The New York Geekcast

NYGC Episode 46: Keanu Reeves: The Greatest Actor of All Time

David — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 04:02:41 +0000

Take the red pill and join the New York Geeks as they celebrate the career of Mr. “Cool Breeze Over The Mountains” himself, Keanu Reeves. Say it with us: Whoa.

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Show Notes:

Break Song: “God Gave Rock and Roll To You II” by Steve Vai and Kiss

Nostalgia Critic – Babes In Toyland Review

Bill and Ted…3?

NYGC Episode 45: Conversations About The Future

David — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:27:36 +0000

Even though the world will end in 2012, the New York Geeks took it upon themselves to sit down and discuss the future — YOUR future. Join us in discussing future concepts, concerns, and crazy predictions.

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Show Notes:

Break Song: “Future” by Cut Copy

Vision Machine, a free comic by Greg Pak and R.B. Silva

Douglas Rushkoff’s “Are Jobs Obsolete?” op-ed on CNN

NYGC Episode 44: Costumes and Cosplay!

David — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:17:56 +0000

As if we needed more than one excuse to dress up, Halloween and New York Comic Con happen in the same month. The New York Geeks get together to talk about costuming of all kinds.

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Show Notes:

Break Song: Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top

No Qwikster for Netflix

Why Gamers Are a Great Fit at The Gym – CNN Health

Zombies, Run! Audio Game

Wikipedia – Cosplay

Wikipedia – Halloween Costume

Dragon*Con

NYGC Episode 43: Retcons

David — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 02:36:30 +0000

The New York Geeks sit down to talk about instances of retroactive continuity (or “retcons”) in various forms of fiction — when creators or copyright holders go back and mess around with previously established works. We’re looking at YOU, George Lucas.

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Show Notes:

Break Song: Pinky and the Brain (and Larry)

The Secret History of Star Wars: In Tribute to Marcia Lucas

NYGC Episode 42: Trading Cards

David — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 02:14:49 +0000

The New York Geeks dusted off their shoe boxes, dug out their binders, and are ready to exchange and examine the world of trading cards. Tap two mana to join us.

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Show Notes:

Break: ’90s Nickelodeon Trading Card commercial

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance trailer

Blade Runner prequel?

Blastoise kid

Steve Lake

Yomi: Fighting Card Game by David Sirlin

NYGC Episode 41: Bleeps and Bloops: Video Game Music

Nelson — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:39:10 +0000

Some of the most memorable music comes from Video Games. Think not?

Well let us convince you otherwise.

In this episode we discuss our favorite tunes from some of our favorite games across multiple consoles.

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UPDATE: If you listened to the episode and couldn’t hear our voices very well over the sound of the music clips, or got a “file not found” on the site itself, we’ve fixed and updated the audio file so please try listening again. Also please try redownloading the file in itunes to reflect this change. Thanks!

AfterEffects 2011?

Trist — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 22:17:29 +0000

Last Thursday I found myself drifting way downtown to a meeting of AfterEffects NY, which promised a special lecture by Steve Forde, the new Sr Product Manager at Adobe After Effects. It was a quaint affair, with a tingle of promise and excitement. AE has been around for 18 years (barely legal!) and all of the original team-members from AE 1.0 COSA (1993) are still working there! Steve Forde used to be in charge of the company that made NucleoPro, but now he heads the AE production group, which consists of 20 guys and 1 girl. He collects all of their photos… He is in charge “of the one application I literally spend my life in.” [random Twitter quote] And he wants to “give our lives back 30 seconds at a time.” Steve Forde totally did, because I learned you can just pull the Effects tab off to the side so you can see the Project tab, and it’s dumb little things like that, that help my workflow.

“All of this stuff may or may not happen to be in a new version of After Effects at some future point in time, maybe.” That was the legalese they produce at Adobe… But at any rate, there are A FEW EXCITING THINGS you can look forward to:

Light Falloff -
Tired of those pesky lights being unrealistically bright and not conforming to our sketchy understanding of the physical universe? Worry no more! Now there is a built in slider that will simulate light-fall off from spotlights and more, so you can have murky shadows…

Rack Focus -
Possibly the coolest thing I’ve seen. They took a video of a boy pretending to hold something in his hand, animated in a ball of fire, separated the hand (foreground) from his face (bkgd) and then applied a rack-focus-map to all the layers. Then you just slide back and forth and viola, simulated rack focus!

Source Code -
all videos will be coordinated and you can switch between any source code you want… I’m sure editors are happy about that

Image caching -
each layer will individually cache their data, so if you change one little thing, it will take less time to update the whole image

Multi Ram Processing -
didn’t actually understand this, except that when you use it, limit the number of virtual CPUs, use a smaller amount of RAM, and disk caching will now default to 20gbs, and u should use it with an ext HD.

3D Glasses -
apparently they already had this filter, but now there will be a one click 3d-stereo-camera rig you can set up and different preview options to try out all the diff kinds of 3d glasses that exist today

RED film -
raw film data can be processed in AE, just like those snobby fashion photographers instantly color correct their pics on set

and finally…
WARP STABILIZATION & SUBSPACE CONTROL!!!!!
A new stabilization filter that uses a default cloud of 500+ tracking points to stabilize an image. We got to see all the crosshairs, but that won’t be available in the future. They had no idea how to term their controls, so one is actually called Subspace. It is all to reduce artifacting and warping around the edges of stabilized footage. Also cuts back on the amount of scaling and cropping. A vast improvement, but not universal for every shot. Personally I think it might cause a little motion sickness, but you’ll have to judge for yourself.

I was going to include a video preview of the Warp Stabilizer, but even though AENY promised it would be up the next day, all my Google efforts produce nothing but Star Trek engine designs… but keep an eye out!

NYGC Episode 40: Nicolas Cage: The Greatest Actor of All Time

David — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:14:57 +0000

If Nicolas Cage can be critically acclaimed, then Ben Oviatt can still be an astronaut. Our “Greatest Actor” series continues.

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Show Notes:

Break Song: “Nicolas Cage Wants Cake” by Harry Partridge

Phantom Menace 3-D release date: February 10, 2012

Nic Cage Internet Memes:

Nouveau Shamanic

Superman Lives Suit