research. (stupid sounding, I know, but I’ve seen amazing crash and burn on this point) Make sure your future vision is hard science at the right level for that department and that you can defend things like why you are doing qualitative vs. quantitative. Also, be able to defend your statistical analysis choice. Know what your alternatives might have been before they get sprung on you in a question.
When you research your potential future colleagues, pick out which ones in particular you would like to do research with. Name them to your contact and ask to have meetings set up with them. Target them during your talk with at least a comment if they are there.
Don’t be a dork at dinner. Yeah, what does that mean? The most impressive people are relaxed and clearly comfortable in their own skin, they cease to be the center of the dinner pretty quickly and the silences disappear. Be comfortable in your own skin is I guess the key advice there.
There is the usual, ask questions about how tenure works, how much support there is for junior colleagues trying to get tenure, what the service load is like, support for travel, etc. If your visit is long enough, ask for a recommended real estate agent to take you around to look at houses. This shows you are serious and gives you the best overview of the place.
That’s the main stuff I guess.
ruemara
Oh John, it’s not that hard. What, pray tell, are you trying to do? Can’t be as hard as reading Megan McMediocre.
thomas Levenson
@Betsy: And there I was taking it as a remarkably poetic reference to the notion that we are all the bearers of our own prisons.
So, what we who know it well laughingly call Cambridge Community College, eh?
7 years to survive that History Dept. is pretty damn good, I think.
Also: what Comrade Darkness said. The ability to give a talk that cuts across levels of knowledge/interest is important — and relaxing and enjoying the experience will do you no end of good.
R-Jud
@thomas Levenson: It was delicious and easy. For additional artery-busting goodness, bake a camembert cheese to go with it.
bedtimeforbonzo
I am going to interrupt with a sports comment and say that Peyton Manning showed last night why he is the best.
Last night’s MNF game defied all logic, one team keeping the ball for 45 minutes and losing. Manning was spectacular with what he did with his offense in the other 15 minutes.
He truly is this generation’s Unitas.
Califlander
John, if using Final Cut really did make you slit your writsts, it would be the most accurately-named software package in history.
Comrade Darkness
@thomas Levenson: You can tell I am not an academic . . . I can only give particular, concrete advice. ;-)
ruemara
@KevinNYC:
You know, I have Vegas and I absolutely hate it. Dunno what it is, but I can’t do shite without it making me mad. Then again, I did learn on FCP. Now I’m using Premiere. And if you want to do more of this editing thing, the Adobe Suite is highly recommended for it.
And COBOL *shudder*, that and FORTRAN/PASCAL ruined my plans for global domination via computers.
thomas Levenson
@R-Jud: You are evil. Get the behind me, spawn of Mr. and Mrs. Satan.*
Or perhaps you are a cardiologist?
t
*epithet stolen from the paperback Dawn Patrol, by someone good whose name I’ve forgotten
Corner Stone
@Comrade Darkness: engineer? Or clueless husband?
thomas Levenson
@Comrade Darkness: And you probably don’t have a third hand, either.;)
Nethead Jay
@burnspbesq: Have to admit, you got a point there.
Comrade Darkness
@ruemara: I never learned cobol, but fortran 77 was mostly okay and pascal was a walk in the park. On a sunny day with a light breeze, walk in the park.
Comrade Darkness
@thomas Levenson: Hm, nope. I’ve had moments where I’ve imagined a third eye, however . . .
@Corner Stone: I’m the engineer, that’s correct. The SO’s the academic. Speaking of slitting wrists, had a masters taken a day longer than two years, that would have been my fate. Not my environment. At all.
R-Jud
@thomas Levenson: Not a cardiologist, just an overpaid hack who likes cooking.
4jkb4ia
Finally getting to the Bradbury 2007 memo released last month. The sophistry in this thing is worse than Yoo. He has just written that the revised Army Field Manual cannot say anything about contemporary standards because the people who were in charge of it knew that there was a CIA program for the worst of the worst. He also mentions the infamous Appendix M.
/teshuva
Betsy
@Comrade Darkness: @thomas Levenson:
et al
Thanks so much for the advice/moral support. :) I really appreciate it. Thankfully, any interviews are, at this point, entirely hypothetical, since the first applications aren’t due till Oct. 1 and the due dates continue through early December.
And @thomas Levenson, yeah, it’s been an interesting ride. I feel that an important component of the process will be (I hope!) demonstrating to people that I’m Not An Asshole.
KevinNYC
@ruemara:
You know, I have Vegas and I absolutely hate it. Dunno what it is, but I can’t do shite without it making me mad. Then again, I did learn on FCP. Now I’m using Premiere.
I think the Vegas UI is easier to learn for NEW videos editors. Experienced Video editors have a problem adjusting to the UI, if they are used to working with the source window. When editing moved to computers they emulated the physical Video editing machines with a source tape and program tape. So Avid has a source Window and a Project Window and FCP and Premiere both emulated that. Vegas actually started as an audio only product and they realized the same UI would work for Video, so Vegas wants to do everything on the timeline, which, for me, allows me to think about the edit and not about the tools, I found it so much easier to work with then Avid or the old Premiere. But then I hadn’t mastered either of those workflows.
If you ever want to give Vegas a shot again. Drop me a line.
The system is GooglesMAIL and the name is filmworks.
Tax Analyst
@ #85 Brachiator said:
“@Bill E Pilgrim:
RE: Is it a cowbell? This blog always needs more cowbell.
No no, I think it’s spelled C o b o l
More COBOL! I like it.”
C O B O L – An acronymn for “COmmon Business-Oriented Language”, and one of the older programming languages.
C O W B E L L – or more precisely, “More cowbell”, from a “Saturday Nightly Live” comedy skit originally aired on April 8, 2000. Reference to the song “Don’t Fear The Reaper” by the Blue Oyster Cult, in which the cowbell has a very prominent presence.
TOMATO – a herbaceous, usually sprawling plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family that is typically cultivated for the purpose of harvesting its fruit for human consumption.
TOMATOE – the less favoured spelling of the above herbaceous, usually sprawling plant, etc., etc.
(NOTE: Information regarding “C O B O L” and “TOMATO” are direct excerpts taken from Wikipedia. “C O W B E L L” comment was distilled from and then rephrased from a longer piece within Wikipedia. “TOMATOE” I just friggin’ made up because I could not find a source that addressed the reason for the spelling.
BTW – I once wrote a song parody to “Don’t Fear The Reaper” about a fellow who got careless with his pruning shears while doing a little gardening in the nude. It was called “Dope Sheared His Weiner”.
Colette
@Tax Analyst: Your spelling skills are impressive for someone who is apparently +8 or more, possibly with additional chemical enhancement. I salute you, sir. Have another beer.
different church-lady
Codeheads should not try to cut video — the two skills involve entirely different bits of brain and the only thing they have in common is that they both take place on a computer. End of discussion.
Steeplejack
Cole:
[. . .] I can honestly say I have not been this ready to slit my wrists since I was taking a college course in COBOL when I was 13 using a PR1ME mainframe with dummy terminals.
It must be something going around. I finally bit the bullet and installed Microsoft Office 2007 on my computer last night, and it is way, way fuglier than I dreamed it would be in my worst nightmares. Stayed up way too late battling with Word and Outlook, did the day shift at the part-time gig today, came home and have been duking it out with Outlook all evening, in between drinking and reading Balloon Juice. (Actually, not a bad evening, now that I think about it. But I digress.)
If Microsoft built cars, they would have little tail fins on the tail fins, “fur-lined boards and chrome on everything” (2:10 in this clip of Ronny Jordan’s “The Jackal”).
I like a nice, clean interface. I do not like “the ribbon.”
Comrade Darkness
@different church-lady: That’s funny I have no trouble cutting video. But I have done it tape to tape many times in the past (always dreaming of non-linear editing while doing it), and I did not want to be an engineer when I grew up, I wanted to paint, damnit.
Steeplejack
@JK:
My favorite from the other movie voiceover guy, Hal Douglas. “In a world . . .”
Steeplejack
@Richard Bottoms:
TRS-80: Ah, the venerable “Trash-80.” I worked at a software company back then where a programmer got in trouble because the configuration disk that went out with some of our stuff actually said “Trash-80” on the menu.
I think the CP/M implementation for the Trash-80 was done by Pickles & Trout. Such good company names back then. Digital Research started as Intergalactic Digital Research.
Of course, at the time I thought I was a mack daddy because I was driving an Altos ACS-8000 with a stylin’ Hazeltine monitor. Dual 800KB floppy disk drives (8″, of course). Oh, yeah. Good times. You had your program on one diskette and you saved your data (if you were lucky) on the other.
asiangrrlMN
@Jay in Oregon: Glad that you had that moment today. Remember them and build upon them.
Tattoosydney
@asiangrrlMN:
Hello from Sydney – the land of the dust storm.
Steeplejack
@Tattoosydney:
Man, that is some seriously harsh weather. Is this the Down Under equivalent of “April showers bring May flowers”?
Tattoosydney
@Steeplejack:
It’s an unfortunate combination of drought in the inner parts of Australia, and a huge windstorm which picked up all the dust and then dumped it on the coast.
There’s so much dust that it’s now just hanging in the air over the entire city and not being dispersed…
I woke up at 6am thinking that our house was on fire, because the air was bright red…
It’s all a bit eerie (and our radio stations are not helping y playing “It’s the end of the world” on repeat).
Steeplejack
@Tattoosydney:
So is this an annual thing, or is it rare? Seems like I have seen news reports before about Sydney being blanketed with red shmutz.
(Red Shmutz was my football coach in school, but that’s another story.)
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Suddenly exhausted and must pitch face forward into bed immediately. Will check back tomorrow morning for a response.
mario
er,
dummy terminal?
Yes, I imagine that would be very frustrating.
ylb
First program or two I wrote in COBOL were on punched cards submitted to a remote mainframe.
After that, I switched to a considerably cooler and most awesome HP3000 with the slickest dummy terminals ever made.
And I saved my programs at the end of the term to paper tape. That was fun too.
Gosh those were the days.. the niches some people choose to thrive in.