Easily the best thing I’ve seen in weeks…

New Domain Name

Well, now that I have been setting up my new web resume/blog for my films and interests, I thought I would make this a little more professional.

So two new additions to the site.

1. It is officially www.brianolyaryz.com so it’s easier to remember (though I doubt people will spell it right).

2. My new web address is brian@brianolyaryz.com

The new web address is for business e-mails. But anyone can e-mail me at that address, it just redirects to my Gmail account anyways.

Well, gotta go work on the next post, Talk to you guys soon. Leave comments! They are good for the site!

I love my new browser: Flock

I have bounced around quite a bit with my web browsers. Safari 1.0, Opera, Firefox as well as that pseudo-media player/browser Songbird. But I never truly felt comfortable with any of them. I mean, yea they got the job done, but I felt there was a disconnect from the browser to the media I was viewing it with.

Let me explain.

When I edit on Final Cut I can manipulate, drag and drop and interact with the video’s I uploaded the moment I sign in. Similarly when I open up iPhoto I have all my photos organized by date and events. But with a web browser, there isn’t any of that built in functionality with the sites you visit regularly.

When you have a facebook account, it doesn’t change your browser, nor does it interact with it. You still need to go to Facebook, log on, add friends and comments. But the moment you log out, you’re browser is virtually unchanged and you are completely disconnected from the facebook world in which you so profoundly encompass.

Well all of that changed when I downloaded Flock.

As you can see, Flock is an adaptive web browser that specializes in social networking features built into its interface.  Whether you use Flicker, Facebook, youtube, gmail, photobucket or blog with blogger or WordPress; it fully integrates and interacts with your account so you’ll always be connected.

I can’t really describe it, you really should just check it out, it’s a teeny-tiny 20MB file size, so there really is no excuse.

It regularly checks your e-mail account so you can see at a glance if you have new mail. I actually use my Mail application less since using Flock seems easier. You can post a new blog article without having to sign in. It even highlights your friend’s Facebook, Youtube, flickr and many more accounts whenever they have a new post, picture or video. You just click their name on the People Sidebar and it will show you what’s new.

Another real cool feature is the Media Bar. It’s a speedy way of checking you’re friends facebook pictures or strangers public flickr images, you can even see your own pics as well. It’s a simple bar below the address field with thumbnails that you can highlight to view a larger thumbnail. If you click on the image you can either subscribe to the poster if its on flickr or view the full photo if it’s on facebook.

That’s all great but how does it function as a regular browser? Well, lucky for us Flock is powered by Mozilla, the same engine Firefox is built from. Even all the Firefox plug-ins I had perfectly migrated to Flock. My bookmarks and RSS feeds as well. Hell, I’d go as far to say that Flock has the best RSS reader I have ever had the joy to use.

No, I was not payed to write this, I’m just eager to share this delightful piece of software with everyone. I hope you try it out, it’s great.

SHORTS: Limonade

So now that I’m doing regular updates, I might as well show you a short I completed six months ago.

The short is entitled “Limonade”. I made it because a wonderful friend of mine, Chris Cortes, began a short film company called Robot Head. And he asked me to write and direct a piece for Robot Head. The first two scripts I had were too ambitious for the simple back-to-basics vision Chris had for Robot Head. So we ended up with what you’re about to see.

 Enjoy

 

A Brand New Day!

Firstly, I apologize for my absence. I promise you whole-heartedly that I will now update regularly. This is no April Fool’s Joke. I hope you enjoy the new web design, I’m not entirely sold on it yet, but I like it more that the old one.

Apologize already!

Sorry for the haitus fellas, updates coming soon….

Apple Rumor Crushed

Hey everyone, as most that have spoken with me for more than fifteen minutes have known…I’m a strong supporter of Apple Computers and highly prefer them over the PC equivalent. And with most things that people have no clue about, they tend to bash against my unpopular yet constitutionaly legal opinion. So far I have been able to justify my choice very well and have proven the benefits to Macintosh computers for all except one argument….Price. For years Mac Enthusiast have had to pay a premium for our computing needs…till now. I have been doing some comparision shopping lately, as I would like to update my current computer rig for an upcoming feature that I will be editing. And to my surprise the new Mac Pro is quite a steal.

To do a comparision I decided to use Dell Computers for obvious reasons. Not only are they the number one PC distributor but also regarded as a competitive priced computer company. Now I used their Prosumer grade (Not Professional) Precision models. Specifically the Dell Precision 690.

Now, when compared with the Mac Pro I stocked them with similar options.

- Two dual-core Core 2 Duos Running 2.66 GHz
- 1GB memory
- 250 GB HDD
- 256MB ATI Graphics Card with 2x DVI

Now what you will find is quite interesting.

As you can see the Dell Precision 690 is priced at 3,637 of our sweet sweet american green. Which at first glance seems pricey, but you gotta remember that some of these new Core 2 Duo processors are being priced over a grand, and the fact that there are two of these doesn’t help either. So it seems just about right. Now lets take a look at the Mac equivalent.

$2499! For the Apple equivalent! You bet your patriotic butts it is. That’s $1138 you’d be saving for using a better lookin’ computer that has the greatest OS I have had the pleasure (and sometimes frustrating times) to use. And when you start configuring them both to higher specs, the price margins increase even more.

Now, this gave me the urge to go ahead and see if this goes for all Macs now, and to my surprise, well, take a look for yourself.

I got the delicious new Core Duo Mac Mini and noticed they have bumped up the price since ditching the slow but reliable G4 processor.

A bit of a price increase, but still VERY powerful for the price and connecting it to an HDTV and an external harddrive would make the perfect Multimedia center. Now, the only company that I thought can make the equivalent to such a unique piece of hardware was AOpen, and sure enough, I got the stats down to the t and i with the Aopen Mini PC Duo:

- 1.66 GHz Core Duo
- 512mb Ram
- Intel Integrated Graphics
- Bluetooth and Wifi
- Remote

for the bargain basement price of..

$324 of savings to switch to Mac? Talk about comparing Apples to Oranges.

Finally we arrive to what saved Apple from total destruction, the culture-ly significant and sleek looking iMac. Now, there are only a handful of all-in-ones in the market today. I decided to use the recently released Sony Vaio LS series. I chose the LS because quite frankly all the other offerings stink, and don’t even come close to what the iMac has to offer.

Now for $2099.99 you’re getting a 1.88 GHz Core Duo, definitely on the lower half of the Core Duo family, but still totally kickin’. Everything else seems to be pretty much on par with the iMac, except for one thing that really is a make or break for people who are looking for aesthetics or deskspace. (Which I would guess makes up for about 100% of this specific market, and that is the power supply isn’t built in. Nope, instead you get a laptop-esk AC brick to plug in to your nearest outlet. Kudos to the Design team at Sony for rendering this all-in-one almost completely pointless. Then again, this is coming from the same designers that slapped the Spiderman movie font on the PS3.

(click on Thumbnail to maximize)

Weird…anyways. Now the iMac is featured below.

There you have it folks, a $400 save when switching to Mac.

Buying a mac averages at $620 usual savings with my calcutations. Not too shabby. Just don’t go telling everyone and inflating the Mac market which will then be the catalyst for Mac Viruses, not interested.

Man did this small discovery turn into one long post.

SHORTS: Max and The Comic Book Intro

So I edited the intro to my latest short a few days ago. Nothing special but figured I should show you guys something. Hopefully I’ll be done with the film soon. But what I really want to get started on is my feature, but alas, the script isn’t even complete.

As I said, nothing special, but doesn’t the Pirate/skeleton doll Own? Anyways we filmed sooo much for the intro and had to cut a lot that was really great stuff. But you gotta know when to cut something great if you know it will slow down the film.

And another boring introduction…

As with every site, it needs an introduction and with every site, it’s boring. I don’t have much to say other than, thanks for reading. My name is Brian O’lyaryz and I hope my writings will help you in the world of independent filmmaking. Though this site won’t be limited to that of course.