I made a video for Monsterdon, the weekly mostly-monster-moving event on Mastodon.
For some reason, people voted to watch Frogs (1972) this week. The title sequence I’m riffing on can make anything look action-packed, but, uh, I’m told… don’t be fooled by that.
I mean, it’s terror frogs. Don’t expect too much. xD
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Content owners are being incredible dicks with ATSC 3.0’s DRM support. (I know, it’s a shock.) And broadcasting companies have repeatedly lied about their intent, and are breaking tuners and television set functionality all over the place on ordinary over-the-air broadcasts. You know, over the publicly-owned airwaves.
It’s bad enough that LG has stopped making ATSC 3 tuners entirely.
This is obscene because ATSC 3.0 is genuinely a big improvement over ATSC 1.0 (the original standard), particularly in terms of how it handles signal dropout. It meaningfully extends effective signal range, as well as higher image quality. I care more about the signal range than anything else.
So if you care about the future of over-the-air television even a little bit, you might watch this video for background and then contact the FCC and your representatives with opinions.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Back at Clallam Bay Comicon, I did “USSR” for the first time, as a karaoke track. When I got back, I posted a video of the live USSR performance on Tumblr, taken off of audience camera.
And that was fun, but the sound quality was pretty bad, because it was just the on-camera microphone. Plus, the camera did things like make automatic-recording-level adjustments throughout, which means the backing track is pulsing all over the place.
I’m going to be cleaning up some other, similar live recordings for some other people this weekend, so I’ve had a go at this audio, just to warm up and see what I can do with it. That’s meant a lot of level-control automation, heavy use of a multiband compressor (and a high-pass filter to get rid of most of an occasional rumble from… somewhere…), a bit of reverb to smooth out some of the sample rate issues, and a lot of EQ work.
I’m going to massage it a bit more, I think? But I’m reasonably happy with what I’ve managed so far (mp3 link). The amount of surprise audio-level changes is down a lot, I’ve brought back the low end and some of the high end, there’s even a hint of kick to the bassline now – though I wonder if I’ve over-built that at the moment. It mostly sounds okay but I’m not sure it’s so great on anything that does a lot of bass boost, like some gaming headphones.
Anyway, what do you think? I’ll re-upload the live video with the improved/massaged audio if enough other people think it’s better enough.
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Remember that video I mentioned shooting a part for? It’s up! This is Mary Crowell, or more specifically Doctor Mary Crowell who didn’t go to Evil Medical School for all those years to be called “Misses, doing a jazz cover of “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked.” Enjoy:
It’s funny how an afternoon’s shoot gets distilled. 1:13-1:18, and 2:52-3:01, if you’re curious. But watch the whole thing, particularly for Zombie Chef and Zombie 10th Doctor, they’re both pretty great. :D
Use cyber2015 at checkout for 20% off all music, including Bone Walker, the long-list Grammy Award nominated album.
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Waiting on hold to arrange some engineering issues, and George beside me started snoring. So enjoy some video. (Hosted on Tumblr.)
Use cyber2015 at checkout for 20% off all music, including Bone Walker, the long-list Grammy Award nominated album.
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Hey, remember I extended the raffle deadline – any Bandcamp download for free – to Wednesday, right? Then I didn’t post the winner because Second Thanksgiving and a Lair full of visitors and all that. Well, I did in fact roll the dice to determine a winner, and that winner is Kimberly Turriff on Facebook! Kimberly, I’ll tag you on the Facebook link of this post, please contact me and tell me what you’d like!
Also, thanks to everyone for entering! If you didn’t win, well, this being Cyber Monday, well, I think you can make a guess about the post I’m about to make right after this one. But that’s for the next post. :D
Meanwhile, this weekend a few of us got out there and shot some material for Mary Crowell‘s upcoming new video. Tune in for EXCITING RAKING ACTION:
It’s all for Mary’s cover of “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked.” The video is due out later in December. I’ll link when it comes out.
And how was your Second Thanksgiving?
Looking for the Grammy Awards Long List nominee post? Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.
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Do I know anyone with working (or semi-working – appearing to work is fine) versions of:
If this is you, and you can shoot video reasonably stably (horizontal phone video will do), and are interested in a mildly silly project this week, contact me via the contact page.
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Scarecrow Video has been a Seattle institution for many years. It started as a video rental store – and still is one – but it was owned by the kind of crazed film fanatics who run a business primarily as a way to build the biggest collection of things imaginable. The original owner was the sort of person who would fly on an hour’s notice to former Soviet republics on the rumour that he could get a SECAM videotape copy of a particular obscure Stalinist-era Belorussian film. And half the time, he’d return with it.
Despite having one of the largest film collections in the world – possibly the largest in the world – video rental doesn’t cut it anymore, so they’re going non-profit. But that’s expensive, too, so they’re launching a Kickstarter to make it happen. Go help.
I started renting from them when they were next to J&S Phonograph Needles in Roosevelt – yes that was a store for phonograph needles it didn’t make much sense then either – and remember when they moved to the U. District, on 50th and Roosevelt. They bought out what used to be the biggest Radio Shack ever, a multistory building with its own screening lounge and everything.
It’s pretty damn cool, and it’d be a disaster to lose such a comprehensive film collection – particularly as it is actually available to the public. Even the exotic stuff can be rented and/or screened – they have multiformat players available, too. In some cases, they have one of only three to four copies of films still in existence, and you can see it. That’s the kind of collection this is.
I’ve known one of the current owners for a long time; this project is a big deal for them, too. So go help them flip that switch to non-profit. As I write this, they’ve made 60% of goal in a day, thanks in no small part to The Onion‘s AV Club. Let’s see if we can’t get them there by tomorrow, eh?
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We’re going to try livestreaming the concerts at nwcMUSIC – the Norwescon geekmusic festival – this year! Not necessarily all the shows; some artists may opt out. But it’s a thing which will be happening, so we’re talking about it now. Go us!
If you can’t come to Norwescon, you can at least see some of what we’re doing at nwcMUSIC – for free! It’ll be an open livestream, no membership required.
K Wiley is running the webcast side; he’s done similar things at other events, and is donating his time and expertise to the convention. He’s also asking for help with defraying uplink costs, as this is an unfunded-by-Norwescon adventure and high-bandwidth mobile network uplinks are expensive.
I want to stress that the cost-coverage fundraiser is not a Norwescon project; it’s K trying to afford a better uplink, it’s all K, and all money goes to him. I’m chipping in myself, providing a backup network uplink, also out of my own pocket. But my uplink is slower, and less reliable, so he really hopes not to use it. If he can get some help, he won’t have to.
It has to fund really quickly though, because Norwescon is so close. Nobody really wanted to do it this way, but after some other ideas fell through, well, here we are, exploring options and engaging backup plans. So if you’ve wondered what nwcMUSIC shows are like – and we have quite the lineup this year, with people like The Doubleclicks and Molly Lewis and Seanan McGuire and 9K1 and Death*Star – but can’t attend Norwescon, give it a look.
And keep reading for updates; since this is a late addition, I’ll be posting updates as we have more pieces fall into place. And they will – if nothing else, we have my Verizon uplink. But it’s much less robust than a proper high-speed network uplink, so check out his page and see what you think.
We’d like to do this every year! Maybe someday we can. :D
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Anybody here livestreamed an Ubuntu Gnome desktop? I found this howto for justin.tv, but while I appear to have it running (albeit with a strange error that’s probably critically important) it doesn’t seem to work. I also found this tool (which was formerly on Sourceforge, which still has an older version) but haven’t tried yet.
Anybody have a preferred solution?
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Paul found this and sent it to me. Basically, somebody made me a movie. Enjoy!
I thought I could embed it but I was wrong, clickie here.
eta: Totally worksafe.
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In addition to today’s DIY post on monitor speakers, this past weekend was more or less nirvana for Doctor Who fans. If you missed them, I did a 50th Anniversary reaction post called Okay, Moffat, You Can Live, and a second post on the surprisingly delightful related short features. Enjoy!
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Seriously, that’s what this is, more or less. Da Vinci took a hurdy gurdy and designed a huge one that goes all the way down to cello range, and set it up to be shaped like a harpsichord. He called it a “viola organista,” but it’s basically a giant hurdy gurdy.
Da Vinci never built his design, but Slawomir Zubrzycki has:
That’s… pretty awesome, actually. ^_^
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Several people I know spin poi – some of them are really good! A few of them are fire performers, and that shit is epic. I have photos of a bunch of that up on my Flickr account.
But I haven’t seen people spin LED poi before. This is awesome in a different way entirely:
Somebody commenting on it said the spinner is using those bike LEDs. BEST USE EVAR.
I want to see this added to the Main Street Electrical Parade. I love that show. :D
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Well, this is exciting – Kaiju Meat seems to be going over very well:
Total Plays
I am surprised! And excited! And a little confused about what to do now, if anything! So since 60% of online music plays are on YouTube, I made a mostly-static-image YouTube video for it, since that’s easy to do. If you’re one of those people who makes YouTube playlists and such, here y’go:
Props again to tereshkova2001 on Tumblr and Kathryn Tewson on Facebook for their chorus vocals. And to Flatbear on Tumblr for making Jaegercon badges!
Today is the big day, and del Toro showed up this morning. I AM NOT EVEN JOKING GUILLERMO DEL TORO SHOWED UP TO JAEGERCON THIS MORNING. Briefly, but still.
Jaegercon is awesome.
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Virtual Comicon panels start in two minutes! URL: http://youtu.be/eFf7HugybCw
Supporting material for Rocking Hall Costumes:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21077670@N02/sets/72157634715038767/
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Two Virtual ComiCon panels today! They’re listed just below. Also, Donna Barr wrote up a nice report on Clallam Bay Comicon, and I wanted to link to that. Anyway, “Rocking Hall Costuming” at 2pm Cascadian/Pacific, 5pm Eastern; “Kitting Out Cheap” the next hour, at 3pm/6pm. Deets:
Added: Rocking Hall Costuming: Join award-winning costumer tereshkova2001 as she discusses what makes a good hall costume, how to have fun in one, and how to avoid awkwardness or creepiness. Visual aids will be included! 2pm Pacific/Cascadian, 5pm Eastern, Saturday, July 20th, Supervillainy 1. tereshkova2001 (Moderator)
Added: Kitting Out Cheap: Assembling the sound kit you need for the very little money you have. Supporting materials included but not strictly required. 3pm Pacific/Cascadian, 6pm Eastern, Saturday, July 20th, Supervillainy 1. Solarbird, the Lightbringer (Moderator)
We’ll post with the final URL once we know what it is – Google+ will just kind of assign it for us once we open the livestream. See you there!
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The new Pussy Riot single (and video) is out. In short: screw you, Putin.
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I love touring. I really do! I know a lot of people get tired of it and if I got to do it a lot more often then eventually it’d turn into “have to do it” and frankly I can think of worse problems, but sure, that’s a real thing that you’d eventually probably get tired of doing, sure.
Getting back, on the other hand? God damn a lot of crap piles up, doesn’t it? Laundry, mending, cleaning out the tent, cleaning the gear bags, recycling all the dead batteries, checking equipment, catching up in the office, seeing what you can get off the cameras and audio recorder… I should have some usable footage and audio from the Leannan Sidhe shows once Shanti gets back from Europe; sadly, the only thing from Clallam Bay is on-camera audio that’s probably too clippy to post to the channel. What do you think?
(I haven’t got the audio recorder wrong in a while. But I did here. There’s a small trick to it, and every so often, I forget. ;_; If I hadn’t, I could’ve brought over that audio and used it with the video. Dammit!)
I did make good on my pre-departure promise, though: the YouTube version of the latest Geekmusic Podcast episode went live last night and is on the Podcast page! Video embed, j0:
Right then, back to it.
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