Farewell Alex!

Please wish a fond farewell to Alex Meyer. Alex has been helping things run smoothly here as a lab consultant here for quite a while, but he's decided to move on to bigger and better things (ie. a real job in the real world.) We'll miss him. *sniff* i promised myself i wouldn't cry! *sniff*

The End is Near!

The semester is just about over. Our last day is this Friday, and then we'll re-open on January 2, 2008.

Here's our schedule for this week:

Monday: 10am - 9pm
Tuesday: 10am - 9pm
Wednesday (last day of final exams): 10am - 9pm
Thursday: 10am - 5pm
Friday (our last day until 1/2/08): 10am - 5pm

Have a great holiday and we'll see you in the new year!

Trashing Posters

Just a quick FYI. Lots of people have printed posters here in the lab and then never picked them up. We'll be throwing out any and all posters left in the lab on December 21. If you have a poster here, please pick it up ASAP.

Staying Late

Please be sure to thank the lab consultants who have been voluntarily staying past closing time at 9pm so that everyone can work on their assignments.

Please keep in mind that this is a special, end-of-the-semester thing, where we do our best to stay open to give people as much lab time as possible, and our official closing time remains 9pm.

Also, please give yourself plenty of time to save your work (video, in particular, can take quite a while) before the announced time that the lab consultant on duty has said s/he's going to be closing the lab. Otherwise, you might have to take your chances and leave your project saving overnight.

iChat Videoconferencing Demo

Friday at noon, we will hold a Technically Speaking session in the Weigle Information Commons in the Van Pelt Dietrich Library Center on the new iChat videoconferencing software for Macs.

Connect anywhere using the built-in video camera and Internet-based videoconferencing. The new version of iChat includes video backdrops, Photo Booth effects, photo slideshows and sharing of Keynote presentations and movies. iChat builds on the capabilities of Apple’s new Leopard operating system. Presented by Mike Wolk, Apple Systems Engineer.

Friday, December 7, 2007 at 12:00 noon, in the WIC Seminar Room.
This is a free and open session. There's no need to register in advance!

Art Exhibit at the Rotunda this Thursday!

I thought I'd mention that there's an exhibition opening this Thursday at the Rotunda (Walnut Street, just west of 40th) featuring work by one of our lab consultants (Nick Salvatore) and two former lab consultants (Jesse Harding and Michael Highland) and a few frequent users of the lab, as well. (A chili cook-off is also mentioned, but I never know how seriously to take these things.) Here's the info. See you all there!

Join eleven artists for the opening reception of Extra-Personal Science, an exhibition of site-specific installations that activate the space of the historic Rotunda.

Fatema Abdoolcarim
Lauren A. Every-Wortman
JiaJia Fei
Laura Goldberg
Jesse A. Harding
Michael Highland
Antonio McAfee
Nick Salvatore
Manya Scheps
Artie Vierkant
Liz Yohlin

Opening reception (and chili cookoff):
Thursday, December 6, 5-7 pm

Additional viewing hours:
Friday 12-5 pm
Saturday 5-7 pm
Sunday 12-5 pm

LIVE MUSIC TO FOLLOW!!
Massive III: starting at 7 pm
Video Hippos
Audio/Visual Performance
www.videohippos.com

Swamped

We're swamped!! (get it?? Creature from the black lagoon? Swamped?? I slay me.) When we opened the lab this morning at 10am, there were people who had already been waiting an hour to get in.

It's the end of the semester, so lots of assignments are all coming due at the same time, and of course, everyone waits until the last minute to do their work.

We'd just like to ask two things of lab users:

1) Please be patient. The lab is first-come, first-served, and right now the best way to get a machine is either to show up right at 10am when we open, or to grab a seat and wait for a workstation to free up.

2) Please try to limit your lab time to academic uses to give everyone a chance to finish their assignments on time.

Thanks!

UPenn Nude Art Auction

One of our most frequent lab users told us about an art auction on campus this Friday, November 30 from 6-9pm at Meyerson Hall. The art is "nude-themed" (ok, there's not THAT much "nude" art, but there are a few pieces, and all of the art is worth making the trip over to Meyerson to see). In addition to art by Penn faculty and MFA students, they will also be featuring works by: Terry Adkins, Gabriel Martinez, Sarah McEneaney, Joshua Mosley, John Moore, Eileen Neff, Demetrius Oliver, Robert Pruitt, Zoe Strauss, Jane Irish, and more.

The auction preview, for those of you who would like to see the art in advance of the actual auction, as already begun, and is being held from 9am-5pm today and tomorrow in Meyerson Hall.

Proceeds benefit the MFA class of 2008 Thesis Exhibition

Shirt and Shoes required (no, really.)

More info at http://www.design.upenn.edu/new/about/eventsdetail.php?eid=556

Greater Philadelphia Student Film Festival 2007

The Greater Philadelphia Student Film Festival has extended their deadline to November 30. Not much time, if you haven't already started, but maybe you've already created a video that's appropriate for submission.

More info at http://www.gpsff.com/index.html

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Be sure to ask the lab consultant for a piece of candy today!

The 2007 Insomnia Film Festival

The Insomnia Film Festival is back—and while the world sleeps, you could be making film history.

Calling all high school and college filmmakers.

On Saturday, October 13 at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern time), Apple will post a top-secret list of elements — special props, dialogue, settings — you get the idea. Choose any three to include in your movie. Then all you and your team have to do is write, cast, shoot, edit, score, and upload your 3-minute masterpiece within 24 hours. No problem, right?

Once the films are in, your friends, family, and adoring fans will be able to watch them online and rate their favorites. The 25 entries with the highest rating on November 9 at 12:00 a.m. EST will be screened by industry professionals, including Barry Sonnenfeld, James Mangold, and Nora Ephron.

If your film is the biggest hit with either the public or the pros, each member of your team will receive a MacBook Pro, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Studio, and Shake so you can get started on that first sequel. How’s that for a Hollywood ending?

You must register in advance, so if you even THINK you MIGHT be interested, please register ASAP at http://www.apple.com/education/insomnia/

Adding YouTube videos to your iMovie project

[UPDATE, FEB 2010: THESE INSTRUCTIONS APPLY TO iMOVIE HD/06. FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON USING YOUTUBE CLIPS IN iMOVIE 09, see http://wic.library.upenn.edu/multimedia/tutorials/youtube_imovie09.pdf]


We've received many many questions about adding clips from YouTube to iMovie projects. And until now, we haven't been able to do that in the lab. But today we've started to add that functionality to the lab workstations thanks to a free, open-source plugin for QuickTime Pro called Perian. Basically, the steps are:

1. Download the YouTube FLV file to your workstation using a service like keepvid.com
2. Export the FLV file to a QuickTime file with QuickTime Pro and Perian
3. Import the resulting QuickTime file into iMovie.

Keep in mind that YouTube video is notoriously low quality, but when you don't have a source of high-quality video, this method will do in a pinch.

Right now, Perian is installed only on the lab consultant's machine, so if you need to use a YouTube clip in your iMovie project, just ask the lab consultant on duty for help. We'll be installing Perian on the remaining lab workstation in the coming days. We'll also post a step-by-step tutorial so you'll be able to do it all without the help of a lab consultant.

Workshops this week

The lab will be closed this week:

• Monday, October 1, Noon-1pm
• Tuesday, October 2, 1pm-3pm
• Wednesday, October 3, 3:30pm-5pm

For classes and workshops.

iWeb Workshop!!

This Friday, September 28, from noon - 1pm, we will be holding a free workshop on how to use Apple's iWeb software, which is available in the Digital Media Lab, and comes free with every Macintosh computer.

iWeb makes it easy to create a website that’s stunningly beautiful — and totally you. Start with an Apple-designed theme, then customize it with your own text, photos, movies, and podcasts until it’s exactly what you want. And switch themes with a click anytime.

Apple's own Mike Wolk will be teaching the workshop in the Seminar Room in the Weigle Information Commons. Walk-ins are welcome and no registration is necessary! See you this Friday!

The Acetate Connection

Scrrraaaaattttcchhhhhhh! That's the sound of car keys on the scanner. If you're scanning anything other than books, magazines, or other paper products, please be extra careful with the scanner. Ask the lab consultant on duty for a piece of clear acetate (ok, technically it's "Dura-lar, the acetate alternative") to put down under the items you're scanning--like car keys, candy, paper clips, your hands and face, pens and pencils, iPods, scissors, staplers, and so forth--so we can keep the scanner glass clean and scratch-free.

Sheet Feeder Broken

Alas, the sheet feeder on our scanner is broken. kaput. dead. gone. 6 feet under. This is an ex-sheet feeder. (or maybe it's just pining for the fjords.) When you try to use it, either it doesn't feed the paper, or it actually chews the paper up. We've tried everything but have finally given up. The manufacturer's website (I still can't believe this) actually recommends hitting the scanner to fix this problem. And we did hit it. Several times, in fact, before we even knew we were supposed to. :) Anyhoo...

The flatbed part of the scanner still works fine. We're working on replacing the sheet feeder functionality with a dedicated sheet-fed scanner, which will hopefully be much faster than the one we've had all along.

Update: Thanks to Pat Heller for the following information:

Wharton Reprographics will do scanning for you

Basement of Steinberg Dietrich
3620 Locust Walk
Suite 400
215-898-1251

$7.00 per ¼ hr. labor fee

iMovie tip

All you guys with your own Mac laptops and desktops: remember that iMovie comes free on every Mac, so you can capture your footage here in the lab and then transfer it to your own computer. That way you can work on it whenever you want, without having to worry about walking all the way to the library, or whether the lab is full when you need to edit your movie.

If you have a laptop, just bring it in and we can help you capture video footage directly to your computer, or we can transfer it to your computer with our portable hard drive. For those of you with desktop machines, you'll need a hard drive of your own to take your footage back to your dorm room.

Lab Closings Page

We've added a new webpage that lists all scheduled lab closings, such as when we offer open workshops to the general Penn public, or we close when a class needs to use the lab. We're hoping this helps people avoid coming to the lab only to be disappointed when they find it's closed for a class. Since we add workshops in an ongoing way during the semester, the page is somewhat dynamic and may not always be totally completely 100% up-to-date, but I promise we'll do our best. You can find the page here:

http://wic.library.upenn.edu/lab/closings.html

and linked from the sidebar on the right side of the blog you're reading.

Storm Worm virus alert

Given the popular nature of downloading free music and movies, we just wanted to pass along the following security alert from the University's Information Security Officer regarding the Storm Worm virus:

Today the Storm worm switched to new bait that might prove irresistible for some segments of campus.

The worm arrives in your email inbox as spam, warning that the RIAA is tracking you if you download free movies or music. You are pointed to a link to download Tor, a popular anonymous internet routing implementation. But if you follow the instructions, you infect your machine with the Storm worm. Your machine is then drafted into a network of hacked machines used to crash popular websites and carry out identity theft attacks. Other versions of the scam send the Storm worm as an email attachment rather than send you to the web.

Other Storm worm bait that has hooked victims include: -Bogus email warning that your face is all over YouTube. If you click on the purported YouTube link, you're asked to first install a video codec (which, in truth, is the Storm worm).

-Bogus email informing you that an account has been created for a free music/movie service. The email includes an account name and a password and instructs you to log on, but first you need to install a (bogus) media player. Same result: Storm worm infection.

-Bogus email forged to look like it's from Amazon (or EBay, or PayPal, or many large banks) warning you that you have unpaid fees (or that your purchase is (in)complete, or that your information is out of date). If you click on the bogus link and follow the instructions: Storm worm.

-Bogus email announcing that you have an electronic greeting card. Same result as above.

-Bogus email with news announcing "Chinese (or Russian) missile (or satellite) shot down by Russian (or Chinese) satellite (or missile)"

-Bogus email announcing "Saddam Hussein (or Fidel Castro) is alive (or dead)."

All the usual advice applies:

Be wary of unsolicited email asking you to click on links or to install software. If you think it might be legitimate, type the URL into your browser rather than click on the link. Or check it out by calling the organization using a phone number from a service like switchboard.com.

Electronic greeting cards are highly suspect these days. If you don't recognize the sender, hit "delete". (If it's a secret admirer, don't worry, they'll eventually find you.)

Be wary of email with links to outlandish news stories. If you get email claiming that Jimmy Hoffa's body was uncovered by a road crew on I-95 below the Commodore Berry, don't click on the link. Instead, point your browser at your favorite news site.

Shortened Hours This Week

Welcome back! The lab will have shortened hours this week while we hire new lab consultants and gear up for the semester. This week only, our hours will be

Tuesday-Friday, September 4-7: 10am - 6pm
Saturday, Sunday, September 8,9: Noon - 6pm

We hope to be back to our regular hours starting next week! Stay Tuned!