Thinking of Spikes for the first few links

Turntables!
Portable VW toy.
Vestax Pretty USB one.

Evil TSA sexually harasses woman
I know they get a bunch of training, but is any of it for common sense?

Watching this show...

And some stuff from just a few weeks ago.

Isabelle's Video Saloon drawings.

New blast from childhood.
My high school transcript.

Two pages: One & Two

People on eBay are being babies lately.

I have had 6 auctions canceled by the seller just because they are scared I would win with a really low bid. Isn't that the point of auctions?

This is why eBay will die. There is no honor anymore.
All (eBay) people suck ;)

I recently found a fake magazine I made for an assignment in middle school.
I'm guessing 7th or 8th grade.

I scanned the whole thing.

It is on flickr
and as a PDF.

The PDF looks better.

Other than cleaning up the scan a bit, the original remains pretty much untouched.

Looks like I made it using our Atari 520ST, a graphics program (NeoChrome; with which you could do rudimentary on screen animation, I think doing some pallet tricks), dot matrix printer, pencil, scissors, magazines, and a bunch of tape.

I think the assignment was to make a magazine.
It is fully of typos, but I think I was smarter as a kid ;)

Note: In middle school I made up this weird writing style with friends of mine that would spell things wrong on purpose, as in the title "Tee Vee Wee Klee".

For Abraham Lincoln's 199th birthday!

First Section of an 1865 biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Found this in my parents' basement while helping them move.
Find the Flickr set here.

Here is the entire book Googleized (mine looks better)

Wow... The Saudi government is cracking down on the color red.. really...
What the hell is wrong with the govt there?

Just watched this BS, horribly biased 'news report' about the Pirate Bay.

This is the most biased story about file sharing I have ever seen.

It ignores the cost for hosting, servers, legal costs, offices, etc.
I could see that easily being in the millions.
The amount of bandwidth costs just for hosting the .torrent files has to be a big chunk.
I guess it is a bit naive to think TPM not making any money.
I wonder what the taxes for the members looks like.
This 'story' likes to detail the offshore accounts and such, but there where just a way to insure that if the members got in trouble, the site would still be going.
All the real money made from pirated content is physical DVD+Rs with copies of movies on them.
These are usually what gets uploaded to TPB. Most leaks are from the industries themselves through PR, reviews etc.
If the corporations really wanted to protect against piracy they would police themselves first, but it is far easier to blame college students.

Just ordered a lighting kit that includes 2 lights with stands and a light box with different color backdrops. I tried doing a bit of this before for my website, but the light ended up crappy. Hopefully this will remedy that.

First project is to take photos of all of the pages of this book my sister and I found at my parents' old house when we were helping them move (which they are still doing).

Book is a bio of Abraham Lincoln published in 1865.
It has great illustrations and a minute by minute account of his pulse after he was shot at Ford's Theatre. The book is in horrible condition, so there is no way to scan it w/o completely destroying it. I want to take a photo of each page and post at least some of it for Lincoln's birthday next Tuesday. But I will not have the light kit by then.

Paper Boy

This is a catchy song...

and he has a new album?
Some song about taking it in the anus... i jest not...

The thing that scare me about MS buying Yahoo! is flickr...

I just had an issue with Flickr recently.

It ended up being a problem with the Betterflickr greasemonkey script I had installed.

Contacted flickr tech support and they were fast, and pointed to the problem immediately.

I admit I would probably not have thought about GreaseMonkey, because I really didn't remember what scripts I had installed.

So I removed most of the scripts that offers "better"ness.

5th Transoceanic cable cut?
Did C.O.B.R.A. do it?

Celebs all about Obama... I am hoping that is a good thing for him.

Chris Rock's message

Pete Miser (of "Hit Me On My iPhone" fame)
has a new video!

I think I am almost caught up with uploading my photos to flickr.
Current on video? That is another story...

Albany bowl upside down walk view 01.02.2008 from zebtron on Vimeo.

Improv Anywhere: NYC Grand Central Station 200+ people freeze for 5 minutes.

This is so cool.

Found this neat site that you use to organize embedded web video and put it in one place...

get your vodpod

Check it out!

I really don't know why I did, but I watched some of the GOP debate tonight.

Man... could Romney be MORE of a jackass?

He just wasn't making sense...
He reminded me of the current moron-in-chief.

Only thing that came across good for him made McCain look bad, but thankfully Ron Paul was there to pull people back to reality. Isn't that a sad day? When Ron Paul is the most realistic guy speaking ;)

My sister has been asking me really great consumer tech questions lately...
The last one was about buying a new TV... I pointed her to a Vizio.
(Philips Outlet is a GREAT place too)

Her most recent question was about a solution to record audio of our family's stories.
I figured I would blog this in case someone else found it useful.

QUESTION
I think that we need to get these stories recorded to have a hard copy of them. Aunt Leslie and, I think, Mom suggested using a video recorder to get the stories, but I thought that would make people uncomfortable and stilted. I was thinking more along the lines of a tape recorder or some sort of digital recording device (?).

Any suggestions (on a recording device) or otherwise?

ANSWER:

There are a BUNCH of really cool solutions that would work.

Belkin Podcast Studio
Belkin just announced something really cool. The proposed retail price is $99, but it requires an iPod as the recording destination.
It records in lossless WAV format and can easily be edited or burned to CDs.
The caveat is that the announced street date isn't until June 2008.

Thesre is a whole other class of stand-alone, all in one professional portable recording devices.
These record to some sort of flash memory (usually CF or SD).
These devices are great, but a bit expensive for most folks.
I will mention some other (more expensive) solutions in a bit.

M-audio Microtrack
Microtrack II is the current model
You should be able to find a used or first gen version of this device (try ebay).
It does require some sort of microphone, but a comes with a simple T mic which works for most conversation recording. Great device and form factor. Uses CF as the recording media. Can do various bit rate MP3s or lossless WAV.

Edirol R 09
Has built-in microphone. These devices have been around for a while.
The earlier gens are probably pretty cheap used, but those mofos are huge by Microtrack II standards.

Cheap solutions
There are a couple way to go here.

Minidisc
Minidisc recorders. These things hav been around for a long time now.
I own one... I have it SOMEWHERE... in my storage space I think... errr....
Discs are cheap... and you can get a home deck too so you could dump it to a computer.
Big problem? The way it writes the files. Old recorders tend to $%&% up when writing the table of contents (TOC). What does that mean to you? If the TOC fails.. the WHOLE disc is gone...
I got burned a couple times and realized that the cheapness does NOT make up for the risk.

MP3 player/recorder via line-in
This is probably one of the best DIY/hack solutions.
The big draw back is that you do not get a single device to carry around.
You will have wires, mics, pre-amp, recorder, and all those batteries with which to worry.

Many mp3 players have the ability to record via a line-in jack.
If you find a mic and an inexpensive pre-amp, you can use that to record for pretty cheap.

One of the best things about this solution is your ability to upgrade any of the components of the solution to meet different or growing needs.

Video camera
Just record video, but put a lense cover on and just never use the video.
The audio from most video cameras is pretty nice, but you are stuck with the mic in the camera.

Laptop
You could also use a laptop and some sort of mic/audio card to run into the laptop...

Expensive (more-pro) solutions
Marantz and Sony make some nice devices.

Most of these solutions make some sort of compromise.

It comes down to your priority:

1. weight
2. cost
3. sound quality

Hope that helps!

Time for an n800 linux application infusion!

UKMP media player

Song Bird

Media Box

Load Applet

comix

mClock

Mapping

Maeomo Mapper
Simple Mapper
Map Downloader

i used to live here... for 2 yrs

and here for a few months

lived here too

i lived here for a year, but they knocked down the bldg

lived here for a few years too

and here too...

lived here in Indy

in Illinois... i lived here... in suburban hell

At least I am not the only person obsessed recently with Scientology and the weird BS Internet censorship they like to spread.

Thanks DMCA!
Church of Scientology under 'attack'

Planet B-Boy

This was a productive evening... right after I got fired... drawing at Upland and drinking beer...

I just posted some drawings...

I just finished watching season 1 of "the wire".
Good show. I only have 3+ seasons to catch up.
Can't wait for season 2 to come from netflix to begin my accelerated watch.

As far as music goes, I am LOVING the Zune subscription music service.
I am discovering so much cool new music.
One of those artists? jill scott man... jill scott... she is dope

Mitt Romney is now called "captain douche"!

Just found out that Google Street view in my little town now ;)
you can see my car and house

I just updated my links page.

Revised my mom and sister's business site.
Doublejquarterhorses.com

Scientology Orientation Video
These are not meant to be funny.. but the 5th level cheese mastery here is so humorous!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Ron Paul and John Edwards are too honest to be elected.. and that fucking sucks.

Dolphins are cool!

Dolphin Play Bubble Rings - The funniest home videos are here

Drawing of KUSF guest DJ slot

POWER THIRST!!!!!!!!

400 BABIES!!!!!!

KENYAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

POWER THIRST 2: THE REVENGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

drawing of kyle i did last night.
pencil sketch to start out, then went ovet the whole thing with 'manga pens' i got for cmas

Craig's List is funny...

I saw a photosyhth demo before, but this stuff is getting better.

I heard on the internets...

YOU SUCK AT PHOTOSHOP!

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Audio blog post, transcription...

Audio blog post, transcription unavailable listen

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10.13.2007 San Diego CA SDMA

1155

10.13.2007 San Diego CA SDMA 1155 from zebtron on Vimeo.

1156

10.13.2007 San Diego CA SDMA 1156 from zebtron on Vimeo.

1157

10.13.2007 San Diego CA SDMA 1157 from zebtron on Vimeo.

1158

10.13.2007 San Diego CA SDMA 1158 from zebtron on Vimeo.

1159

10.13.2007 San Diego CA SDMA 1159 from zebtron on Vimeo.

1160

10.13.2007 San Diego CA SDMA 1160 from zebtron on Vimeo.

1161

10.13.2007 San Diego CA SDMA 1161 from zebtron on Vimeo.

More 640x480 goodness

11.22.2007 jam session at spikes's

01

02

10.20.2007 Jam session @ spikes's 02 from zebtron on Vimeo.
03

10.20.2007 Jam session @ spikes's 03 from zebtron on Vimeo.

Now for some 640x480 digicam video posted to vimeo

Thanksgiving 2007

11.22.2007 Thanksgiving Brown County Wimmenauer VIDEO from zebtron on Vimeo.

Some airplane take-off video...

01.09.2008 airplane take-off a from zebtron on Vimeo.

01.09.2008 airplane take-off b from zebtron on Vimeo.

Vacation Video!

Oakland police stopping a guy.

Looked like he ran a stop sign.

Cops rolled up on him screaming to stop and turn off the car.

Guy didn't stop as soon as he should have...

cops yanked him out of the car...

Oakland Police 1 from zebtron on Vimeo.

Oakland Police in action 2 from zebtron on Vimeo.
and an hour later they towed his car.

active corner

Testing vimeo.com for hosting video.

Trying to compare it to YouTube as far as quality goes.

This first test is probably not the best example as it is low res, but I post low res video too.

YouTube

Vimeo with the same original video file

KUSF nate covering country show 01.04.2008 a from zebtron on Vimeo.

KUSF nate covering country show 01.04.2008 b from zebtron on Vimeo.
Vimeo loads and converts videos much faster.
It also has an option to download the original file.

Feedback throughout the process is much better too.

Already I think it beats YouTube.

And I have yet to test high-rez video.

last minute software for my n800

DiskUsage v0.1

http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/visualboyadvance/
ttp://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/fceu/
xmaeme/
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/wifiinfo/

So cool... but yet disturbing

From Wired interview with David Byrne and Tom Yorke

Yorke: "Yeah. Especially in the US. Everybody drives. So how the hell are we going to address that? The idea is that we play in municipal places with some transport system alternative to cars. And minimize flying equipment, shipping everything. We can't be shipped, though."

The location they have used for past Chicago shows makes more sense now.

Kurt Loder on Reason.tv

This is really worth watching...
3 episodes about 90 minutes each.

Well this WAS a post to "Tin Man" the scifi channel mini-series.

but it looks like HULU no longer is hosting it.

Part 1 of 3

Part 2 of 3

Part 3 of 3