Corfizz

From Poverty to Africa

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:26:34 GMT

From Poverty to Africa, whose working title was Un Homme, Une Femme, Leur Chameau et L'Angleterre is an amateur independent feature film conceived and produced by MatthewTisot. It is set for a summer 2010 release.

GrammarRefs

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:18:27 GMT

I have made some pocket-size 'emergency' grammar reference booklets, inspired by PagePacker. You should go to that web page to see how to fold and cut the page to make your booklet. It only requires a single side of A4! These booklets would only be useful for people who have already studied the grammar that it refers to; they can then use it simply as a handy, quick reference.

Bear in mind that I don't speak Turkish or Spanish (at least, not very well); I compiled all the information by researching various sources, including http://turkishlanguage.co.uk and http://www.cromwell-intl.com/turkish/nouns.html. I didn't copy anything - just read and absorbed the info and set it down in as compact and helpful a way as I could find. Needless to say, however, that there may be inaccuracies or omissions. If you notice any, please contact me.

German
- Ready-to-print PDF
- PDF
Spanish
- Ready-to-print PDF
- PDF
Turkish
- Ready-to-print PDF
- PDF
French, Italian and Spanish all together - this one needs beta-testing!
- PDF

Hello

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:12:36 GMT

There is, unfortunately, not much of a unifying principle behind the various projects you'll find on this site - accessible from the links on the left-hand side - except that they are all made by the same person. The most significant, of those that are completed, are:

My three science-fiction/fantasy novels
FerrousRing - an experimental, philosophical text adventure
WorldConquest - a text-based RPG
TheBibleRetold - more text adventures
Physics Lightning Tour video
Some music that I have composed
Grammar references for Spanish, German, Turkish, French and Italian.

But there are many more things besides.

An upcoming project is the feature film, From Poverty to Africa.

If you want to find out what's new on this site, click on the link on the right-hand side that says "Tags and tiddlers". A timeline should pop up, showing when each page was last updated. Therefrom I sense niftiness!

Tisot

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:56:00 GMT

MatthewTisot.

MatthewTisot

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:51:00 GMT

Matthew Tisot, friend and comrade of mine, is the director of the indie film, TheCamelOnWheels, which I edited. We are now working on his next feature, From Poverty to Africa (working title: Un Homme, Une Femme, Leur Chameau et L'Angleterre).

For a little while he had a blog at Blogspot for 'Matisia and Contoria Productions'; the posts from that blog have been moved over to Corfizz. His posts on this website are tagged with Tisot.

Corfizz

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:27:00 GMT

My real name is Justin Morgan.

The eclectic nature of this website reflects the diversity of the things that have interested me over the years. I enjoy programming, video editing, story writing, essay writing, musical composition and language learning. For a long time, however, my main interest lay in theoretical physics and mathematics. But for all the time that these pursuits have consumed, they are - nowadays at least - little more than hobbies.

You can e-mail me at this address:
feedback at corfizz dot com

And my Skype user name is entrentity.

Essays

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:27:00 GMT

I actually enjoy writing essays. Here are some.

Also see the Article category of this website.

FourNobleTruths

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:25:00 GMT

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism are, roughly speaking:

The fact that all life entails pain and suffering.
The idea that the cause of this suffering is the ignorance of anatta or 'not-self', the concept that things have no intrinsic identity. This ignorance gives rise to 'cravings' for things based on their 'self', causing suffering because they really have no 'self'.
The fact that there is an end to suffering.
The suggestion that the end of suffering can be brought about by following the Noble Eightfold Path.

The trouble, in my opinion, is that Buddhism's 'solution' to suffering - the Eightfold Path - focuses solely on things that a single person can do with their own mind. It doesn't make any suggestions on how society itself might be made better.

Denying Individual Efficacy: Resolving the Problems of Freedom and Identity

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:14:00 GMT

The abstract of the essay:
The claim of personal causal efficacy in humans and other living things is not falsifiable, but has considerable counter-evidence from studies of consciousness. Still, there are benefits to rethinking the problem entirely. By considering the problem of assigning things identity, both in philosophical terms and in light of theories of quantum mechanics, we can establish that the 'person' in personal volition does not rightly exist; if generally accepted, this view would prompt a complete overhaul in our perception of ourselves.

You can download the essay here.

It is in fact the first part of a more ambitious work.

42 Tapes

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:23:00 GMT

Looks like I've got my work cut out for me: 42 tapes on the shelf and more to come.

16 April 2008

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:00:00 GMT

I have finally published two of my novels online: The Microcosm of Paragon and Introducing Zirth, available on Lulu.com, in paperback, and for digital download.

Update: By reducing the font size to something more sensible, I have been able to lower the print cost of Paragon.

11 August 2008

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:00:00 GMT

StyleSheet

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 09:58:00 GMT

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ColorPalette

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:55:00 GMT

Background: #001
Foreground: #fff
PrimaryPale: #000
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Error: #f88

Camera woe

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:25:00 GMT

Out of my camcorders, only one of them - a Samsung - has a microphone port, which I use to connect an external microphone for (hopefully) better sound quality. Specifically, I'm using the Røde VideoMic. Imagine the panic, then, when the Samsung camcorder suddenly comes up with an error message with the eject symbol and a letter 'D'. Of course, I eject the tape and even try inserting a new, blank one, but the error message persists.

I need a camera with a microphone for the location filming in France - tomorrow. I frantically search for a camcorder on eBay that accepts collection in person and which has both a microphone port and a shoe mount... (It's very surprising how many DV camcorders fail to have either of these immensely useful features.)

But it turns out that the error message is documented in the manual in the troubleshooting section; apparently it indicates a 'mechanical fault'. Its advice is not only to eject the tape but also take the battery out and put it back in again. After doing this, the camera works. The question is - how can a mechanical fault be fixed by simply removing the tape and battery and putting them back in again?

Green screening

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:27:00 GMT

Most people on the web are probably familiar with 'Photoshopped' images, where an element of one image has been cut out and placed onto another image. Achieving this effect with moving images, however, is not quite so easy, because you'd need to cut out the desired element(s) from each and every frame. What you need is a consistent way of knowing which are the elements you want and which are the bits you want to cut out, and the best way of doing that is to have the desired elements (usually actors) performing in front of a plain colour background. All you have to do then is get the computer to detect that particular colour and make it transparent, and then have the new background (which could be a video itself) placed behind. This technique is called chroma keying.

You can achieve a wide range of effects and solve quite diverse problems using chroma keying. You can make actors appear to be at places that you can't practically visit; you can show news footage or weather maps behind them; you can make them appear to be flying or falling; you can have two or more clones of an actor side by side; and you can create complex 'composites' by layering various elements together, which were shot separately.

There are several complications, however. Since one particular colour is going to be removed, it won't do to have the actors wearing anything of that colour; it also won't do, ideally, to have slight variations in that colour - something which could come about through having shadows or even creases in the backdrop.

I did some testing with a green screen yesterday. I had some green muslin cloth stapled to the picture rail in my dining room; I opened the French doors to let in some daylight and then did some filming in front of it. The cloth was extremely creased and unevenly lit: the top of the screen was in more shadow than the bottom. I had no lighting equipment. Obviously, I wasn't expecting good results. I imported the footage into Final Cut Pro and used its chroma keying features to see what I could achieve. The results surprised me. Fiddling with the settings - widening the colour range and introducing a luma key - allowed me to get pretty good results despite the non-ideal conditions. There were a few difficulties: small amounts of shadowy green on the edges of me - but this can be rectified using the edge thin feature or with an extra 'matte choker' filter; an unusual 'shimmering' effect in the hair - which can be rectified by not keying on very dark luma; and the fact that I accidentally got the rest of the wall in shot (the bit above the picture rail) - but this can be solved with a so-called 'garbage matte'.

When we do green screening in the film, we will have soft box lighting so hopefully it will be even easier to get a good effect.

Land Ends Here

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:28:00 GMT

[non-serious point]
I discovered *to my horror* while attempting to drive to the Americas to visit, say, Colombia (as one does), that when I reached Land's End there was a body of water large enough to fill over 3,595 quadrillion [short scale] bath tubs in my path, and, upon phoning the Emergency Gargantuan Number of Bathtubs Hotline I found that the delivery charge was 68p more than I could reasonably afford.
[/non-serious point]

So anyway, I was in Land's End 'location scouting' (as spying on places you intend to film is referred to in the business), and was rather surprised by how much less commercialised it was, when compared to the impression I had been given by their advertising. Now, it just so happens that in the scene at Land's End, the characters reference the extent to which the place is commercialised. Whoops. Also potentially problematic is that the characters decide to leave essentially on the basis that there are far more people there than they were expecting. Yet when I got there, I could count the number of others around using only my fingers and toes (of which I currently have the average number). Whoops again.

It is worth mentioning that the part of Land's End beyond the (much less extensive than expected) commercialised part rivals Bangor in beauty. It would have been lovely to have my friend Sara (who, it so happens, has a minor role in the film) and her camera equipment with me when I was driving along the A30, at Bangor, and at Land's End, as I am sure the (excellent) photographer could have recorded the beauty of the places in an awe-inspiring manner. This is especially the case with the phenomenon on the A30 as, since the period before sunrise each day is transient, there will not be any further opportunities to record the event.

Didn't I have a lovely time the two hours I went to Bangor

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:29:00 GMT

(but it wasn't all for under a pound [you know], as, despite Amber paying for my food/drink (until such time as I pay her back), the fuel cost was £50)

Since the beginning of filming was so impending, I ended up taking the scripts to the main actors and camera operator in person rather than relying on the postal service. It is unfortunate that, since Amber was still in Bangor, where she attends university, this meant a six hour long, 400 mile outbound journey from Penryn. Or, rather, it would have been unfortunate, had it not been for two things:

Firstly, setting out at 03:45 and travelling East along the A30 through Cornwall, the pre-sunrise sky was in gently undulating waves of gold for some distance above the horizon, and somehow looked to have depth, such that the optical illusion was created that the horizon was actually at the point where the blue part of the sky met this gold, and that a golden desert of sand dunes stretched out in the distance, beyond the trees and fields, to the horizon. I have never before seen such a wondrous sky effect.

Secondly, Bangor itself is highly picturesque, with the road approaching the city being bordered on one side by lofty cliffs, and on the other by the sea, across which one can see Anglesey beyond the Menai Strait. The road itself actually goes through the cliffs in a number of places, although the tunnels in question admittedly don't quite match up to some I've traversed in Switzerland.

As it happens I actually heard of the Bangor in Northern Ireland before the Welsh one (through reading Across the Barricades by Joan Lingard, which I would definitely recommend, with the caveat that I was 12 when I read it), although I suspect that while the Irish Bangor has almost four times the population of the Welsh one, the average person might have become aware of the Welsh one first. I mean, apart from the song, most Bangors in countries formerly in the British Empire were named after the Welsh one (or so I read on Wikipedia).

TheCamelOnWheels

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 08:55:00 GMT

The Camel on Wheels, the first film from Matthew Tisot (unless you count Wycliffe: The Play Within the Film), is an ultra-low-budget comedy largely in the form of a sketch show. It's not currently available on the internet, but it may be soon.

(I could have sworn I got the camel from the Open Clip Art Library, but I can't seem to find it now; it was called Machovka_Camel.svg.)

Video

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 08:33:00 GMT

I do a lot of video editing, and I'm using Final Cut Studio. Don't think that means the videos are going to be good; it still depends on how the user uses the software, rather than the software itself.

Editing for MatthewTisot:
- From Poverty to Africa - set for a summer 2010 release!
- Wycliffe: The Play Within the Film
- TheCamelOnWheels - not set for a release
- GeographyChallenge - ditto
Physics Lightning Tour - This video is far better than the maths one below.
Mathematics: Beyond Reality - This video is embarrassing. So laugh! Or just use it as a Final Cut Studio demo.
SavingTheWorld
Dreamrise
- See YouTube.
A Montage of Video Games - OK. So I'm not afraid to admit that I like computer games. But I do have high standards. Clips of some of my favourite games are in that video, but there are also clips from games I've never played but which I consider to have a good reputation.
The Corfizz Bubble Logo.
The Corfizz Space Logo (made with lots of stock Motion objects - except Jupiter and the logo itself).