Freaking Idiots!

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 29 - Napoleon Dynamite, production

Oh, this is so freaking awesome it's almost scary. Apperantly the Idaho legslature is really bored and decided to honor the best piece of publicity that has happened to them since... well, ever. My favorite part.

WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of Their Lives!"

Mah Teef Huwt

Actually, it's not just my teeth that hurt now, it's my whole head. I had my wisdom teeth out on Friday. All four of them at once, I figured it would be a good idea to get this done while my parents were still supporting me. And the amount of time that they will be doing that can be counted in months now....

Whoa! Breaking news! I have a job offer! More details to follow.

Update:
I am really excited that a business has made me an offer. I will have a lot of decisions pertaining to the future of my life coming up soon. I don't want to talk about it too much here, potential employers might end up reading this.

It is exciting to think about actually having some financial stability after graduation. It's hard enough to focus on finishing all of my projects for graduation without the job hunt distracting me further. I don't know if this will make it harder, or easier to focus. Well, I guess nothing is for certain yet. Speaking of final projects, anyone know where I can find a mannequin to use for a day of taping? Just thought I would throw that out there.

I should also mention that the template for this site is almost working again. Somewhere the wordpress selectors are causing a weird break with the left column in Internet Explorer. This only shows up when my posts are shorter than the menu bar. So I guess to hide the problem I should be more long winded. Or to hide the problem I should probably avoid telling you about it in a post. That might help too. Oh well, I don't think anyone reads all the way to the end of these anyways.

Alright, back to work.

Project Directory Structure Templates

I do a lot of different video and web projects and I have found that unless I take the time to really set up an organized directory structure it’s easy to get confused and loose files. When working on any multimedia project there are countless source media files from a wide variety of sources that will be combined to produce the final product.

So I have set up a standardized folder hierarchy for my own use that saves me some time in that I just copy the blank folder structure over and rename it every time I start a project. It should also save me some frustration in the future, because now I will know where exactly each type of file should be found and usually I will know exactly where to save files as I work on them. Also, when working in a group it would be wise to make sure that everyone has a copy of the same standard directory structure so that others can look at their files and easily find what they need.

You can take a look at it yourself if you like.

Download Folder Structure Template

The policy I use is that original source files go inside the ’source’ folder and the edited version that I actually take into the final video or web-page are stored in the root of the ‘images’ folder (for example). I like to have separate folders for each type of media file that I used, images, video, sound effects, and music.
If it’s a video project I have folders to hold the original captured footage, the trimmed video clips, and the rendered post-AfterEffects video clips. There are of course folders for images, frame stills, audio effects, background music tracks, and project related documents.
The documents folder holds pretty much anything that does not go directly into the final project, or anything that isn’t media. Its purpose is to hold organizational files. Word documents, spreadsheets, any sort of document that was used to communicate ideas guiding the progress of the project. Outlines, scripts, copy from the editor, use case diagrams, site-maps, style guides, anything of that sort.
In the web project folder I have a folder for each of the five phases of web-site development.

1. Planning


2. Design


3. Production


4. Testing


5. Sign-Off

These come straight from the default phases that are used in PhpCollab, a great open source project management system for teams.

There are a lot of other folders in there that I use some of the time, they are not all necessary, and there may be some gaps where you need many additional directories. I encourage you to create your own folder structure template for projects. If you are like me you will really get a kick out of this sort of standardization. I’m sure that I will change the folder hierarchy as I use it more, but that’s the great thing about it being just folders, its dirt simple to modify.