Michael Verdi

Category: Process

  • Test Print

    I’ve still got one more image to create but I can get the printing started today.

  • Making Progress

    I finished re-writing issue 4 for the third time today. It’s finished now. I cut a couple of things that I’ll put on the issue’s page. Other than the covers I have to create new illustrations. I’ll start working on those tomorrow. Only one side will be 4 colors. The others will be just 2 so it shouldn’t take as long to print as I anticipated.

  • A Cookie and Forgiveness

    I’m aiming to print the zine I’m working on next weekend so my goal was to have it all ready to go this weekend. That didn’t happen. While I did make a bunch of progress on it, I also had a nice relaxing couple of days. I hung out with Rebecca, watched some movies, did some reading, played a few more hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 and even rode my bike for a while (despite the air being on fire). I still have plenty of time to catch up but if I don’t, I don’t.

  • Jenny Nicholson on the Star Wars Hotel

    User experience, service design, game mechanics — it’s all in here. This is a fabulous, four hour (yes four hours — totally worth it) breakdown of what went wrong with the Star Wars hotel.

  • Playlist for Issue 4

    I’m working on finishing up issue 4 of and, of course, I’m listening to the playlist I created while I’ve been working on it. The thing is though — I’ve been working on it for months so I wanted to post this before I started listening new things. I’ve written about a bunch these songs but I’ll save that for when the zine is out.

    Yes, Issue 4 is titled “Vision” and that’s a preview of the cover.

  • Waking up with an idea

    I really like the Freewrite Alpha for getting ideas down without editing.

  • Feeling better

    Straightened up the office

    I got some sleep, completed some long overdue things, and cleaned up. It’s amazing how much better that makes me feel.

  • My camera is amazing but …

    After the Apple Vision Pro came out, I sold my Lumix GH6 and got a Canon R5C with this dual fisheye lens so I could shoot “immersive” (180 degree, 3D) video.

    It’s pretty impressive. It shoots 8K at 60fps. The 3D video it produces is 4096 pixels X 4096 pixels per eye. So like 2, 4K movies stacked on top of one another per eye. but it’s not like watching a 4K movie. It’s actually more like watching 1K/1080p movie because those pixels are covering a much larger area.

    The immersive videos that Apple’s produced are also not as clear as a 4K movie but they’re a good deal closer.

    Then today during Apple’s WWDC announcement they quickly mentioned a collaboration with Blackmagic Design on a professional, immersive video workflow comprised of a new Blackmagic camera, Davinci Reslolve Studio, and Apple Compressor.

    There’s no info on their website yet, but they did post about it on Instagram. This thing will have 8160 pixels X 7200 pixels per eye at 90fps. That’s about 4X what you get from the Canon R5C! Wow.

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  • Making a Website

    The other day I said I was setting up this website to get ideas out of my head and make room for new ones. I guess that’s only part of it. The rest of it is to document in the hope that it’s useful or at least interesting to more than just me. I already do this with but I can’t put everything in there. Smaller, more discreet things can go here. I think this sits adjacent to my journal. This is the conversation I’m having with myself that results in and eventually into artworks (actually I consider one of my artworks). Anyway, there are things that I put in my journal that aren’t ready to be public and there are things that I can put here that never make it into my journal. 

    I think I first started blogging in 2002. I ditched that blog and started over in 2004 when I started video blogging. That lasted until maybe 2009. Somewhere between waning interest, reliance on unmaintained WordPress plugins, and the demise of Blip.tv (video hosting) I called it a day and wiped everything. I became fond of collecting domains and stared things in various places: greymattergravy.com (now hosting another zine I make), x627.com, talkbot.tv, verdi.space, verdi.mov, and zine.party. Meanwhile, I have at least a half-dozen YouTube accounts and various social media accounts that I start and delete. It’s too much and too confusing. And the thing is, I already have a great place for everything — michaelverdi.com (it’s my fucking name). Thank you other Michael Verdi who let the domain expire in 2003. So this weekend I’ve been putting it all together. There’s still lots I want to do but this is in a workable state.

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  • Couldn’t Sleep

    My office is a mess — just like my brain is today.

    4:21 a.m.

    I’ve been sleeping less the last month or so, going to bed later and later. My brain is just going and going and I have a million things I want to get done. Today I went to bed just before midnight and woke up at four. I guess that’s why I set up this blog — to get those ideas out of my head and make room for some new ones.