Video

I’ve been kind of quiet here lately as I’ve had many things to keep me busy, but the good part of it is that many of them are actually fun.

One of them is playing around with my new Canon MVX330i.

Another one is getting to know about the videoblogging scene and how to get into it to try it out for myself.

On that front I must say I found it pretty easy to get going once you find the right group of people.
In my case I was looking for the cool Creative Commons tag clip that Steve Garfield adds to the end of his videos. So I just wrote to him and a few minutes later I had a reply essentially pointing me to The List. Steve seems like a really nice guy, by the way, and was really helpful. Thanks Steve!

The videoblogging list is a Yahoo! groups mailing list regarding videoblogging (what else…) which is filled with people who really know what they’re doing and are really helpful to beginners. I didn’t even have to actually post any questions there, just by searching through the archives and the documentation and files related to the list I was able to find answers to all my questions.

Great stuff.

Now I’ve cobbled together a video which I will post as a first try at videoblogging but I still have to hammer enclosures into my feeds, so it may take me a couple of days more (or maybe not, I laid eyes on a plugin for Movabletype which seems to do what I want for my RSS2 feed. The ATOM feed will just go without it for now…)

So I’m almost there, trying my hand at videoblogging.

The time I spend preparing the infrastructure will not be wasted, as I already have footage for maybe one or two more posts (erm… video posts?) so by the time I’m actually able to post I’ll just have more content.

Oh and just for the record (read: big disclaimer), I am a Geek, I love tech stuff and I know about it. But I am no artist, not by a long shot. I love photography, music and possibly video editing, but I really have no clue as to what I’m doing in this department.
On the other hand, many people who are videoblogging right now (from what I’ve been seeing) are actual artists and professional editors and so on and some really wonderful stuff is being produced and put out there, you just have to look for it.
So I figured I might just as well get on the boat now and play around for a bit until the big wave hits and many people with actual talent come into town and then I’ll probably just quietly take me leave. Unless I’ve become hooked on it.

Either way, watch this space, as it were, and when they come, download and watch at your own risk! :-)

Technorati Tags: RSS, videoblogging, VideoEditing

Today’s update for Mac OS X

I don’t know if “surreal” is actually the best word to describe this, but if it’s not, then it must be very close indeed…

This evening when I turned on my iMac G5 at home up popped the Software Update window with a new update I hadn’t seen all day on my iBook.

In fact the update is iMac G5 specific and the title is “iMag G5 Sleep Light Update”.

That intrigued me, but it was a specific iMac G5 update so of course I went on and installed it but before, as always, I read the description. And I just couldn’t believe my eyes…

The update, then, makes the sleep light on the iMac go fainter in the evening, while maintaining the usual brightness during daytime.

Yes, that’s right, I’ll repeat that: the little pulsating “I’m alive but sleeping” light will pulse as brightly as ever during the day but will be softer in the evening.

Sometimes Apple just cracks me up! It almost (but not quite) makes up for the nightmarish distribution problems they have around here. (Not quite, no, I’m about to give up on buying my Mac Mini, after almost 5 months’ wait for one with a memory upgrade. Grrr!).

So, surreal is not that far off, is it?

Technorati Tags: MacStuff, Apple