About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

Spam Report

At least 70644 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

The original Lego Star Wars

I attempted to make a Super-8 animated-Lego version of Star Wars when I was 14 -- in 1982 or so. I had made several other animated movies, Lego-powered and otherwise, but this was my most ambitious project. Over several weeks of painstaking stop-motion animation, I got as far as the escape-from-the-Death-Star scene. In real time this was about four minutes of footage (yes, it was a multi-reel production), but as anyone who has done traditional animation can tell you, that's a lot of work.

Anyway, one night, our Golden Retriever named Sugar had puppies. This event was not a total surprise, naturally, but it hadn't really been on my mind. Somebody grabbed the camera out of my room to document the miracle of birth and, well, I never made it back to my magnum opus.

Lego Wars I recently came across this tiny animated GIF I made many years ago -- I had scanned a few feet of the film and sliced the individual frames in Photoshop. In case the 0.0034-megapixel resolution makes it hard to pick out the details, what I believe is happening here is Han and Chewie are blasting their way through some hapless stomtroopers. The pyrotechnics are actual burning match-heads. Blaster bolts were to be added in a post-production phase that never came.

I still have the original film. Can anybody recommend a trusted vendor for doing a digital transfer?

Monday, March 31st, 2008
art + fun + star wars
2 comments

Some related posts: USB Art

• Comment from David Reynolds , 3 weeks later

How much of the film td you manage to do?

• Comment from Paul , 3 weeks later

David -- In about 4-5 minutes of breakneck footage I think I got from the opening credits to the climactic Obi-Wan/Vader lightsaber battle aboard the Death Star. I also think that my scene-list was quite selective and completely from memory. I haven't watched it in many years. I located my old transfer box, so the digital conversion may actually happen as a summer project!