Viv and I filed our taxes today with a visit to the Block back on the Hill – I owe FOUR GRAND – Then we consoled ourselves with tasty sushi at our former local, the ever-hopping Hana.
Alas, they had no monkfish liver.
Gigs
I am excited to learn that my backup mail service, fastmail.fm, has upgraded their TOS for Enhanced users – I can now assign 200 aliases and 50 virtual domains there, and they have also implemented a 1GB WebDAV volume at that service level with includes some level of hosting. This may very well mean I can basically stop selfhosting for email, which would be a Good Thing. The aliases also mean that I can transfer all the friend and role addresses over there and I might even be able to do proper groups.
Blip blip
This time, I’m testing the mobile videoblogging service available via blip.tv. It seems like file upload speed to my mail provider from the Treo might be part of the problems I have seen with these attempts.
Crud – the Flickr crosspost just plain failed, and the post to mike.whybark.com appears to have succeeded, but the post format only provides a link instead of a thumbnail linked to the movie asset.
Not only that – but it looks as if the file upload for the video asset is also no good. It took over four tries to upload the attachment, and the handset kept trying to go to sleep while uploading. The final, apparently successful upload took about 10 minutes, much more time than it should have based solely on file size, about a megabyte.
Rickshaw, take two
Lessee if this actually posts this time. Also, I think I have found another MT-enabled video-moblogging provider. Stay tuned.
Finding Lost
cityofsound: Why Lost is genuinely new media [via thingsmagazine.net]
Far out. The author notes that there is a book for sale on Amazon seen on the show as a manuscript being read by Hurley, and cites the author bio from the online bookseller’s listing:
“About the Author: Bad Twin is the highly-anticipated new novel by acclaimed mystery writer Gary Troup. Bad Twin was delivered to Hyperion just days before Troup boarded Oceanic Flight 815, which was lost in flight from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles in September 2004. He remains missing and is presumed dead.”
Lostpedia, a wikipedia for the show.
Rickshaw
Greg, Stacey, and Viv at the Ricksaw for drinks.
Cygne
I had a dream last night in which I stumbled into a little known hipster subculture centered on the construction and flight of archaic aircraft while dressed in pseudo-authentic period costume.
Among other things, I saw a linen-winged open-frame triplane in flight and met a young man in a vibrantly reimagined riff on the baby-blue service uniform of a Great War French airman. The high-collared tunic had rainbow piping and embroidered logos and symbols on the back, at the elbows, and at the shoulders and breast. This decoration combined the manner of astronaut flight suits, NASCAR track outfits, and the heraldry of motorcycle club colors.
In essence, the garment, as I dreamt it, was an argument that the Great War practice of personalizing pilots’ planes with distinctive unit devices and color schemes is the common ancestor of these more modern coats of manty colors.
Buck-Ninety-nine
FREE*PASS: All the copyright rubbish you can take for $99 a year, or $1.99 per flick. Despite my distinct perception that this is cinematic shovelware, I have not taken the time to see if all the UK Hitchcock they have is actually from archive.org or if it’s sublicensed from commercial distribution. I will note that they have a ton of black-and-white horror (lotsa Karloff) and some really crazy stuff. such as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. But really, $1.99? That seems like it beats BitTorrent considered simply in terms of time for a lot of this stuff.
Another thought – the stuff they have available is distinctly reminiscent of the late-night local-horror-host material that was once prevalent in this great nation, and has succumbed to the wash of money that erodes local flavor with such vigor. I wonder, are there distribution restrictions on the content? Could I create a video podcast around, say, Vincent Price in The Last Man on Earth, peppering the film with shots of me in an ill-fitting bald-head wig, cape, and round-lensed black glasses, telling stupid jokes and pretending to drink from beakers of dry ice?
Simon, self portrait
Cat pictures being a statutory requirement and all. Simon grappled with the Treo as I framed the shot and pushed the ‘shutter’ button with his paw just before attempting to gnaw on the antenna stub, purring loudly.
See Nay Moi
I got rolling with Vimeo yesterday and today, and apparently was able to email a movie to my Vimeo account; but for some reason the clip isn’t rendering there successfully. Googling for a direct Vimeo-to-MT pipe such as Flickr makes available has been fruitless, to date.
That reminds me, i keep meaning to make sure Jim sees the cover of the Newsweek dated April 3.