Bird flu

My friend Chad is back to blogging at http://jakartachad.blogspot.com with some great posts about the avian flu outbreak and the government responses. While he describes some horrific and frightening incidents, he once again manages to put a human face on this tragedy. Check it out.

What I did on my summer vacation...

100_0317
Originally uploaded by NC Sylvis Photos.

Missed this guy like crazy.

What I did on my summer vacation...

080406
Originally uploaded by NC Sylvis Photos.

Missed this one too.

Pouringdown

Wow...
http://pouringdown.tv/
What the hell am I doing??
I need to update my lame excuses book.
-No time
-No money
-No camera
-No talent
-Bad parents
-Planets out of alignment
There, everything's covered.
Now I can get back to sitting around in my underwear, searching Youtube for girls gone wild videos, eating fried egg sandwiches, and draining any scrap of creativity I have left.

48 Hour Film Project debrief

Sorry for leaving everybody hanging.
I was so burnt out from the process that I fled to the comfort of Hogtown for a much needed vacation.
Now that I'm back and I have some perspective on those 48 hours, I'll try to make some sense of it all.
Our genre was horror, our prop was bubble wrap, our line was "It's just like my mother always told me." , and we had to have a character named Bob or Barbara Jones.
We had a great crew of volunteers to help out. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they knew what they were getting themselves into.
We had a great time, and pulled some hellacious allnighters wrasslin' with this beast.
It was fun, frustrating, and like all short/intense relationships, ultimately a heartbreaker.
To make a long story short, Team Daydreamthief did technically complete a film in 48 hours, although we missed the deadline to turn in our project by about 20 minutes.
Because we missed the deadline, our film was not eligible for the contest. Bummer.
Bummer may be the wrong word. The film we turned in was by no means a completed project. More like a very very rough draft.
I'll post some more notes on this experience and I'll try to get a copy of our movie up on the web to pick apart as a lesson in how not to make a movie.

48 Hour Film Festival

I'm in the middle of the Greensboro 48 Hour Film Festival.
http://www.48hourfilm.com/greensboro/
Team Daydreamthief is rocking it old school.
Good times!

What's beef?

Whether you're a Democratic-Republican or a Federalist, pour a little bit of mead on the corner for the original gangsters.
202 years ago today Vice President Aaron Burr fatally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.
Booyaka!
Better watch your step when you besmirch the character of cabinet member who packs a flint lock gat.
RIP Hambone.

(image via wikipedia.org)

A declaration of independence

Everyone put their burgers and kool-aid down for a few minutes and let's just take some time to really read this document and think about how this experiment is going.


In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Enjoy your fireworks show.

William S. Burroughs - Thanksgiving Prayer

While technically this is a "Thanksgiving Prayer", this piece by Burroughs really cuts to the dark heart of this holiday. There are a lot of great things about this country, but there is also a really dark aspect to our history. Leave it to the deviant gentleman junkie to pick at the bloody flag that covers the foul smelling wound that America won't disinfect.
Mission accomplished, Dr. Benway.

A little UAV lite taking you up to news hour...

I'm going to start collecting defense contractor videos. Dig that music. I picture some Israeli humming this little ditty while he's hunting down targets. Angel of death elevator music.

That Hawking's such an A-hole...

Colbert nails Stephen Hawking.
Score another one for the gut!

Homeland security

Okay, my man is laying it all out for the Charlotte city council. No ice in the arena, somebody with their hand in the pie, and now a rogue helicopter pilot flying between the magnolia tree (you know the one) and his property line. Looks like they're gonna just sit on their hands again. Well I urge my audience to help my friend out and call John Walsh and urge him to issue a America's most wanted alert.
Is George Shinn a chameleon lemon headed coward terrorist pussy? Maybe... maybe.

Let's open those neural floodgates

Just watched David Cronenberg's Videodrome for the first time.
Whoa...
It's not like I wasn't aware of this film before today. I had seen clips and read some brief descriptions of the plot. But nothing can prepare you for that kind of biomech hallucinatory horror. Amazing. I can't even imagine what that would have done to my 13 year old brain.
I love the original trailer for the film. Like something programmed by some Euro demo coders circa 1983. Beautiful. Looks like Criterion has released a great version with lots of neat goodies.
I had just watched A History of Violence, which was pretty underwhelming. This movie reminded me of the director that I know and love.
Long live the new flesh.

Mount Merapi

Threat levels are raised to their highest levels as approximately 1000 villagers flee from the volcano after an eruption. Let's hope that area will be spared another horrific natural disaster
I'm keeping one eye on the news and another on Chad's blog.

Wheels of steel

Browsing through Robotwisdom and I came upon this amazing video link of four turntablists named Birdy Nam Nam from Paris. Great to see people taking this artform in completely different directions. The scratching that came from the early days of hip hop, pushed by pioneers such as DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Grand Wizard Theodore, has blossomed into this artform all its own.

Wherefore art thou Daydreamthief?

Sorry for the absence.
Took a bit of a break to recharge my batteries and reseat my logic cards.
Helping out with the Mount Merapi blog took more out of me than I thought.
It was kind of hard switching modes. The Merapi blog was a much more serious endeavor, and it didn't feel quite right bouncing back to my blog and blathering about movies, media, and me. Not that I don't think that the light and the weird have their places, it's just that I'd like to separate that stuff with some respectful distance. Events are still very bad in that part of the world. If you feel like helping out, please do.
As for me, I'm gonna get back up on my pony and ride off in the other direction. See what the digital prospectors have turned up on the other side of those hills yonder.

(Emperor Norton via Wikipedia)

Blogs - What are they good for?

Absolutely nothing!
Say it again!

Okay that's not fair.
The recent events are making me seriously look at what I (and all the other netheads) are doing.
I recently posted to a local Greensboro board about my thoughts on the state of the blogosphere.
I'll mirror part of that text here -
As a netizen and newborn blogger/vlogger, I'm wondering can any of this help anybody. Initially I helped him set up his site as an experiment. We were trying to see if we could find an alternative way to tell real human stories and bypass the barriers presented by traditional media. Little burps of gas and lava from the mountain and a nightmare of technical problems just trying to carry on the most rudimentary forms of electronic communication were all we achieved on the first try. Now this. Destruction on a massive scale. Thousands dead and/or dying. Whole villages leveled. Roads and tracks buckled and folded like ribbons. And Chad is going back into the heart of that. Between his straight day job of reporting for VOA and NPR he's going to try to put a human face and voice to what only appears as a body count and a 30 second news blurb. Can he do it? I hope so. But I have my doubts. The place was chaotic before a 6.2 quake. I imagine it hasn't improved any. So what does any of this have to do with us? Katrina wasn't that far away from Greensboro. Did netizens make a difference there? And what happens the next time a hurricane chews its way through NC? What brave soul will be on the front lines, blogging their experiences and the experiences of the people around them? And will that bring the National Guard in any faster? Are we all just a bunch of dreamy, head in the infocloud, early adopter dreamers? Well, what do you think?
Thanks,
j

And then there's the problem with tyrants and theocrats...
But that's another post.

Indonesian Earthquake

I just did a quick emergency post over at the Mount Merapi blog for my friend Chad.
There was a 6.2 earthquake in the area of Yogyakarta and thousands are dead and injured. Chad wasn't in the area at the time, but he is on his way back to report on the disaster.
I guess there are a bunch of people who feel like me this morning. Relieved because our friend/colleague/son/brother is safe, sickened because of the massive loss of life and unimaginable suffering, and freaked out knowing he's going back into this area to report. I was chatting with him while he was preparing to go, and my stomach was in knots. I can't even imagine what he must be feeling. In the end I realize the only thing I can do is help him get all sides of the story out, and hopefully that will make some kind of difference. And I know that if there's one person who can bring back something human and true, it's Chad.

online video services

I love me some youtube. Lord knows I do.
Let's break down the debate going on in my head.
(+)
Content aside, the interface for uploading is dirt simple and fast.
Straight forward interface and audience numbers seem to be huge and growing by the second.
(-)
But their design is way too clunky and old school.
And the quality is so so.

On the other hand there is blip.tv.
(+)
Nice clean design. Lots of groovy options for CC licensing, and better creative control of my content.
(-)
It posts immediately in the format that I uploaded. QT produces a QT popup and WMV produces a WMV popup. A popup! Have I mentioned how much I hate popups? And what if the average viewer is having OS issues with the alternate OS media format. Flash may not give me the best quality, but it seems to be a play anywhere kind of solution. And it takes forever to post a flash version. I may be way out of touch on this one, but I'd much rather take the hit in quality and reach a larger audience than get in the middle of some media player format war.
I know I'm missing quite a few points, but these are the ones that immediately jump out at me.

What do you guys think?
Anybody have any thoughts?

video poem

ahhh...

The academic creative drought has ended.

The irony that I can be a film student and not have any time for my own creative expressions isn't lost on me.

Messing around with Resolume and Premiere.

Music/glitch sounds via ML Oslo EP @ http://www.opsound.org/artist/ml/ under a Creative Commons license.