How To: Make Camera Phone Footage Not Suck
Remember the band Presidents of the United States of America (P.O.T.U.S.A)? You know “Lump”, “Peaches”…just try to pretend you don’t have that CD stashed away somewhere. I have it, I love it, and I still listen to it all the time. Well they are back! Back with new video shot entirely with camera phones.
One of the blogs over at O’Reilly has a great interview with the band and some technical stuff on how and why they shot a video with camera phones. Its a cool idea with a cool implementation. P.O.T.U.S.A is back and they are as tech savy as ever, hopefully their new music will be just as cool.
..then maybe you won’t be so ashamed to rock out to “Peaches” later tonight.
I Want A Boot Video
You’ve seen the movie Hackers right? Yes, I know its dumb. Yes, I know its fake as hell. …and yes, I, for some reason, love that movie too. Anyway. Remember towards the end of that movie where they are “hacking the Gibson” and they all boot up their chunky little laptops? Each of them has a cool little video / movie / animation that plays when they boot their computer, before they get to their desktop. I want that. Don’t you think that would be cool? Sure it might be annoying everyonce in a while when you just want your laptop to boot up quickly so you can get something done, but all those other times…it would be awesome!
So how do we get that to happen? That I don’t know. Apple does this when you first install Tiger or get a new Mac, they play that little “welcome” video. So I did a little digging. I found where the movie is stored that plays on initial setup, and I found out that deleting a certain XML file will cause the system to go through the setup again…but thats as far as I’ve gotten.
Does anyone have more suggestions on how to get this hack done? Does anyone really even care if this hack gets done?
Review: iMac G5 (iSight)
As promised, after speeding a few days with my new computer, I am now ready to sling a little review your way. Lets just get right to it shall we?
How fast is it?
Coming from a G4 933 iBook, the G5 (1.9 Ghz) in this last revision of the iMac seems very quick. Though you really don’t notice the speed difference until that first Spolight search. All iLife apps that I have tried so far (I’ve yet to get to Garageband) preform well. iPhoto handled my smaller sized library with no problem what so ever, scrolling up and down with little issue. iDVD and iMovie both preformed well in the simple tests, and I even tried to see how a more professional level video editing software, but…well, I’ll get to that later.
Can’t Delete Videos in iTunes
I’ve got a few videos in iTunes that I don’t want any longer. When I want to get rid of a podcast that I’ve listened to I can either drag it to the trash or right-click and select ‘clear’. In the ‘Videos’ section of iTunes (for the mac) neither of these two methods work for removing a video file. I have to dig into the iTunes podcast folder and manually delete it, which doesn’t update the listings in iTunes. I know you can delete podcast videos from the podcast section, but that does not encompass every video that I’ve got in iTunes.
You can erase files from any of the library, shuffle, podcast and playlist sections, but files in the video section (which are bigger by many orders of magnitude) are locked in.
Those weekly 250mb DiggNation videos are starting to eat up a good amount of disk space….
….
Update: Ok. You can delete videos from iTunes if you find them in your Library, but navigating that enormous list is kinda a pain and it just does not make much sense to me that you can’t manage your files in the video section.
damn I bitch about iTunes a lot. I’m sorry. (I’m not, really, but it was nice to say.)
Wait, Laguna Beach Isn’t 100% Real?
I just threw up. Twice. I can’t believe what I just read on the LA Times website. I’m just going to say it: Laguna Beach isn’t 100% real. Sure the producers still hold on their statements that they force no drama or dialogue, but they did let this out:
Despite persistent skepticism by some viewers and critics, producers said nothing, including dialogue, is made up. Still, many wonder how far MTV and the producers go to encourage the drama. “There are times when something big goes down the night before and we’ll ask, ‘Can you wait until the camera’s there to talk about it?’ ” Gateley said. They may suggest a restaurant that will allow filming, and they help pay for dinners. The cast receives “a nominal fee,” but no residuals, DiSanto said.
Wow. What a shocker. Wanna here more news that you could have guessed? People (schmucks) have flocked to the town of 25,000. But not just as tourists looking for Steven and L.C. (even though, from what little I’ve watched, Kristen is hotter.)…many people are moving there, hoping that their budding teenager will get “casted” in the show. This year’s freshman class is 300, the most in the last decade. Which of course means that the new class will be crazier and 100% more fake as they do anything to get in front of the camera. You think this version is fake and lame? I have a feeling we haven’t seen anything yet. Have you ever sat down and watched an episode of Saved By The Bell: The New Class? It will be like that…but I don’t think Screech will be their assistant principal.
Read more about the real Laguna Beach in the LA Times article.
See If Thelma and Louise Get Funky
I’m going to assume you’ve heard about the “Bird Flu” that is doing its best to fullfill the statement: “Today the birds, tomorrow the world” Note, I don’t think to flu actually thinks that, its just a dumb joke I threw in there…unless the flu was released my an evil genius that is somewhere under a mountain sculpted to look like his head petting a cat. If that is the case, maybe that is his mantra. In which case, its not a joke.
Where was I? Oh right the “Bird Flu”. Well if you really into that kind of thing, someone has setup a webcam so you can watch 2 chickens, named Thelma and Louise, in a cage in Europe and see if they get funky…I mean get the Flu. To me this sounds endlessly boring. Its not like the birds are going to start choking and screaming when bumps appear on their skin and their face melts like the solider that dies at the beginning of The Rock. If that starts to happen to one of these Chicken’s let me know, otherwise just watch it on your own with the rest of Europe.
Note: Has anyone else noticed that when the talk of this flu first started it was called “The Avian Flu”, but then the press here in the US decided we were all too stupid to realize that “avian” meant birds, so they changed it?
Link: Thelma & Louise Cam (Figures that the cam is currently down.)
Mike Replies to Hell Yeah Bitch! .com Comments
Its been about a month since Hell Yeah Bitch! .com became one of the masses and switched our hosting provider to Dreamhost. After the switch, I thought it might be nice to enter the site into the Dreamhost Site of the Month contest, mainly to get some exposure to our new hosting-mates. After submitting the site, I got a pleasant surprise: You know how I’m always asking for site feedback and never getting it? Well we got some now!
Like most comments made by the general public, not all of it was exactly helpful. If you read this site enough you will learn I’m a sucker for answering any and all comments, both constructive and stupid. So I figured I would take the time to comment on the comments we have received so far. (I have removed the user names of the comments just to be a nice guy)
Click after the jump to read the comments and replies.
The iMac Has Landed
My new iMac G5 has arrived. Thats the good news. The bad news is that I can’t play with it today (I’m at work), tonight (I have plans) or tomorrow (Work again). But tomorrow night! Thats when the magic happens. And since I have noticed a complete lack of new iMac reviews on the web, I will pick up the slack and save the internet’s ass yet again by contributing a full review this weekend.
Thats all I have for this post. Sorry, it sounded like a lot more in my head.