Category: Uncategorized

Today was busy out covering the snow in the Twin Cities for The Weather Channel. Now its back to finishing up the editing of the video’s for the new site.

2/8/2006 Very busy working on the new videos. I’m almost done with all the encoding. It has been a really huge project and I have 3 computers busy encoding the WMV files while I work on the final catalog files on the fourth computer. It’s a lot of work but once it is done, it is done!!! Then I just have to start working on the scripting for the new site so I can block out all the people hot linking into my sites to stop the bandwidth pirates.

Video Footage from the Minnesota/South Dakota border from the Blizzard Warning Area of intense 55MPH winds and blowing & falling snow creating reduced visibility and hazardous travel conditions.

Video footage includes:

1. Blowing snow across the roadway and falling snow.
2. Heavy blowing snow and low visibility.
3. Strong winds across the landscape.
4. Heavy snow burst and strong winds in the trees.

5-9 50MPH plus wind gusts on tress and signs.

1. Large Garbage dumpster buffeting and slapping up and down in the wind.
2. Stop sign shaking in the winds.
3. Car driving in low visibility.

I was having a hard time with the way my office at home was setup so I stopped work on the encoding and designed it. Now I have all 4 computers in a half circle around me so I can work on all of them at once. It really has helped to speed thing up.

Working on a ton of stuff today. Stringers are shooting video in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and I was out shooting in Minneapolis. It was a busy day but I like it that way. Yesterday it was nice, today, it was cold. Temps are a good 20-25 degrees lower then yesterday.

Working on all the digital video files for the site and relaxing in the 45F Temps.

Today was a very busy day for me. Not only was I covering the snow early this morning but I was back out shooting video for The Weather Channel this afternoon. In between, still encoding video for the on line video collection. This Windows Media stuff takes a while but then again, I have about 300 videos that I’m making for the site.

I was out shooting some snow video for The Weather Channel this morning around Minneapolis. The snow is back but not much to save this winter. It looks like my forecast for a brutal winter is busted. My forecast was for a wicked winter but I was wrong. Hey, it looked like it was going to be nasty the way that November started out.

1/29/2006 Today I was out shooting more video for The Weather Channel of the snow in the Twin Cities. Snow is rare now with the record temps that we have been having.

Snow video in St. Paul, MN for the Winter Carnival

1/28/2006 Out playing Weather Channel photographer again today with this strange weather. It is the middle of winter but it was not snow but rain falling in the Twin Cities. The St. Paul Winter Carnival is really felling the hurt with the ice sculptures melting and lakes thawing out.

1/27/2006 I get back from Florida and did not notice that much of a difference in the weather…

I was out around the lakes in Minneapolis for The Weather Channel to video tape the warm weather. Shorts in the middle of winter, yes, it’s that warm outside.

1/26/2006 Today I finished up my Scuba training and just need to take the open water tests. I am loving this new hobby. It has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for fun and for photo and video work. After I got out of class, I met up with my buddy Brian who also shoots for BNVN in the Tampa / St. Pete / Sarasota market for us for The Weather Channel. We hung out for the day and kicked around some video ideas for different locations and shot some footage for TWC.

After leaving Brian’s place I decided to head south to Punta Gorda to stop in to the Celtic Ray Pub to see how they were doing.

The Celtic Ray is the Pub that we helped out with selling the Hurricane Charley DVD so that they could get back on their feet. Well, I’m happy to say that they are doing great and their already starting the rebuilding of the building that was destroyed in Charley.

Below is a photo of the owner, Kevin, showing me the Magazine cover that he was on that talks about how he made a come back after the storm. While hanging out at the pub and talking to some friends from Punta Gorda, it was great to know that with all the B. S. that I had to put up with from the egos of a few people that were involved with that project, it was all worth it to see people having a good time and relaxing.

Everyone told me that night, if it was not for the Hurricane Charley Video, the pub would not be their today. And as the cook, Matt said to me, don’t worry about the other guys that got rock star egos, you nailed Katrina in New Orleans and your on a successful solo career now.

1/24/2006 After my scuba class today I was out shooting video for The Weather Channel of the dense fog. The fog got really bad after the cold front moved through the area. One person died after being hit while crossing the road in the fog and the driver did not see them in time.

1/23/2006 Today I was out shooting some video for The Weather Channel in the St. Pete Beach area. I was out before my scuba class on the beach to get people getting in their morning walks and runs. Then after class, I went back to my hotel and noticed a perfect sunset. So I shot some more footage for The Weather Channel evening show.

1/17/2006 Out shooting video of the snow and poor roads for The Weather Channel for the morning shows.

1/16/2006 Out shooting for The Weather Channel morning show.

1/14/2006 Today I was out doing some Paparazzi work at the Mall Of America. Real Paparazzi work with Sophia Bush (Brooke Davis) and Hilarie Burton (Peyton Sawyer) of the WB TV Show, One Tree Hill. I was able to get some great B-Roll footage with them signing autographs for all their fans. They both seemed pretty down to earth and amazed with how many people showed up to see them. Hilarie also explained the bandage on her right hand. She said “It was a bar fight but then Sophia joked and said no, my dog bit her.” Hilarie then said, “I cut my hand in the kitchen while washing dishes the other day but a bar fight or dog bite sounded better.”

1/14/2006 PM – The Weather Paparazzi Blog Pages are finally up and running. Everything is back on line but some links may not be working still

1/13/2006 Today as you can tell, I’m working on the new blog page. This is a lot of work to clean up the mess I had with my blog. A lot of mess, but when its done, it will look a lot more professional.

1/12/2006 Out playing Weather Channel Photographer again today. Today it was in the 40s and was almost spring like to where I was thinking about gearing up for some storm chasing.

1/11/2006 Almost done with the video catalog for the new site. Month’s of worth of work, no, over a years worth of work is just about done. I can’t believe it is almost done and then I can move on and focus on just updating the new Weather Paparazzi site with new content, and of course, having fun shooting the new content. How Much Content Have I Reviewed? Well, Let Us Add Up The Hard Drive’s. Twenty Seven Drives! 1- 40 Gig, 7 – 80 Gig, 3 – 160 Gig, 3 – 200 Gig, 10 – 250 Gig, & 3 – 300 Gig Drives. Total 27 @ 5.04TB. That’s over Five Terabytes of video that I have reviewed for the new site so I could pick out the coolest footage from my 8 years of video since I started freelancing for The Weather Channel. Now that I think back at all the work I have done on this project, damn, it was a lot more then I could ever conceive but it was well worth it. Once this is finished, I will have so much free time on my hands I won’t know what to do until storm chasing season starts in a few months.

1/8/2006 Wow, almost 2 weeks straight on keeping a normal schedule. Its so strange to wake up in the morning and start working in my home office by 8am then stop at 4pm and then leave it to relax. I’m shocked at how much work I was able to do by keeping a normal schedule. All of the video is digitized and I’m well on my way to completing the video catalog and indexing. I took a break from the video work this afternoon to go out and play weather channel photographer again since it was snowing out. First time we have had snow in the city in a while.

1/6/2006 Today I completed the very last tape review at 10:20 this morning. Everything is in the computer now and I just have to review all the digital video files. The plan is to release weather paparazzi in a week and then slowly ramp down the lightningboy.com site as I transition it all to the new site. All of the hurricane video, and more of the Hurricane Katrina video as well as the rest of the canes from this year will be on line for viewing. Yes, there will be ad’s but hey, I’m a paparazzi, A Weather Paparazzi, I sell this stuff to make a living 🙂

1/4/2006 Another busy but productive day. My new years resolution was to get back into living a normal life with normal sleep. So far so good. I have not felt this great in years and on day five of getting at least 8 hours of sleep a day and working during the day like normal people, its strange but I’m also getting a lot of work completed. I have a huge chunk of video now edited and cataloged and I’m down to the last 450 Gigs of video to review. One hour is about 15 gigs so its a few more days worth of work until the catalog is complete. Today I also got my new video editing software and no sooner then I loaded it on the laptop, the assignment desk called and wanted me to go out and shoot some cold weather footage. I’m just finishing up the video for them right now and then back home to play with the new software.

1/3/2006 Out covering some Dense Fog in southern Minnesota.  With the airport being closed due to fog, I was able to go out to the end of the runway and get some foggy video.

1/1/2006 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Today is an historic day to say the least. BNVN is going into its 6th year and as of 10:40 AM central time this morning, I finished the tape archive digitization project. I have reviewed over 500 hours of my own footage and digitized the best stuff for the new web site, Weather Paparazzi that is set to launch in a couple weeks. Now its all digitized, but I still have to review the footage and catalog it all for stock and on line streaming, but that is the easy part.

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 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.

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…

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 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 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.

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

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 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.

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.