Paul Conigliaro

UPDATE: Humble pie. I already had to fix a pretty critical bug. Post Haste 1.0.1 has just been released.

One of the more tedious tasks in post, with the exception of rotoscoping, is just setting up a project. A while back, we discovered the usefulness using a template folder to keep everything consistent. Thomas Tomchak at Suite Take goes into great detail about project templates. But we were still duplicating folders, copying and pasting, and renaming multiple files before we could get started. I decided to make the write my own software to make things easier. The result is Post Haste.

Post Haste really just does one thing, but does it well: automatically generates a project folder for you. All you have to do is enter information such as project number, client, etc. and Post Haste will create a project folder with files in place and renamed. It’s customizable to allow up to five fields of information and auto-fills certain fields such as date, editor, or suite. Take a look.

Post Haste is completely free. There are no nag dialogues about how you should give me money. Really, I wrote the program for myself to make things easier. But to make things interesting, I’m releasing Post Haste as “luchware.” If you find it useful, consider buying me lunch.

Several weeks ago, I heard about YOURLS (get it?), a personal url shortening service. I had tossed around the ideo of using it, but never got around to it. Then tr.im (my url shortening service of choice) announced they were shutting their doors, then they weren’t, now they’re “community owned.”

So, just last week I registered coni.gs to host a YOURLS install, as well as a landing page for my various profiles online. The service is private, meaning only I can post urls to shorten, but it will handle all posts on this blog. At the bottom of each post (eg, Short URL:  http://coni.gs/32), you’ll see a short URL listed. It is also included as a <link> tag in the head of the page for auto-discovery. It’s a nifty service.

So I decided to create my own Amazon affiliate store. I figure there’s always people looking for recommendations on products, especially in the film/video field. My store is mostly for post production and includes peripherals like the Wacom Intuos4, books, storage devices, and even a T-shirt.

One thing I’m really trying to do is make sure I only add products I own or  have personally used and can recommend. If I haven’t at least used it, it won’t go there. With that said, I gladly welcome recommendations on anything you think should be added.

Over the weekend, I updated the site design. I’ve been working on it off and on over the past month or so. Thoughts?

I added a new piece to the portfolio today: Harley XR1200,  shot by Joe Picciolo.

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So, it’s 11 months late, but I’ve finally started to get some pieces up on the portfolio section of the site.

I’ve got one issue with it though (aside from it not being complete). Shadowbox, the media viewer I’m using, seems to have an issue with Firefox 3 and Adblock. It prevents any plugin media (including flash & quicktime) from loading in the viewer. If anyone has any ideas, I’m open to them. Right now, though, I think my best bet is to just provide a different view option for those users who may be affected. Are there any special firefox-only functions that can be used to detect plugins? I’d want this to be as automated as possible.

So today officially launches the 6th redesign of conigs.com. This time around, though, a few things have been moved around.

First of all, you’ll noticed that the blog now lives at http://blog.conigs.com. This is because the main domain will now be used for my portfolio—of course, still in progress. The redesign also ties the two together. At first I was unsure whether or not I wanted the blog linked directly to my professional life, but I figure, why not?

So here, it is. Hopefully I’ll actually keep this moderately up to date. With a baby on the way, I’ll either barely touch the blog, or I’ll be updating it constantly with “baby kinda-sorta half smiled at me today” posts. I’m guessing the latter.