Business cards
Flickr has a cool collection of Business Cards. For some other creative ideas check out
41 questions
The 41Q website claims to be able to identify your personlity type with only 41 qutions. Here's what that had to say about me. Clearly they figure the flattery will bring in an audience. I'm pretty sure no matter how I answered the questions they weren't going to tell me that I was the type of person that was best suited for a career as a crack whore or as a conservative talk radio personality.
Your personality type:
Assertive and outspoken - they are driven to lead. Excellent ability to understand difficult organizational problems and create solid solutions. Intelligent and well-informed, they usually excel at public speaking. They value knowledge and competence, and usually have little patience with inefficiency or disorganization.
Careers that could fit you includes:
Business executives, CEOs, organization founders, business administrators, managers, entrepreneurs, judges, lawyers, computer consultants, university professors, politicians, credit investigators, labor relations worker, marketing department manager, mortgage banker, systems analysts, scientists.
Click to see another attempt. Or see it directly on their webpage.
Download from web address
Sometimes we have the address of a file and when we put the address into the browser the browser opens the file. What if, instead, we wanted the browser to download the file? Say, for example, you knew that there was a flash object at http://www.neave.com/games/frogger/frogger.swf that you wanted to copy onto your local machine. How do you download that file with Internet Explorer? If you had a hyperlink to that file, you could right click and select "Save Target As.." The form below will create that hyperlink for you.
Lyrebird mimicking various noises
Sir Attenborough is one of the best known broadcasters. He worked for the BBC. In April 2006, for his 80th birthday the public was asked to vote on their favorite moments of his. This video was rated number one. It is an incredibly profound view of our world.
Black Rock City Telephone Company
Through the course of visiting Black Rock City and experiencing Burning Man and all its marvels one inevitably comes up with ideas for contribution ideas. I've had plenty; and although very few of them ever come into fruition, they're nice to share because the ideas get people thinking. Around early August last year I starting piecing together, in my mind, what it would take to get a telephone system around black rock: The Black Rock City Telephone Company (BRCTC).
The infrastructure would provide the following features.
- Playa-wide telephone coverage
- On-playa and off-Playa digital directory
- Voice mail
- Operator services (dial 0)
- Access to playa info (dial 411)
- VOIP services to people with their own phone
Equipment for each of the locations would include the following.
- Weatherproof enclosures
- Replenishing power supply
- IP Phone
- Wireless access point
Ideally, each of the kiosk locations would need to have an autonomous energy source maybe with a solar panel and a marine battery. I considered using swappable power sources, allowing one battery to charge while the other was consumed but I think the real strength of this project is the infrastructure itself. Resources initially would focus on supporting the WAP locations but would later be focused on weaned to focus on the Central Office. If that is in place, somehow, power for the phones (and even the WAPs) themselves will come.
The first phase of the project would include covering a reasonable amount of the playa with as little equipment as possible. There's a minimum coverage that needs to occur. This would be a public network so we'd want the customers to actually be able to talk to other parts of the playa. An infrastructure with one phone would be much less attractive than an infrastructure that could span the playa. On the other hand, covering too much of the playa on the first phase could make the project unmanageable.
The locations I've chosen would each location was chosen to be 1000' father than the previous location.
Location 0 (1000') [Central office]
The central office would be wherever my camp was located. This is where the server handling the VOIP services would be located.
Location 1 (2000') [4:00@Esplanade]
I chose locations on the esplanade for access points locations because they're reasonable points to radiate radio signals for people with IP phones to connect to the network. A location a few streets back would probably provide optimum coverage area but locations on the esplanade is the ideal place for positioning stationary phones. The locations is the same distance from center camp as from 2:00.
Location 2 (3000') [Center camp]
Playa info is already an invaluable resource. Connecting it with the phone system is critical to getting the phone system accepted.
Location 3 (4000') [The man]
Originally I considered locating a phone behind the man. I realize now that this is probably a terrible idea.
Location 4 (5000') [8:00@Esplanade]
This location is positioned where it is for the same reason location 2 is where it is.
The CO would consist of the following items.
- A very cheap, very low power server running asterisk.
- Replenishing power supply
- Wireless Router
I've gone back and forth about whether this should use VOIP or use a technology that would allow them to use their existing cell phones. The more I think about it the more I realize that VOIP phones are the answer. Cell phones are a mess. I have no idea how to set up something that would work like a cell tower. Even if I could find the hardware the documentation would probably be as obscure as that for the phones themselves. Using VOIP allows us to set up an infrastructure that could be used for other things. Or, better yet, make use of other networks that could help span the playa. Phone prices are dropping and the functionality of an infrastructure to support them is relatively transparent.
If this were to happen I'd want to field test it at least a couple times before I brought it on the playa. Toast and Decom SF would be likely test sites.
Phew, that was a mouth full. I have ideas for the directory but that probably deserves another post.
The Burning Man sites have a plethora of resources, here are some that are particularly useful for this project.
Engaged and Underage
I just discovered that a coworker friend of mine has a son who was a groomsman for the guy on MTV's Engaged and Underage. In one
clip they show him getting his eyebrows waxed.
Fast forward the Mother's day episode until the timeline reads 3:25 and you'll see the shot I used in the thumbnail for this post.
Adobe Flash Player
Just about every (98.7% according to Adobe) Internet-enabled PC has the Adobe Flash Player. The Flash player piece of software that adds functionality to your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc). When you give your web browser an address either by clicking on a hyperlink or typing the address into the address bar, it retrieves a document for you. If the document it retrieves is an HTML file, then that document may contain links to other pages, images and objects. One type of object that can be included in an HTML page is a Flash Object. You're probably already very familiar with Flash objects because you use them to view video on YouTube. The player that loads in the webpage is a Flash Object.
This above relationship is also valuable to understand because there are a variety of flash objects available on the web that have nothing to do with watching video. If you're among the 98.7% of the people who already have the flash player installed then you can run these objects without any additional effort. The Frogger game below is another example of a flash object.
When the Flash object loads it can retrieve other files from the internet. In the case of the YouTube flash object, it downloads the Flash Video file. There are a variety of formats used store videos, flv is one of them; other formats include wmv and mov. The following diagram shows the interrelation of the resources we've discussed. Internet explorer is listed on the left, it's a program used to browse the internet. The Flash add-on is loaded by internet explorer to handle Flash objects. The Flash object (e.g. YouTube player) is loaded by the Flash add-on. If the flash object you happen to load is the YouTube Flash object then it loads the Flash Video file (e.g. files with the flv extension).
This relationship helps to explain the use of Flash Video files. As I mentioned before there are at least two other formats for videos: wmv and mov. There are other flash objects that support Flash Video files. Just about all the popular video sites seem to include one. Metacafe and Blip.TV for example each have their own flash object to play Flash Video files. However, there don't seem to be any flash objects readily available to play wmv or mov files. If you wanted to include wmv and mov files in your webpage you have to use some other plugin. None of these plugins are as popular as the Flash plugin. If you have Windows Media player installed you most likely have a plugin to handle wmv files. If you have iTunes installed you most likely have a plugin to handle mov files. If you're writing a web page and you want to ensure that everyone is going to be able to watch your video, then the safest way is to save it as a Flash Video and find a flash object to read it.
To learn more about Adobe Flash, visit the Wikipedia site. To see what version of the Adobe Flash player you have installed, visit the Macromedia site.
Shift happens
We are living in exponential times. This is Scott McLeod's version of a video clip originally done by Karl Fisch. Visit their sites for more information on the video including the source text.
See also: Web 2.0
Metacafe
Real life secondlife
This is a funny look at what real life would be life if it were run by the people at second life.
The power of Microsoft Surface
Sarcasticgamer has posted a sarcastic look at Microsoft's new Surface. Most interviews indicate that this technology will be available to the consumers in under five years. Early adopters include companies in the consume business like hotels and restaurants. For more information on multitouch check out my other multitouch posts.
The the impotence of proofreading
This is a funny poem on the importance of proofreading by Taylor Mali.
Singing Tesla coil
Artist Steve Ward makes a Testla coil play music from Super Mario Brothers at Duckon 2007. Video of Jeff Larson's Tesla is also on the net.
Web Trends
On May 22 Google replaced Zeitgeist with Hot Trends. The new site gives you more detailed information on what people are searching for. Select a hot term (e.g. gia allemand which happens to be today's hot term) and you'll see a graph of that terms search volume over the last 24 hours. Search for a term (e.g. violet blue) and the site will show you the term's history over the past few years. If there were any news articles related to that search term, markers for those events will be added to the graph. Add a coma to your terms and you can compare search patters between those two terms (e.g. violet blue, good vibrations).
Ary Scheffer
This painting by Ary Scheffer. It's called "Les ombres de Françoise de Rimini et son amant apparaissant au Dante et Virgile". If you click on the thumbnail you'll get a better view. There's a second one with a little more lightness. The painting is an illustration of Dante's Inferno and Francesca Di Rimini. Fortunately I had a chance to see it when I visited Paris (Louvre, Room 77, Denon Wing, next to Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix.
Apparently there's even a 15 minute movie on the story.
New justin.tv shows
Justin.TV has been rolling out quite a few shows since their initial launch of the Justin show. In their FAQ they say they "are rolling out new shows once a week as a precursor to opening up our network." Here's a list of new additions. To watch a thumbnail view of the show, click on the photo.
Date calculator
This is a handy little JavaScript program to subtract time from the present date. Its useful for getting the date if you know that something happened 94 days and 9 hours ago for example.
The Clintons
The Hilary Clinton campaign came out with this video to unveil their campaign song. AP reports that they're going with Celine Dion's "You and I" (gag).
NewTeeVee
I attended the June 2007 Pier Screenings hosted by NewTeeVee and Metacafe last night at Pier 38. Justin Kan was there along with Enric Teller. If you look really closely at James Jyu's photos, you can see Shannon and I in the crowd. The coolest video had to have been the The Real World Ikea, seen below; though, the Entourage.TV trailer was pretty clever too. Check their site for a writeup of the event.
Burning man retrospective
2001:
The seven ages. I still remember driving into Burning Man my first year, looking for a spot to camp. We'd been playing either Techno or songs that we could sing along to. It had taken us a lot longer to make the drive from the east bay than it should of. We made stops for supplies that we'd forgotten to pack and we'd missed the turnoff from 447 so we drive for nearly an hour out of the way. So when we finally got past the greeters we put Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the moon on the radio. It turned out to be the perfect soundtrack to what we were about to experience. It took me the whole first night to get acclimated to the explosions. I would jump every time I'd hear one. I arrived towards the end of the event and resolved to arrive earlier the following year.
2002:
The floating world. When I arrived on the playa my second year I met up with the LiveJournal camp. As far as I know, this camp no longer exists, at least it didn't exist the following year and as for their website, they've sort of been pushed out of the limelight in favor of sites like Blogger, Yahoo 360, et al. The even I remember most about this year was the slave auction. Camp Arachnid had an open auction selling off volunteers. The volunteer would spend a day of servitude to the highest bigger. People usually bid assorted types of alcohol, packs of beer or tequila for example. One of the volunteer was this girl that was the spitting image of Drew Barrymore. I mean, she looked so much like her that the only thing that convinced me that she wasn't Drew was that I discovered she was staying with the Green Tortoise. For some reason, I imagine the real Drew would find a camp that was a little less public. Anyway, Drew gets on stage and just as the announcer starts asking for bids, she whispers into his ear. He does a double take and hesitantly announces that they will be auctioning off this girl's hymen. After some clarification from the audience, to which she responds with a shy nod the bidding starts going crazy. The rooms seems to spit into two camps. One supposedly bidding for selfish reasons, the other to try and protect this girl from the ladder. I suspect both camps were actually bidding for the same benevolent reasons but neither side believed the other's motives. When I spoke to her afterwards it was clear that the girl was a complete sociopath. That made the whole thing absolutely brilliant.
2003:
Beyond belief. I met a wonderful group of MIT students my third year and they were kind enough to let me camp with them. It was then their first year and they someone managed to build what is still a pretty nice sized installation. When I first arrived I immediately set out to learn more about my fascinating neighbors. Their team dynamic was possibly one of their most notable traits. I helped them put together a massive geodesic dome. They'd pulled the plans off the Internet and customized it to suit their needs. Only one of them had actually been on the playa before but that didn't stop them from setting out to be one of the more memorably camps there. They shouted instructions with little regard for social graces. Absent from their uttering were words like please and thanks. As they shouted commands at me they realized that I might not be accustomed to their style. They paused to apologize but I quickly made clear that I was more than OK. I had a wonderful stay with them and we spent quite a bit of time together as the week went on.
2004:
Vault of heaven.
I skipped 2004, opting instead to spend the summer in Portugal. My options were either to explore my parent's native land with them as a guide or miss out on the opportunity entirely. Forget trying to get them to work their schedule around burning man. They've only recently started to accept that this is an annual thing for me. Still, Portugal was a wonderful experience. I simply resolved to make up for 2004 with the years that followed.
2005:
Psyche. For my fourth year at burning man I met up with some friends from the Bay Area. This was the year I was actually introduced to Camp Arachnid. What a fun experience that was; perfectly in line with the theme of the year. It was certainly a year of introspection. I'm not sure what I learned exactly. I think, like most aspects of Burning Man, the experiences just seeped into the core of who I am.
2006:
Hope and fear the future. My fifth year was the first time without the pickup truck. The person who bought it took with them what was probably one of the easiest methods of camping at burning man. All it would take to setup camp was to drive up to a spot and reorganize the junk in the back. A friend of mine had introduced me to Yurt Domes. He bought one with him to Toast and it seemed to work really well. I was so impressed by it that I decided to fork out the hefty price tag and get the exact same model for myself. When I finally set it up on the playa I realized that, after fitting the whole dome in my compact car, there wasn't much room left to bring anything else, and my new home was filled mostly with empty space.
2007:
The green man. This year's burning man is approaching quickly. It's only 69 days away. In 74 days they'll burn the man and the whole cycle will start again. This year will be a little different. I hope to have a better idea of what I'll be doing before I get on the playa. I'll have the dome again but this time I'll be a little better prepared with how to affix it to the ground. Last year I tried candy cane rebar but when I tried hammering them into the ground, the rebar just curved in the direction of the bend. I can't help but get nervous as I approach the day. I get the feeling you get when you're worried about failing an exam. I worry that I'll get out there and realize that I've brought canned goods to eat but forgotten the can opener at home.
- 2000 The Body
- 1999 The Wheel Of Time
- 1998 The Nebulous Entity
- 1997 Mysteria: The Secret Rites of Burning Man
Robogames 2007 drummer
This drum set played itself. It was hooked to what looked like a homegrown controller, visible on the table to the left of the video and a compressor towards the back of the video. Air lines run down the floor and connect to controllers at each of the drum sticks.
Robogames 2007 overview
RoboGames was awesome. The coolest exhibit had to be the Zou Ren Ti twins. Unfortunately, my camera died before I was able to film them. I was watching a soccer match when Shannon pointed them out. Nothing special, I thought, I'd seen twins before. Then she made me realize that only one of them was "real". The robot twin looked exactly like his human counterpart. They both had the same odd smile. The robot sat there next to his human twin making only subtle movements: blinking, moving its eyes occasionally, even moving its neck. I stood dumbfounded, taking it all in. Videos from the 2006 show are available on the RoboGames website, they expect to have 2007 videos available in a few months.
Here are some videos from the The Robot Dreams website .
Graduation
My cousin Richie graduated from high school yesterday. I spotted this crazy poster of one of his buddies when it was all over.
Robogames 2007 storm trooper
Here's a video of the girl with the storm trooper at RoboGames.
I also wrote up a tabular schedule of RoboGames in case you're still looking at going.
Have you got a nickel
This is an old clip of two girls demonstrating their talents on the the Gong Show. That third judge is great "Do you know that thats the way i started." She even comes up with a Popsicle herself. A nickel...talk about inflation!
Soprano's finale
11.9 million viewers tuned in to see the final episode of Soprans. Here are some interesting observations by louie A. on courant.com.
The two men who previously tried but failed to kill tony are in the diner.Phil Leotardo's nephew Nikki is in the diner.- The scene switches back and forth from Tony's perspective.
- We hear the bell ring for nearly everyone as they enter the diner.
- In one episode, Booby and Tony discuss what its like to die and Booby says "in the end, you probably don't hear anything, everything just goes black".
- There was a flashback to Bobby discussing what its like to die in the second to last episode.
When meadow enters the bar, we don't hear the bell, the scene just goes black.
UPDATE: Bob Harris has a lengthy writeup on the finale.
Podcast primer
In previous articles I've talked about converting QuickTime movies (mov files) so that they can be used in Windows Movie Maker (WMM). WMM creates ouputs Windows Media Video (WMV) files. You can upload the wmv to YouTube or blip.tv to share your video with other people. If you have a blog, you can then add the code to a post. Otherwise you can copy the URL and send it to friends in an email.
If you've subscribed to podcasts, you know that the video or audio files are delivered to your machine (and possibly your mp3 player) automatically whenever the author publishes a new episode. You can do the same things with your videos.
An easy way to manage your podcast is by creating a blip.tv account. YouTube wants you to watch movies using their player so you'll have a hard time trying to manage a podcast there. When you create an account at blip.tv you'll be given a "Show" page. This page contains a "Subscribe" section which publishes your videos as a podcast. Visitors will have 3 ways to subscribe, with iTunes, Windows Media Center and Democracy Player.
If you're uploading your videos as wmv files and you're concerned about making the video available to all 3 audiences (including iTunes) you need to convert your video to a format that iTunes understands.
To convert the wmv file, you're going to need third party software. I use MPlayer because its free, fast, powerful and it doesn't need to install itself on your system. Download MPlayer and extract the files onto your machine. I've written some scripts to make converting the files easier so you'll need to download those into the MPlayer folder as well. Take the files you want to convert and drag them one at a time onto wmv2mp4.bat. This will create a file with an mp4 extension. Upload that file to blip.tv. Blip.tv allows you to store the same file in more than one format. If you've already uploaded the file to blip.tv in another format, "Add additional format" from the edit page and upload the files from there. I usually use "Portable (iPod)" as the format.
- Download MPlayer and extract the files.
- Download mov2avi.bat and wmv2mp4.bat into the MPlayer directory.
- Drop the wmv files (it can be located anywhere) one at a time onto wmv2mp4.bat
- Upload the file to blip.tv.
Now that your podcast is ready, you can add it to your blog. You can let everyone know about your iTunes podcast by copying and pasting the following code. You'll need to change qicboy.blip.tv to the name of your show. You can find this by going to your show page and copying the URL from the address bar.
<a href="pcast://qicboy.blip.tv/?file_type=mov,mpeg4,mp4,m4v,mp3&skin=rss"> <img width="186px" height="47px" src="http://qicboy.blip.tv/skin/blipnew/icons/sub_itunes.gif"/> </a>
See also: Movie watermark, Editing mov files with Windows Movie Maker, Podcasting 101, MPlayer invocations
Gangsta
Way back in the day, there was a group that went by the name of DRS (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels). They recorded a video for their Gangsta Lean track then went under an album with the same name. I mention this because, if you look in the back of the church you'll see me, the girl I was dating at the time and a classmate of mine. The girl, ironically dated my brother-in-law before he and I ever met. What an interesting revelation that was. Sorry, this is the highest resolution I could find. If you find a higher resolution version, send it my way.
QICBoy video podcast
QICBoy.COM is now podcasting. Now, you can subscribe with iTunes and catch the latest podcast episodes automatically.
Britain's got talent
Britain's got talent, has the American show beaten hands down. Take a look at these shining stars and judge for yourself. The video below is of Damon Scott and his monkey Bubbles singing a Michael Jackson compilation.
- NEW: Paul Potts singing, "Con te partirò" by Francesco Sartori.
- Paul Potts singing "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot by Giacomo Puccini.
- Conny, a 6 year old girl sings, "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz by Harold Arlen.
Dr Dean Edell
I just got off the phone with Dr Dean Edell. Last night I watched the most recent episode of Big Love. One of the main characters owns a hardware in Utah and is obsessed with being outed as a polygamist. The non-polygamists are portrayed, unilaterally as being opposed to the beliefs of these fundamentalist Mormons. I couldn't help wondering, as I watched the show, if his lifestyle would be as much of a concern if he lived in San Francisco or California for that matter. Edell brought up the issue of Polygamy on his noon talk show on KGO 810 and so I thought I'd call him up and get his opinion on the matter. I told him that I was calling from San Francisco and that, out here, we have a pretty strong sex positive culture. We have authors like Dossie Easton who wrote The Ethical Slut, a book on polyamory. I personally know people who are in polyamorous relationships and their relationships seem to be working successfully. I don't know anyone who's a polygamist though so I asked him if he thought polygamy would be as much of an issue with someone who lived in San Francisco?
He explained that California was founded by people during the gold rush and that this contributed to our acceptant attitude. Furthermore, our acceptance of people, as with people who are homosexual for example, is influenced by whether we know someone with that lifestyle. We are more likely to accept a lifestyle if we know someone who practices it. He said it was more likely for polygamists to be accepted in blue states than in red states.
My dome at Burning Man
This is my dome at Burning Man 2006. My car is also visible, it's the straight up from the dome. You can find the spot on the regular Google Maps site too at [40.763282, -119.226706].
You can add one of these widgets to your site.
- View the HTML source of this page.
- Copy and paste the portion of code labeled with START/STOP COPY comments.
- Find your location on the regular Google Maps site and double click where you would like the marker to go.
- Click "Link to this page".
- Find the line in the code you copied from this page with the words "var me". The the line is followed values for the title of the info window, the latitude and the longitude. Notice that the URL contains a portion that reads ll=XXX,YYY where XXX and YYY are numbers. The first is your latitude. The second is your longitude.
- Replace the title in the "me" line with your own title.
- Replace the latitude in the "me" line with the latitude from the "Link to this page" URL.
- Replace the longitude in the "me" line with longitude from the "Link to this page" URL.
If you want to nudge the marker a bit you can play with the latitude/longitude numbers. Increasing the latitude makes the marker go up. Increasing the longitude makes it go left. The distance to the back of my car is +0.0001 latitude.
If you end up using this thing for anything, post to this article; I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Psychological illusionist
Derren Brown is an
English psychological illusionist. In the clip below, he convinces two advertising professionals to come up with a concept for a product that Brown has already slipped into their mind using subliminal advertising.
Google sightseeing
Are you one of those people who loves exploring Google maps?
Each weekday at
GoogleSightSeeing.com
your guides James and Alex Turnbull introduce new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by the reader. The site features cool posts like an explanation of the geocache that's tattooed on Angelina Jolie's arm. The first post was on Apr 6 2006 so set aside plenty of time, they celebrated their 1000th post on Feb 1 2007. Here some of their more interesting posts.
BumpTop
Anand Agarawala from the University of Toronto may have invented what will be the hottest computer interface to date (see demo below). His thesis "Enriching the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen" explains the concept that went into BumpTop. He and Ravin Balakrishnan wrote the article "Keepin’ It Real: Pushing the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen" provides the info in a more digestible form. Visit his website for more information.
BumpTop
You can see a demo from March 29 2007 at Demo Camp Montreal (part 1 and 2).
Paris Hilton jail song
Paris Hilton has her own YouTube page. She doesn't have her Stars are Blind video on her page but someone else was kind enough to upload it. Surprisingly, some portions of the video, were actually well done. I liked the scenes where she's playing with the rope in the blown out background or the scene where she's playing with the camera and the photographer on the floor. The scene where she's tied up to the wheel was nicely done too. It's like half the video has an artistic feel to it and the other half, the part with the hunk and the waves is just absolute shit. Anyway, it's worth a look. The song itself sounds very familiar but I can't seem to place it. Either way, I like it. There's also a spoof of the video 'Paris in jail' which I've included below.
Boogie Nights Star Wars Mashup
Boogie Nights came out in 1997. It was a story about the adult film industry at the end of the 1970's. Here's a mashup, called "Boogie Nights, Star Wars Edition", with that film and another classic film, Star Wars.
Safari for Windows
Think your browser is the only game in town? Think again. Browser competition drives innovation, and with Steve Jobs announcement of Safari's release for windows at yesterday's WWDC 2007 keynote, the competition just got fiercer.
Here are the browser stats for May 2007 (data provided by HitsLink.com).
Dodgeball
A couple months ago, Dennis and Alex, the founders of Dodgeball quit Google and made their frustrations public. Kuro5hin has a nice writeup on the Google purchases. Read more...
Redneck party
Our friends hosted a themed "Redneck" party this weekend. I just uploaded the Drinking, Dancing and Debauchery
Here are some videos from a friend's 26th birthday party Saturday night.
UPDATE: After 5.5 hours, YouTube has still not finished processing the file. I've posted them on blip.tv instead which processed the files after only a couple minutes. Also, the picture quality on blip.tv seems to be better.
Pebble search
This change to Pebble 2.1 avoids the Confirm dialog that appears when users go back to the results of the search action. The dialog reads as follows.
The page you are trying to view contains POSTDATA that has expired from cache. If you resend data, any action the form carried out (such as search or online purchase) will be repeated. To resend data, click OK. Otherwise, click Cancel."
--- $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/pebble/WEB-INF/fragments/search.jspf.rel 2007-05-14 19:58:10.000000000 -0700
+++ $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/pebble/WEB-INF/fragments/search.jspf 2007-06-10 10:26:55.876366217 -0700
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-<form name="searchForm" method="post" action="search.action" accept-charset="<c:out value="${blog.characterEncoding}"/>">
+<form name="searchForm" method="get" action="search.action" accept-charset="<c:out value="${blog.characterEncoding}"/>">
<input type="text" name="query" size="15" value="" />
<input type="submit" value="<fmt:message key="common.search" />" />
</form>
\ No newline at end of file
Editing mov files with Windows Movie Maker
If you own a point and click camera that records video, there's a good chance that it saves the files as QuickTime Movies (mov files). Unfortunately, Windows Movie Maker (free) doesn't read that file format. If you want to edit the files (to add a watermark for example) then you're going to have to convert the files first before you can edit them. Here's what you have to do.
You're going to need a program called MPlayer. You can download it for free. It doesn't use an installer. Unzip the files and run it from the extracted folder.
- Download MPlayer and extract the files.
- Download mov2avi.bat and wmv2mp4.bat into the MPlayer directory.
- Drop the mov files (it can be located anywhere) one at a time onto mov2avi.bat
See also: Podcast primer, Movie watermark, MPlayer invocations
Write your own blog
At some point even the most casual internet user is going to start creating an online identity. They've taken a fist full of pictures from their last vacation and they want to share it with their friends but they decide to put it on one of the file sharing websites instead of sharing the pictures over email. Maybe they made a video of some drunk friends trying to take down a pinata, added music to it using Windows Movie Maker; and, instead of attaching the 10 MB file to an email and sending it out to everyone, they decided to upload it to youtube and send a link to the YouTube site instead. Whatever the reason, they've started creating their online identity.
A person's online identity can be a hodge podge of links to several different websites. Their Shutterfly offers you a peek at their pictures, their YouTube page shows you the videos they've taken, maybe they even have an account on some random site that offers a gadget showing you what celebrities you resemble. A blog offers the perfect solution for somebody who wants to tie these distinct pieces of their online identity into one place.
Blogs have been compared to a personal journal or diary. People, however, tend to think of a diary as something that offers a glimpse into a person's intimate thoughts and not everyone wants to do that. A blog is similar to a diary in the way that the writings follow a timeline. Really, a blog is a timline of writings visible over the web. The writings might offer insight into your intimate thoughts or they might just be references to thing's you'd like to share with other people: an announcement that you've posted new pictures on your Shutterfly or info on how to find the latest video from your trip to Paris.
The easiest way to start your own blog is to create one on blogger. It's so easy that a tutorial on how to create one would actually complicate the process; but, if you want to see an example of someone creating a blogger blog, watch the Web 2.0 video, there's a small segment of the video where they demonstrate the process.
This life's for me
When I visited Paris, the tour guide had us straining to look out the window of the bus. She had convinced us that if, while the bus was moving, we looked real hard and were able to look through one of the windows of the building across the street we would see Napoleon's picked member. We struggled to look past the windows through the rooms and into the back walls where she had said we'd find it sitting on something-or-other. Finally she stopped the bus and had us look out the other window. There right before our eyes in its massive magnificence, stood the Eiffel tower. We'd been struggling so hard to look out the left window that we hadn't seen the tower sneaking up on our right side. We were so close by the time the bus stopped that we couldn't help but gasp as we took it all in. We raced out to get a better look when all of the sudden it started blinking. I don't think any of us knew it did that. I managed to catch this video while I was out there.
Movie watermark
Did you know that you can add watermarks to your movies using Windows Movie Maker? Oh yes, it's true (see for yourself). You just need a minor hack to the program. All you have to do is add an xml file and an image file to your installation. The two files need to go into "C:\Program Files\Movie Maker\Shared\AddOnTFX". You'll find them in the AddOnTFX.zip file. You'll need to restart Windows Movie Maker for any changes to take effect. To add the watermark to your movie, follow these steps.
- Start Windows Movie Maker.
- Under the "Movie Tasks" pane, select "Make titles or credits". The pane is on the left hand side. If you don't see it, select "View | Task Pane".
- Select "Add title on the selected clip in the timeline." This should be the third option in the list.
- Enter a single space in one of the text boxes and select "Change the title animation".
- Select "Watermark" from the list. This option is only in there if you've properly installed the AddOnTFX.zip files.
- Select "Done, add title to movie".
- In your storyboard you should now see a track in the "title Overlay" section. You will stretch this track for the length of your film. If the storyboard isn't visible, select "View | Storyboard".
To customize your watermark simply replace watermark.png. If something breaks when you're customizing your own watermark, replace the files with the ones from AddOnTFX.zip and try again.
If you're feeling truly bold and you want to resize the watermark, you'll need to change the value of LogoRec in the xml file. Here's a little program to calculate that value for you.
See also: Podcast primer, Editing mov files with Windows Movie Maker
Cock out rockout
Extra Action Marching Band had their Cock Out Rockout show last night. I filmed some video, see the list below. I have more videos but I can't post them on YouTube because of either content or size. I'll repost when I get them online.
UPDATE: OK, this is all the videos I recorded for this night. I uploaded Black Chicken (my favorite) by Extra Action Marching Band to blip.tv, I don't think they'll have problem with the partial nudity. Also, the newer videos have watermarks. See my related posts on watermarking and Windows Movie Maker for HOWTO information.
- The Iron Maiden tribute band I Yearn for Maiden
- The Guns N' Roses tribute band Rocket Queens (Welcome to the Jungle) (Paradise City) (Sweet Child O' Mine)
- The Van Halen tribute band Hot for Teacher with Terry Lauderdale (Hot for Teacher) (You Really Got Me) (Pretty Woman) (Best Part Of A Man) (Jump)
- Extra Action Marching Band (Intro song)
Pebble favicon
This change allows you to specify a favicon on your pebble 2.1 blog. I simply make the change described below and add the following property in the "Properties" box on the plugins page.
blog.icon=http://www.qicboy.com/themes/user-default/assets/favicon.ico
The following is a diff of required changes to to the pebble webapp.
--- $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/pebble/WEB-INF/tags/page.tag.rel 2007-05-14 19:58:18.000000000 -0700
+++ $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/pebble/WEB-INF/tags/page.tag 2007-06-07 16:23:41.439391309 -0700
@@ -15,10 +15,14 @@
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=${blog.characterEncoding}"/>
<meta name="description" content="${blog.name}" />
<meta name="abstract" content="${blog.description}" />
<meta name="author" content="${blog.author}" />
<meta name="generator" content="Pebble (http://pebble.sourceforge.net)" />
+ <c:set var="favicon" value='${pluginProperties.properties["blog.icon"]}' />
+ <c:if test="${not empty favicon}">
+ <link rel="shortcut icon" href="${favicon}" type="image/x-icon" />
+ </c:if>
<title><c:choose><c:when test="${empty title}">${blog.name}</c:when><c:otherwise>${title} - ${blog.name}</c:otherwise></c:choose></title>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="${blog.url}rss.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rdf+xml" title="RDF" href="${blog.url}rdf.xml" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="${blog.url}atom.xml" />
Insert the save date in Word
I'm constantly publishing word documents. It's inevitable that someone collaborating with will show me a printed copy of that document. The problem with printing a document of course is that it can be modified after they've printed it. It can be difficult to tell if the document they're showing you was printed before of after you made changes to the document. That's why it can be handy to include a field that reflects some information about the state of the document when it was printed (like the date the document was saved). You can do this using "fields". Fields are placeholders for data that change. To insert a field that reflects the date the document was changed follow these simple steps.
- Select Insert | Field...
- Select "SaveDate" under "Field names"
- Select a format, I use yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss (W3C format)
- Press OK
AfterEllen.com Hot 100 List
AfterEllen.com has come up with their own hot 100 women list to rival that put out by Maxim.
Princess Leias of Gencon
The Princess Leia slave outfit has to be one of the hottest costumes ever made. This video features several dozen women all wearing that outfit. It will take a minute or so for video to respond.
Goatse 2012 olympics logo
It looks like the BBC got Basic pyrotechnics
Some guy nearly torches himself trying to set a fire. The shot of the fire as it strikes is pretty spectacular. This guy is lucky to be out alive.
Good Vibrations has their own Cheetah in the car
Some lucky (?) travelers get footage of a cheetah in their car. I can't believe they got this footage. I would have been sweating up a storm.
Rasterbator
Create collages that fill your wall using this cool software. The software works either from their web page or by loading the software on your PC.
This is a cool video mix from Finding uncategorized posts
The following command will display blog posts that have not yet been assigned a category. It should be run from the within the location where your Pebble data is stored, in the directory where blog.properties is located.
find . -name "*.xml" -exec grep -HL "" {} \; | xargs grep -Hl " published " | sed 's/.xml/.html/'
The Shining
Here's another funny video, this time from Anheuser-Busch.
Download from YouTube
Use the following form to download YouTube videos. That way you have access to the video even if they're removed from YouYube. You'll either need a program like VideoLan or know how to write HTML to be able to watch them. You might also need to rename the file with a .flv extension.
For more information on downloading YouTube Videos, read the post by Stan Schroeder.
Deep fried pizza
You've probably heard of the deep fried Mars/Snickers bar. Well, this company does deep fried pizza.
Blog categories
Someone once told me that the best mechanics have the worst cars. The reason, supposedly, was that if you were a good mechanic, then your skills were in high demand. If you spent the day working on cars, the last thing you wanted to do when you got home was work on your own; and, if you had any spare time to work on cars, you'd be working on the ones lined up in your shop.
Over the last 6 months or so, the number of posts on my blog have skyrocketed. The main reason for this was that prior to Nov 2006, I had been using some homegrown blogging software. Now I don't know if the mechanic story is true but I do know that if I had any time to work on programming I was going to spend it working on software that people were actually going to use rather than on the blog software that was only really meant for me. When I moved to the new software, the blog became mostly about content and less about functionality.
With the influx of content, I've started to realize that there are people who read my blog who come here for tips on cool websites, people who want to learn how to do stuff, people and still others who want to see where I went on vacation.
It's for this reason that I've decided to start breaking the blog down into categories or sections. The main page won't change but you'll be able to click on one of the four (so far) sections of the site and limit the posts to the ones you're most interested in. So far I've come up with the categories below. You can already subscribe to the RSS feeds for your preferred section. As I add content, the posts will be sorted into the appropriate section. For example, if you wanted the RSS on the LIFE category, you would simply click on the RSS icon next to "LIFE" in the categories list.
/
|-- LIFE
| |-- blog
| |-- comic
| |-- good review
| |-- bad review
| |-- holiday
| `-- photo
|-- HOW2
|-- NEWS
`-- TECH
`-- video
`-- youtube
- LIFE includes personal writings, ramblings, opinons, reviews, etc.
- LEARNING includes HOWTO articles. I'm considering calling it HOW2 so that all the categories are 4 characters long.
- NEWS includes posts related to news worthy topics e.g. the 580 fire.
- TECH is probably the hardest category to come up with a title for. It would include youtube videos, links to interresting sites, etc.
Here are the categories of some popular websites as reference. For reference, this post would be stored under LIFE.
NYTIMES: HOME, WORLD, US, NY, BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY, SPORTS, SCIENCE, HEALTH, OPINION, ARTS, STYLE, TRAVEL USATODAY: HOME, NEWS, TRAVEL, MONEY, SPORTS, LIFE, TECH, WEATHER WSJ: HOME, NEWS, TECHNOLOGY, MARKETS, PERSONAL JOURNAL, OPINION, WEEKEND & LEISURE LATIMES: NEWS, CALIFORNIA, WORLD, ENTERTAINMENT NEWS, BUSINESS, SPORTS, POLITICS, OPINION, COLUMNISTS
Hindsight
The Trulia Hindsight site lets you see how a neighborhood changes grows over time. I tried it out with a map of the
neighborhood where I grew up.
How to kiss
This is a fun video on how to kiss passionately. You can see others on the videojug site.
This is a video of Bill and Steve at D5 on May 30.
Pop Rocks
Yesterday, YouTube removed one of my videos. Today I found this one on their site. They've added a warning that reads "This video may contain content that is inappropriate for some users, as flagged by YouTube's user community." I looked all over for a way to tag a video with that message and couldn't find one. I'm floored that they deemed this video acceptable but removed mine.