I'll just try to restructure my thoughts in chronological order in an attempt ot make some sense.
Yesterday, right after I finished my latest addition to this weblog, I started working on the Integration project again. I kept on working on our movie all night, and when I was about finished, the first people of the project group were appearing (around 9AM). I showed the movie to the other members of our group, and they were very enthousiastic about it. I was very content with the fact that at least two other people from our group were happy about the result. While I was making some final additions to the movie, Agneszka (another member of the group) showed up. Again, I played the movie. She seemed to be even more enthousiatic... I mean, she was lyrical. I was pretty content with the result myself, but it was even better to see that my work was also very much appreciated by the other members of the group.
Happy about what seemed to be turning out as a successfull project, I made some coffee, and we chilled a bit in the living room while listening to some Radiohead (which we also used music from in our movie). While we were chatting and enjoying both Radiohead and the coffee, Fanny, the last member of our group called. She was already at the Academy to work on the poster that would function as an introduction our product. She said she had gone there early because she was affraid we wouldn't have enough time to finish both the movie as the poster before the presentation which was the deadline. Agneszka let her know she didn't have to worry since the movie was finished already. She couldn't believe it at first, but then she rushed her way here to see it herself.
The first thing we did when Fanny got here was watch the movie again, and she also seemed very pleased with the result. One of the girls (I don't remember who exactly) asked if it wouldn't be a good idea if I'd add the sentence that we created on the second day of the project week (and based our concept on) to the end of the movie. We agreed this would be a nice addition to the communicative level of the movie, and so I made a final addition. After that, I converted the Flash movie to uncompressed AVI so that we could be sure the machines at the Academy would be able to read it. I burned the movie on CD, and send the girls of to the Academy to work on the poster and make some preperations for the presentation. I stayed home to catch a few hours of sleep.
A few hours later, they called me from the Academy, not sounding too happy. It appeared that my CD wasn't working on the machine at the Academy. I told them that the CD probably was corrupted and that I'd make a new one. I burned the movie to a new CD, and decided to test it on my own machine first this time. This one also seemed corrupted. Now we seemed to have a problem since I didn't think I had any more writable CD's. Fortunately, I found one (a rather old one, I must add, and so I could try again. Success, this time it was working... on my machine at least. I put on a suit, and went to the Academy to prepare the presentation.
As soon as I got there I tried making the movie work in the auditorium, using an iBook that my group had borrowed somewhere, a beamer, and an external sound system. Everything seemed to be working fine, except for one thing: the iBook did have Quicktime installed, but not the professional version. This means we could not display the thing full size.... something I was not willing to settle with. Luckaly, Casper, who is a friend of mine and an Apple expert came to lend us a helping hand. He figured that iMovie, which comes with Mac OS X by default, would be able to display the movie in full screen. We dragged the movie into iMovie, but it didn't do anything. We figured that iMovie does not play AVI, and tried to access the internet via Airport. The conncetion to the network, however, seemed to be protected, and we didn't know the username and password (and the people we borrowed it from were gone).
We put the iBook away, and asked a guy that happened to be sitting in the auditorium with a PC laptop on his lap whether we could use his for our presentation. After some minor problems, we had the movie -in full screen- projected on the wall... yay! We put the laptop away and took a seat, as the presentations were about to start.
After we witnessed some nice presentation from the other project groups, and I experienced several close-to anxiety attacks, it was our turn. I had told the girls in my group that I was not doing the presentation because I had been working all night and was feeling like shit, but that was ofcourse all a big joke... I always end up doing the presentation anyway, and frankly, I enjoy it a lot. When the moment is actually there, and there is a presentation that has to be done... somehow, my mind seems to stop thinking, all my emotions are under perfect controll, and I feel good, secure and actually quite happy. This time was no different. I was experiencing semi-anxiety attacks, couldn't think straight, and felt I was about to fainth... but when the moment was there, I suddenly seemed to have forgotten all about that and got my ass on stage.
I turned on the laptop, booted the movie, turned around... Great, the movie was working perfectly fine on the laptop, but the beamer somehow didn't feel like projecting it on the wall (though it was projecting everything else just fine, even the borders of the media player). While being in my presentation mode, I tried fixing the problem while making funny comments to keep the attention of the audience. It was not likely I was going to find a quick solution, though, so we decided to get our stuff together first, and let the next group do there presentation.
At the end of the presentation that followed I got on stage again to check out the hardware.
A guy from another project group was messing around with the iBook we had used before, trying to get there movie running in iMovie.
To my total surprise I recognized the frames that iMovie was displaying... it was out movie.
This messed with my mind good, but then I realized that it had probably been rendering the AVI to a format it could handle (.mov?) while it was just sitting there.
Awesome!
I got rid of the guy that was playing with it, and introduced us again. This time, everythin went perfect. The audience was very enthousiastic, and I got possitive feed-back from some friend right away. By that time, I felt a little dosis of stress falling away from me... which is a nice feeling.
I stayed to witness the rest of the presentations, and then wandered through the Academy a bit to see the projects that were not presentated in the auditorium (not everybody made a movie, ofcourse). As always, there were some really nice things to see and do, and I enjoyed together with a glass of red wine.
On my short journey through the Academy I bumped into Jurriaan and Anne, two people from my class, and we somehow started talking about these weird physical complaints that had been addressing themselves to us. It appeared I wasn't the only was with hyperventialion, anxiety attacks, and feelings that sometimes makes you wonder if you're not having a heartattack. This doesn't really cure anything, or make it any healthier for me, but I at least can relate with people, that's got to mean something.... right?
During my little journey I also talked to some teachers, especially those I repect the most. I was very, very pleased to hear that they liked the movie a lot. Jos Rutten (who I believe is the best graphic design teacher at the Academy) even came up to me himself to express his appreciation. I think that means about as much for me as the feed-back of my project group and my own experience of it, which I believe to be the two most valuable things in this matter.
After my little journey, I went back to the auditorium to see what was going on in there at that time.
What I found inside was four teachers (not specifically my favorite ones), and two members from my project group... not looking to happy.
The first thing that came in mind was What the fuck?
, but since I figured that wouldn't be a very good start I decided to not say anything and just sit down.
From what I understand is that we do a possitive rating in the end, but that those specific teachers (that happend to be in the position to rate our work) were not too convinced of the visual presentation of the movie, the communication of our idea, and that they were displeased with presetation of the presentation (as in the few words that were spoken around the display of the movie).
Maybe it's because I was really tired, but again, the only thing I could think of was What the fuck?
.
I'm not trying to pretentious, and say that we did make an excellent movie, and that the teacher are wrong, but... it does strike me as odd that the teachers I look up to the most had already expressed that they thought it was really good, and it's not like they ever showed to be affraid to criticize my work. Quite the contrary. Hell, it's one of the reasons I respect them so much.
After I (kind off) listened to what was being said for a few minutes I got tired of it and asked the two members of my group that were also there whether they were attending the party ater that night, said Ciao!
, and left.
I greeted some of my friends, picked up Roos that was smoking a cigarette outside, and together we set course to the train station. We walked arm by arm, and talked about some of the students and teachers. Some of it might not have been very nice, but it was good for a laugh or two... or three... but probably more. She took the train, and I took the tram, but not before we agreed to have a lot of drinks next week. By the way, earlier that day, in the auditorium, she told me she had broken up with her boyfriend (after more than four years), but I already heard that from a friend.
At the tram stop, I bumped into a guy I used to be in the same class with when I was studying at the Haagse Hogeschool. He told me that he was still studying there, and that a graphic design teacher, that I was thought was kind of... weird, had seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Right.
Once I got home, I wanted to go to bed directly to catch a few hours sleep before attending the party that I was really looking forward to. My uncle Peter and my mother were not really co-operating with my plans though. It appeared that some kind of wire was missing from the digital camera that he lend me. I told them that I strongly doubt I have ever had that thing in my possession, and that even if I have, I will buy a find it tomorrow, or -in the worst case- buy a new one. Either way, even though it's inconvenient, it is not a big deal, and I really needed some rest.
Pissed off about it, Peter and my mom went to the living room, I send an SMS to Beatrice from my guitar ensemble (that would start in an hour or so) that I was not going to make it this week, and went to bed.
I think it was four times that my mom woke up while I had dosed off, and I think that all happend within one hour.
I don't think I have ever been this aggressive, and if I have, I sure don't remember.
It is not a good idea to keep a guy that's been working for two days straight from his rest over some stupid wire.
I tried to get this point across by shouting, banging on the walls, and throwing stuff around in a little rage that lastest a good minure or so.
I'm not sure I got the point across, all I know is that they're upset with me now, but frankly my dear, I don't give a damn
.
I finally got a few hours sleep, and woke up around 10PM, feeling pretty good... a lot better than a few before at least. I brushed my teeth again, put on a suit... again, and went to the Academy... again. At the tramstop I bumped into Karin, who is a girl that was in my project group during the previous project. She, and her boyfriend (at least that's what I think he is) were also on their way to the party.
The party started off good, as they always do, by seeing a lot of familiar faces.
Faces of which I'm glad they are familiar to me.
I spend the first twenty minutes or so saying Hi!
.
One of the first people I greeted was Tessa, a girl that studies photography, and who I kissed on the previous project party.
I couldn't help but wonder if a similar situation would take place that night.
After I tasted the music a little, did some dancing, and put some more wine in my stomach, I started talking to Kees van Drongelen.
Kees is the CEO of VisualSpace, and he was my typography teacher last year.
It's always a lot of fun talking to him, because we share a lot of interests and visions.
Especially about programming languages, operating systems... and, ahem
... other teachers.
He told me that he was also really pleasantly surprised about our presentation that day, and how he and Jos Rutten (who I introduced earlier) were saying to eachother that I have really good qualities, also on a visual level.
Wow, talk about flattering feed-back.
Ofcourse, now I couldn't help but tell in detail what the teachers that actually rated our project reacted like.
He told me what I actually already knew, and that is that I shouldn't weight to heavy on this at all, and that certain things at the Academy are to be taken with a grain of salt (I won't go in detail on this one).
We chatted some more, getting hyped up on things like XML, XSLT, UNIX, Java, Cocoon... well, either you catch my drift, or you have no idea what I'm talking about.
Either way, there's no reason to go on about it.
Even though it's always great talking to Kees, I figured that is not exactly what I came for. I can talk to teachers all day on any other day at the Academy. This night ought to be about music, alcohol, girls... well, either you catch my drift, or you and I are not from the same planet. Either way, those were the things I focused on from that moment.
I did a lot of dancing. I went pretty much all out. I think that maybe if you'd look closely, you could see the stress dripping through the velvet of my suit. I don't think this party has been very healthy for my velvet suit, or Andrea Zantoli shoes, but it has been very healthy to me. I haven't felt this good for weeks.
One of the people I danced with was Tessa (the girl that I mentioned earlier). It was pretty obvious she wanted at least the same as the previous project party to happen, but somehow I didn't feel like it. I wonder if I'm the reason she was crying pretty much the rest of the night. I sure hope it's not, but if it is, I'm sorry. Apart from Tessa there was some flirting going on, but nothing remotely close to the previous project party (which was refered to by friends more than once today), but that's probably me. I didn't feel like attending anything that could become even slightly complicated this night. This night was one to clear my mind, which I think worked our rather well.
After the party, and after I turned down a lot of people that invited me to go dancing elsewhere, I joined Herline and Suzan in a walk to Herline's place where they will spend (are spending) the night. It was pretty cold and rainy (which was also not very healthy for my suit and shoes), and I had to walk home by myself, but I enjoyed it a lot. We talked about a lot of things, including the happenings at the party (Suzan kissed a girl), and -again- the painfully obvious difference between the teachers. Apart from that, the walk allowed me to clear my head even more.
There's probably a shitload more I could tell you about the past few days, but frankly... I think I cleared my head enough for today.
7:00 AM