I figured by posting this I will be the hero of every Mac Genius, Creative and IT worker in the US.
Short term plan is simply to have a table list. Long term is to have a searchable database. Any and all submissions are welcome.
Keeping in my ’seeking out inspiration’ kick, I just registered for the Seed conference with Jason Fried, Jim Coudal and Carlos Segura on October 29th. I’m looking forward to it, I hope to learn a lot. I’m also really enjoying networking as of late. I’ve been astounded by the people I’ve been meeting lately and it started with An Event Apart.
Coming out here to Chicago has been a huge opportunity for me, there is always something new and inspiring going on that fascinates me. So much to learn.
Last week I was lucky enough to attend a screening of Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier at the Apple Store. The screening was hosted by producer Roman Coppola. Afterwards Roman stuck around for Q&A. The crowd was excellent and his rapport with them was phenominal. While film is not my field of choice listening to Roman was really inspiring. He spoke about starting a project, from researching it and making compromises to achieve a vision. I’m really looking forward to The Darjeeling Limited.
It’s weird but I spent years in New York, the “cultural center of the world”, and somehow I missed opportunities like this. I think I’m just more in tune with the world around me now.
I’m excited.
Eric Meyer NAILED my first thought about Microsoft’s new ‘Surface’ computing device. I watched all the product demos on the site just waiting for this to pop up.
On a serious note… that thing looks REALLY cool, I think for once Microsoft is right on the money, it’s going to change the industry with this technology. I’m not sure this is the right implementation, but it’s years ahead of the curve. Too bad it costs $10,000.
Then again, I thought Sega’s ‘Time Traveler’ was the future of gaming back in 1991. I was 10. Cut me some slack.
So.. how long before someone mods one to do what Eric’s suggesting?
Finally got my HDTV working! I’ve got a MacMini and an AppleTV hooked up to it… it’s amazing and i’m ripping my first DVD. ‘The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi’ Some Japanese samurai movie my friend Chris made me borrow it a while ago and I keep forgetting to watch it, so I’m ripping it and giving it back to him.
I’m going to have the most awesome home theater setup in the freakin’ world when I get to Chi-town.
Living Room:
40″ Samsung HDTV capable of 1080p
Apple Airport Extreme Basestation with 802.11n
Nintendo Wii via composite wired to basestation
Microsoft XBox 360 via component wired to basestation
Sega Dreamcast via VGA with 2 keyboards for typing of the dead.
Sony PS2 via composite
AppleTV via component wireless 802.11n
Apple MacMini via HDMI with eyeTV Hybrid for recording. MacMini is modded to have 802.11n instead of g! MacMini has a Nyko AirFlo hooked up to it via USB and will be loaded with Emulators.
Last but not least:
Namco TV games Ms. Pac-Man / Galaga. via composite.
In the other room:
PowerMac G5 with a 500gb harddrive, wired directly to airport base station. Drive will be filled with movies, music and TV shows eventually to stream to the AppleTV!
and my favorite part:
At my parent’s house:
SlingboxAV hooked up to digital cable and eithernet to stream TV from NY… to Chicago.
Definition: Free NY cable in Chicago! More importantly - Free Yankee Games in Chicago!
All i need now is the Slingbox and the Wii network adaptor.
Note about the wireless: The MacMini is modded to 802.11n from 802.11g because it’s my goal to have only n wireless devices in my apartment, meaning: really fast data transfer rates between devices. Doing so voided the warranty but that’s besides the point.
My Laptop, the Mini, and the AppleTV all have n. g will be disabled. Hence why the Wii will be hard wired instead of wireless. Any g device on the network brings the whole speed down to g instead of n. Only downside: no online PSP… but I never use it anyway.
I am such a huge fucking nerd. But I know you’re jealous.
My apartment is going to rock! It’s like a mecca for consumer electronics whores like myself. Now I need surround sound… haha
I’m going to go out on a limb and just flat out dissagree with Robert Scoble.In his latest post he cites an EngadgetHD article noting that there are only two years remaining until the government mandated shut down of analog television. Thus completing the switch to the more efficient, higher quality and most of all, media company friendly, digital signals.Scoble uses his own father for the example as to why this shutdown won’t happen. While he raises a good point his arguement is flawed. His point is old people vote, and they vote in large numbers. He argues that when they find out we’re going to take their analog TV from them, they will come out in droves and change the laws. I’ll go on the record and agree if there is anything that would, and could stop this upgrade it’s cranky old people voting it down.But I’m also going on the record to say it won’t happen. The transition will happen without a hitch.I think by the time the analog switch is flipped off no one will really notice. Especially the elderly who are less in-tune to technology. The main reason for this is something I’m not sure Scoble really caught: the switch doesn’t require the average consumer to upgrade their set, only their signal. It just means that pretty much every household who wants a cable connection will have to switch from an analog reciever to a digital reciever. They don’t need to buy an HDTV or anything of the like. My parents 15 year old TV works fine with the digital box and probably so will Scoble’s dad’s.The thing is most people don’t understand the difference between analog and digital, nor do they care, they just know the cable company is offering them a better deal and more channels if they switch the box on top of their TV. Most people won’t even be aware it’s happening, or that they have digital service.In my area, here on Long Island, the transition is pretty much completed already. Cablevision, the dominent provider in the area has made it cheaper to switch to their iO digital cable service than to keep your existing analog one. Combine that with the cheap bundles of broadband with your digital signal and it’s pretty much insane not to. And now more companies are getting into the game. Verizon for example has started to penetrate the once monopolistic grip of Cablevision with their FiOS service and they don’t offer analog service at all.I think Scoble raises a good point, if highly publicized I think people would come out against the transition. But I believe it would be almost entirely based on misunderstanding. Even if people did band together against it, if consumer rights groups got up in arms, I’d argue you wouldn’t hear about it too much. Not to sound cynical or conspiracy theorist but the media companies aren’t exactly going to publicize it when they stand to benefit from the transition and the people who would be up in arms aren’t exactly reading blogs on a daily basis either.Watch, the transition’s going to happen with a whimper. The media companies have been working on this for a while and by the time the clock expires to be done people won’t even know it happened, with a very small handful of exceptions who are too out of touch to have their voices heard. Mark my words.
CEO of photosharing site Zooomr, Thomas Hawk is taking Flickr to task for the changes they announced yesterday.
In his post he uses customer complaints from Flickr’s forums to make his point that Flickr has lost it’s way with these changes and they need to reconsider them. After reading through the post it seems to me like just a bunch of noise and childishness. Let’s take a look at what is actually changing here:
1. In our ongoing efforts to Make Flickr BetterTM, we’re introducing two additional limits: the new maximum number of contacts is 3,000 contacts (good luck with that), and each photo on Flickr can have a maximum of 75 tags.
Okay.. well I could see this complaint as somewhat half valid.. there are people out there who use Flickr to promote their work professionally and they want to reach as many people as possible, putting a limit on the number of people they can have as contacts kinda does suck. But at the same time Flickr’s contact system is a lot different then say MySpace’s friends list system. Just because someone makes me a contact, doesn’t mean they have to be mine. Me personally I only make people contacts under a very small set of circumstances:
I think it’s a safe bet if you have upwards of 2,000 contacts that you really aren’t looking at everyone’s photos that much in depth and I also doubt you know all of these people personally. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that if you have that many contacts it’s in effort to get people to add you to their contact list as self promotion. While that’s okay it’s a little disingenious, as really, I doubt you care about them all that much and isn’t there enough shameless self promotion on the web these days? Where’s the line between it and spam really? Maybe I shouldn’t cast judgement but with their ‘Good luck with that’ comment it would seem that Flickr feels the same way. There is also a positive benefit to this, it requires people to be more mindfull of the people they add to their contact list. In the end it strengthens the community, as it requires people to consider things more heavily. Flickr also claims it will allow their systems to run better, and I can imagine that being so, having more than 3000 of anything in a database will bog things down, capping people’s contacts will almost certainly improve speed and take load off the servers. Yes it will save them money.. but they are a business, it doesn’t make their service any less awesome.
Next up: The 75 tag limit. This is also about shameless self promotion in my eyes. If you’re tagging your photos that heavily, you’re tagging them for the purpose soley of other people finding you, not for accurate results and almost definitely not for easy personal organization. Limiting tags in my eyes is also a good move for the community as it once again will require more thought put into things. And really, 75 tags? I rarely put more than 5 on something. 75 is a very high number. I doubt few people at all will be limited by this.
Oh but it seems with the exception of Mr. Hawk not many people are making a big deal over these changes, it’s more about the second change.
2. On March 15th, 2007 we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.
For many this is a big change… but like it or not, those people are by far the minority. Flickr has seen such a dramatic growth in users over the last year that the ‘old skool’ users are dwarfed several times over by the newer users. There are more than a few people bitter about this move but mostly people who were skeptical about the change when Yahoo! bought Flickr. The fear, as near as I can tell is irrational. All the complaining I’m reading sounds really petty and stupid, people afraid of change. They people complaining sound to me like angsty elistist teenagers who stop liking a punk band because they signed to a major label or something. It’s stupid.
In reality… what is the big difference? The only thing this affects at all is your login and password. It does not affect people’s site address or your Flickr screenname. The change is minimal, these users will experience no difference except having to type something different at the login screen. For example: my Flickr account is linked to my Yahoo! ID of ‘reallocalcelebrity’, but my Flickr page address does not reflect that name: http://www.flickr.com/people/localcelebrity/ and at the moment I have my username as ‘reallocalcelebrity’ which does match my Yahoo! ID, but I can change this at any point if I want, it does not have to match my Yahoo! ID.
I thoroughly enjoy that many of the self proclaimed ‘old skool’ users of Flickr don’t realize this. Many of the complaints reposted on Hawk’s blog relate to the misperception that they will lose their user name or be forced to change their page address, neither of which is the case.
The other complaint is that these users will be required to have a Yahoo! ID and many feel that this will open the floodgates to them for spam and marketing emails. I kinda think this is a tad bit irrational. I have a Yahoo! ID / Yahoo! Mail account… and I pretty much don’t use it, except for Flickr. Having the account has not added any spam to any of my inboxes or in any way had any effect on anything else in my life at all. As Flickr also points out you don’t even have to use the account for your Flickr alerts email either, you can give them another account and have them notify you at that account when someone adds you as a contact of comments your photos.
So in actuality… Flickr is making you sign up for a Yahoo! ID, but they are not making you use it for anything other than a login and password.
If you’re getting worked up over this you really need to put your world into perspective. In reality, this whole thing will blow over with little to no impact on anything, maybe a few ‘Old Skool’ users will jump ship to different services but that’s really their loss more than anything. In truth Flickr’s going to work better and continue at it’s gigantic rate of growth while strengthing it’s sense of community while at same time becoming more profitable and integrated into Yahoo! But the end result is more choices and features for the end user. I’ve yet to see how this could be a bad thing.
(via Robert Scoble)
So, I’m home sick from work today and bored as heck. In an effort to cheer me up my friend Robin pointed me to an Amazon.com link for Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz.
That quite possibly might be the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. Who in their right mind would buy a perishable food item online? Especially considering that with shipping and handling to get the item to your household without spoiling it might cost you as much as 10 times the price of going to your local store.
The best part by far is the product reviews, all 835 (and counting) of them that get a good laugh at the absurdity of the idea. A worthwhile read.
Since March I’ve received a lot of feedback regarding my cleaned up remix of the Gimp version of ‘Supernothing.’ (In case you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, take a look at this post here.) In fact the .mp3 file generates the majority of the traffic that this site receives. So much so that I needed to up my hosting plan. I don’t mind though. As a Streetlight Manifesto fan I’m just glad to be contributing and helping other people enjoy their music as much as I do. I’m really glad people are grateful for the work I did and I really appreciate the comments and messages regarding it. Most of which come from people from Skachilles (the official unofficial Streetlight Manifesto message board.)
It’s because of those messages that I’m prompted to write this. The majority of them come with curiosity as to what I’m working on and encouragement that I work on more. Most ask me to take a crack at Catch-22’s ‘Rules of the Game’ EP. I figured I should post something of a follow up to that since I get asked so often. Although I’m a graphic designer, not an audio engineer, back in March I was excited at the work I’d done and I took a serious stab at remixing ‘I’m Better Than You’. I even went as far as to buy good studio headphones to work on the project. However, once I got into it I found that the recordings of ‘RotG’ are a bit more challenging than ‘Supernothing’ was. Partially due to the recording quality, partially due to the speed / intensity of the songs themselves and mostly due to my own lack of expertise.
With ‘Supernothing’ there is a lot of silence and lows in the song. That gives me more to work with to take out the ambient tape noise. When working with a song like ‘I’m Better Than You’ that’s not so much the case. Thus far I’ve had no luck with any of the other recordings and haven’t produced anything worth releasing or commenting on here. I haven’t given up entirely, but at this time it’s not within my skill level, nor is it high on my list of priorities. (No offense!) While I appreciate all the encouragement and feedback, what it comes down to is… I’m a graphic designer, not an audio engineer. It’s just something I tried out and got lucky with. I’m going to keep trying and I’ll keep you guys posted should I manage any other future miracles, but I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up too much.
Thanks again for the interest and kind words, keep me in your bookmarks if something pops up, here will be where to find it.
‘Peace out bitches!’
I already put this on my del.ico.us but I figured it needed more attention because it was that damn good…. More rotoscoping and compositing! I’m sure you’re thrilled oh fictitious reader.
Special Effects house Buzz Imaging shows off how it made the effects used in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The clip showcases some incredible 3d modeling, rotoscoping and compositing work and makes it almost look easy. Don’t be fooled, this sort of thing takes days, weeks even months to get right. But it’s still incredible.
(Via Daring Fireball)