greatings, long neglected bloggy-place, and esteemed readers, who I also esteem to be primarily bloggy, because i like that word and it is 3am. obviously, Jed is not the most livejournal-motivated, or even networking-social-motivated person as of late, but other things have been occupying his time, or so he justifies his worthless vacation.

I have been learning everything i can about the intricacies of video compared to its static brethren, photographia. this includes attempting to learn the "industry-standard" Avid nonlinear video-editing interface, (as well as the less proffessional, and thus far less confusing and equally functional Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and Adobe After Effects 6.5), learning how to take video that isn't cliched home-movies (still attempting that one), building a cheap version of that essential piece of film-industry hardware, the Steadicam, and reading and reading about screenplays.

notably also, i have been spending a great deal of time reading the excellent manga Blame!, by Tsutomu Nihei, which Omanga.net so nicely translated for the english speaking nipponese-ignorant masses, of which i am a part (though my vocabulary grows). His magnum opus of awesome architectural drawings and a sci-fi inspired cyberpunk-fueled storyline (which makes more use of characters walking and visually exploring their environment than dialogue), is a captivating adventure which i thoroughly enjoyed.

I have also been enjoying Ghost in the Shell: 2nd GIG, which has also not been released yet in the overprivaleged english-speaking countries, but has been carefully translated by the excellent human being behind Laughing Man Fansubs, who is also hosting torrent files for distributing all of his work.

soon i will utilize my "ghetto" lighting system, which consists of several car headlights, a naval spotlight, and a car-battery, to take awesome footage of some of the more visually appealing nearby cave systems, and the speleothems therewithin. I will also use my Ass (a.k.a. pack-mule [ a.k.a. Kina]) to haul this equipment to some of the more road-access-challenged locations. saweet! (this is a joke, i plan on hauling around my own giant batteries, so that my already quite bloated muscles grow "exponentially more powerful than they are today!!" (to quote Our Modern World).

and what is also growing? the number of Iraq war military fatalities.