Back in 2002 some friends and I took a trip out to Whistler, BC for some amazing skiing. One of the days we went heliskiing. Here’s video shot both by one of the guides mixed with some of my own.

I shot a lot of ski video that season, to follow up my 2000-2001 Ski Video. While I was just learning Final Cut when editing the first, I didn’t edit the second during the season and meant to wait till the summer. Sadly I never got around to it, so these video clips (along with many more) had been buried on tapes and hard drives in the basement.

Editing in iMovie 11 is much easier than the Final Cut 2.0 that I used (though still less capable). It’s enough to throw together simple videos which is about all I have time for these days. One annoyance is that its processing deinterlaces these old DV videos so the quality is somewhat degraded. Not a big issue with the guide’s lower-quality camera video here, but I would need to invest in FCE if I were ever to go back to editing my old DV.

Last weekend our house was filled with deafening noise day and night as the I93 bridges in front were replaced. All 14 of the I93 overpasses in Medford are being replaced on weekends this summer using the latest construction techniques to entirely replace a bridge over just a weekend instead of years. I rushed home on friday to beat the rotary closing to traffic at 6pm, and had front-row views of the impressive demolition and construction work all weekend. Giant jackhammers pummeled the bridges all night Friday, while the huge beam-eating machine literally shook the entire house for hours. 16-wheeled cranes moved in on Saturday to lift the precast sections of bridge. Amazingly, exactly 24 hours after the concrete was first broken, the last piece was in place. Sunday quieted down for gap filling concrete and line painting, and everything reopened for the Monday morning commute.

I made a long video of the process for anyone geeky enough to watch, including time lapse from 5,000 photos shot from my bedroom window. Be sure to crank up the sound to simulate what we had to sleep through!

Update: You can watch video captured from their professional photographer here and several photo galleries on his website.

Today we had some long overdue tree work done around the house. Watch the video to see some of their work in the morning and some before/after views. We had one dead tree that had split and almost fallen on the bedroom for a full year, and another large rotting branch over the driveway threatening to crush both cars. Trees had clearly not been pruned in many years aside from some of my own work on the lower branches a year ago. And while we at first considered removing our towering front pine tree, we instead trimmed up the bottom to open up the front of the house. Returning after work and seeing the difference was almost unsettling. The back feels much larger now after significant pruning of the driveway tree, and the front of the house needs both lawn and paint work now that is no longer hidden! Most importantly, I no longer need to get very nervous every time we get high winds.

For the first time in three years, I pulled my bike out of the basement and got it running again. I just went on a quick bike ride today to make sure everything was still working OK, heading along the Mystic River. Medford has some nice trails there in Mystic Riverbend Park, and you can continue underneath 16 over to MDC’s reservation and a tower overlooking the Boston skyline. This is all within a mile and a half of my house. I recorded some video clips along the way.

Last friday was one of several snowy commutes that I’ve had in January, and I realized my normal dash mount allowed the iPhone’s camera a view of the road. So I recorded a few clips, if you feel like experiencing the crawl of traffic with me.

The video was shot vertically in portrait mode, as my iphone normally sits there running INRIX Traffic while driving. I was wondering what effort I would need to go through to rotate and crop the video, which is beyond the capabilities of iMovie on the computer. But a new free iPhone video editing app just came out that allowed me to do so very easily: Splice. In fact I’d say it is easier to use than iMovie for iPhone. Sadly it is currently prone to bugs and crashes (you MUST add transitions to get around export errors). But the price is right, and I’m sure it will be improved soon. It’s great to be able to shoot and edit together clips without ever leaving your phone-in fact 720tube lets you upload in full resolution, so there’s truly no need for a computer.

Today’s storm had 1-2 feet of wet, heavy snow and most of Boston stayed home to wait for it to end. Between the sounds of icey-snow-covered tree branches smacking the house, I awoke to the eerie silence of no traffic outside except for the occasional bus or plow. I spent almost the entire day shoveling out. I took the opportunity to take some video with my Canon T2i, also to test out the Magic Lantern firmware hack with its useful extra features. Watch the video on YouTube to see it in full HD resolution.