Adjusting the Set

As I’ve mentioned I’ve been mostly  keeping to my lodgings in The Village, not going out, thinking and dreaming.

Sometimes when I am half awake, watch tv, strange things happen.

 

There might be a clue in this ds106 Assignments as to what is going on, and I guess that the RSS feed might need:

I’ll be hearing strange sounds…

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

As we move into Week 2 and get more information, it appears that a major theme in The Prisoner is repetition (a long with reflection and recursion I hope).

Before I start thinking about the audio assignments, I knocked up a few gifs from The Chimes of Big Ben:

oscilloscope 1

tape 01

lamp01

I repeat a well trod playflow.

  1. Open video in MPEGStreamclip
  2. Select in and out points
  3. Trim (command T on a mac)
  4. Export to Other Formats…
  5. Choose Image Sequence
  6. I usually click options and choose Jpeg and 12 frames /second
  7. Export
  8. Right Click on First File in export list
  9. Open in Fireworks
  10. Select all the other images in series & Drag to FW window
  11. Cmd-A Select All
  12. Open FW Frames window, Choose Distribute To Frames from the Window
  13. This creates a series of frames.
  14. Further editing and setting the Export Options in the Optimise Window
  15. Export to Gif

I made a Say It Like Peanut Butter – YouTube video showing the process a while back. Fireworks, as I’ve blogged about before (more repetition), is great for gifs as it separates layers and frames. That make it much easier for me to understand.

Watch Repeat, Don’t Repeat

Dance-of-the_Dead01

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  • George Santayana

I’ve got news for Mr. Santayana: we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive.

― Kurt Vonnegut

I though I was hitting week one in the village running, I’ve already, settled in, done a little prep, started some investigations and visited the office and filled in the forms.
I also had a strange psychological experience which seems to be par for the course.

I got a bit of a shock reading this weeks diversions. Lots too do!

I had started to review the video records of number 6 with a view to developing a plan, the office seems to have a different approach to the reels which I’ll have to follow. After starting watching The Dance of the Dead, I’d agree with:

  • Although aired originally as episode 8, many sources recommend viewing this as episode 2.

from: Dance of the Dead (The Prisoner) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, number 6 says, he is new and it feels like repeated phrases from the series, I’ll be seeing you are emphasized more than other episodes. I can only suppose that the official order was created to confuse rather than illuminate.

My aims and methods are still basically the same, rather that taking an intellectual approach to escaping I am going to concentrate of finding out how the village works, what lies behind the rational. My methods will be to approach the problem via the automated, serendipitous and random I will give a little information (not INFORMATION) about these methods as I go.

The idea being to understand. Number 6 went through some terrible ordeals continually butting his head against Number 2, my approach is to keep my head down, investigate The Village without leaving my room.

As I watch the other occupants of The Village arrive I am somewhat puzzled that they seem to be taking on roles in the village. Have they already become part of number 2’s team, or have I miss understood something basic?

 

closing-zoom

Gifinformation

Here is the village there is a constant battle to avoid giving any information away. From a ds106 Assignments should come with information, a prisoner106 dilemma?

To start making good the many assignments with a lack of supporting information here, I’ve made a few brief tests on exporting gifs and the dither and loss settings.

I usually use FireWorks for creating gifs, with the occasional dip into Photoshop for selection tools. In FireWorks the export options look like this:
fireworks-gifexport

 

In Photoshop 5.5 the export dialog:

photoshop-gif-export

 

In Both it is easy to adjust both dither and loss:

I took a gif I made a few posts ago and exported it at different settings, you can see the result here: Gif Loss and Gif Dither.

Personally I usually go for small size over quality but hopefully not too mindlessly.

tv01

 

A Visit to the Office

Since I arrived at the village, I’ve done little but stayed in my room dreaming and listening to the radio.

Today I visited the office for the first time, picking up my badge, rather hynotic, and essential supplies (fonts and the like).

YourVillage_InformationCard

I filled out my information card too (click to expand), taking the time to get new frames for my Jim Groom’s. The village looks better with my Jim Groom’s on.

I’ve not made much of a dent in the video archive, and will return to my room for some viewing and a nap now. Be seeing you.