Time for a massive update! Read on!

And we have.. movement!

The new Starlord.net blog has really taken off, be sure to stop in and read my latest rants (if you like that sort of thing). Here on blogger, we just added FeedBurner to Miniology Podcast, as well updated StarLord Mini Podcast (archived now.. but still fun to watch!) ... we are hoping that if SMP gets migrated succesfully from dot mac, we will have a smooth transition for Miniology as well, yay! Stay tuned...

My website.. official music and art site for the blogger, podcaster, mac geek, car fanatic known as yours truly.. starlord.net

Miniology Podcast website.. The science and study of all things Mini. Live now at Miniology.com


and for you smart car owners, be sure to check out the new SOCSF, the Smart Owners Club of San Francisco. All the latest smart news from around the world is posted on the main page, and we have a growing forum where fellow owner/enthusiasts can interact and share tips, DIY info, dealer and parts reviews, plan runs and drives, etc! All happening now at socsf.com

East Coast Correspondant

I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to the newest member of our staff, Rich. He’s a service man out in Sicily, Italy (can you say, Italian Job?) who will be joining our ranks from abroad, as well cover East Coast events from his next home base in Washington DC area (it doesn’t get much more official than that...) Cheers! We will see more of Rich and his beautiful 1973 Innocenti Mini soon.

StarLord finally arrives on Blogger

Yeah, I have been doing it myself up until now. Posting on the website, .mac, myspace, and who knows where, but now (thanks to Rich) have finally made the plunge and posting my blogs on the Google-owned "blogger.com" site.

Well, I figure they have done such a great job with so many other tools we use, the search engine of course is top-notch, Google Video (beta) is great, and as they aquired YouTube, that says something-- it says I won't have to post in so many places when the integration or whatever is complete ;)

What other Google tools do we use? We love Google maps, as well the language tools are very helpful when trying to read international news about the Mini from Japan or Germany, for example. Whew, that was a big run-on sentence.

Well you can tell I haven't had my coffee yet this morning. Need to scarf down some breakfast, drink some coffee (or perhaps a Redbull.. but this early?) get dressed, and ready to go to the car show (see last post).

Moving forward, we will begin importing the blogs from other sites into this one. I hear it only lets you see the last 300 or so entries, and the import process is a manual one, so this may take some time before you see all the old posts here, but, they will get here eventually, and, if blogger supports it, we will be able to back-date the posts so that the timestamps follow the correct linear date progression of this idea we call "time"...

Cheers,
Christopher 'StarLord'

International Auto Show in San Francisco

Today we are reporting on the International Auto Show in San Francisco. This will be our 3rd year attending (perhaps we've been more times, but can't remember) and really looking forward to checking out the new concept cars, zero-emission (and low-emission) vehicles, and of course the new models by BMW/MINI, Smart, and Tesla motors. We'll be taking photos and video this year to publish in a future episode of StarLord Mini Podcast.

On assignment

Working on TV shows we often needed press passes to gain media access to events or at least show our credibility for exercising our ‘freedom of the press’ rights. Well, StarLord has finally bit the bullet and joined the International Press Association, thanks to meeting one of the IPA members at Laguna Seca during Monterey Historic. Finally, independent producers and professional contractors in the broadcast industry won’t be left out in the cold without their station ID or placard on their person. As a member of the working press (albeit not my full-time job), we gain the benefits of access, not only to press areas at the track or press-only events/access at shows, but also some of the delightful footage as you will see beginning in episode 11. Would we have gotten this footage otherwise? Well, probably eventually yes, but it does make things easier when you have verification from an established press organization backing your credentials. Thanks, IPA. We are also working on a proposal to startup StarLord’s cable access show again, ala Mini enthusiast oriented, so look for these vodcasts hitting the airwaves (and in a more polished state) again soon!

This just in - Google Video and YouTube!

We’ve posted our podcasts elsewhere, so that everyone (even non-iTunes, non-Mac people) can enjoy them. Look for StarLord Mini Podcast over at Google Video and some episodes appearing on YouTube as well! You can still get episodes from iTunes and directly from my website, though we are setting up a feedburner URL to try and track subscribers and viewers better (since some regulars never write us comments, send us free stuff or even email us their pictures or anything ;) you know who you are!)

There goes iMovie again

iMovie is a great little program. I use Final Cut Pro 4 to do most of my edits now, but still like the ease of use iMovie gives me for inserting transitions and especially titles! Yes, LiveType is awesome, but its modular nature and slow render time (at least, on my PowerBook) make it impractical for doing a quick vodcast. Maybe the learning curve of using the thing has me stumped. On that note, I have yet to use “Soundtrack” the sound editing thingy in Final Cut, so it’s still GarageBand for me. To be fair, I haven’t even tried it yet. So, even though it crashes on me and sometimes horks itself, I still like iMovie for those quick edits and titles. Of course, it is great for publishing to iTunes since Final Cut isn’t integrated at all with any of the iLife programs. If you watch Episode 7, this one was done primarily in Final Cut. If you watch Episode 8 (all 3 parts) the rough cut was done in Final Cut, but all the major editing, transitions, and audio mix-down were done in iMovie.