I made 1.07 €. Plus taxes.

For a Web 2.0 thingie that’s still in beta I’m rather surprised by that. In fact I made 90% of that the first day after I signed up with Flattr. The rest of the month was spent by posting creative stuff I did to Flattr, hoping some people would enjoy my music, my videos, my podcast, my photos or this blog as much as they’d toss me a coin.

In retrospect I even feel a little odd: Instead of doing the stuff I usually do for free and mainly for myself, it became a habit to wiggle them under people’s noses every day, hoping they would drop me some spare. Like a shabby one-man-band-guy on the street I play all my different instruments uni-sono, hopping around like a court jester and shout, strong yet friendly, for some monetary attention.

What has become of me?

I still have the PayPal donate-button on my posts labeled donationware and you know what? People actually clicked these. In the last 3 years I made 13 bucks that way. Without trying to sell myself out. And now: I spend considerable more time attempting to get my work noticed than I spend actually making cool stuff.

This has to end. The cake is a lie!

Hereby I declare, officially, that I will concentrate more on creating content than in the last weeks — while keeping my hopes up to find one day an actual bill in my tip jar, instead of the Euro-equivalent of nickels, dimes, buttons and small rocks. Well. Or at least really many of those. Why? Because I’m a greedy bastard who wants to take this girl out for dinner and the movies, you know. Well, at least I admit it, right?

And if you like this post then, please, flattr me.

There’s quite a bit I have planned for in 2010. First and foremost I’ll get busy on some new AEtuts+ video tutorials introducing Nuke to the After Effectors among you all and something I have in mind for quite a while now, working title: “The Art and Science of Rotoscoping”. (Everything’s “art” and “science” in visual effects, if you read the books.)

There’s a new series for flickr that I have in mind by the name of “Austrian Details”. There are so many things I encounter that are so typically Austrian in some way and that people from other places probably wonder about when they see it. When it launches I’ll tell you here.

I’ll also be holding Tutorials on the Salzburg University of Applies Sciences again, this year with a main focus on compositing, color grading and VFX.

In May the fmx/10 in Stuttgart will be held again and yours truly is looking forward to cover the whole event on this blog like the years before for those of you who can’t attend.

So I’m getting all educational it seems. And creative. I’ll try to post somewhere something creative I did every week. Since I’m an aggressively creative person that shouldn’t pose any problems to me.

Life’s incredible again! Stay productive and wise! Any single ladies out there, btw?

Another time it’s been way too long between updates. Again much has happened, I was too busy to author a thorough blog post of general interest. And honestly, I still am. So I will give you a short run down on what I did recently. And if you want to see some shading/texturing going on, to witness the power of the almighty bump-map that still does its job well and without the annoying purple eye-cancer-causing colors of a normal map, read the rest…

After posting the last blog post I…

• …worked on some station ID motion graphics as a compositor at Fresh FX. Lovely place!
• …took a week off, hoping to get anything done with my diploma thesis.
• Instead I am working on a rather secret project on lighting, shading, rendering and compositing. Oh and I got me a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. As soon as I produce something worthy I’ll let you know. But I already know how much I love that black brick already.
• …did an elaborate video tutorial for AEtuts+, that’ll go live this week or so.
• ..enjoyed two weeks of heavy duty Nuke compositing for Fresh again, complete with long hours and weekend shift.

Now I’m back to not writing on my thesis and continuing on the secret project, codename Trailblazer.

Some of my colleagues already know about Trailblazer but for those of you who don’t I’ll have a little riddle. Look below, this is a small part of the project I shaded today — w00ts for Photoshop! All I can tell you it’s from a movie that was released nearly 20 years ago. If you can guess it from the detail: Damnit, you’re better than good, you’re all knowing! So you’re either god, the anti-christ over the über-nerd. Either way I am happy that you spend your precious time reading this little blog entry!

License Plate Shading from Phil Strahl on Vimeo.

And don’t bother googling, it won’t help you here — hehe!

This is a short photo-blog-post of my impressions.

But wait, there’s more!
There also is a photo book available now with many many more colorful pictures. Check it out if you’re interested

The delivery man rang twice and twice as fast I jumped into my pants to greet the man in red bearing gifts. After the worst garble of signature I gave on his handheld he handed me the packet and off he went.

On opening the box there was additional to the router a little surprise in it, apart from the cancerous smell of new plastic manufactured in the hinterlands of China: A small pack of chocolate along with the invoice and a sheet begging me to give a five-star rating on Amazon. The free chocolate is perhaps the most compelling reason to order from a certain company because, let’s face it, any provider of networking technology is kinda the same. For your information: The chocolate tasted much like the plastic smelled.

I unwrapped the shiny bugger called TL-WR642G, placed it somewhere under my desk where I keep all other truckload of electronic crap I don’t want to see because it’ll remind me of the uncomfortable amount of money I spent in accumulating them. I plugged all the LAN cables in the correct plugs, started my computer and it connected me to the internet. Was that too easy?

It was, I couldn’t connect to my router (which is configured via IP/TCP). When I set the IP address of my PC manually to 192.168.1.2 I could reach my router, but not the internet. Annoying. While rendering some compositions I had some time to fiddle around with the settings. I did more or less the same things over and over again and suddenly it worked. Currently my PC gets its IP automatically from the router, still it has set an alternate configuration set to 192.168.1.2 / 255.255.255.0 and obviously that did the trick. In minutes I set up a WLAN and started to flood my place with internet-waves.

I’m rather borderline now with all my wireless gadgets and use them to the max: My Nokia E51 currently connects to Google Maps; my PSP is hooked up via line-in to my PC and plays AnimeOST and Radio Kawaii cheerfully loud; Desdemona, my notebook-girl, updates her Windows XP installation; my Wii displays all the current news from Reuters and AP on my TV and I just tried to get my Nintendo DS also online somehow.

The sexiest feature is being able to Skype-call from the PSP anywhere around my room so theoretically I could invite friends to play volleyball or barbecue while being outside. Unfortunately I’m not much of an outdoorsy person.

Still my Wii kicks me after about 1.5 matches of playing Dr Mario online and every time I get disconnected it counts as if I chickened out and hence loose the game. According to the game’s highscore I’m ranked last — worldwide! Especially painful for me as the current world record holder.

Room 212,
originally uploaded by Phil Strahl.

Currently I am in my bed at the Hotel Hottmann in southern Stuttgart. This year I got the room above the one I was in last year, unfortunately it is a bit smaller, still comfy. Most important to me is the radiator next to my bed because I freeze easily and the room was really cold. Even colder than the hallway. So I turned it all the way up and spend my time waiting for the WLAN to transmit data-packets, one at a time at about 25 baud. Every 5 min I have to attempt reconnecting for another ten to thirty minutes, so it’s quite tedious. But not as tedious as driving around for 20 minutes looking for a space to park the car — Stuttgart’s jammed!

In all the excitement of today’s journey I totally forgot to prepare me some food and all I ate today were gifts: A piece of sausage, a sip of apple juice and 24 thin Hello Kitty wafers. Now I count the hours until they serve breakfast around here – 6.5 more to go – d’oh!.

Continuing last year’s list of stuff I forgot at home there’s also one for today.

• shaver
• soap

What I have learned today:

• That sunsets still touch me.
• That 100 calories won’t make your day.

What surprised me today:

• How cold the Hotel Hottmann’s rooms really are.
• That a woman really said: “Hey, this cloud looks like the Enterprise!”
• How easily annoyed I get, when I can’t check my mail.

You ask “What’s new? What’s cool?” and I tell you: A lot: I’ve been in the trenches with Nuke and fought After Effects so there’s a lot of stuff I want to show and tell what I’ve learned in the past weeks, not only about VFX.

I recorded a couple of tracks for my upcoming album (release: summer 2009). The Samson G-Track is a sweet piece of hardware, it combines a condenser microphone and an USB-soundcard. Finally I am able to record my acoustic guitar and piano work without the “help” of my 5€-headset whose microphone buzzes worse than the wasp hive in Donkey Kong Country 2 and rumbles more than my PS2′s Dualshock 2 controller that surrendered yesterday to material fatigue after nearly nine years of heavy duty service. Got me a new one today.

Between all my private creative work I am tackling 87 effect shots for our student short film “MOSKAU” and have only 4 weeks more to go. Luckily I am not alone with that truckload of effects still many shots end up on my todo-list. I am really honing my skills with Nuke right now. One year ago I only considered After Effects as the way to go and even was surprised that neither Double Negative nor Dreamworks ever came back to me after my enthusiastic applications at the fmx/08 conference.

That reminds me: If I was you (and I am 80% certain that I am not) I would keep an eye on this blog because I’ll be covering the fmx/09 in Stuttgart in detail on this very blog, complete with pictures and serious grammatical errors. So if you won’t be able to see it all in Stuttgart yourself, come back on the 5th of April 2009.

That’s all for now folks. I gotta get some sleep before the weekly meeting tomorrow. Which means I am shredding some Guitar Hero songs on extreme. Yes, you read correctly: I am publicly admitting that I am good at that game. On the upside: I got better on a real bass guitar as well.

So it all boils down to that simple phrase for me at the moment: Practice makes less imperfect.

Currently I can’t let anybody in my campus room because it looks like I slaughtered something in there. Blood is splattered on my blankets, the floor and on countless tissues in the bins. I was never heavy on nose bleeding but four days ago it suddenly started and now it returns at least every morning. I laid off the Aspirin at first but the bleeding didn’t stop. Now judging from all the headache I suspect high blood pressure. It feels like wearing a shirt with a too tight collar all day long, especially in the mornings and evenings. I changed my diet to low-fat and low-salt immediately and still don’t feel much better. And it looks like I’ve developed a nice pink eye along the way as well.

This is the worst sickness I’ve ever been ridden by in the last five years! I need a +100 med-kit NOW!

On the plus side it is interesting how my sickness evens out everything. I’ve slept only four hours today and don’t feel it. My feeling of hunger is as nonexistent as my urge for coffee. Sounds like I am really not doing well!

I bought Left 4 Dead last year via Steam during the 30%-Off! days. The download took frickin’ ages thanks to the trickling internet-connection here on campus and so I started on the last day of 2008 to really play it. A lot. Hardcore in fact. I only made a pause for fifteen minutes around midnight when I went to the highest point of the campus building and observed in perfect loneliness the fireworks before getting back to the game. I solely play it online and there were a lot of people in my time zone who didn’t give a rat’s ass about the new year, because they wanted to play the game — NOW!

So after about 12 hours of zombie slaying I felt odd and decided to go to bed. That was the last time I felt splendid this year. I woke up on the next day (in fact, the same day) with terrible pains in my tonsils and a fever. It was hard to tell being awake from being in delirium and thanks to my L4D gaming the days before I had the worst fever-trip ever. I guess I got a free glimpse of what Vietnam veterans mean, when something “really takes them back”. All the time zombies were coming for me when I closed my eyes, and even when I kept them open. I groaned and rolled from side to side but it was no good. This bad trip lasted for about seven hours.

I think I have nailed down how fever-dreams work. They single out a few little moments of a normal dream and repeat them again and again and again. The only way out, as far as I’ve discovered, is to bring some new images in, by, say, watching TV.

I don’t recall my awake/asleep phases exactly, the only thing stable was the fever, the chill and the zombies. Today I felt a little better, not so many zombies in my mind anymore but still the same pain in my tonsils though. I got a lot of phone calls I couldn’t answer, a lot of text messages about my missed calls and it took me half a day to overcome my dizziness and get up to look at the phone.

While I was feeling a little better today I noticed that I am slowly running out of food and drugs and didn’t yet feel in the condition to get up and get some. So hopefully today I’ll get myself together to do buy the most urgent necessities.

What I have learned in the last days

• That playing horror-games hardcore go terribly with fever!
• That watching TV all the time has some appeal.
• That stocking up on packet soup, instant noodles and that likes should be done regularly.
• That Podravka-brand soup doens’t taste too well two years after expiry date (Hint: Don’t eat anything from a packaging with a company’s old logo on it!)
• That my first machinima fun video has over 70.000 views on Rock Star Social Club. It’s crazy!