Bruceville

Category: Video

  • BOOMTAGE – New HD Boomerang Video on YouTube

    We got a new HD camcorder (Canon Vixia HF20) recently and this weekend, Ace and I went out to make our first boomerang video. It was over 100 degrees and the winds were gusty and shifty. To make matters worse, the field we were on was near trees and we were getting some crazy turbulence. Two throws that I would feel were identical might end up 50 yards away from each other. All this added up to a brutal afternoon with way more throwing than catching.

    Here’s the video that Ace put together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBwXt19XU_4&fmt=22. If your computer and bandwidth are up to it, make sure to click on “Watch in HD”. YouTube down-converted our video from 1080i to 720p/30fps, but it’s still reasonably high-definition. Unfortunately, the boomerangs we used the most were unpainted, but you can still make them out pretty well.

    One new thing we tried was using a fish-eye lens to be able to keep the boomerang in the frame more easily. This worked pretty well for fast catch.

  • Ace’s Show was Great!

    Ace Armstrong at Opening BellAce performed in his first show ever on May 21, 2009. It was at the Opening Bell Coffee Shop at Mosaic in Dallas. Ace did a great job and got lots of good feedback. If you click this YouTube playlist link, and click “Play All Videos”, you’ll feel like you were there. My aging camcorder didn’t handle the low light very well, but the sound came out pretty good. Be sure to leave comments on YouTube. Thanks!

    There’s also a photo gallery available here.

    Aaron B's photos of Ace on stage-3 Ace during sound check A portion of the crowd

  • The Science and Fun of Boomerangs

    For a 3rd grade science project, Holly had the choice of doing a video demonstration or an in-class demonstration of anything at all “scientific”. I’m so glad she chose to do a video, because it is so much fun to watch, even four years later. Some of you may already have seen it on boomsmith.com, but I just now uploaded it to YouTube and it is being well-received. Here’s the description:

    This is a “How Boomerangs Work” video from the perspective of a 3rd grader. The video discusses some boomerang flight science, shows construction, throwing, and catching.

    This video was done for Holly’s 3rd grade science class and was so well-received that it was shown to all the other classes as well.

    And here’s the video: 

  • Videos by Ace and Friends

    There’s been so much Holly stuff on here lately, that I thought I’d better give Andrew some equal billing. Here’s what he’s been up to lately:

    Ace and his buddies skating better than you might expect:

    General goofing off:

    Go Skate Day 2007 Video Midlothian Montage Video Stop Motion 0.9 Video Dino-surance Video

  • Lady Cubs First Volleyball Win

    Holly’s volleyball team has been through some tough times in their short history. It was great to hear them say that they wouldn’t let a few bad experiences turn them off of the sport. During their first tournament, their perseverance finally paid off when they finally captured their first win. I was lucky enough to capture their reaction on video. Enjoy.

  • My First YouTube Video

    Some guys on the Boomerang Talk Yahoo Group were talking about lighted boomerangs and I shared with them a sparkler boomerang video I had made a few years ago. I realized that I had never posted a video on YouTube and decided this would be a perfect way to start. Here it is:

  • New Photos

    So…I didn’t wait a whole year after all. Maybe I’m not the horrible procrastinator I’m made out to be. Anyway, the real update is just one page. Click here to see new photos of the kids and some test shots from our new digital camera. Also please note that the voting and feedback pages are currently broken. Because of some nasty viruses (Code Red, Nimda, etc), I had turn off some of the web server’s features. I’ll fix it someday.

    Holly's First Grade School Photo (2001).jpg (96133 bytes)Andrew's Fourth Grade School Photo (2001).jpg (75010 bytes)Armstrong Kids Halloween 2001.jpg (100981 bytes)Armstrong Kids Portrait 2001.jpg (112778 bytes)

    OK, while I’m at it, even though a lot of you have already seen these, I should mention something that was added to the site, but never mentioned here. Go to the Videos page to see a couple of videos we made earlier in the year right after we got a digital camcorder. They are big files, but they’re on a reasonably fast server for all you broadband users.

    Also not previously noted is that the boomerang page moved to its own domain: www.boomsmith.com. That site was on a now defunct Yahoo web ring and got hits from all over the world. Here are some of the domains I got visitors from:

    .com (Commercial), .net (Network), .fr (France), .nl (Netherlands), .edu (USA Educational), .br (Brazil), .ar (Argentina), .es (Spain), .ca (Canada), .mil (USA Military), .pf (French Polynesia), .fi (Finland), .si (Slovenia), .org (Non-Profit Organisations), .cz (Czech Republic), .it (Italy), .au (Australia)

    Interestingly, those are in order of most visitors to the least. Australia had the least visitors to a boomerang site!

  • Happy New Year, Everybody!

    Wow. Its been a long time since my last update, but I’ve been on holiday. (Plus my SIDS has been acting up). What’s new? Well, for one thing, I’ve moved my larger video files to a faster site, so if you’ve never looked at them because they took too long to DL, you can do it now (unless your slow connection is the problem).

    In other news, Andrew and I wrote a new game over the holiday break. Perfecto, the Java-powered shape-matching game is available here. Its still under test, so if you find any problems with it, let me know.

  • Monkey Show 96

    Added a short “Monkey Show 96” clip to the Videos page.

    Added the CD Label for “Andrew’s First Mix – 1999” to the Graphics page.