Watch the Trailer: An Epic Adventure

If you or someone you know is involved in TV, video, or film production, you may want to check it out. I wish I could go!

This is where JES Deinterlacer comes in. This Mac-only application takes a video (NTSC, PAL, and other formats), and processes it to remove the interlacing. The result is a cleaner image.

There are at least two benefits to using this application:

1. You get cleaner stills, without the blur effect seen in interlaced images (see examples below).
2. You can use the de-interlaced video to create cleaner video for non-interlaced video formats, such as YouTube, podcasts, and just about any digital video format.

I’ve had great results with this application, and highly recommend it.

Here are some practical examples:

Exhibit 1 (top image is interlaced, bottom image is de-interlaced; click to enlarge to actual size):

C.A. Murray 1 - Interlaced

C.A. Murray 1 - De-interlaced

Exhibit 2 (note especially his hand in the foreground):

C.A. Murray 2 - Interlaced

C.A. Murray 1 - De-interlaced

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=13a4a045cd290bc2ae2d

First, my hopeful prediction on February 3 that we might be nearing the end of winter weather turned out to be grimly mistaken. In the several days leading up to 2/11, we had warnings that a severe winter storm was afoot. Nevertheless, the morning of that day wasn’t too bad. I started to see snow and a bit of sleet coming down on the way home for lunch. Still, I was somewhat surprised to be caught at home after lunch, when I learned that 3ABN was closing due to badly deteriorating road conditions.

Sleet and freezing rain fell all afternoon and into the night. On top of a couple inches of snow, we had a 1/4 to 1/2 inch layer of ice. The ice covered my wireless internet antenna, knocking out my internet access, which left me without a convenient source of news and information for the next several days. (Not to mention no chatting with friends!)

I remained stuck at home Tuesday morning. The mound of snow on the windshield of my Jeep was encased in a hard shell of ice, and presented quite a challenge when I tried to clear it off. I tried to get to work, but Hernando and I couldn’t get the Jeep unstuck. We finally managed to back it out of the space where it was parked, but then it became caught in a thick mixture of slush and mud. We worked for maybe 30 minutes or more, and with the aid of a snow shovel loaned to us by the Troys, we were finally able to free it. But by then Hernando had given up on going to work. It was nearly lunchtime, so I decided to just wait and try again after lunch. I did make it in to 3ABN in the afternoon. Only about half the employees were there. Greg and Jill were running the Call Center by themselves.

Ice storm nature pics:

Carving out the snow under the ice on my Jeep’s hood and windshield:

With cold temperatures, the snow lasted nearly a week. On Friday, 2/15, I got stuck in the slush twice: once at the T’ville post office, and once on the road that connects Main Street to the curve on 149; but was able to get myself out in both cases. The snow was mostly melted by the next Monday, 2/18, but there were still mounds of snow where it was plowed.

As explained in previous posts, the last week of January I had been taped for the 3ABN Today “Behind the Scenes” program, to air on Valentine’s Day, February 14. I was on the set with Jim Gilley, Mollie Steenson, and John Lomacang. My topic was the viewer survey we were preparing to release. Mollie was talking about camp meeting, and John about a series, “Where Are All His Miracles?”, soon to be taped at the Thompsonville church. But 3ABN overbooked its guests, and Lonnie Melashenko took that date on a live program instead. Because my taping included topics that were dated, the producers decided to reshoot it. We were scheduled to do it again on February 21.

However, on February 21, another ice storm rolled in, and the taping was canceled. Kenton, Adam, and I worked until about 4:00, or a little later, and then went home. It was sleeting, and we knew the roads would soon turn slick. By this time I had developed a good technique for removing ice from my vehicle’s windshields, but it was starting to get a bit tedious. We all came in a little late on Friday morning, and found again that many employees were missing. But the main roads were not too bad this time.

A really short video of the February 21 storm:

This storm knocked out my internet connection again, but this time I had two things going for me: I had learned how to connect via by cell phone (sloooooow … 14.4 kbps). And, lastly, after one cold, tiring, and unproductive experiment, I found a fast way to de-ice my antenna. (I knew that water cannon was good for something.) But, for next time, I think I’m going to invest in the aerosol de-icing spray.

Saturday was warm enough to melt off some of the ice and snow, but we got a couple inches more Sunday morning, which began melting later that day. As of Monday, 2/25, most of it had melted, but a little still lingers.

Apparently my “Behind the Scenes” segment will still be taped, but I have not been told the new taping date yet. I know some of you may be tired of hearing about it already, but it’s my first significant appearance, so I guess I’m just excited. (I’m not sure if I should be; I’m not the TV type.)

A section of one of the streets:

Here is a video I took on Claus’s camera:

The music for this video was taken from this website. Ordinarily I would not think of the “1812 Overture” as Christmas music, and I almost chose another song. But in the end I thought the soundtrack matched the exuberant display perfectly. If I had more footage, I could have done something to synchronize with the music (especially the cannons!), but this was a quick and dirty job.

Bradford pears along the entrance way to 3ABN:

Beautiful tree just outside the reception entrance at our Production Center:

A short little video taken from the road alongside the Production Center; the trees in the background were also quite colorful, but the color is lost in the haze over the distance (this was taken with a plain ol’ camera that happens to have video ability):

Since my mom is trying to sell her place, I spent part of the weekend helping her sort and clean. My mom has enough books to start her own library.

On Friday I met my friend Eve at the Tennessee Aquarium. I had been there before, but a number of new features had been added since then, and I was looking forward to checking them out. Besides that, it is such an awesome place, I’d visit again even if nothing was new.

The lighting throughout the facility is very subdued, so I did not get many good still pictures. However, I discovered I could get acceptable images by using my still camera’s video function. The movies below are not award-winning quality, and they are all very short (the longest is under 20 seconds). But they still offer a glimpse of some of the things I saw and enjoyed.

One of my favorite sea creatures, the sea dragon (a relative of the seahorse):

We also saw some cool jellyfish. This one was absolutely amazing. I could not get my camera to focus on it for some reason, but still you can see its amazing lights, which blink in multiple colors in a mesmerizing pattern (the video doesn’t show the colors very well):

There was a tank with several of these jellies inside, lit very dramatically. It looked like a living lava lamp.

This sea turtle was really cool:

There were tanks where you could touch sting rays. But those were not as cool as these fresh water rays with amazing patterns:

In another place there were adult and juvenile alligators:

The penguin exhibit was really fun. The penguins were absolutely amazing under water. They swim unbelievably fast, like underwater torpedoes. Here’s my friend Eve visiting with a curious, friendly penguin:

We also enjoyed a large walk-through butterfly exhibit. With the natural light, it was much easier to get photographs there:

This one had amazing blue wings, but he kept them folded whenever he was resting:

I had to laugh at this T-shirt, in the style of an iPod poster:

On Sunday I got to visit my friends Alan and Nicole Parker, who just recently moved to Southern Adventist University. It was fun to catch up with them. Nicole’s home reminds me why having three preschool age children is not for the faint of heart. But she does a great job of keeping the little monsters/cherubs in line.

There is such a stream of atheistic and anti-religion materials coming out these days, I am happy to see The Enzyme tackling this subject. The sad part is that much of the attack on religion is deserved. There have been major abuses of religion over the centuries. But I won’t dwell on that. For their own part, atheism and naturalistic materialism are sorely lacking. I was recently reading a review of the book Letter to a Christian Nation [edit: this is a book written by an atheist, attacking Christianity; it made the New York Times best-seller list], as well as comments by people defending the book, and so much of the argument is made of straw. But all this reminds me again of several Biblical principles: (1) Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. (2) No one can obtain truth unless they receive (are given) it. (3) Do not cast your pearls before swine. (I say that with humility, but it is an important principle.)