(I like “property is theft” best. No Proudhon, no Holzer.)
Hm, I see some interesting possiblities here. Like, for example, linking inbound Google searches to one’s site through to Amazon with the same string sent in a search, so that each visitor to one’s website is served a result that directs them to Amazon via an affiliate link that is based on the visitor’s inbound search string. Gee whillikers! They’ll architect cities around it!
Apple – iBook G4: out now. Ships with Panther. Base $1099.
Can you say “G5 Powerbooks”? I knew you could.
More Twain-related links for my own satisfaction. I’m currently completing “Life on the Mississippi” and figured I should supplement my imagination and Twain’s recollections with hard links.
Regarding “Life on the Mississippi,” two passages have stood out. In one, Twain modestly describes the peculiar experience of seeing a steamer named after him. He’s writing in the 1880’s, and it’s interesting to me that his steamboating past was sufficiently celebrated prior to his fact-gathering voyages for the book I’m reading now that his former colleagues saw fit to honor him in such wise.
In the other he describes the loss of his younger brother Henry in a steamboat’s boiler explosion. The passage held special meaning for me; there was a certain inevitability in his matter-of-fact recounting of the loss that I comprehended over a century-and-a-half’s distance.
Steamboats.org (employs the word “Steamboatin’!”)
Putt Putt Boats: Steam powered toy boats.
SJ noted a few days ago that Calvin Johnson of K Records and various influential indie bands such as Beat Happening and the current Dub Narcotic Sound System was in an auto accident recently.
K Records has updates and info about benefits, as, of course, the musicians’ insurance is limited to nonexistent.
<sarcasm>
No, we don’t need universal health-care – why, when independent musicians get hurt badly enough to require hospital time, a few benefits can raise as much as a couple thousand dollars!
</sarcasm>
I feel constrained to point out that although more rain is predicted, at the moment I write this, it’s very sunny.
Oct. 20: FIVE INCHES / Nov. 20, 1959: 3.41 inches.
Mount Vernon in danger of flooding as Skagit river expected to crest at nine feet over flood stage.
UPDATE: Skagit River expected to crest above 1990, 1995 levels at the Skagit Valley Herald. The article has a photo overview of the edge of the river. In the image, the river can be seen at about street level: ordinarily, it’s about twenty feet below the boardwalk you can see in the back of the image along the flood.
I’ve looked for MV blogs but to no avail.
Also, my throat is sore and I expect to host a battle between my immune system and microorganisms over the next few days.
You know, this morning when I splashed through two inches of standing water to retrieve my hermetically sealed Seattle Post-Intelligencer from the courtyard, I recall thinking, huh: it sure is rainin’ a lot here.
I was not expecting to learn that today would be still raining.
A visit to Uwajimaya and the ID of course brings with it the wonders of food not commonly found in Safeway. Check it out! Grass jelly, on sale for 75 cents!
(I have eaten grass jelly in the past, and can aver, it’s pretty tasty! Slightly sweet, refreshing! Aaahh!)
I also particularly like the (Taiwanese) package design. It’s intimidating.
A survey, compiled as a reference work for yours truly to familiarize myself with what’s out there.
MIS-ONE.COM was the source of the hilarious video cited by dan in late August, and has an ever-growing repository of slacker video to peruse via the link above.
Doin’ OK is a UK based house apparently oriented to music video. I’m looking less for music video and girly-reels, actually. Or fetish reels, actually, for that matter.
Isuma: Inuit video.
Neural.it pointed me to the New Global Vision project. Neural.it also has a passel of fascinating media links that I was unfamiliar with, such as the Molecular Media Project and Digital Fiction.
Volksmovie.com, “the complete online resource and community base for the digital filmmaking movement.”
Videoactivism.org. Clarification unnecessary.
Vital 5 Productions: Seattle based! Distributes Arbitrary Art Grants.
…
This area looks much to me like online comics; there’s clearly a huge amount of work being produced without much headway to identifying a self-sustaining business model. I think that the lower costs of creating this sort of entertainment directly threaten the dominance of the feature film and TV market by Hollywood, but don’t expect to see significant pressures on Hollywood to adopt indie-style production techniques as a regular, day-to-day thing for at least a couple more years.
I think the genre based fan-films I often highlight here are the probable nexus of that threat (Blair Witch Hunt, anyone?). Knowledgeable and passionate genre fans have already shown that they can create work that is more entertaining and compelling than the material coming out of the studios targeting the same audience. Of course, indie production places some constraints on the pieces themselves that limit the direct threat at this time.
But what happens when someone in Hollywood recognizes that you could make an entire season of Starship Exeter for less than the cost of a single episode of Enterprise, and get better ratings with the product? Havoc will ensue in the industry. It will be like NAFTA for film and video professionals, and it’s going to be ugly.
In the meantime, indie video people will have a couple choices. They may seek to perfect their imitation of the commercial product, (which seems to be the goal of most of the genre stuff). Or they may perfect their own idiosyncratic techniques and themes while firmly aiming for mass-market accessibility. in a way, this has already happened, with the commercial success of Girls Gone Wild and Bumfights. Yet, the extreme and prurient content of these videos, by design, makes them unacceptable media for broadcast, ensuring the unit-sales that underpin the producers’ business models.
foreword.com | FOREWORD.COM INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL:
Dan’s provided a selection of media clips for our edification. I thought it made a nice segue from Rox.