Let there be zipline!!

Yes, I realize I'm relying heavily on photos to get me through this week of posting, and also to limit how much I have to write. Well, tough it out, cuz here's another post with photos ... and videos! I'll eventually post a larger album of photos on Home Dipu proper, but here's a taste for now.

To kick off this summer, on Memorial Day, Barbara, Michelle, and I went on a zipline tour through the cypress trees of the Hill Country, about 40 minutes out of town. I'm sure compared to ziplines in Alaska or South America, this one is no big deal, as we were probably never more than 30 feet up. (Okay, it would still hurt a lot if you fell, but I assume the ones in other places are 75-100 feet up or more). Still, none of us had ever been on one before, and it's nearby, so we decided it'd be a fun and different thing to do. Plus Andrew had done the same one before and lived to tell about it.

First, they outfit you with harnesses, gloves, and helmets. (For the record, Michelle and I are almost exactly the same height. It's just perspective in this photo, okay?)

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Then you get a brief lesson on a zipline that's maybe 4 feet off the ground and no more than 20 feet long. The main lesson being how to stop. I was a little unnerved to learn that the way you stop is to use the friction of one of your gloved hands on the wire. Even with the gloves, I couldn't help but picture the wire cutting through the gloves and into my hand. The fact that my first two pairs of gloves had holes on the sides, clearly from wear, didn't ease my mind.

Still, off we went to tackle six ziplines of varying lengths. The guides hook your harnesses to the zipline, then you place your hands on top of the zipline trolley, sit back into your harness, and shove off into the open air. Michelle went first...

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...then me...

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...and then Barbara.

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Turns out, the zipline was surprisingly relaxing. Even on the shorter ones, I felt like I had time to look around at the scenery below, not worry about falling, and enjoy the peaceful feeling of gliding aloft through the woods. Although I never felt brave enough to try to somehow take a photo or a movie while I was ziplining. After all, they wanted us to keep both hands on the trolley. I suppose next time I might try snapping some shots, though.

We also crossed a couple of rope bridges, and for some reason, they made us walk backwards on the longest one:

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As you can see above, you kinda had to see where you were going because there was a fair amount of space between the slats, so I'm not sure what they were trying to prove with that. (We were still harnessed to safety lines, but still).

The longest zipline took about 30 seconds for each person. The guides were responsible for keeping us harnessed to the safety lines at all times, even when we were in each "base" in the trees. The tour lasted about an hour, hour and a half. The guides also gave a nature talk about the local ecosystem, making sure to point out that there were snakes in the creek directly below our ziplines.

Overall, it was pretty relaxing, and now we're veteran zipliners!

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Would I recommend it? Definitely. And to give you a sense of what it's like, I'll leave you with two videos of Barbara and Michelle in action (I have no movie of myself, but oh well):

Barbara in motion
Click to play movie

Michelle in motion
Click to play movie

Six Man Premiere: On the Red Carpet

Okay, this week I'll be blogging a bit belatedly about the Six Man, Texas premiere at the AFI Dallas film festival on March 29.

We didn't know until just a couple of days before the film's premiere that we'd get to take part in a red carpet event. The festival held a number of these red carpet events at numerous theaters throughout the opening weekend. It was a short red carpet, and it didn't lead into the theater, but hey, I'll take it! Our red carpet event was in the evening, and Six Man had already premiered a few hours earlier. So it was a tiny bit odd in that we weren't heading into the premiere from there because our thing was already done. But hey, we still got to walk it!

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any celebrities. Someone said Mischa Barton was on the red carpet we had been on, but an hour later, so that's as close as we came to anyone marginally famous. I guess our time on the red carpet was for the documentary group, so ... lots of unknowns. Including, of course, us.

And I was clearly not a professional. When you see a Hollywood star going down a red carpet, they don't usually have 2-3 cameras themselves, busily snapping shots and shooting videos of their fellow carpetgoers and even the phalanx of photographers and reporters. But, shockingly, I had multiple cameras and was happily taking shots of our group and getting shots of me taken on the red carpet. Geek alert, I even snapped one shot on my iPhone so that I could send a "live" shot from the red carpet via email. And I was filming from time to time. And I was even carrying my laptop, because director/producer Alan had hoped to use it for a slideshow presentation right after the red carpet. Turned out I coulda left it at home. Oh well.

And, for the record, I wasn't the only carpetgoer snapping shots from the red carpet. A number of people behind us were brazenly doing so as well.

Our group on the red carpet consisted of Alan, Mike (the editor) and his wife, Tom, some of the guys from the main football team featured in film, and me. Most of the time, we all milled around behind Alan while he was interviewed by various reporters from outlets like AT&T U-verse. Mike finally got to be interviewed halfway through, and Tom got a couple of minutes at the very end of the phalanx. I got to walk the carpet with the group and have my photo taken ... and to return the favor.

Tom and I were the only ones in our group in suits. Tom thought it'd be best to be dressed up, so after the film premiere was over, we rushed to his in-laws' house to change. But we weren't fast enough, and so we missed the first few minutes on the red carpet, as well as one group shot. But we still made the video highlights! (see below).

It seemed at least a few of us felt a kind of childish glee while we were on the red carpet. Certainly, I did. For nearly half an hour, we could pretend we were important and famous. Being in a suit helped that illusion too, so I didn't regret missing the first few minutes.

So, that was my brief experience on the my first-ever red carpet event. But what's that? You want proof I was really there? Okay, here are a couple of stills from the official AFI Dallas Day 3 video highlights. In this first still, Tom, Mike, and I, as well as others from our group, are standing at the back next to the logoed wall on the red carpet as Alan is being interviewed at the railing. Tom and I are in the very back; we're the ones wearing suits. Tom's head is shaved, by the way. I'm the guy in the suit juggling, what else, multiple cameras.

We're on the red carpet!
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Below, that's me in the top right corner heading out of frame with my laptop bag.

Me on the red carpet!
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To see the actual video, click here  and scroll down to the Day 3 highlights, or click here for the direct link.

What's that? This pixelly footage doesn't prove to you that I was really there? Okay, how about these shots:

Our team on the red carpet
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A celebrity's point of view: The view from on the red carpet
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Alan being interviewed by the waiting phalanx of reporters
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Absolute proof of me on the red carpet!
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Uncle Fester? (Yes, that's Tom)
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More stories and photos from Dallas to come later this week!

The Annoying Thing

Another lazy post.

Remember Harold Faltermeyer? Or his song "Axel F" from Beverly Hills Cop? Want to sully your memory of that? Then enjoy the European sensation that spread around the world, spawning toys and PS2 games and hit albums. Yes, albums. Topped the charts overseas. But like soccer, it was popular everywhere but here. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to a link sent by a coworker, I present to you that ringtone-born celebrity known as Crazy Frog, or The Annoying Thing (and yes, his, uh, dangling tadpole has been pixellated out):

Home Dipu updated!

Okay, pasting in text from the front page of my website is a cop-out as far as posts go, but I'll try to be a lot better with new entries this week. Meanwhile...

Home Dipu is updated!

Okay, to be fair, I did upload a bunch of new stuff last year, I just didn't make it official on this page ... and suddenly it's March. So here are those "old" new photo albums along with a new new photo album. I'll continue quietly updating here and there, so check the left column on this page periodically for the newest stuff.

NEW STUFF: The Johns at Jovita's, the Chamberlain-Hemstreet Wedding Reception, Carolyn & Ward's Baby Shower, Amy & Omid's Housewarming, Austin City Limits Music Festival, My Birthday, Wurstfest in New Braunfels, Andrew & Liz's Baby Boy!, Tom Chamberlain's 40th Birthday Roast DVD Trailer.

NAME INDEX NEWS: Brian maintains his lead for #1 over Tom. Also, Bob breaks the 400 barrier and Virginia tops 200. Anita and Omid continue their back-and-forth battle; this time, Anita retakes 6th place. Plus, two newcomers — welcome John and Michelle B. (the 2nd Michelle in a row to be added) to the index!

5 years in the making

So now, my first excuse for my lack of blogging and Home Dipu updating and everything else lately. Before the week-and-a-half cold took me down, I'd spent a few weeks finishing a project I'd started nearly 5 years ago. Though to be fair, I put the project on hold after a few months, so no, technically I wasn't working on this for 5 years straight. There was a gap of 4 1/2 years where I did nothing with it. At first, I was waiting for technology to catch up and become affordable; I needed to be able to burn a dual-layer DVD easily and cheaply. After that came to pass, I was fighting inertia. So I finally set a deadline for myself to finish this project on the 5th anniversary of the event.

I missed that deadline.

I finished a couple weeks ago, about 2 weeks after my self-set deadline. Not that missing the deadline mattered to anyone but me. No one else even knew about it. And at least it forced me to finish it.

The project, if you haven't guessed, is the complete DVD compilation of Tom's 40th Birthday Roast in 2003. This new 3-hour DVD contains the entire roast, edited with titles and song captions, new or additional graphics for some of the skits, and all the short films shown at the roast. Actually, director's cuts of those films (the director being me, of course). So now, the opening scene of Being Tom Chamberlain has sound. The kidnapping reenactment cut is better. And the Walk of Life filmed segments are now edited how I'd originally intended, instead of having some of the slapped-together segments I ended up with when I ran out of time before the roast. And yes, the DVD has extras like deleted scenes that I dropped from the original roast for time considerations, as well as lost footage that I shot the morning of the roast. (Erol and Leslie will be particularly interested in this segment).

I can of course burn a copy for anyone upon request, though it might be nice to have a beer or two in exchange for the supply costs. Yes, this DVD even has an actual label. To see the brand-spanking new trailer for the DVD, click the thumbnail of the DVD cover below. Enjoy!

Click to play trailer

Bob's Hawaii 5-0

As you may have heard, Bob turned the big 5-0 on New Year's Eve. To celebrate Bob's 50th, we threw a, what else, Hawaii Five-O themed party. As part of the festivities, Tom shot new footage to edit into the Hawaii Five-O opening credits.

If you're lucky (or maybe unlucky), in a later entry I'll post my rendition of "Tiny Bubbles" as Don Ho from that party. But for now, please enjoy these behind-the-scenes photos I took on our video shoot, followed by the original Hawaii Five-O opening credits and Tom's revised version for Bob's birthday celebration:

Tom directs Kyle
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Tim runs
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Dipu mad!!!
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Notice Kyle's footwear
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Original opening credits
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Tom's version
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Fire at ACL Fest

Barbara and I were the first of our group to arrive at Zilker Park for Day 1 of the ACL Fest early Friday afternoon. As we were waiting in line to get in, a huge column of smoke started rising from somewhere inside the park. At first we thought it might be the Zilker train, because the smoke was kinda brown like exhaust. But then as the smoke column grew larger and higher, the smoke became blacker and blacker. That's never a good sign. Yet there were barely any signs of reaction from the crowd. Other than, "Hey, look at that." And from inside the park? The music kept going and no one was screaming or running or panicking. Still, we questioned whether we should be heading into a large but enclosed area ... with few exits ... with a massive crowd ... toward a fire.

Fire engines drove into the park and out of sight. The smoke kept billowing in huge dark clouds. It looked like a tornado. And apparently at some point in the few minutes between when Babs and I entered the park and Trish and Brian did, they closed the entrance briefly.

I was going to title this post a bit more flippantly, something like "Burn, Baby, Burn," but that was before I learned that four people had been burned, two critically enough that they were lifeflighted to the burn center in San Antonio. You can read some news coverage here.

So rather than covering Day 1 of ACL, here's a photo and a couple of videos of a very strange and somewhat tragic start to the festival:

Yep, that's a fire behind Barbara
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"Okay, I think it IS a fire..." (I have keen powers of observation)
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"Nuthin' But Trouble" (An unfortunate juxtaposition with the song)
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Deja vu

Okay, I missed posting on Saturday, but I have a very, very good reason. I was working most of the day to finish the videos for Tom and Virginia's wedding reception, and I didn't get home till 3 am.

As some of you know, we held a roast for Tom's 40th birthday in 2003 at the McBeth Recreation Center in Zilker Park. That went so well, Tom and Virginia chose the same location for this party. In 2003, this is how I spent much of the party:

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And here I am on Saturday, 4 1/2 years later:

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Note that while those laptops look similar, that's actually the successor to my iBook, my new MacBook, in the second photo. And I only had to run the multimedia show for about 20 minutes this time instead of during the whole shebang. And here's one of the videos I showed that night, the trailer for Tom and Virginia's wedding:

Click to play

HIV Anime

Hard to believe it's been more than 4 years since I spent 2 weeks on vacation in China (full story here). I long ago posted photos from that trip, but I neglected to post any videos. The other day I ran across the footage I'd captured; specifically, this short segment I filmed during my layover in Tokyo's Narita airport in Japan on the first/second day of my trip. Leave it to the Japanese to make even a public service announcement about AIDS into a cartoon. Yes, that's right, playing on a continuous loop in kiosks throughout the terminal was a cartoon about the perils of HIV.

I had four hours until my connecting flight to China and didn't want to chance napping and oversleeping (a peril of traveling alone), so one thing I did to kill time was tape this PSA. Maybe it was because I'd barely slept over the previous 24 hours, but I thought it was kinda funny. You can't really hear the video because of the airport PA system, but it's subtitled. The visuals are the main thing anyway (I especially like the depiction of the heroin addicts). And can you imagine anything like this being allowed to play in a public space here?! The religious right would have this shut down so fast (it mentions ... gasp! ... condoms!) you'd think someone had just seen the hint of a nipple for a quarter of a second.

So enjoy Japan's cartoon Everyman as the Narrator guides him through the perils of AIDS, dispels myths about transmission, and learns some valuable lessons about HIV:

Click to play