Rob Knight

Installation Day

March 03, 2006

In January, I had the unenviable task of reinstalling Windows XP on a computer in my father-in-law's office. I'm no stranger to Windows installs, but let's just say I'm more accustomed to Apple's OSX. The two tasks are quite different, as I learned. Windows needs to be installed, then updated, and updated, and updated so you can go on the web safely without getting one of the millions of Windows-related plagues lurking on the Internet. Then you have to go get Firefox, some type of spyware eliminator, an anti-virus program (or two) and finally you can roll.

On this day, that process took about 4 hours (mostly because of Service Pack 2). Lucky for me though, the other computer in the office is an iMac G5 with built-in iSight camera. After installing the iLife 2006 suite on the iMac, I figured what better way to spend my "Windows Wait Time" than make a short film about my day. The new version of iMovie features a variable capture rate, so you can make stop-action movies by setting it to capture a frame every second, instead of every 30th of a second. This feature is KICK ASS! It turned a script-less, horribly colored little short and made it entertaining enough to share with the world.

The entire thing was done in iLife '06 using iMovie, and Garageband for the audio. There is even a cameo by my father-in-law. Enjoy.