Up to episode seven.
The little female death god is an amazingly enigmatic
character.
She is becoming possibly one of my fav Anime characters.
So bizarre how she goes from intense serious young insect,
to bouncy Japanese school girl when she is around the high school students.
The guy is a bit plastic, but I like the way the standard Anime
type small comedy character is introduced.
How long does this series go on for?
I've just been pinged by a local cemetery where I took some video and made a bit of a montage type thing.
Interesting that when I popped in to view the YouTube of the sender of the email, the account had been open for four hours.
I’m thinking that someone drew their attention to the video, and they opened an account specially to send me the ‘cease and desist.’
It was a polite email, and looked like a form letter so I would think that they have it sitting around to ping others.
Dear Mr T,
FOR YOUR INFORMATION
We note that you have taken, reproduced and have placed (either for sale or otherwise) photographic images of ??? Cemetery at both this You Tube website and the following address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davetimperley/
We have no record of application or approval issued to you for the purpose of filming, displaying or disseminating images of the cemetery. In light of this you do not hold copyright permission to use the cemetery in these images for public exhibition either in physical or electronic format. We recommend copyright and filming permits be arranged with us ASAP to avoid any possible complications. Until such time as permission is granted the images containing elements of the cemetery MUST not be placed in the public domain.
The images we have found are not considered to have been created or used in relation to family history or genealogy research for your family.
We are a cemetery used often for photographic and film work and we try to accommodate as many requests as possible taking into account we are a fully operational cemetery with competing demands placed upon our resources.
We are happy to help you sort this particular issue out by contacting the cemetery office.
A while back, after I had posted a few videos on YouTube, I started getting these email messages...
Re: Your Videos
Dave,
I wish that I were able to fully articulate my company here. Due to the fact that we are in direct competition with YouTube there are certain things that I'm not able to say here. I hope you understand.
What I will do however is share with you my mobile number so that you can give me a call 619-573-2810.
Looking forward to your call.
Warm Regards,
Ethan
A bit weird!
I got a few of these messages, and who ever it was, they wanted me to ring a number in North America, cause they wouldn’t reply to email.
There has alway been the argument that photovoltaic cells lose out to fossil fuels on the ‘cent per kilowatt argument.’
So what happens when major corporations take the initial uneconomic hit, and invest in solar power?
The cost starts to come down for everyone.
Extract:
Tesco USA Building World's Biggest Solar Roof
Dphotoind_small_1An LA-based manufacturer of solar panels got its dream order this morning: a $13m contract to "empanel" the roof of a grocery chain distribution center in Riverside, Calif., from Tesco USA. It will be the world's largest array of solar panels when completed.
If it's perhaps a little sad, in the big picture, that the photovoltaic roof will only be able to provide a fifth of the depot's power needs, that shouldn't dissuade us from lauding Tesco's pledge to spend a billion dollars on making its operations energy-efficient.
Extract:
Story posted on: December 18, 2006
Google car park filled with solar trees
It is well known that Google loves the environment with its founders driving hybrid cars, and that fact is accentuated by the ambitious solar project located at their Mountain View headquarters. Google has set up approximately 9,000 solar panels to power approximately one third of the complex's power demand, where 3,000 of those solar panels function as a 'solar tree' that line the parking lots. These solar trees not only convert the sun's power into useable electricity, it also shades the vehicles underneath from the scorching heat as well as rain. It is nice to see corporate giants doing their part for the environment.
This could be much like what happened with Cell phones.
Business paid for the initial start-up expense of the Cell Networks.
Eventually as the ‘carriers’ worked to broaden their market, the price of phones and connections was bought down to the point where cell phones was attractive to consumers.
So, Here in Oz, water is a scarce commodity, but the sun beats down regularly all year round.
Why would the government want to stop us collecting rain to ease the water shortages, and to collect the sun light that beats down on us all to ease the release of greenhouse gases?
Because if we collect water and power ourselves, the government and business can't sell it to us.
Desalination plants and Nuclear power stations have nothing to do with logic, protecting the environment, and public safety.
It’s all about protecting the incomes of governments and industry.
In an earlier post I mentioned kids playing games on their
phones that mesh with the real world.
http://nokian95.groups.vox.com
Nokia have an article discussing the technologies here…
I’ve been thinking about the entry I made earlier in the week…
http://nokian95.groups.vox.com
Why wouldn’t it be possible to set up a ‘localised cell network’ using the phones themselves as base stations, repeaters, etc?
For example:
At work we all tote phones around.
All have Bluetooth, and within the next couple of years, all will have Wifi.
We could potentially activate a piece of software…
Which activates a local Wifi based network linking the phones…
We all log onto this network...
And this allows us to talk to each other.
An SMS has to bounce through the Cell net, even if I’m sitting three meters away from the person I want to message.
Why couldn't my phone, recognise their phone if it is within range, and bypass the Cell net completely?
The same system could work for kids at schools, building lots of mini networks during lunch breaks.
Imagine games of schoolyard tag, where all the participants have software (hooked into GPS and the other phones) that mimics the ‘Alien 2’ style scanners which beep with greater intensity as the person who is ‘it’ gets closer.
A thousand kids, all linked by Net and tracked by GPS could map out the boundaries of the school grounds and classes in half an hour. Software could construct a real life Doom style game. The horror creatures only appearing on the screens of the children’s phones, mapped with the phones cameras over real life locations. This location data would be passed onto younger brothers and sisters when they start school. The more kids travel these locations, the denser the data becomes.
Kid’s could ‘tag’ locations with schoolyard lore.
Emergency workers could establish a mini network at a crash site, just by turning on their phones. Hell, the crash survivors might have already established a local net, just to find each other.
Imagine the bandwidth potential of a Soccer match. Each phone could link up, with a low range radio standard such as Wibree, register its position in the stadium with GPS, and graphic data could be pumped through the network, producing an enormous TV screen.
Instead of waving candles at rock concerts, everyone waves their phones and the huge composite picture would shimmer and flow.
I wonder if it’s possible to logon on all the phone cameras? Record a thousand different angles, a thousand different personal experiences of the one event.
One super antenna isn’t needed to suck up each phone individually.
Just small ones around the edge of the arena, sipping data from the huge net linked people filled cup of shared experience.
What would be the difficulties in getting the phones to recognise each other, with one of these radio standards?
Nokia is already fooling around with P2P networks running on phones.
The network would log phones on and off as units come into, and fall out of range.
The more dense the population of phone units become, the greater the data transmission.
Laptops could be used to boost range.
Along with the list of personal contact details my phone would carry, there would be a list of ‘localised cell nets’ that my phone had permission to log onto.
for example:
At school the phone would log onto my friends in the class room.
Travelling home the phone would log onto the Cell network.
Once home the phone would log onto my families phone network, and all re-establish the ‘friends from school’ network if one of my mates came over to study.
We’ve been playing around with Bluetooth at work, and these concepts seem to be possible.
Our PC Bluetooth adaptors came packaged with the facility to build a wireless net between units.
All that is needed is for the phones to recognise this localised Network and each other.
Something for the Fashonistas.
http://www.shoutfit.com/
(Wow, weird one. Oz is one of the top three countries for visiting this site.)
Interesting this Nokia/YouTube hook up.
Nokia press release…
http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1104222
Nokia have had a love/hate relationship with the ‘carriers’ for a while now…
http://nokian95.groups.vox.com/library/post/6a00ccff84be77985d00cd970d0e234cd5.html
This deal parallels the ones YouTube have made with carriers such as Verizon Wireless.
http://www.youtube.com/press_room_entry?entry=MfvRjkWLxgk
The main difference seems to be that Nokia won’t be pruning the selection of videos that are downloaded.
Nokia and other mobile phone companies are neatly bypassing the ‘carriers’ by providing a wide variety of potential wireless access nodes (2G, 3G, Wifi, Bluetooth) onto the Internet.
The ‘carriers’ should love Nokia for making it so easy for the user to chew though bandwidth.
Unfortunately, the ‘carriers’ don’t see themselves as a utility such as water or electricity.
They see themselves as media companies.
Users want control over the media they consume.
Users are not interested in the ‘carriers’ censoring media.
Users want tools (mobile ones in this case) to find and access the media and human contacts they desire.
What Users don’t want is an ‘old school media channel’ dolling out teaspoons of sanitised bits and bytes, and controlling who the User can communicate with.
Life could be so easy for the ‘carriers.’ Give the Users a cheap, wide, fast flowing river of bits, and then sit back and let the cash roll in.
One day, we may find mobile phones talking to each other in a huge fluid mobile web (each phone would be its own ‘base station’ and function much as a P2P network would) dipping into household WiMax stations when access is available.
This would completely bypass the ‘carriers’ and would make the function of mobile phones much like the Net itself.
If so…
Hiya,
Welcome to the ‘Child of the Planet’ Vox group.
I was mailing these out personally, but Vox’s mail handling was getting on my tits, so apologise for this ‘taking the easy option.’ :-)
I’ve compiled a list of ‘getting to know you’ questions that you may wish to fill out and post as an item on the ‘Child of the Planet’ group.
You may also like to check out some of the responses to our ‘icebreaker’ in the Group entries.
Home is:
The one place I haven’t been, but want to visit before I die is:
The weirdest place I’ve been was:
How I feel about flying:
Eg: I do it cause I have to, or I love it and like to skydive on weekends.
My last road trip was:
My train or boat adventure was:
My favourite travel item is:
Eg: a torch for inevitable blackouts, or my partner cause they always know where to find the passports.
I think that I am a ……… sort of a traveller:
Eg. I like hotels and hire cars, or I prefer to backpack, or whatever.
One question I’d like to ask everyone else in the group is:
Questions from the group members:
Uncagedbird
Are you open-minded and accepting of anything?
musicchick2
What do you want people to say about you at your funeral? How have you contributed to the planet or society?
Alex
Do you have any travel advice that you think is crucial for everyone to know?
Gracious Light
What your favourite 'non-tourist trap' places to visit?
Tim Gildersleeve
Do you prefer to do touristy activities or just wander around a location?
Yasmine
What has been your favourite trip so far?
hamikka
Do you get tempted to live in your travel destinations?
Hush Prelude
Would you ever sacrifice a person for the sun god?
Jane
What has been your best or most memorable meal while on your travels?
Aubrey
What city, state or country have you visited - that you wish you hadn't?
Jenny
What's your favourite travel-related website?
We had some amazing rain showers today...
Sorry if this all reads like a rant, but I’ve been using this blog to vent.
I guess I just hate the ‘group think’ way of doing things.
Nothing truly wonderful ever seems to come out of a group of humans all ambling along in possibly a similar direction.
Humans don’t do ‘hive mind’ very well, so there needs to be some sort of direction applied to all our endeavours.
In our group, there were three of us (me, the actor and the young guy) all pretty much pulling in the same direction. The actor and I went off for an hour during the edit to organise music and sound effects.
We come back and the old man has forced his opinion onto the young guy (who was probably the most talented person in the group.) A chunk had disappeared from the middle of the piece.
I’m kind of pissy at both of them.
One for being a wimp, and the other for taking advantage of that.
The old man was still at it till the end. We were typing in the credits, and he tried to change the title of the piece. The young guy pipes up with a ‘but I thought we were going to call it Six Shots?’
The old man couldn’t pull a bully move now, and we kept the original title.
I guess that is just the way of the world. If you let someone walk all over you, they will.
Since the project didn’t go the way he was pushing, I think the old man had decided that he was going to ‘fix’ the production.
Unfortunately, as with a lot of things that are pulled one way and then the other, the end result didn’t really satisfy anyone.
What do you do…
Please one person?
Please a few people?
Please most people?
Please everyone? (This can happen, but almost always remains a utopian fantasy.)
Hard isn’t it!
We started the day with one unhappy person in a group of five, and ended the day with four cranky people glad just to get the thing finished (the final member was an older woman who spent most of her time coming to terms with the complexity of film making.)
The ‘short’ is finished and we all get a DVD copy of the result.
I’ll see what I can do about posting it for you all to have a perve.
What is it with old men?
They seem to think that they know everything, even when it is excruciatingly obvious that they don’t.
Our old man seems to have no idea about time management, as in…
We have an hour to finish three shots.
Up till now a ‘shot’ has taken us an ‘hour plus’ to finish,
but the old guy want’s to shoot just one more version of a shot,
cause he’s not happy with one of his pieces.
He seems to have some sort of ‘time distortion’ thang going on, where his minutes are five times longer then everyone else’s.
I think that my problem is that I keep forgetting that he is ‘the centre of the universe.’
At one point he had hoisted up a studio lamp, and was waving it through the air, cause a shadow was irritating him. The tutor had warned us not to move the lights while they were on, and kept repeating ‘you can’t hold a light above your head while we shoot a scene.’
Most old men seem to be like this.
I’m embarrassed to say, that at one point, the old guy (don’t feel sorry for the ‘old man’ - he is defiantly cashed up, works in construction, and spends big chunks of his time on adventure holidays around the world - This guy can look after himself) was upstairs behind a sheet of sound proof glass, and the rest of the group who was left behind downstairs started bitching. Just like when your dad is over by the BBQ, dousing it in petrol to ‘get some heat up,’ and everyone else in the family is grouped around the picnic table, complaining about the aftertaste gasoline gives the sausages.
Does this mean that I suddenly become a cantankerous old bastard when the snow is a little thick on the roof?
Sometimes I reckon I’m already turning.
Like this is the form that male menopause takes (or something?)
Will it be like Alzheimer’s and I won’t care that everyone around me thinks that I’m an arse?
Anyhoo, we actually got the six shots that we needed on tape.
We were all happy at the end of the day…
…despite finding that the camera had been set for sunlight for most of the indoor shoot.
…that the headphones only sometimes worked so we’re pretty sure that we got audio.
…that we had really dodgy ‘continuity’ (we all swapped jobs for each shot which didn’t help) so objects probably will appear and disappear from shot to shot.
Trainspotters will love our piece. ‘Can anyone spot something that didn’t move from shot to shot, other then the wall?’
As is always the case with such things, we were gelling as a team, just as the shooting was drawing to a close, and that special ‘sumptin sumptin’ that forms in the atmosphere around a group of people shooting a film (or putting on a play) was beginning to coalesce.
Tomorrow is ‘editing.’
Hooray for ‘let’s fix it in Post!’ which became our battle cry around two this afternoon.
...and already I want to ‘punch out’ one of the other classmates.
Three days and we learn everything there is to know about film making (ha.)
I’m not taking it too seriously. I see it as a second step towards other stuff.
Don’t feel sorry for the aspiring punching bag. He’s fifty something, built like a brick shithouse, sounds like he’s cashed up, and a self made man.
WHICH MAKES HIM A TOTAL PAIN IN THE BUM, UNLESS EVERYONE IS INSTANTLY DOING WHAT HE WANTS.
This isn’t a problem if we’re stuck on a deserted Island, and he’s the only one who packed a hunting knife. He is a royal pain in the posterior, in a small group where we only have three days to get something filmed, and burnt onto a DVD.
The point of the exercise is that everyone is supposed to contribute, and get an equal share of the resources.
The tech reckons I have good veins.
So I said ‘that will be really useful for when I decide to become a cocaine junkie.’
Hiya,
Welcome to the ‘Great Southern Land’ Vox group.
We’ve started to see a few people joining the group and I thought a bit of an ‘ice breaker’ was called for
I’ve compiled a list of ‘getting to know you’ questions that you may wish to fill out and post as an item on the ‘Great Southern land’ group.
What did you do on the morning of Oz day 07?
I walked down to the beach to see the Google plane fly over. It was a no show.
Did you get sunburnt that day?
No,
Where are your ancestors from?
(Unless your folks are indigenous aboriginals, everyone in Oz originated from somewhere else.)
Manchester U.K.
What’s your favourite thing about where you live?
I'm ten minutes from the sea, and fifteen minutes from the middle of the city.
What's the weather like on the day you post this in the Group?
(Feel free to include a photo with the posting)
In Splashcast, when one interrogates an
items properties. The User is presented with a series of dialogues.
I want to highlight the ‘map’ page where
one can quickly see where on the planet, their audience is located.
There was an article here…
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/01/flixster-growing-like-a-weed/
On a social network that uses film to draw
users onto the site.
There is also an interesting article here…
http://gigaom.com/2007/02/05/are-social-networks-just-a-feature/#more-8085
About building a ‘social network’ around
causal games.
I’ve noticed that one of the biggest groups
on Vox is the photographers.
Is this direction the one that Vox hopes to
move in with its association with media sites such as iFilm?
Specking of Groups. I’d like the group Icon
to be a picture randomly pulled from within the Groups store of posted images.
The channels are interesting, and look to be highly configurable, if one understands HTML, which I don’t, so I haven’t played around with the formatting much (Too busy paying the mortgage and building content.)
Feel free to explore Veoh and post your findings back here.
The site is nice and clean looking,
I like the multi posting
The video quality is great and they will auto build and iPod compatible streams (which I haven’t tested cause I don’t have an iPod.)
Veoh seems to be putting a lot of effort into getting hold of costumers, and content.
Hiya folks,
There are now two
little photography groups specialising in eye candy from cemeteries and cloud
chasing…
And one lonely little user group dedicated to the Pentax W10
pentaxw10I've been building a channel on Splashcast called Adventure Spang.
I started out with some clips from my holiday.
Last night I inserted some clips that I found on YouTube that suit my 'adventure' theme.
Now I have two shows in the channel and I've inserted some small title id's.
Splashcast reckon there’ve come up with some interesting monetisation schemes.
As Vox doesn’t allow 'embeds' I've knocked up some screen snapshots.
Note:
It's been a couple of days, and my Splashcast video embed has started to register eyeballs.
Interesting feature of Splashcast is that the server tracks the city and country in which the eyeball was living.
There is a little map that appears with pushpin dots.
Things I like:
Amazing control over player size. As the player is separated from the
channels, it's possible to retarget your content to a verity of
situations such as a tiny thumbnail for a MySpace profile, or a huge TV
type display (that said YouTube has possibly the worst codec quality
and this is the only useful option for content.)
It’s really easy to construct a channel and feed media through it
Things I don't like:
The Console where 'shows' and channels are shuffled is slow and it's drawn in a tiny Flash based window.
Splashcast doesn’t accept AVI uploads to their servers so DivX is cut out.
Current progress is displayed here...
