Ungab Productions!

A fig rig is sort of a steering wheel shaped rig for your video camera to help get steadier shots while still keeping fluidity of motion and control. Since I didn't really want to spend $300 today or wait for one to arrive I decided to make a similar rig myself. I decided on a square design (hence squig rig) instead of circular since it's easier to assemble and I think the benefits of a circular design is dubious at best.

This is a video showing off my Squig Rig and a short shot of it in action:

Here are a couple of still photos for a more detailed view of the squig rig iteself and the bracket after it has been put together:

This rig uses four equal length pieces of 3/4" pvc pipe for the walls (make long enough to fit your camera), four 3/4" pvc elbow connectors, one 1/4" wing nut, two 1/4" bolts, one 1/4" hex nut, one 1/4" locking nut, one pipe bracket with space for 1/4" bolts/nuts, super glue, and flat black spray paint.

I think this rig is pretty good, but I think shifting the weight of the camera more towards the center will help increase stability even more, so I've drawn up plans for version 2:

What do you think? Let me know if you give making one of your own a shot. Feel free to ask any questions about the rig and materials as well.

I recently put together a shoulder rig for my Canon EOS T2i and my H2 Zoom audio recorder so that I could take more stable moving videos and record better audio than with the built in microphone.

It's made out of 2 pieces of PVC pipe, a PVC "T" connector, a pipe bracket that has a place for a bolt to fit through, two 1/4 inch bolts, one locking 1/4 nut, one regular 1/4 inch nut, two 1/4 inch wing nuts, and duct tape where needed or cool. The shoulder padding is made of some pantyhose, rags, and rubber bands. Not very expensive, not very pretty, but steady and useful. :)

Here's a video that shows it off pretty well (though my Sony Bloggie has trouble in the low light and close up):

Here are some stills taken with my Canon T2i so you can get a clearer look at how it's all put together:

What do you think? Please, let me know if this helps you out or if you make a variation on this design. :)

I get home late last night and the power is out. After a couple hours, the power finally comes back on. I turn on my machines, but something has gone wrong.

The webserver is down and the hard drive partition that houses everything is fracked.

Definition of "fracked" you ask?

It won't mount, and e2fsck won't fix it because the journal is on a superblock that "reads short" so I feel pretty much screwed. . .

But then I remember - I'm - freaking - awesome.

So I hook up the DVD drive and boot sysresccd. Try to e2fsck from there. Still no good. I'm still awesome, so I keep looking for a solution. Looks like

# tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sda5

followed by e2fsck could help or could frag it. Don't want to do that without a backup of the drive as it is. . .

I decide that I'll pull the data off the bad drive into a file using dd_rescue. I hook up the external hard drive and start that process.

# dd_rescue /dev/sda5 sda5.img

Then I go to sleep. It's a long process.

When I wake up I run

# tune2fs -O ^has_journal sda5.img

and it does it's thing. Then I can run

# testdisk sda5.img

which lets me look through the disk image for alternate superblocks. I pick one and run

# e2fsck -b 32768 -y sda5.img

This checks the filesystem on the drive and answers "y" to any questions. Trying to autorepair the filesystem. It's another long process. I go do some other stuff.

When that's done, I try to mount the image as a loopback device

# mkdir /mnt/tempo
# mount -t ext2 -o loop sda5.img /mnt/tempo
# cd /mnt/tempo
# ls

HOLY CRAP! There's data there. Recovered data! I check through it and it's all looking good. I dance around. Then I start the next part of this journey.

# dd sda5.img /dev/sda5

That's another very-long-process. It puts the fixed data back on the partition.

After the fixed data is back on the partition I finally run

# e2fsck -c /dev/sda5

Which checks the partition for bad blocks and puts all the other stuff back in order.

Then I hit ctrl-alt-del and pray that there's a happy restart!

The system clicks and whirs and restarts. The little Ubuntu logo flashes by and. . . it starts running fsck automagically one more time. . . hmmm. . . how will this end?

Starting

Starting
Starting

WHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

As they say in Brazil, GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

I have recovered my system. The webserver is running. All is right in the world. . .

Oh and:

I - Am - Awesome.

Kalamazoo Valley Museum Movie (mostly scifi) Costumes Special Exhibit Quick Tour

Camera/Post: Phillip J Rhoades http://philliprhoades.com
Music: Black Wings by Oleg Serkov (CC license via Jamendo) http://jamendo.com

Recorded this storm just a few minutes ago, thought I'd upload a clip of it real quick.

Fulton, Michigan 49052 2010-June-18 @20:xxhrs