Author: natemoss

Ready Always • May 2021

Posted on by natemoss
camera and bible

Sharing Light Through the Lens

This week I was out with my boy and my camera, just taking a walk in a park. I looked over and saw the most perfect light falling on a great looking couple. They seemed approachable enough, so I asked them if they wanted me to take their picture. They agreed, and in addition to getting the chance to photograph them, we had a great conversation.

It got me to thinking about my long-held idea that a camera could be used as a valuable witnessing tool. Once the initiative has been taken to ask someone if you can photograph them, it doesn’t take much more boldness to talk about your faith.

This month there has been a lot of convergence for me between my photography efforts and my theological efforts as you will see below.

The Darkroom

I was presented with the opportunity to speak at North Hills Bible Church on Sunday Morning, May 2nd. When I was asked, I had already been working on an illustration that God was using in my own life: “The Darkroom”.

The Darkroom

This sermon was the culmination of a variety of thoughts and projects. When I realized the example of the spiritual darkroom about a month ago, I began to use it in my own life to spend more time in prayer and contemplation with God. Once I knew it was going to become a sermon, I wanted to capture the message in a single image, especially since this was going to be a photography themed sermon.

Right about this time, I was purchasing some flash related photography gear, some gels and a remote system. This allowed me to shoot with a red flash to create that red darkroom effect and turn my kitchen into what looks like a darkroom. It was a lot of fun shooting this picture, and the gels and flashes will open up a huge range of images that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, case and point, the featured image for this blog post.

Photography has a lot of great metaphors for our spiritual lives. I have been hunting them for a while, but to finally be able to present some of these illustrations in a sermon was a real joy. If you’re interested, you can watch my sermon here:

Technology Consult

There is a relatively new Bible church in Lancaster county that I have had the privilege of interacting with a few times recently. I had heard that their pastor was looking for some technology advice, so we arranged for me to stop over to the church and offer what thoughts I had.

Churches tend to have a few basic technology needs, and this church was no exception. They tend to want good projection, good audio, and the ability to record sermons. They also need a way to get those sermons online, and having a website where they can do that, as well as showcase what their ministry is all about is really important too.

I hope to continue to offer some help for their technology needs over the coming weeks.

TBC Streaming Ministry Update

Rumble finally release the long awaited ability to live stream to their platform. I was counting on streaming the TBC services to Rumble as soon as they enabled the feature. My excitement when the feature dropped quickly faded when I looked at the business model. Rumble allows streaming for free only if you allow ads, and the pricing ends up being comparable to other paid streaming services.

Since we use our own rtmp server and re-stream to multiple platforms already, I don’t really have a need for a paid streaming service. However, having an alternative streaming platform as a fallback is an important part of our long-term strategy, so I guess the hunt continues.

There are ongoing discussions about other things including redesigning our stream scenes and layouts, and potentially adding another camera. Slowly but surely, things are coming together now, and some big enhancements are right around the corner.

Photography • April 2021

Posted on by natemoss
glass

Communicating with Light

Light is my paint, the world is my canvas. It’s a phrase that for me, captures the essence of photography in some pretty interesting ways. Photographers know that light is not static, but fluid. We often use phrases like: “splash some light over there”, or “oops, I spilled light all over the place”. Like a painter with paint, a photographer understands that to make a good image, light needs to be controlled.

The second part of my photography-defining phrase, “the world is my canvas”, sort of has a double meaning. In one sense, it means that I can use the whole world as a place to make my images. In another sense, it captures the second, and more important half of all of photography: communication. “The world” in this sense, is all the people of the world, and my canvas in this sense, is the great open opportunity to tell them something.

The great window to the world

There are a handful of occupations that give the practitioner a broad view of many different places and people. Technology is one of them. Nearly all occupations need the assistance of technology at some point. As a technologist, I’ve been able to interact with a wide range of disciplines. Photography is another one of these practices, and given the chance, it can provide an even wider window to the world.

Not only does every industry have an eventual need for a photographer, but there are always opportunities to go further and capture the moments and places and things that people rarely see. One of the great opportunities of photography is the chance to show people something that they would never otherwise see. To get a good image, we sometimes travel to places where few people go, and experience things that few people know.

Great results require great effort

This work we do is not trivial. I think people often have the idea that photographers just go to where they want to take a picture, click the shutter button a few times, and bam, they have a photograph. So much more goes into a photo, we could say even “blood, sweat, and tears” in some cases. The best images often require a lot of planning, knowledge of the surroundings, the weather, the culture, anything that might impact the light and the timing of the photograph. We sometimes have to wait for hours for just the right moment, not to mention the years of practice, study, and personal development that we pursue in the quest for making better images.

The Darkroom

Once the image has met our storage medium, the real work for the photographer begins. We love snapping that shutter button, and the whole experience of taking pictures is a wonderful thing, but making great images doesn’t stop there. Just like the film days, it becomes time to enter the darkroom.

Little has changed in the process of editing photographs over the years. We still take out our exposed images, crop them, dodge and burn them, retouch them, and produce a final image. The only difference of course is that we use computers in place of chemicals. That great photograph still requires hours of work in the darkroom.

A Month in Images

This month has been a really great one for my photography. My camera has gone everywhere with me. I had taken quite a bit of a break, and so my eyes and my skills are rusty. I feel like in some ways, I’m starting over… taking some of the really basic shots, and snapping way to many images. But, this is an important process if I’m going to get back into rhythm.

I’ve been doing a lot of photo walks, some for my 50 Limits project, and some just for fun. I also created a photograph for my first Sunday morning sermon, which I delivered at North Hills Bible Church on May 2nd. In order to convey my example of the darkroom in our spiritual lives, I made my kitchen look like a darkroom using a red color gel and a speedlight. This was a fun month of photos, and I’m excited to make more images in May!

  • The Darkroom

Project Updates • April 2021

Posted on by natemoss
kv code

Deep Learning

Information technology is a field that is always undergoing change. Keeping up with this constant change is a constant challenge. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been diving deep into the area of cyber security.

Information Security is a field of study all its own, with a wide array of career paths, subject areas, and specializations. The challenge is that ordinary IT folks should be doing our work with security as an integral part of our processes. For smaller organizations, there is no dedicated security team to turn to, so the role of security falls squarely on the IT department.

The trick is finding the right security optimizations that can be implemented with the resources and time that we already have. The simplest place to start might be a security framework. There are a host of these out there, so selecting one might seem like a challenge all by itself. COBIT is a high-level framework that covers a lot of ground, but doesn’t seem to address specifics. PCI is very popular, but is focused heavily on the financial sector. ISO and NIST are also very popular and I hear good things, but they’re not free. CIS is a great framework for smaller organizations to integrate. There are many many others, but starting with a framework provides a direction to begin, and highlights some of the simple tasks that make a big difference in securing a computing environment.

GuruPilgrim

After completing my first video series for the GuruPilgrim project on Inkscape, I began work on a similar series on Gimp. Right around that time, the option of upgrading my gear presented itself. Rather than make my next video series with the same quality, I decided to delay it and make something with higher quality, taking the lessons learned at ever stage of the process and enhancing things in minor ways.

In my last update, I talked about the Canon 6D, which will serve as my video camera for future YouTube videos. I also picked up an Electrovoice RE92L lav mic, a directional cardioid mic that should help pick up my voice and eliminate background sounds in my untreated home studio, (also known as my living room). It took longer to arrive than the camera, and I needed to do some testing to become familiar with it, so that pushed back my timeline further. While I was making changes, I decided to start using my Tascam DR-70D to record instead of routing the mic through my mixer into my computer. This should give me a much cleaner sound to work with.

So far in my tests, the new mic does just what I had hoped. Sound clarity is spot on, and the off-axis rejection makes a big difference. I’m looking forward to using this mic for years to come.

Penn Manor Auditorium

Speaking of audio, one of the highlights of my month was the chance to take a tour of the new auditorium at Penn Manor High School. Penn Manor is undergoing a full reconstruction of the High School building. As a result, the contractors installed a brand new state-of-the-art sound and lighting system.

Penn Manor Auditorium

I was super curious what hardware they would select and how things would be configured. There is a separate room near the auditorium that is set up for an orchestra. That room has its own mixer that sends sound into the auditorium mixer. Soundcraft was selected for the mixers in this setup. It was fun to see the way this was configured.

The lighting system is also state of the art, capable of handling any kind of event. They have the Strand Neo console for this, which is a really awesome rig.

StreamBuilder

Due to the heavy focus in other areas over the past month, StreamBuilder has only started to get my attention over the last week. I don’t like to predict the future in these updates because it’s really hard to say for sure what will happen, but I’m ramping up to work on the camera tab in StreamBuilder. My hope is to replace the PTZOptics camera controller for the TBC Bible Church live streams so I can start getting feedback on the application early in the process of building it.

Below is a screenshot of the cameras tab as it is now. This is really just a partial mockup to place some things where they will go.

StreamBuilder screenshot

Sushi

Around the start of the year, I started teaching myself how to make sushi. I’ve always enjoyed sushi, so it seemed like it might be worthwhile to learn to make it at home.

  • sushi
  • sushi
  • sushi

It’s become a near-weekly event in our house, and has proved to be both as fun and as tasty as I thought it might be. One big requirement of making sushi is a good sharp knife.

I’ve got a lot to learn about sushi making. As I understand it, sushi chefs need to have at least 2 years of experience before a good sushi head chef will let them make sushi for guests in a restaurant.

Tech Think Blog • April 2021

Posted on by natemoss
circuit board

All of the goals of Information Technology can be summarized in two very simple ideas:

• Minimizing Worry
and • Enhancing Workflows

That might seem to be a bold statement, and although it doesn’t capture all of the biggest reasons we do what we do, every action that the IT person performs can fall into one of those two categories.

The IT professional has an increasingly growing task list as advances in technology and society drive more and more solutions to the technologist. I think one of the dangers that we fall prey to is overthinking our roles and missing out on these two really important reasons.

We sometimes say that our job is to make the end user’s job easier. There’s a bit of psychology here, and several layers, but in some ways it gets to the essence of the role of end-user support, if not all of IT, so let’s unpack it.

First and most obvious is the fact that if we keep things physically working, the end user will be able to work uninterrupted and undistracted. Interruptions caused by computer or software malfunctions cost valuable time. Keeping things working, and working efficiently is the most obvious task of the IT team.

If we take our jobs more seriously, we usually want to go one step further. If we are able to make the end user feel as though we have their back, and that we will make sure the tech they use is going to be solid, they will be much more free to do what they do best. We start to think about the efficiency of our users workday in terms of their level of distraction.

Another important task falls more to the leadership of a specific IT department, and that is the freedom that is granted to the IT staff to help find solutions. If a tech is allowed or encouraged to work with end users to find a better or more efficient way for them to do a task, whether it be a professional development thing or a software and solutions thing, or a research and development thing, enhancing the workflows that our users use every day can boost the performance of the organization in ways that no other approach can do.

This is the great power of a good IT department. There is no other team within an organization that has more influence over the performance of the entire organization than the IT team, at a host of levels.

Minimizing Worry

So how does this work? Let’s say that you get a call saying that a computer won’t turn on, and there’s an odd message on the screen. You go down to address the issue and find that the computer is on the boot selection menu and no hard drive is listed. The way that you handle that incident in front of the end user could either provide peace of mind, or totally destroy all the efficiency talk in this blog post up to this point.

When a user believes something is wrong with their tech, the initial response can be one of panic. They often have the feeling that they might have done something wrong to cause the issue, so a lot of different negative thoughts can be triggered.

If you as the tech talk negatively about the computer or the software selection, regardless of how minor your negative comment, you’re likely to cast more worry on to the user. It can be easy to forget that they don’t already have opinions about technology brands and software like other IT folks, so your minor comment could greatly influence their entire thinking about not just that one part of their computing experience, but their IT department as well.

On the other hand, if you demonstrate a content and relaxed attitude about the problem at hand, it can reassure the user in multiple ways, boosting their confidence, attitude, and even self-respect for having “not done something wrong”. This is the “pour sunshine into their day” rule that I describe in my 7 rules for end user support; you’ll make their day.

Across the IT landscape, I find similar issues at play. The vast majority of our daily tasks have something to do with minimizing worry. The difference between tasks is often whose worry we are minimizing. Sometimes it’s the end users, sometimes it’s leadership, and other times, it’s the IT team ourselves whose worry we are working to reduce.

Enhancing Workflows

There are tasks that don’t have anything to do with minimizing worry, but it seems to me that all of the remaining tasks fall into the category of enhancing workflows.

Don’t forget the primary reason people use technology: people use computers because they want to save time and work. If an IT department is doing a great job of keeping things running, but never offers new solutions, the day to day workflows of everyone else in the organization will fall behind as fast as technology advances.

It should be a core mission of technology teams to improve the processes that everyone in the organization uses.

So yes, this is a bold idea. And sure, it’s a bit simplistic. There are other reasons for the way we work and the specific tasks we perform, but I would venture to say that these two ideas really do underlie everything we do in IT.

Ready Always • April 2021

Posted on by natemoss
tbc studio

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

I Peter 3:15

This is my first attempt to capture my thoughts and activities in my spiritual walk. I’m currently involved in some ways at TBC Bible Church in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. I lead the music for the services, and organize the live stream. I also occasionally teach, and although we are a small church and currently don’t have many teenagers, I’m on standby to teach the youth should they come. There is currently one teen boy who comes occasionally.

If there is a theme over the past number of years that captures my ministry related activities, it might be apologetics. Although I haven’t been practicing apologetics “in the field”, it has become more and more of a desire of mine to be ready with answers. If we are going to fulfill I Peter 3:15, it is important that we prepare. That theme is the basis of this blog post and hopefully more to come.

TBC Streaming Ministry

One of the biggest ways that I currently serve at TBC Bible Church is in the streaming ministry. We had a desire to stream our services for a while, but at the start of the pandemic in early 2020, it became more than just a casual idea.

We currently stream Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night services to YouTube and Twitch, with uploads to Rumble. When Rumble enables live streaming to the public later this year, we will start streaming there too. All of our content is available at the church website: tbcbiblechurch.org.

There are currently 5 people that work in the studio at TBC. Phil and I have put most of the work into the development and running of the stream. Ryan is in college for computer science and does a phenomenal job running the stream when he is in town. Randy runs the sound for most of our Sunday morning services, and Dale and Ron are slowly working their way into the streaming and lighting aspects of the studio respectively.

Building the studio involved audio, video, lighting, software, and programming, and each of these areas have continued improvement that we work toward. As mentioned in my project updates a couple of weeks ago, I’m currently working on writing a program that will handle some of the more time consuming work that we do before and after each stream.

Are you ready?

One of the tools I find most lacking in the majority of Christian circles today is an effective program for apologetics training. We have Bible study, preaching, prayer, singing, fellowship, and the occasional outreach program. Those are all good things, very good things, but what part of the modern church is addressing I Peter 3:15?

There are several kinds of activities that could solve this. Guided curriculum, workbooks, and videos do exist to help you learn how to talk to people and how to handle some of the core concepts around sharing your faith. I’ve experimented a number of times with drills, where a scenario is presented and the participants have to find Bible references that address the scenario. I think there is so much more that needs to be developed around this topic, and my hope is one day to produce some of this content myself.

Reddit

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve started looking at some of the Christian related threads on Reddit to see what I could learn. The AskAChristian subreddit is really a great place to see a wide variety of questions around Christian apologetics. People ask all kinds of random questions about Christianity, and there are a wide variety of answers, some of them very good, and some of them really not so good. I’ve responded to a couple of questions, and the exercise has been great. Pushing myself to explain my faith and the reasons for it is a refreshing experience.

Pete

One day last week, I was out on a photo walk in the area, and a man called to me from his front porch. He saw me walking barefoot with an expensive camera and was really curious what I was up to. I explained that I was a photographer and I was just out taking some pictures. We struck up a conversation and I learned that he’s under house arrest for a DUI, works at an airport, and spent time in Iraq as a Marine.

He mentioned that he didn’t get out and see people much because of his situation, so I asked if they would let him go to church if he wanted to. His response was interesting: he said, “who would want to help me?” I didn’t have the right words to react with on the spot, but there were a couple of things his question made me realize. His view of the church is that it is there to help people. His view of himself is low enough that he doesn’t think anyone would want to help him. Yet there’s this little glimmer in his question, he thinks that maybe he could use some help.

People like Pete are all around Elizabethtown, and frankly, all around the world. If we’re not ready, and if we’re not out in the community talking to people, how are we supposed to be the light and salt of the earth? It’s time we take that step, put on the shodding of the preparation of the gospel of peace, and go reach people. It’s not just the call of missionaries, it’s the call of the Christian.

50 Limits • Photography • March 2021

Posted on by natemoss
50 Limits Starting Photo

Most photographers eventually reach a point in their shooting referred to as a plateau: a time when they find it hard to develop new work, or take their photography to the next level. When this happens, it can be hard to describe why it’s happening, and even harder to break through and start creating great content again.

The past couple of years have been kind of rough for me (can’t imagine why…), and frankly, I haven’t been shooting. It’s time to change that, so here it goes.

The 50 Limits Project

There is a common exercise that photographers use to enhance their skills. Pick a thing, maybe aperture, maybe a shape, maybe a style, and go shoot within that limit. Giving yourself a constraint helps you focus on one thing, or requires you to see things you might not normally pick up.

It’s this exercise that is the inspiration for my new photo project: “50 Limits”. 50 Limits is a 52 photo project designed to take me back to basics and get all the kinks out from endless months of being out of the game. It’s 52 photos, because there will be a before and after shot, each intended to represent the idea of 50 limits.The before photo is the featured image for this post.

52 photo projects are often associated with a 52 week project. In my case, I hope to work faster than that, but the requirement will be that I can only capture one of the targets at a time.

I’ll be sharing my photos on Flickr in this album. I will also be updating this page with each photo as well as more details about the photo. Here are the 50 Limits for the project:

#AreaObjective / LimitPurpose
1ShapesSquareLearn to see
2ShapesCircleLearn to see
3ShapesRectangleLearn to see
4ShapesTriangleLearn to see
5ShapesOvalLearn to see
6RulesS CurveLearn to see
7RulesDiagonalLearn to see
8RulesRule of 3rdsLearn to see
9RulesGolden SpiralLearn to see
10RulesGolden RectangleLearn to see
11RulesSymmetryLearn to compose
12RulesFrame in FrameLearn to compose
13RulesLeading LinesLearn to compose
14RulesRepetitionLearn to compose
15RulesPointLearn to compose
16FocusBlack & WhiteLearn to compose
17Focusƒ2.8Think in time value
18Focusƒ4.0Think in time value
19Focusƒ8.0Think in time value
20Focusƒ16.0Think in time value
21Focusƒ32.0Think in time value
22Focus1/1000Think in ƒ stop
23Focus1/250Think in ƒ stop
24Focus1/30Think in ƒ stop
25Focus1/8Think in ƒ stop
Deal with Camera shake
26Focus1/2Think in ƒ stop
Deal with Camera shake
27Focus1 SecThink in ƒ stop
Deal with Camera shake
28Focus5 SecThink in ƒ stop
Deal with Camera shake
29FocusISO 100Deal with less light
30FocusISO 800Think in tv & ƒ stop
31FocusISO 6400Think in tv & ƒ stop
32FocusISO 25600Handle noise
33ColorsRedLearn to see
34ColorsBlueLearn to see
35ColorsGreenLearn to see
36ColorsYellowLearn to see
37ColorsPurpleLearn to see
38ColorsBlackLearn to see
39ColorsWhiteLearn to see
40Elements1 SubjectLearn to see
41Elements2 SubjectsLearn to see
42Elements3 SubjectsLearn to see
43Elements4 SubjectsLearn to see
44Elements5 SubjectsLearn to see
45CreativityForegroundTranslate an idea
46CreativityBackgroundTranslate an idea
47CreativityNothingTranslate an idea
48CreativitySomethingTranslate an idea
49CreativityToo MuchTranslate an idea
50CreativityToo LittleTranslate an idea

Canon 6D

Although I’m a firm believer that any camera can make good images in the hands of a good photographer, it has long been a desire of mine to have a full-frame camera. There’s something about working with the standard format that feels authentic. I have finally acquired a used Canon 6D from mbp.com. It shows a little wear, and already has a shutter count of over 50,000, but it’s really in excellent condition and it’s everything I’ve wanted for many years.

The biggest things I love are:

  • Easier control of the settings with a wheel selector on the back of the camera.
  • I can also choose the white balance by selecting a kelvin value (something that has really bothered me that I didn’t have before).
  • The shutter is quieter than my T3i, which is helpful when I’m shooting in quiet environments and don’t want to be a huge distraction.
  • I can push the ISO much further than I would ever be comfortable trying with the T3i.

Choosing a Lens

My bigger hardware problem was, I didn’t have good glass. I knew I was going to need a reasonable lens for my new camera. Selecting the right lens at a lower price point was a challenge for sure.

I settled on another used option: the Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di LD. It’s relatively sharp for a 3rd party lens, and it has flat ƒ stop of 2.8 regardless of zoom. Yes, it’s a zoom camera, but it’s going to serve multiple purposes. It will be a great walk around lens, and still give me the consistency to get some really good shots.

All of this, just in time for some beautiful weather and some prime opportunities to get out and shoot. I’m looking forward to kick starting my photography again and making some photographs to share with the world.

Project Updates • March 2021

Posted on by natemoss
Inkscape Logo and Ubuntu Logo

“Do a lot of work.”

I recently stumbled upon a motivational video featuring Ira Glass (a radio personality) which brought to my attention the barriers for creatives like myself to break through and finally get started doing what we love. What’s the key? “Do a lot of work. Do a large volume of work.”

The thinking is, you might know that you’re not good at doing something, and you might want to be better at it, but you’ll only get better if you start doing it. Over the past few months, I’ve been putting this concept in to practice by attempting to be more consistent in my content creation.

GuruPilgrim Project Launch

In February, I uploaded the first video for the GuruPilgrim project. Here is a brief summary of what the GuruPilgrim project is and what I’ve accomplished so far.

For over a decade, I’ve been using the handle “GuruPilgrim” for a lot of my online activity. The term “Guru” has come to mean one who has obtained great knowledge of a subject. And “Pilgrim” of course, is one who is on a journey, often in search of something better. A “GuruPilgrim” then, is one who is in the constant pursuit of great knowledge.

The focus of the project is on doing things with Open Source software. Making graphics, videos, websites, photographs, software applications, or live streams involves elements of both architecture and art. All of these kinds of tasks have one thing in common, you’ll need to use a computer to make or modify them. This gives me enough common ground to put a lot of content in one place, showing everything from post processing photographs to programming languages. I hope to connect these many elements together in an easy to understand way.

I’ve completed my first tutorial series, Intro to Inkscape, and I’m gearing up for another one, Intro to Gimp. The lessons learned in making the first series have helped me to make some changes that should make the Gimp series just a little better.

Learning Cloud Technologies

When you have a career in technology, you really can’t stand still. It is important to always be looking to learn something new and relevant. I’ve been focusing my study on cloud technologies recently.

Most of the cloud providers have a “free tier” to help people get started on their platform without spending a lot of money. Oracle currently seems to have the best free tier offering, which makes sense as they have been pushing hard to get more people using their cloud solutions. That has attracted me to the platform and I’ve been really enjoying a lot of things about it.

Oracle has an “Always free” offering that includes 2 free virtual machines, which I was quick to use up. The way that they isolate products into “compartments”, combined with the sane and safe default security settings, make everything feel secure. You only open the doors you want to open, connect the things you want to connect, and grant only the permissions you want to grant.

Cloud solutions are likely a big part of the future in systems administration, so I’ll continue to explore Oracle and the other major cloud providers for the foreseeable future.

StreamBuilder

One of the needs that I’ve come across in the live streaming world is for a way to schedule, manage, update, and post-process live events across multiple live streaming platforms and sites. Let’s say you have an event, and you want to live stream it on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and Periscope. When it’s over, you want to upload the full video to Vimeo and YouTube, and upload snippets to Twitter and Facebook. That would be a whole lot of work, before, during and after the event, but it’s all the same event with a single source of content.

As I thought about the problem, I realized that with the available REST APIs for all of these platforms, it should be easy enough to build a single interface that could handle all of this. Thus, StreamBuilder was born.

The plan is to build StreamBuilder in Python using the Kivy framework for the GUI. This will allow me to compile it for both Windows and Linux. If I had easier access to Mac, I could also compile it for Mac, so someday in the future the door would still be open for that as well.

The interface is split into four tabs: Streams, Videos, Cameras, and OBS. The Streams tab is where you will schedule, manage, and manipulate upcoming stream details across the live platforms, as well as trigger “go live”, and monitor activity. The Videos tab is where you will be able to work with the videos that OBS generates, insert and manipulate cut-points, and upload portions of your live stream as individual videos to the same or other video platforms (some video platforms can’t handle live streaming). The Cameras tab will allow you to control PTZ cameras with some new and very helpful controls, potentially even easier than with a joystick. The OBS tab will allow for integrations with OBS for showing and hiding overlays in your stream, greatly simplifying the number of scenes needed to get the same control.

This project is still in the conceptualization stage, but has great potential. I’m looking forward to implementing it piece by piece.

Blender

For years, I’ve dabbled in Blender (3D software), but until version 2.8x dropped, it was always overwhelming. Thanks to the Blender Guru, Andrew Price, who years ago shook up the Blender community with his podcast where he tore apart the Blender interface, there has been a huge redesign that took more than five years to realize. That design change has made Blender monumentally easier to use, and I’ve been much more successful recently in making things with Blender.

In keeping with the “Do a lot of work” theme, I’ve been thinking about ways to use Blender more consistently. The intros and outros for the GuruPilgrim videos so far have been created in Blender, and I’ll continue to explore other things I can do with it.

Enve

It used to be that the biggest gap in good open source software for creative work was video editing. Kdenlive has advanced to a level where that can no longer be said. Now, the biggest gap is good 2d animation software. Blender has incorporated a great 2d animation toolset, but Blender still has a steep learning curve. Just a couple of weeks ago, I came across a new open source application that might just be the ticket!

Enve (pronounced like “envy”) is a new project, with one primary developer, who frankly isn’t all that responsive. They continue to commit to the project though, and it is starting to show some skills. Enve for me is really easy to learn, because it allows you to import from Inkscape (one of my favorite tools), and it works in a very similar way to Inkscape.

I still have some learning to do in regard to using the program, and there isn’t much documentation yet, but it has me pretty excited about the potential.