December 2005 Blogs

12/31/2005 Home Relaxing and letting the computer run on auto pilot to digitize the last of the video archive for the new Weather Paparazzi website. Almost done with the archive.

12/30/2005  Playing Weather Channel Photographer

12/30/2005 Today was an extreme video day. I started shooting at midnight for The Weather Channel for the early show and then I was booked up again for second morning show. I got a lot of great snow footage today including a couple of aftermath of some cars spun out due to the roads being slick.

12/30/2005  Playing Weather Channel Photographer

When I thought I was done for the day, and could relax, I got booked for a third video of people out in the snow for the new Weekend View show on The Weather Channel. The producers wanted to have some fresh footage of the snow storm today for tomorrow morning broadcasts.

12/28/2005 Back home relaxing and working on Weather Paparazzi site and sorting through all the video from yesterday.

12/27/2005 Took a break from working on the new Weather Paparazzi web site to go out on a day long video adventure. I needed more fog footage so I headed south to the Minnesota and Iowa boarder to shoot some night time footage. The next thing I know I was feeding out footage to The Weather Channel then I was in Des Moines Iowa. Today was a very busy day but I got a ton of fog footage for the new site. I just wish there was some weather in Kansas City so I could have shot three videos in three states in one day for TWC. Maybe next week…

12/27/2005  Playing Weather Channel Photographer
12/27/2005 Playing Weather Channel Photographer

Below are all the videos packages that I shot for TWC.

12/24/2005 Ho Ho Ho, this morning it was a white christmas, well, sort of… The fog over the Twin Cities was thick early this morning.

12/23/2005 Busy working on finishing up the new video archive. I had to pick up another 500 Gigs of hard disk space to help get everything into the order. Yes I’m over the 5 Terabyte’s of disk storage space. I only have a couple more hundred hours of footage to review before I start the coding of the new page. But a lot of that will be reviewing and double checking of footage.

12/20/2005  Playing Weather Channel Photographer
12/20/2005 Playing Weather Channel Photographer

12/20/2005 Out shooting cold weather video for The Weather Channel again today. I can’t wait until the warm up happens later this week.

12/19/2005 Back to working on the webpage revamp. I’ve decided that I’m pretty much throwing out the Lightningboy.com page and the BNVN.com pages and going for the Weather Paparazzi and rebuilding everything from the ground up with everything working the way I want it to work. Correct spelling, html that is not broke, you know, doing it right the way it should be in the first place. Before I begin the new Weather Paparazzi page, I’m actually reading several books on internet programing and retraining myself with the latest knowledge, not the stuff I knew 5 years ago…

12/18/2005  Playing Weather Channel Photographer
12/18/2005 Playing Weather Channel Photographer

12/18/2005 Okay, thought I would have the day off but no,  The Weather Channel Assignment desk called me at home and woke me up and said they needed more Minneapolis weather video but this time people doing stuff in the sub zero winds.

12/18/2005 With the extreme cold moving into the area tonight, the temps have dropped well below zero and now we have false aurora.  The extreme cold and still air is making ice crystals that reflect the street lights and it looks kind of like the Northern Lights.

12/18/2005  Playing Weather Channel Photographer
12/18/2005 Playing Weather Channel Photographer

12/17/2005 Out playing Weather Channel Photographer, again at the Mall Of America. Man its been a busy weather week but I’m loving it.

On location at Under Water World for The Weather Channel

12/16/2005 On Assignment for The Weather Channel for a in depth look at the Minneapolis Weather. Out around town shooting lot’s of footage including some interesting stuff at the Mall of America in a private tour of Under Water World. It was pretty cool at Underwater World with sharks swimming right over you as you walk through the glass tunnel. Oh course I got to talk to Santa who took a break from the North Pole to visit Camp Snoopy 🙂

Also got more snow video here in Minneapolis last night.

12/15/2005 Ok, yesterday was nuts. Four different video packages for The Weather Channel yesterday and I have to go back out for another project for them today about the winter weather. As promised, here is the first 3 packages from yesterday. Click on the image below to watch the raw feed that was sent into The Weather Channel.

12/14/2005 Playing Weather Channel Photographer

12/14/2005 I know I have not been doing a lot of updates but that’s because I have been busy for the past week and a half shooting video for The Weather Channel and working on stuff behind the scenes. Today I have been playing weather channel photographer for the last 12 hours and shot 3 packages for TWC from Midnight through Noon. Traffic really sucked this morning but I was able to get some cool footage. Minneapolis International Airport was getting dumped on with lots of snow as well. I’ll post the footage later tonight of everything I shot today.

12/13/2005 Yes I’m still around, been super busy here with the new webpage and the video archive. I have several hundred videos that I’m putting up on the web for the new site in a few weeks. I have finally embraced the name of what I am doing for a living, it is not Storm Chasing, because just about anyone is called a Storm Chaser these days from professionals to people who run out side of their home in the middle of a storm with their video camera. No, I’m not going to be known or called a Storm Chaser because I do much more then just Storm Chasing. I’m a Weather Paparazzi! Look for the new site to launch in the next few weeks. It will be a merger of BNVN.com which is the business side of the company and Lightningboy.com, which is my personal site.

Weather Paparazzi
Weather Paparazzi

12/9/2005 Out shooting for TWC today.  It is freaking cold outside here in Minneapolis, MN

12/8/2005 Not weather footage but was out shooting B-Roll of fire fighters in cold weather at an apartment fire.

12/6/2010 Sub zero weather in Minneapolis this morning and I was out in it for TWC.

12/5/2005 This afternoon it was subzero hella cold here in Minneapolis, MN.  The cold snap is just brutal. 

12/3/2005 UPDATE, where the heck have I been and what have I been doing for the last 10 days?

First off, dealing with family stuff since my dad is sick. If your a kid reading this page, DON’T START SMOKING!!! What else have I been up to? Well I have been very busy. I am just about finished with the server switch. Why did I move all my business around? Simple, AVOID USING BPIS or Back Pack Internet Service in Minneapolis at all costs. THEY SUCK. They bought out the ISP I had been doing business with for 8 years and changed everything and their service went down hill fast. I have had to move everything to Godaddy that has the same setup that SCC had before they got bought out. Ton’s of work that I did not need to do but got forced to do. Lots of wasted time. Also out shooting video of some crazy winter weather today.

In the last 10 days I have also been very busy shooting video of the snow and cold for The Weather Channel. Yesterday alone was a full day with shoots for the morning and evening shows. Busy but I like it and now I’m working on the new site now that everything is almost synchronized after the server move.