Name that quote

Character1: He doesn’t like you.

Character2: I’m sorry

Character1: I don’t like you either. You just watch yourself. We’re wanted men. I have the death sentence on twelve systems.

Character2: I’ll be careful.

Character1: You’ll be dead!

 

My Letter to the FCC

Posted through savetheinternet.com and sent to the FCC:

Independent Media in Jeopardy

I am a former editor of an independent newspaper called Vigilance. It is now gone like many other papers of it’s kind. Either small, locally-owned publishers are merged or driven out of business by the circulation & market leveraging of the giants.

70% of circulation is made up of a small group of corporations with multiple subsidiaries and 50% of total daily circulation is controlled by a mere 10 companies*. What’s wrong with a centralized media? It creates a hegemony of information and alienation of a large part of the US population.

We need to keep the Internet available to the public and not allow the corporations that already own much of or information resources to co-opt this currently fluid communication channel. Please support net neutrality to sustain a fundamentally necessary aspect of our democratic society.

*Source: http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/

To send your own letter visit http://www.savetheinternet.com/yourstory and keep this valuable resource in our hands.

“But wait…just what the hell is Net Neutrality?” you may be saying. Just hit play below for ultra-hip infotainment.

 

If Yer Bored

from Save the Green Planet!
Originally uploaded by cinemaknits.

I was recently asked to assemble a list of worthwhile movies for a friend with MythTV, a free, tivo-like PVR (personal video recorder) for Linux. Now you reap those “fruits”.

If you don’t have either of the previous 2, you can download some of the following titles with or another service. Definitely do not use Azureus P2P (peer-to-peer) downloading software or something like Mininova to find them. You will go to jail and make your mama cry. Here goes, hope you enjoy:

SCIFI/horror/comedy

• Children of Men
• Save the Green Planet (Korean/mind-blowing)
• Slither (w/ guy from Firefly/Serenity)
• Serenity (best recent sci-fi)
• The Descent (hits all the phobias)
• Science of Sleep
• Flushed Away (animation)
• Doom (pretty good for The Rock)

ACTION/Adventure/Mystery

• Factotum (Bukowski bio)
• Lucky Number Slevin
• The Illusionist
• Casino Royale (the new one, ‘07)
• Crank (guy from the Transporter)
• Smokin’ Aces
• The Wicker Man (Nick Cage)
• The Black Cauldron (animation)

KUNGFU

• New Legend of the Shaolin
• Fearless
• Curse of the Golden Flower

DOCU/tainment

• Who Killed the Electric Car?
• An Inconvenient Truth
• The Corporation
• This Film Is Not Yet Rated (freaking awesome)

TV

• Heroes
• Ugly Betty
• My Name Is Earl
• Lost (duh…)
• BBC Horizon: Parallel Universes
• How I Met Your Mother

This is by no means a complete list (or even ordered), just some recent views.

 

Step into the 21st

Pardon the re-post from Green Anarchy (mine is the only post on that Google group, hmm), but it illustrates my photos with good back-story:

My mower took a crap on me today, the nasty, noisy, death-belching thing….so I’m spending money that I don’t have to put my wallet where my mouth is. I ordered a battery-powered mower online called the Neuton (I’m not linking them to keep this from getting too salesy). It sucks that I have to go into hock to go green, but the thing only uses about 10cents worth of electricity/use and emits no fumes and little noise (I saw the informational vid). I live in the boondocks by loggers and knuckle-draggers, but if any of you out there are by a collective of green minded people, it might be a good idea to go in on a similar model together and share it.
Support companies that are making the gradual change to eco-friendly products. If you have to keep up with the Joneses, do it with a clean conscience…at least until the bamboo takes over (my latest, slow-going effort). “…Operating a gas mower for one hour will produce the same pollution as driving a car 1300 miles.” -http://www.greengrasscutters.com/

As you may be able to tell by the tone, I was a little put-out about the cash outlay. However, I find it hard to describe how good I feel using this device. While it’s light, it doesn’t feel like a toy. It uses no lubrication or petroleum products. There is not choking stench filling my mouth and nostrils. I feel better about doing something I see as pointless, yet feel obliged to do for the community (and certain health factors). By the time it got “tired”, so was I. It can mow higher, so I don’t kill the grass by taking it down too far.

And it is quiet enough for me to hear my music without blowing-out my eardrums. For fun, here’s my playlist:

• Little House I Used to Live In – Mothers of Invention
• How Am I Different – Amy Mann
• The Qa’im Deliberation - Secret Chiefs 3
• Goin’ Down Slow – Howlin’ Wolf
• Metal Machine Music, Part III – Lou Reed
• Lover I Don’t Have to Love – Bright Eyes
• Walking Away – Sugar
• Take me for a Little While – Vanilla Fudge
• Eva’s Warning – Snake Finger
• One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula – Dengue Fever
• Gratitude – Beastie Boys
• Point Blank – Pig Face

The grass was pretty high, too; couple week’s growth. This thing is no wimp…I could go on and on. But, I’ll leave you with a shot of how damn cute this thing is. Those are geckos (or chameleons or something) stamped into the plastic of the wheel.

 

I Want My *%&$ Back

I know I have been posting tips purely on Mac matters lately because I have access to some pretty high-end stuff at work, so here’s one for the masses (like me when I’m @ home):

I wanted to get one of my videos back from Youtube that I misplaced in my piles of unlabeled discs to post on another site I just joined. It’s not super-easy, but fairly painless.

First, if you haven’t switched to Firefox…why the hell not? Stop using IE (highly vulnerable/unweildy) or Safari (clunky/site-support spotty), because it has a mass of need-specific tools you can add to it. The one I picked for downloading Youtube (and supposedly Google) video was Ook? Video Ook!…I know, but the usefulness outweighs the bad name. This add-on puts a little icon on your browser status-bar (but you can put it elsewhere with the options). Depending on your system, you either single- or left-click on the icon when on a video’s page to download an .FLV file.

Now what can anyone do with a Flash file (that’s what an .flv is)? This is where VLC comes in. Like Firefox, this massively useful, tiny video player is free and runs on the major operating systems with zero hassle. Again, why are you still using Win-Media Player or Quicktime for which you can’t find specialized codecs for different formats? If you don’t know what codecs are, then you need VLC. It has all of them (except a couple that are only being used by trouble-makers and I don’t run inot those often).

So you open VLC and

• click File
• choose Wizard (Streamin/Exporting Wizard for Mac)
• when the window pops-up, choose Transcode/Save to File
• under Select a Stream, click Choose and find your fresh [videodname].flv download
• Click Next (duh)
• Check Transcode Video, choose Mpeg-2
• Check Transcode Audio, choose MP3
• Click Next, choose where you want your file to go and name it [whatever-you-want].mpg

It’ll do stuff, how long depends on the length of the movie. Then, boom (or bam or wiffle, etc.), you have your video back.

If that’s all too difficult for you, check these guys’ article. They’re hawking somebody’s wares and suggest something called greasemonkey, which adds another layer of complexity. But whatever ou do, get Firefox & VLC. They make life easier. VLC isn’t the best thing for transcoding, but it plays video awesomely. And if you want a one-stop, free install, that one’s it.

 

Working with High Definition Video

I recently took a class (with the kind patronage of my boss) in the use Final Cut Pro. If you haven’t had the pleasure of working with it, it is one of the most useful, hands-on video-editing suites available. It is also very intricate.

Therefore, as I understand how to better use it, I will be posting primers on video processing and manipulation. We (that is, WSU LC-NOP) recently acquired a high-definition (HD) camera and are trying to discover it’s possibilities. While it’s images are stunning, the new technology ads an extra layer of complexity. Below is a guide to capturing footage shot on such a camera.

For Final Cut Pro & the Sony HDV 1080i mini DV camera:

1. Open a new project
2. Go to & click “Final Cut Pro” in the top toolbar
• Choose “Audio/Video Settings” from the drop-down menu
3. When the dialog window pops-up, it shows the Summary tab first.
4. In this tab, under Sequence Preset choose HDV – 1080i60
• under Capture Preset choose HDV
• under Device Control Preset choose HDV Firewire
5. Now go to the Sequence Presets tab and make sure that HDV – 1080i60 has a check-mark
• Go to the Capture Presets tab and make sure that HDV has a check-mark
• Go to the Device Control Presets tab and make sure that HDV Firewire has a check-mark
6. If that is all correct, click OK and select your Sequence 1 by single-clicking on it (you have to do this to be able to access the sequence settings – a must for capturing in this format)
7. Now go to Sequence in the top toolbar and choose Settings
• In the dialog box, the General tab is the 1st to show
• Under Frame Size, choose your desired size (something HD for sure, like 960×720, but make sure that it is in 16:9 Aspect Ration if you shot your footage in Widescreen)
• Then set Pixel Aspect Ratio (to the same as the above choice and definitely HD), check Anamorphic 16:9 if desired
• Then set the Quicktime Video Settings to HDV 1080i60
8. Then Click OK and you should be ready to Log & Capture

If you try to capture video and the program is still not seeing your camera, then one of the settings did not “take”. You might have to go back and check to make sure. You might also have a different model. Just play with the settings until you get results that work.

Sometimes it’s something as simple (and upsetting) as merely not clicking on your Sequence before you set the preferences (see #6 in the list).

 

This Death is Not Yet Rated

The Death Star Is at the Mechanic’s /
A Estrela da Morte Está no Mecânico
Originally uploaded by Alex Castro.

About Jack Valenti’s more-than-timely demise, the SF Chronicle posits “…when he devised the controversial movie-ratings system in 1968 — he doomed himself to a life of being misunderstood…” I think we, those of us who take notice, understood all too well.

This evil, ugly, malignant dwarf has held our culture captive for nearly 40 years. He has kept us safe from ourselves. He is in large part the reason nothing good has come out of Hollywood for decades. He was the head of the motion picture ratings group – and now he is the subject of unfounded hero worship.

I like to sound informed, but the only reason I know about him and am going on this rant is because of the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated. This is an amazing movie that you will probably never see due to its attack on the MPAA. Viewing it makes it hard to believe that people all over CA aren’t popping champagne corks this day, including those currently extolling his virtues.

His boyscout maxims that litter the aforementioned film & are being broadcast posthumously are a thin veil for draconian ideology. He said things like, “There isn’t anything in the world that can’t be made better.” It sounds good on the surface, but has a fascist aftertaste. I mean who says what better is or what is purely censorship? I say he’s made the world better by leaving it.

Other Valentiisms:

• I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president.
• No one today knows what is indecent.
• The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone.

Valenti quotes from BrainyQuote

 

Google Video

For lack of anthing interesting to say (for several weeks it seems), I am going to post my knowledge of how to get your stuff on Google Video.

This info starts from the DVD rip and goes to the finality of uploading to Google. I include the DVD info because one of the things I do at my job is to transfer individuals’ VHS memories to DVD. One person that comes in likes to get his stuff on the web, hence this little tutorial…oh, btw did I mention that this info is for Mac? If you are using a PC, the process is so much easier and there’s tons of info out there for that.

QUICK & DIRTY GUIDE TO VIDEO CONVERSION

(If using DVD-disc/VOB-file)
Rip to harddrive using Handbrake program
-using “MP4″ file format
-& “AVC/H.264 Video” codec
-set avg. bitrate at 750 (Google suggested min.)
-adjust picture settings to desired size (320×240 min.)
-audio should be fine (lang1:unknown/44.1k/128kbps)
this will create an “.mp4″ file

General Transcoding:
(either from ripped file or locally generated)

Using Quicktime Pro, open the desired video(s)
If multiple videos need to be spliced together, copy desired footage/ trim movie to desired points/ paste parts at play-marker points

(if file is already a “.mp4″ file)
Save video (not “Export”) as “Self Contained movie”
this will create a new file that is a “.mov” file

(if file is not already an “.mp4″)
Go to >File>Export
At bottom of dialog box find “Export”>Choose “Movie to MPEG4″
select “Options” directly to the right of “Export”
-Under Video tab (1st screen)} File Format: set to “H.264″
-Data Rate: 750 kbits/sec
-Image Size: choose (min. 320×240)
-Frame Rate: 30
-Under Audio tab} Audio Format: set to “Pass through”
-select OK
When that produces a “.mp4″ file, open that back up in Quicktime and save as per above instructions.

The Google upload program seems only to accept MP4 encoded MOV files. Use the Google Video Uploader application as it appears to be more stable than browser upload.

IF SERVER WARNING APPEARS
Do not become discouraged. This happens frequently. The program is in “beta” stage.
Try re-logging in, shutting down the program & bringing it back up, whatever works at the time.
(Do no remove files from queue. They should be there when the program comes back up, unless it crashed or you forced it to quit)
Then check “I certify…blah blablah” and click the upload button again. Upload should resume from previous point of glitch (i.e. upload status percentage). Rinse & repeat as needed…
If you notice the upload speed stalling at a certain number, selecting “Cancel” will not destroy any upload progress either. Try that and then (wait for the program to respond again, takes time) select “Upload” again.
This will save you hours of trying over & over to get past that glitch point by removing and re-adding (as I initially did) with no successful result.

 

Free Association* Con Carne

abandcalledblower

^enlarge

When I put myself out to the world as a conduit for artists (in reference to iTunes), it turns out I didn’t have to go far from home. In saying home, I speak metaphorically as I sit in Washington and my friend lives in Chicago. Said friend, let’s call him Dan Worland (because that’s his name), happened to read my blog and informed me that his band already had music on iTunes via CD Baby.

I used to hang out with this guy when I lived in Chicago, but have known him far longer from a chance meeting in an Indiana junior-high. I had a copy of Dragon magazine, usually a signal for cromag’s to begin the beatings this became a quick bonding opportunity for a fellow geek…er, enthusiast.

It’s this brand of devotion to the fringe that makes his band’s music so informed. Oh, in case you hadn’t gleaned this, the name is A Band Called Blower. Now I’m not saying that Dan is the only reason the music shines. Like-minds gravitate. Matt Fontaine and former-members Greg & Nathan all flesh out a sound so layered with eclectic influences that it’s almost baroque.

I could drop names like i was tryin’ to get outta jail, for instance:
Dead Language (that’s the album featured ) takes you back to the days when garage meant just that and not daddy’s million-dollar recording studio. It builds on the sounds of The Fall, Clinic, The Stooges and, others have remarked, Television with the benefit of hindsight and more than a little psychedelia…
- but rock criticism is useless and the proof is in the pudding.

One can go to iTunes and get a sampling if each song, or visit their site and pull-down some whole mp3’s for free, or go to their Myspace profile and listen/add songs to one’s own profile, or all of the above. I really hope you give these guys a go. They represent a chapter of the highly self-conscious turn-of-the-century rock progression that much of America missed while it was happening.

Dead Language tracks:

1. Absolute Zero
2. Trickbag
3. Check, Double Check
4. Hangnail
5. Domelite
6. Carpetbomb
7. Infinity Clue
8. Little Wire
9. Strange Kind of Luck
10. Tokyo Olympiad

Oh yeah, I also made a cheesy little video for track 9:

*purplemonkeydishwasher