When you think about how the U.S. Government got $19,000,000,000,000.00 into debt (not exaggerating), $5300 doesn't seem too hard.

I've heard that they are and that the nominations will be out soon. hype

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I know, it's not a comparison, but we are a nation of debt.  And, since I love stats: that number equates to almost $60,000.00 per person.

On a personal note, I never owned a credit card, and I never will.  Once I bought a pre-paid card when it was the only option.

I only recently figured out how to make an image move across the screen in Vegas, whereas I'd been doing it frame by frame for years even though I knew the option was in there somewhere (and it's simple, too).

Silly Penta, when I began with Acid Pro, which is the audio version of Vegas, one of my friends who was all into producing d&B music gave me a tip every time he came over.  And I went to town with each one.

Here's a tip for Vegas (and audio based tricks on Acid pro work on Vegas): You can hold down the ALT key and use your mouse to fine-tune an audio or video clip by dragiging it while ALT is pressed.  That's the first tip, and I used it to fix any of my vocals that were just a bit off!

Bummer. Having roommates is not conducive to audio recording.

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In early 2011 I lost all footage from numerous projects - including my only copy of Windel Hexington and the Telescope of Mystery, the sequel to my very first brickfilm, (Which, itself, only survived because I uploaded it before the crash). The sequel was also my very first stop-motion with a still camera. It was pretty devastating at the time, but, as the years have moved forward, I feel less and less bad about it.

When I first joined youtube (about a year earlier), I uploaded videos like crazy for the first few weeks. And, if you look back, they certainly don't hold a candle up to most brickfilms of the time. Loosing some of these early videos, I eventually realized, is only tragic from a historical standpoint. They weren't technical or story-telling marvels, and, the loss of these videos inspired me to continue on and create more within the coming years.

I guess the morals of the story are:
Always back up footage/data on external hard drives, memory sticks, or anywhere else.
and...
Take that energy (good or bad) and redirect it into a film. I try to take any opportunity to entertain others. It's why I brickfilm in the first place - for personal enjoyment, and, to give others something to watch when they're feeling down, or are just bored.

Isn't that pretty much the point of film anyways?

I'm going to go make my backups now.

This is the sole reason I didn't enter THAC XI. I had a great finished brickfilm (nothing top 10 quality, probably, but, certainly a good little animation with an interesting story) but, had a major problem arise when recording my own lines.

I muted 3 of the 4 takes of lines when exporting just the one, but, for some reason, when it exported, I could hear all tracks at once. This jibber-jabber of noise wasn't usable... and I had already closed Audacity (without saving the project or original RAW takes) due to time restraints. This devastated me so much, I gave up on the project, even though I still had a good 6 to 10 hours left...

And I still haven't released the video since.

I'm sure glad I make back-ups all the time now. I don't want to have a repeat of that again, especially during a contest.