Remember those early Web 1.0 home pages with the navigation buttons and long “Welcome to our Website” paragraphs? Which eventually morphed into more dynamic content, maybe even a blog? How about just making YouTube your home page?
In a recent conference call I cautioned against being “a PowerPoint company in a YouTube world.” I’m guessing the kids at Boone Oakley don’t do a lot of PowerPoint presentations. [By way of Planet Nelson]
I jammed my way into some very crowded Metro cars to make my way down to M Street where Paul Roe [Fez #30], the owner of British Ink was taking part in an art exhibition called Artomatic. Paul was doing pre-session consultations while his colleague, Cynthia, hummed away on a guy’s right bicep. He squeezed me in for a chat and I even got to sit in the tattoo chair. The interview ran just under 12 minutes.
We’re using the next few days in D.C. to field test the new iPhone. I continue to be amazed at the quality of the video (and audio) from the iPhone.
Forget for a moment that I have the iPhone in portrait orientation, and check out the quality of this brief walk through the newsroom. I’ve uploaded videos to YouTube from all kinds of cameras: Sony Camcorder; Flips; my beloved Casios; the MacBook iSight.
But I don’t think I’ve ever ended up with a clip that looked and sounded this good. I know, could be some Cupertino Mind Trick but I think I’m correct on this point. And the iPhone has YouTube option built right in.
I took the dogs out to do their business earlier today and, on the way back, I happened to look up in the tree we walk under a dozen times a day. I saw what I thought was a black piece of plastic until it moved in an unmistakably serpentine way. It was a big-ass snake, about 15 feet off the ground.
As I looked closer I saw the snake was wrapped around a bird nest, which explained the frantic activity of some robins. They were darting in for a peck at the snake, trying to scare it off. With no luck at all. (I found it interesting that they were getting help from cardinals and other birds) The snake looked like he might be digesting something.
If you are a snake lover or naturalist or one of those guys who pick up snakes, you can skip the rest of this post. It’s just gonna piss you off. Let’s go to the video [CAUTION: Adult language]:
Even if I’d been willing to get on a ladder and grab the snake, it would probably have brought down the nest. But friends, that was never a consideration.
And even as I fired little steel balls into the tree, the adult birds didn’t flinch or move away. They stayed right by the nest. I kept thinking I’d hit and kill one of them but I didn’t.
If this black snake had stayed out in the woods, stuffing himself with rodents and moles, he’d still be alive. But he decided to climb up my tree and eat some defenseless baby robins.
A few months ago I received an email from a young man in the UK, asking permission to use a photo he found on my flickr for the cover art for his band’s new single (Cockatoo). I said sure and please keep in touch. And he did.
“The vinyl version of the single’s out now and is doing really well. The photo has certainly done it’s job and intrigued people. We’ve had lots of national airplay from the BBC and lots of new opportunities have been popping up all the time which is obviously very exciting.
We did a single launch in this big DIY arts space called The Arts Organisation in Nottingham. There was talk of doing a Steve Mays photo reel featuring a whole raft of the photo’s to be projected on walls and stuff but we didn’t have enough time in the end and felt that we’d be taking the piss a bit in terms of permission to use them.
Here’s 23 seconds of that show that somebody took on a phone (I’m the short guy wearing the black jacket and white T-shirt btw):
We’d love to send you some copies of the single in the post if you’d like. Posterity and all that. Let me know where to send them and we will. That said we certainly wouldn’t be offended if you’d rather we didn’t. Once again thanks for everything.”
James and all of Fists
Ah, to have my life become the backdrop for an edgy British pub band…
I’ve added the Fists blog to the sidebar for wonderful passages like this:
“…if you want to go on a slightly wrong night out then you should go to Wildside which is this once monthly cock/sleaze/glam rock revivalist night at Junktion 7 in Nottingham. It’s mostly filled wall-to-wall with dysfunctional hard rockers who get crazy drunk whilst getting emotional about it not being 1986 before dropping to their knees for an Eddie Van Halen solo and then disappearing into the toilets to have sex and drink Jack Daniel’s and fall out with each other due to fringe scene claustrophobia. It’s like going to a special zoo that houses dying musical sub-cultures and is one of my favourite nights out.”
Okay, but I like to be home no later than ten p.m.
I love grabbing snippets from old movies or TV shows and sharing them here. The process goes something like this: I hit the record button on the DVR. Then I hook up my old Sony camcorder and pull the video off the DVR. Next, I import the video from the camera to the MacBook. Now, thanks to a new little video capture widget from Elgato, the drill got much easier. (Mac only, sorry)
One end plugs into the video/audio out of any device and the other is a USB connection to the MacBook. And the software is simplicity itself. If you need to get video from your TV or DVR over to your computer, the Elgato Video Capture is a near perfect solution.
My test clip is from Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn.
I was certain I had posted this video previously but can’t seem to find it. So, it won’t hurt to post it twice.