LoftyPursuits

A VR test video

Play this, just music almost no talking, but you can drag the image around and look at different places. If you are watching on a phone, you can tilt it to look around.

Let me know what you think.

-GReg

Podcast #11 Grapefruit candy and a riot of zoot suits.

We go to some background about my grapefruit tree, the grapefruit candy we make, and the music choice we made. We also cover the history of the song Zoot suit riot, and we cover the riots from the 1940's that the song was based off. We also read your letters that you sent to podcast@pd.net

Binaural test #4 I think ..

The last video taught me a lot, and there were two or three sound guys who chimed in an taught me about notch filtering, and a few things about distortion. This let me re-design what I was making. I think this is rig #4, I'm losing count.

In any event, when this uploads , please check it out. I think it's much more pleasing, and I know I have the sound balanced better so you can feel like you in the middle of everything. I'm not going to do this all the time, or even often, but I lo...

Doing more Tiki research.

And waiting for the Disasternauts to go on stage.

The Binaural Sound video

We made a custom candy order of the radiation symbol in Strawberry Lemonaid. It may take a few minutes for the video to finish processing. 

I'd love to have you listen to it with headphones as my hearing is not symmetrical, so I'm not 100% sure it was done right. 

It will go live sometime tomorrow (I know I missed my Thursday release I've been trying to do) I suspect I'll put it up fairly early.

Binaural Audio part 2

Well I re-built the rig. This time I made the ears out of a printable rubber called TPU and the frame is PLA. This should improve the quality of the audio. Also I made the "Head Shadow" 1cm larger in radius.

We get to see how this works with Tomorrows video, that I hope to post early here. Please let me know if it works with headphones for you.

I'm a bit worried about this. The shop is very noisy from the refrigeration for the ice cream and vents and well, everything.  I did ...

#10 Pikes Soda Fountain, New T-Shirts and a Giant Banana

This weeks podcast is about my visit to pikes soda fountain, the influence of Andy Warhol on my work, and the story about our giant banana.

Binaural sound test

Let me know what you think, but keep in mind it won't work without headphones.

The strangest request of the year

Well I got a call from a major firm that wants maple sausage flavored candy canes, and a lot of them. The flavor sample that I commissioned came in today. It sure smells right. Not sure how right that is, but I get to test it next week. I better make this during the breakfast hours since the place already smells of bacon and sausage.

Still playing with Binaural sound,

Ok, the head was too top heavy so I designed a body for my ears. Sadly I glued the mics into that head, so I'm waiting for new mics before I can test. The storm has delayed everything Amazon.

I think this can be balanced out on my 3 axis gimble. Fingers crossed.

On the flip side, I think I have design for 3D printing down cold ;)

Tiki Candy assortment on-line for order!

The video is up. I'm going to try and post some of the concert I recorded of the Intoxicators for you later.

Mai Tai - Tiki Candy

Well I made the first of the series. Mai Tai. While I think I could improve the contrast on the future ones, I am happy with how it came out. It tastes great. It will be part of a 4-8 flavor set that I hope to release in a few weeks, and start taking pre-orders on this week. I'll give you all advanced warning when I do this.

-Greg

#9 Raspberry Drops and how I create stories.

This weeks podcast will cover the history of some of our equipment and how I come up with story ideas.

Binaural sound part 2

Ok,  i was not too happy with the first rig, and then I learned about something called head shadow.

It's not just to get the ears right, but you need to have a head shadow in the way to make this stuff convincing.

There are lots of expensive ways to do this, but I had this Styrofoam head that I until today stored Gefforey's head (mask) on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js-gv7VVg

So Cater...

I only have ears for you

So folks REALLY want me to record the natural sounds of the store when I'm making the candy.

This is very hard as we have tons of refrigeration running all the time. The hummmmmm is not too noticeable when yoiu are in the shop but my mics just love it.

We are thinking of coming in at about 5am before we open and making a batch and recording it, but I figure if I'm going to do this, lets do it all the way. I just 3d printed some ears and I'm thinking of doing it with binaural sound...

Another Rabbit hole I can't figure out

Ok, any guesses why Darpa (our developmental branch of the military) needs am underground location on short notice? 

"Attention, city dwellers! We're interested in identifying university-owned or commercially managed underground urban tunnels & facilities able to host research & experimentation. https://go.usa.gov/xVWCn  It's short notice... We're asking for responses by Aug. 30 at 5:00 PM ET." ...

Developing Subscription Boxes

We've wanted to do subscription boxes for some time. This will take a major upgrade in our order system as I don't want to do this badly. This is the kind of thing that is easy to mess up if you are not truly set up for it.

We are getting closer to being able to do subscription boxes/gift subscriptions/whatever you want to call it.

So I'm looking for input.

1. What would you expect in a box like this (Dream or what you would be happy with,  low and high end).

2. H...

Grapefruit video going on-line tomorrow (but you can see it now!)

https://youtu.be/jcbJVcJrzrU

(well, when it finished uploading, and I will get the title updated later)

A no-dialog advanced video

Youtube compression can be weird. When you upload a video they re-compress it. Normally you don't notice this, but with my slowmotion sometimes if I do it wrong I get a lot of artifacts.

Lately, once i lay out the video, often before I record any dialog, I upload a draft of the video to see what youtube does with it. I have not had time to do this much recently, but I thought you might like a dialog free pre-view of this Thursdays upcoming video on Grapefruit Candy.

Let me know wh...

The oldest podcasts are up for public enjoyment.

I put the first four on-line today. I'm not sure they are propagating to the iTunes of the world yet, but they are located here

http://loftypursuits.libsyn.com/website

There is also a direct link on the right top of http://www.pd.net and under Play at http://www.loftypursuits.com 2019-08-26 01:45:09 +0000 UTC View Post

So I went down a "Caddyshack" rabbit hole.

Some background. Caddyshack is an amazingly funny film. If you have not seen it, stop right now and go and watch it.

This was Billy Murray's break through film. So here I am, going down a rabbit hole, watching clips, reading articles on it's making. I see a clip of Bill Murray's characters  recounting his fictional interaction with the Dalai Lama. (see above.)

It leads me here to where a reporter asks the real Dalai Lama about this film. I'm not sure if he thought Caddyshack ...

Why candy equipment became so common around 1880

I've been wondering for a while why candy became such an industry around 1880. 
It started to become popular to make the machines and start candy businesses in the 1860's but things became big after about 1880.  (Hershey 1894, Wrigley 1891, Wilber Candy 1884) It ends up there was a Sugar tax from the UK, and export tax. since most of the sugar coming to the USA and the UK came from British colonies in the Caribbean, the tax applied. it was repealed in 1874 meaning sugar because c...

A rabbit hole about Lake Peigneur and it's change.

It started as a 6' deep large lake that was freshwater, and it ended up making a 1300 foot deep lake that is salt water now. 

It generated 400' geysers, from the air from the salt mine they hit while doing a test drill for oil.

"The resultant whirlpool sucked in the drilling platform, eleven barges, a tugboat, many trees, and 65 acres (26 ha) of the surrounding terrain. So much water drained ...

#8 Tie Died candy

This is a podcast about  making the tie dyed candy for Terry at Hercules Candies and about the trip I made there a few years back.a year back or so.

We are moving the podcasts to come out on Tuesdays, so the next podcast will be on September 3rd.

Well lets try this again

So I sent this video to Tyler (who's in this video and in this image) and he pointed out that Pikes had closed. I think I knew this, but their website looked live, so I thought they still were open. I re-did some of the dialog to take this into account. The first link will be dead soon.

A new "Travels with Greg" and I go to Pikes old fashioned soda fountain in Charlotte N.C. and hang out with Tyler their head soda jerk.

Pink Floyd ... With a glass harmonica

So what Pink Floyd was playing in Venice Italy they stumbled across a street performer who's playing what I think it's called the glass harmonica. it's wine glasses with wet lips that are tuned so you can play complicated music on it. They got them on stage the next day. It amused me.

Here's some more links to people cell phone cams the concert.

h...

Looking for suggestions for the new video

Tomorrow I hope to film a video that will be released Thursday, but none of the videos I've have the the lineup to be made are ready for prime time yet. 

I'm not sure what to expect, but do you have any suggestions?

-GReg

Next major draft of the Banana Shirt design.

So I felt the skin and the banana was lacking the texture of the skin, and by going down another rabbit hole I learned that the original album cover was a sticker over a pink peeled banana. Since i had some of Andy's original vision here I extrapolated from that. I also added a tag line since a pun is always in order with me. I added an image of my banana candy (need to make sure that has heavy enough lines to reproduce ... might need to go). 

I also realized what was bothering me ...

Going down a underground rabbithole

Spent the evening working on this potential shirt design. I tracked down matching fonts and i peeled the banana of Andy's. I tried to make it match our giant one. Thoughts?

Easter egg

A lot of my videos have inside jokes hidden in them. A viewer found the one in the Raspberry video. There is a blue grass/ukulele version of Eric Carmen's song "All by myself" in the background. Bonus points if you figure out why.