Posted on by mwhybark

Vidpod

I have spent a portion of my weekend messing with RSS and The Democracy Player, per the instructions linked, and so far, so good, although my DSL speed is slow enough to consign this to permanent experiment until I finalize the LAN setup and shanghai one of the G4s as a dedicated media server.

The Times has a look at the burgeoning world of IPTV content production: As Internet TV Aims at Niche Audiences, the Slivercast Is Born.

One of my longtime colleagues has been oriented to providing IPTV instructional programming for over a decade now – it really seems like this should be his moment. I wonder if he has rights to all the content he’s produced over the past ten years? On a related note, I wonder what would happen if I started considering my weekly pitchlist as the basis for video content as well? In particular, a subset of my story ideas are always how-tos, reviews, and explanatory material. A typical magazine story yields 500 to 700 words and takes less than a minute to read, in my experience. If that 700 words could be recast as a three-minute-script and shot at the time the article is prepared, I think there might be a decent microcontent media property, as long as the subject matter is sufficiently consistent.

Some of these ideas could also very productively apply to SIFFblog, I think. Hmmm.

Posted on by mwhybark

Bye-Bye Bert's

I was bummed to learn of the closure of Bert Grant’s Yakima brewpub from the P-I today. From the time it opened to the last time I was on Yakima, about five years ago, a stop at the old depot was a requirement of the trip, in token of Grant’s role in the craft brewer renaissance and in celebration of my family’s agrarian roots in the Yakima valley. Pears ain’t hops, but the incipient vineyards and hops fields of my childhood promised a richer, tastier adulthood, a promise which mostly has been borne out.

Posted on by mwhybark

Seattle and ashes

Charles D’Ambrosio sketches scenes from a pre-boom Puget Sound – my good old days, chilluns – in The New Yorker.

UPDATE: I found the story, as I often do with D’Ambrsio, beautiful and evocative. Interstingly, I distinctly felt that this story was written in conscious dialogue with Alexie and Vollmann. Perhaps someday Vollmann will write of the Northwest directly.

UPDATE II: on Father’s Day 2016 I noticed that the new Yorker appears to have bitrotted this, and presumably other, old links. Fixed. This post gave me such a thrill when the author himself dropped by to express appreciation for my expression of appreciation.

Posted on by mwhybark

Learn from Jon

Jon, who has been a bit quiet of late, makes up for it with disquisitions on the American left, his Christianity, and an unimpeachable list of tunes. Clearly, the man is, in fact, the Greatest Bus Driver in the World.

Seriously, I urge you to reflect on that list of music. It lends credence, as it were, and predisposed as I am to listen to Jon on things political it makes me reinspect my impulse to skip the religion component. Jon makes me think, and think hard.

But why does he think Billy is back on the sauce?