May 24, 2012

How 'bout the Catskills instead?

OK, so it isn't really a camp, but I want one of those summer vacations where you can dance.

May 23, 2012

Fosse 2

For the sheer joy of working with the material.

(download)

May 22, 2012

Fosse animated gifs

Just getting warmed up for camp by making a couple of Bob Fosse choreography animated gifs. His work seems to lend itself to the format. First, the man himself, from The Little Prince:

This was done by downloading the clip from YouTube, then opening in QuickTime Pro and exporting as an image sequence. The first time was a default of 4 frames per second, which was too choppy, so I changed it to 8. Then I tried the Gifninja site our camp director Alan Levine used, but I didn't like it. Too fuzzy. So I used Picasion instead, at fast speed.

Then (always a favorite of mine) the Sweet Charity dance hall girls (this one is subtle):

For this one I did the same thing with Quicktime, but then tried Make a GIF instead. It lets you use 20 images instead of just 10 like Picasion, but that made a huge file (over 1 MB) so it wouldn't play well. I went back to Picasion.

May 14, 2012

I'll be the cook's assistant

Looking at the ds106 collection of campers and counselors, I don't think I'm either one. I've got too much experience to be a camper (and I refuse to bunk with anyone), but I'm not counselor material either.

I didn't go to camp as a kid, except for one New Years when my best friend had a job as a counselor for a camp in Sequoia National Park. She talked me into applying to be camp cook's assistant, and I did it. The cook, Owen, was a taciturn guy with a long black moustache who was painfully shy and pretty much ignored me the whole time. I didn't know how to cook anyway. I had never been to camp. And I had never done more than drive through anywhere with snow. The place looked kinda like this:

(Photo: National Park Service)

One day I went for a walk after the breakfast rush. I was a big city traveler - I can still find my way around any city even if I've never been there. But in the woods, in the snow, I got lost. The night before, there had been a bear - I heard about it after I took a little kid to the bathroom in the middle of the night so my friend could get some sleep. There were no landmarks I recognized, just snow and trees. I wandered for awhile till I got to the edge of the national park, then somehow I found my way back in time to chop veggies for dinner.

The rest of the week, I pretty much stayed in the kitchen. So if you're looking for me, that's where I'll be.