Tree Machine ... Jim Clark, inventor and ahead of his time

Ekka

With Irwin gone and Attenborough as exciting as a snail taking a nap ...

YOU DA MAN!

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Tim Craig

Hey, I like Attenborough!

He is a moment of calmness in an otherwise chaotic world.

Sean Freeman

Yep, I'm with Tim on this one Attenborough can convey more tension in the slightest change in his voice..really, really liked that series on the hidden world of bugs and little critters in the undergrowth...brilliant.

I liked Steve Erwin too, thought he was one of the few celebs around to put his money, time (and life) where his mouth was. Buy back the forests and stop them from being destroyed..love it, simple and effective. Was very sad when he died, very sad.

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Sean

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
- Kahlil Gibran


http://wanderingarborist.blogspot.com/
http://veterantreegroup.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/VeteranTreeGroup

Tree Machine

Very, very, very sad.

That chainsaw hunter clip is part of a 22 minute video I did about three years ago, maybe four. I portrayed Steve's brother, that we were seperated in the womb.

It was my very first video attempt when I decided I wanted to learn to do video. Elizabeth and I watched a LOT of Crocodile Hunter tapes in the days leading up to the job. I hired a camera man, and when the day was over I got the tape, and I hired a video editor to come and sit down and teach me the ways of the edit bay.

That was the beginning of my video hobby, something I learned solely so I could communicate more clearly about all things tree.

Here's another clip from that first-ever video. Our hero is pulling on a long, dead stem with the pole pruner. In attempting to pull it inward and have it snap and go down the inner trunk, the limb was a bit more resistant than he'd expected, and when the tip of the limb snapped, it sent the limb springing the opposite direction, where it snapped off at 60 feet and wallops the garage below. Oops. It made for good fun in the edit bay.

Here's the Tree Dwella. This will make you giggle.

Tree Machine

The bloke takes it in stride!

Ekka

Your friggin mad! We have a mad scientist.

That must have smashed tiles.

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TreeCo

Hahaha!

Good video. If that hit right it might not even damage the asphault shingles that a lot of the houses have here Ekka.

Ekka

No shit!

You can get away with that?

Man, that's pretty wild, no chance here it would have been bad.

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TrevMcRev

Yeah the terracotta tiles most houses here have woulda been destroyed!
I'd consider that a major stuff up!

Had you cut that branch at all or just tried to snap it right off?

TM, you craaazzzyyy

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Tree Machine

They were shingles and the damage was just dobbing some ethicone on the underside and readhering.

Don't take this as me being careless. Damage from the Tree Machine is really rare and to get it on tape, mates, that's a once-in-a-lifer.

That tree was about a hundred feet tall and was struck by lightning years earlier. It had big dead in it, which is why I chose that tree to be a full-feature film. No rigging, except for sling work. Big, high large limbs, lots of action for the tape. Spear cuts stickin em right into the earth. It was real fun. Big limbs bouncin around like pinballs. Good stuff for the camera.

In it, I am wearing a Tilly hat, but no helmet (wardrobe, sorry ANSI). Also there is one clip where I was not tied in twice, actually a couple shots, where I'm over the primaries to the backside of the tree. The one I'm about to share is a 135 degree topside wedge and then use a sling to pull and close the scarf and sling-launch the limb away from the wires and right at the camera (hey cameraman, you may want to put this one on the tripod!)

Actually missed the camera so this clip lacks the full flavor intended.
Excuse my bad Aussie accent.

WMV version 2.4mb

www.treeworld.info/video/135_topside_new.wmv

Tree Machine

By the way, having AUSSIES tell me I'm crazy, now gentlemen, that is the highest form of compliment I can imagine.

Ekka

I got sound and no picture Jim, checked a few things, viewed your other video to make sure.

No picture for me.

See, this .mov Quicktime stuff is a PITA!

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Tree Machine

The time-lapse stuff, the camera formats it into a Quicktime format. The live video, yea, that's Mac.

My video guy can take my stuff and format it into .wmv for me, but it costs me $75 an hour.

TrevMcRev, are you able to open the files since loading Quicktime 7.1 for PC? It's cool they still let you download that for free.

I have what's called Quicktime Pro, which for $30 extra allows you to control more of the video clip, run it backwards and forwards, control the audio portion, add music.

Hey, I haven't given you a video with music yet.... here's a tall locust takedown. This was my very first time-lapse ever, I stumbled across the function one day, and tried it out the next.

This video is the next day. I ascend up, bomb a few limbs, realize I need my pole pruners, drop out, get them, go back up. Lop a few more limbs then begin working the pole pruners. From the ground, the 14,000 V lines didn't look that bad, but from up there, oh my gawd. They were wayyy out over the lines.

I nit picked it down, whittling it down to where the pole pruner would no longer fit the limb, then some creative rigging and Silky cutting. I'm not remembering how exactly I did it, but it took about an hour, just the pole-pruning and technical hairy cuts. And there was a storm blowing in, there were tornado watches out that day. It was a very, very excellent day. Watch the clouds. Just as I got past the crux and I was home-free, I started cutting down the trunk, the batteries on the camera ran out. This video has really nice clarity, though, and is one of my favorites. And music.

Tree Machine

Here is another test video. It's actually a slideshow, I biggerized the screen and elevated the volume with CD quality sound. Turn your volume up!

It's just a test video, a bunch of Silky Saws. The guitar work is to be appreciated. Here's the folding saw slideshow.


Please let me know if these are not opening for you.

Tree Machine

OK, I just stumbled onto a new function. This test is two videos, the first raw, off the camera. The second, is the same video, with music. In putting the video together with the music, you can make the music as long as the video, or the video as long as the music. What is about a six second clip is stretched out, the frame rate slowed so that the six second video will fit into 30 seconds of blazing drum solo amidst Santana's ripping guitar.

Wow, so THAT'S how to slow down a time-lapse to really slow.

You guys teach me all kinds of cool things.


Raw time-lapse

Santana time lapse

It's really important that we can all open these, so everyone's included.

Ekka

First one wouldn't open in the Big Q

But the bottom one did, however no sound.

I did manage to open the Top video with windows viewer but was dodgey.

Conclusion, the Big Q sucks!

I can convert to something more universally accepted, even divX if you like, mpeg1, mpeg3, mpeg4, wmv etc.

My pic camera also rolls out .mov mpeg4 I just convert it over to mpeg2

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TrevMcRev

Jim my laptop will play your stuff after reloading quicktime but my pc still wont so im sure its just a dicky setting on my pc thats stopping it.

The way im set up now MOST of the time im on here its from the lappy,

but..........

Not this time, so i just missed ya new stuff for now

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Tree Machine

No, it's more about Bill Gates not wanting to play fair.


Quicktime is an excellent platform, superior overall from what little I understand, compresses well and something about resolution.

I really don't care which format or codec is used, as long as we all can see it. I will not exclude anyone because their computer can't talk to mine. We'll figure out some other way.

My video guy could take edited video and convert it for me, but at $75 an hour and a lot of extra time for Tree Machine. My stuff isn't that important that I wanna get into a lot of expense, and Elizabeth is not gonna let me buy a PC just so I can chit chat with you guys. Hmmmmm.

Ekka

Get this product, it's what I use.

http://www.avsmedia.com/VideoTools/index.aspx#quiz01

So far you haven't beaten it yet!

What I do is convert everything to mpeg2 or avi, from there it's like moulding butter.

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TrevMcRev

Opened up on the lappy at the moment, came back to this thread and bugger me, identical to what happened to ekka.

For the 2nd one it wanted me to buy the song from itunes, hence the no sound.

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Ekka

Damn that stuff, you want to watcha video and ya get all this mumbo jumbo in ya face like just nick off and play the darn the video, sheeesh, dont they know about Limewire or something!

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Tree Machine

No worries. I'll figure something out.

That sucks that if I incorporate a song I bought from iTunes, they then want YOU to buy the song before it can be listened to along with the video.


Bugga!

Well, at least this is good to know. I've got an answer...... Instead of music, I could sing. Or record my voice onto whatever it is we're looking at. Or go to my CD rack and find something. Still, Quicktime is pitched as this universal platform, PC and Mac friendly. It is not seeming so friendly at the moment.

Let me try a couple different things. So far whatever you've looked at (or tried to look at) is stuff already created. The next piece I'll format in Mpeg4. I'm fairly green to all this and am still climbing the learning curve, so your patience is much appreciated.

Ekka

Tree Machine, get Limewire and your music from there, put that on your videos .... free.

Hey TM

How old were ya in this pic?

Attached Images

treemachine.jpg (85.2 KB, 90 views)

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George Hayduke

That Unicender looks like a nice ride. This thread goes into a lot of detail. More than just the TTT homepage:

http://tinyurl.com/35ssoc

TM...

Why not share your ideas and climbing techniques? Think about what happened when the peanut butter idea was shared. That started a whole avalanche of reactions.

There are few things that you can give away and still own. Knowledge is one.

Love is another

Unfortunately...STDs are another

If your ideas have merit, they'll walk on their own. If not, they'll be sliced and diced in public.

Spill the beans

Tree Machine

Thanks, George. You are so right.

But first, that picture that Ekka posted, that's not me. That is Jerilyn. Who came all the way up from Costa Rica to visit. She's a raft guide and wild adventure woman. She and I trained together in 1990 for an adventure race, the Raid Gauloises. We mountain biked in some extreme and remote places and did major hikes in the mountains together. And made love a lot.

She contacted me in 2000 because she was then working with resort hotels on the coast in keeping their staffs trained in various aspects of grounds management. She told me that trees overgrowing their desired size, namely the ones whose growth has taken them out over pools, the Costa Ricans would shinny up there with a machete (no rope, no safety gear) and whack at the tree until the offensive limb ends up in the pool. Not acceptable says the hotel owners. The also want their grounds staff to be safe, to not get hurt and sue them.

Jerilyn called me up to assist in this dilemma. I told her, "Come on up to Indianapolis. We'll have coffee."

She took me literally and came up, so we went tree climbing together for a week. We'd rock out a solid day and then Elizabeth would take her out shopping.

The picture is Jeri hauling back on the BigShot. We climbed that day in the rain. It was just like old times.

Tree Machine

But back to George Hayduke and TreeCo and Ekka and and probably up to as many as 8 people total on this planet are interested in this piece that I propose.

The hard part, George, is that I feel I know what the device looks like, but it hasn't actually been created for the human eye as yet. The minds eye, yes. But in actual form, no.

To describe to you fully, so that there is 100% understanding will take a few posts and a lot of pictures and some creative Photoshop work to do a virtual creation of a new descent device that does not currently exist. I really believe we can do this together. If you fully understand the concept of how the friction is best handled, and embrace just the concept of doing it a different way, we can step over this threshold together.

Open mindedness really has to come first. Understand that once we have a formal design and an image of what the thing looks like and how it is used, how in the world will we test the thing out? It is still pretend, engineered on paper only.


But the Physics say this thing can work.

And I've been climbing on it, or versions of it for 14 years. SRT, DdRT, DbRT, in and out of one and the other, switching between fluidly, experiencing a joy and ease of work positioning that I'm painfully sorry others can't share.

Climbing should be joy, not overcoming limitations of your gear and suffering through long learning curves. We should be able to master the use of the device in the same day and feel secure and certain and confident with it.

It's just difficult to practice and become accomplished with a piece that lives here only on the internet between you 7 interested arborists and me.

Tree Machine

If I'm to guide us on this little adventure, I wish to call on expert help, not for personal assistance, but to keep expert input and peer oversight as part of the thread, so that if I'm full of shit, that the thread doesn't keep on going and guys get strung along and trolled.

If we are to collectively create something, we could pull in some industry giants to oversee; Petzl, Kong, DMM, Black Diamond, but I want to go higher, to someone who is EXPERT in devices and is connected to all the manufacturers of gear, the literal Godfather of mechanical ascent and descent devices, I would like to summon forward;

Dr Gary Storrick


Dr Storrick, are you out there????

click, click.......

George Hayduke

Gary is busy with his own life and unlikely to even know about this place.

You seem to have a very good grasp on writing. Why not just start to describe what you're think about. It seems like I've read enough of your writing in this thread explaining a lot of why nots, can nots, etc. to have a good start on the explanation.

Can you see that I'm teasing you into coming out and backing up what you're claiming? Come on...spill da beans buddy!

Tree Machine

I'm with ya, George.

Dr Gary Storrick, calling Dr Gary.


It would be cool to summon him forth. I just went caving last weekend in southern Indiana, Dr Storrick is a caver.


SUMMONING DR GARY STORRICK

Come invent gear with us.

Come in, click, click



Do you read?


Can you hear me now?

Tim Craig

George,

r u still monkey wrenching?

if knot what r u up 2 these days?