Friday, May 8, 2009

Some Days It Just Doesn't Work

Younger Son had an attack of creativity this morning. He dragged a fucknormous cardboard box into the house -- it had previously been used as an archery target. Then, with his Christmas-present multi-tool plus a few common household items, he went to work.

Half an hour later: lo! He had his very own "Army Tank". There were guns on the front and the sides, and a flap on the back to let him in. There were vision slits above every gun, and on top there was a red radish which was, according to him, "the siren thingy."

Better still, he had mooched a bag of party-poppers from somewhere, which meant he could even fire his cardboard-tube guns at will.

I decided a brief video of the Army Tank would make a good post here. So I got out the little camera and took a couple of short clips - one of the Army Tank on the move, and one of it firing its main gun.

And that's when things went south.

First, the camera tried to run out of batteries. I beat that, though. Then Windows Moviemaker crapped out on me. It kept crashing every time I told it to assemble the small, simple movie. Eventually I went through a full reboot of the computer, and at last, I got the thing made.

It's not big. It's an easy little 1.5meg WMV file. I figured I'd just upload it to YouTube and lock it in here, the way I did a while back with the little movie that I made over the top of that Irish piece we were playing together.

Uh huh.

First there was the satellite "broadband" system to deal with. After I rebooted the actual satellite modem twice, and the LAN server once, I finally got data moving in both directions. Yay me.

Then I got into YouTube, and told it to upload the movie. Okay, fine.

Whups. No. Not fine. Why not? I have no idea. It says the movie is 0.0 seconds in length, and on my video page it says "processing, please wait". When you try to play the fucking thing, it says "this video is not available.".

I've been through that routine twice now. I'll do it once more, just for the trinity, and then -- fuck it. I've got better things to do with my Saturday.

Sorry about that.


EDITED TO ADD:

Army Tank FTW!


16 comments:

  1. Nice vid,

    "Younger Son had an attack of creativity this morning", the_weapon had an attack of creativity once but we cleared it up with a big glass of salty water.

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  2. That WAS awesome. Higher production values than old school Dr Who AND better special FX.

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  3. I particularly liked the delighted squeal from the Mau-Mau as she collected the expended warhead...

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  4. The battlefields would all be a hell of a lot cuter if they were filled with squealing little girls in tutu's thats for sure

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  5. thats cool
    would've been easy as with imovie.....

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  6. Send that vid to Canberra - knowing what DMO (Defence materials Organisation) is like they'll probably buy a squadron or two's worth from the little bloke, then you and the missus can retire! Win!

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  7. Holy Crap Cap'n there's an armoured column in your hallway!
    Better call in the 1st Kelpie Regiment.

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  8. Oh no! Not the First K9 "ChewFrenzy" Regiment! That's just inhuman!

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  9. Well the vid was worth the effort! I like how the Mau-Mau is collecting the "spent shells" like flowers in her a flower basket.

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  10. But the enemy in the pink skirt totally got away!

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  11. A cute video. Its a wonder why we bother buying toys....

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  12. Beautiful, the lad is on the right path, I shall endeavor to assist...oops..ensure he maintains this course somehow.

    stage 2 you realise, is a more heavily armoured version with a MOTOR, perhaps you can introduce him to the pleasures of PVC, Glue, BBQ, click lighter, Potatoes and Hair spray. Sure Nat will not mind.....much

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  13. Havock... the (illegal, you realise?) spud gun is gonna wait a few more years. But as for a motor... hmm. That's an interesting idea.

    I mean -- I must be able to round up an old chainsaw from somewhere. And he already understands the basic concept of an internal combustion engine. If we mount the motor on some kind of pull-back handle so it has to stretch a pull-belt taut to drive the axle, we can guarantee forward motion will occur only when he's actively engaging and controlling the system. And if we stick to nothing bigger than, say, 40cc... yeah... hmmm.

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  14. Very good but i wonder if he realsied that the mighty mau mau was trying to steal the show?

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