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
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.
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