What I’m doing when I’m not doing anything else…

This is neat: Photographer Mike Stimpson is recreating some classic photos using Lego setups. His re-creation of Charles Ebbets’s famed “Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper”:

Accompanying each shot is a credit to the original photographer, information about the shot (lighting, exposure, etc.), and a photo of the setup itself :

You can view the entire set on Flickr, or purchase prints via Mike’s space on RedBubble.

It’s 2008, and this is what I have to do to get video files off of my Sony DCR-SR82 HDD Handycam, and into an iMovie-digestible format:

1. Download video from the camcorder using the Sony-provided HDD Handycam Utility (crap) within a Windows VM.
2. Move videos from the offload directory to ~/Movies/Sony Handycam/Originals on the host system.
3. Send the offloaded .mpg files to VisualHub (MP4, highest quality, H.264 encoded), saving to ~/Movies/Sony Handycam/Exports.
4. Open iMovie and import Exports/* as new iMovie event, allowing iMovie to move files from Exports to ~/Movies/iMovie Events.

Sony: Please stop sucking ass, and produce some useful software for the creative world’s most popular operating system.

Apple: Please stop sucking ass, and build MPEG-2 handling and playback capability into iMovie and Quicktime, respectively.

UPDATE1: About the MPEG-2 component included with iMovie ‘08

UPDATE2: After raising a stink, I figured that I’d spend a little more time trying to figure out how to make my Handycam work with native iMovie ‘08. Turns out that you have to turn on the camera, wait for OS X pick it up as a USB storage device, and then hang tight for three or four minutes until iMovie detects that your USB storage device is actually a camcorder, and presents the import dialog. I’m glad that I can import native MPEG-2, but am somewhat puzzled by the delay.