YouTube looks crappy

Has anyone been to YouTube recently? You know the site that you go to to watch videos of cats, people hurting themselves, and of course me? Yeah that site. It looks like crap. I think they might even be the same designers who designed MySpace. And by “designed MySpace” I mean created a glorious Internet display of unattractive, tacky, and disproportionate objects splattered erratically across an innocent and unsuspecting social network and marketed towards people who like posting saucy pictures of themselves for you to look at whilst listening to their stupid freaking Fallout Boy song which is set to play extra loud the second you open their page. Long, confusing sentences aside, YouTube now looks worse than MySpace.

If you’re thinking “MySpace doesn’t look that bad, nerd.” then get away from me, I don’t want to speak to you ever again. I only associate with people who have eyes. Eyes that allow them to see things. And common sense to tell them which things they see are terrible.

Bird are not Good People (Video)

I filmed this randomly while nervously studying for a test I had to take later that day. Just in case you care, I got a B on that test. Definitely not my best work, but oh well. (referring to the test and the video.) It’s pretty random, but hey, what did you expect?

On a more depressing note, today was a horribly stressful day. I had to do a group speech presentation with an a group of people who were, for the most part, extremely ill prepared. Everyone in our group went on WAY too long. We didn’t even have time to finish the speech because some people have no sense of time while talking. I’m not going to say I did great, but I certainly gave the best speech from my group. Not only did most people’s speech suck, but our teacher was in a terrible mood and was being really harsh on everyone’s presentations. Luckily class finished before he could get to tearing us apart, but I guess that only means I have that to look forward to next week.

Moral of the story is that people suck and can’t be trusted to do anything properly.

2008 Oscars

Last night I watched the Oscars with my family. My dad describes it as “an orgy of self admiration,” with multiple hours of people wallowing in what they think is their own greatness. This year though was definitely superior to all the rest, even enough to make my dad lose some of his cynicism on the event. 

First off, the set was awesome. I watched the making-of thing they had before the ceremony, and it was pretty neat! I loved all the architecture and the design on the floor and of course the sparkly diamond curtain. The music was fancier this year also, putting a new spin on all of the classic songs. What really impressed me though, was Hugh Jackman. He’s never really stood out to me before. I mean he was good in X-Men and and The Prestige, but I never really thought much of him, he was just kind of there. Forgettable. But as the “Master of Ceremonies” he was great! I didn’t know he was such a good singer and dancer. His opening number was hilarious/awesome/vewwy honorable. He was surprisingly funny for someone who plays a razor clawed man-beast as well as a devious magician. And it’s hard not to love the Aussie accent!

I’m definitely happy that Heath Ledger won the Oscar for best supporting actor. Some people have been saying that he wouldn’t have won it if he was alive, and maybe they are right, but he really was incredible in Dark Knight. Slumdog was an incredible movie and it deserved all it won, but I still felt sad every time Dark Knight was passed up for an award. It was an amazing film! Not just because of it’s amazing story and dialogue, score, effects, and awesome acting, but because of what it did for the comic book movie genre. It showed that at super hero film could be equally as well done as any crime/drama movie.  Augh I need to move on before I go on any longer (Which I so could) on the Dark Knight. Point is, I was secretly hoping for more Oscars for the Batman. It’s like Will Smith said, we like action movies because they have explosions, car chases, and fans. 

But Penelope Cruise for Vicci Christina Barcelona? Really?! That movie bored me to tears. Maybe I didn’t like it because I don’t have ovaries, but I really did not like that movie. And Penelope cruise was just a crazy scary woman. Bah. 

And with that, I’m going to bed.

New Video! (Fallout 3)

After being separated from my copy of Fallout 3 for many a month, we finally reunited just last week. I forgot how much I’ve missed it. I never beat it because silly Fable 2 distracted me, but now I’m finally getting some quality time in post-apocalyptic DC. It’s really a great game. I’ve never played any of the other Fallout games, but the third one is so good I think playing the old ones would only spoil it for me. What can I say? I’m a sucker for shiny graphics.

My friend J. Alan, who you’ll see in the video and who also had been keeping my game hostage for previously mentioned long time, came over the other day and we decided to play some and do a few side quests. We ended up following a mission that led us to this underground settlement of vampire type people. They aren’t necessarily bad in the sense that they attack you, they just aren’t good people and have been known to, well, kill people. Their settlement is set up like most towns in the game, they have someone who sells weapons, some people sell food, clothes etc., and it’s full of people you can talk to and pick up quests from, and they even have a fancy emo-looking leader named Vance. (It should be noted that all of the vampires in the town look like they’d be in a band. Vance was lead vocals.)

New Video (New Channel!)

I haven’t had too much time recently to make a video, but today I had a couple hours to spare, so behold the fruits of my leisure time! I figured it would be good to mention the blog so more than just Twitter people know about it.

Anyhoo, Wii Fit is a demon. See the problem with Wii fit, is that video games are made so that you can hurt fake people in the face and make them dead, without any fear of consequence. But with Wii Fit the game tries to hurt you greatly by forcing you to contort to impossible shapes and positions, with MANY a consequence. And that white bendy woman is so smug, wallowing in her own nimbleness. She makes it sound so easy: “Now, gently rotate your leg until your knee touches your back, making sure to not lose contact between your forehead and calf. Now hold… deep breaths.. now slowly rotate your pelvis off of the wall…deep breaths… and release. Now repeat until you lose feeling in your spine.”

All this talk of video games is making me want to murder something. Fallout 3 time.

Coffee and Coffehouses

The other night, while looking for something to watch, I came across a TV special on Coffee and Coffeehouses. It talked about how it was first discovered in Ethipoia (funny story about this later on) and then spread to Egypt and Arabia, and all around the Middle East where it became extremely popular in the muslim world. From there it spread to Italy and the rest of Europe. There it was forbidden for awhile because they saw it as a Muslim drink, until the Pope deemed coffee a “Christian beverage.” It became popular in England for a long time until they learned how to make tea, which was cheaper and easier to make. Eventually it made its way to America where it spread like wild fire. 

Anyway, a lot of the special was about the way coffee effected society, and the importance of coffeehouses. Before coffee, people had nothing better to do when they got together than drink themselves silly. With the discovery of coffee, they could enjoy a fancy beverage and still remain in their right minds enough to have a meaningful conversation. Things started getting done, because rather than picking fights and passing out by the toilet, people were discussing things that needed doing. They were making plans, talking about the economy and government, and talking about how to better the world.

The coffeehouse became a popular and lively place, where all members of society could get together and down a few hot ones. I remember one lady on the TV said something to the effect of “They didn’t go to coffeehouses to drink coffee. They went there to have a conversation, and coffee was only the excuse.” People wouldn’t go there to just talk to people they know. It was perfectly normal to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger.

Watching that special made me really want to find a coffeehouse that was closer to that old image than to the current model. For awhile now I’ve been getting tired of Starbucks. I haven’t been in at least a month, partly because we recently got an espresso machine, but also because Starbucks isn’t personal anymore. It’s more of a franchise than a coffeehouse.  And as cheesy as it sounds, I think it has lost its charm. Also it’s more overpriced than a free ticket to a Katy Perry concert.

Much to my delight though I discovered a new coffeehouse that was just put in not too long ago by my house, called Boston Coffeehouse. I came in yesterday to try it, and loved it right away! They have a huge menu of breakfast items, lunch foods, smoothies, coffee, and of course tasty pastries. I was overwhelmed by all the choices, so I asked the lady behind the counter to choose for me. And well, it was good! So good I came back the next day (today.) I’m sitting here now writing this and looking around at everyone sitting at tables talking, eating, drinking, waitresses walking around bringing people their drinks. That’s right, they bring you your food! 

Ha, it’s kind of funny. I was talking about people sitting by themselves on their laptops at Starbucks, and here I am writing on my laptop..alone…IN A CAVE…WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!!!  (sorry, Iron Man reference) Anyway, point is that I’m liking Boston Coffeehouse way better than Starbucks. It’s much more personal and friendly, and most importantly, cheaper. It’s decorated all fancy like and it makes me feel at home. I’m definitely going to become a regular here. 

Now I realize this blog was quite pointless, but sitting here has put me in a creative writing mood and I felt like sharing my joy of finding a good place to buy hot brown liquid. Before I hit the publish button though, I’d like to share my dad and my idea for a new coffee company, named after the first discovery of Coffee. Legend says that coffee was first discovered by some Ethiopian shepherds when they noticed that their goats were “dancing” after eating some coffee berries.

So we came up with the idea for the “Dancing Goat Coffee Company.” ….. Crap. Just googled ‘dancing goat.’ Looks like I’m not the first to think of it. They’ve got a sweet logo and everything. I wanted to make a logo… Now I don’t get to photoshop anything. Well poo.

I’m going to go cry now. Bye.

Facebook (The adults finally discovered the internet)

How adults see the internet

I remember a few years ago when MySpace was becoming popular, what a ruckus it caused in the adult community. Parents, police, and politicians (the three dangerous P’s) were all against it because it was putting too much information on the Web and was opening kids up to being molested in the face by the internet. They believed it was some sort of demon that let their kids talk to strangers who would at first chance, molest them in the face.

Then comes along Facebook. Mr. Face (Put-your-full-name-address-phone-number-email-age-and-age-on-your-profile) Book. And boy do the adults seem to love it! Adults everywhere are signing up, parents and teachers alike! I’m not sure what about it it is that makes them feel it is any safer than MySpace. On MySpace, everyone lied about their age, name, location, everything! Only the idiots were posting information that someone  could use against them on it. On facebook, your full name, address, phone number, age and everything is right there on your profile! People that you don’t even know can see your pictures if a friend of there’s is tagged in an album of yours. With Facebook, nothing is private. Nothing is even yours! It’s all out in the open.

MySpace is certainly more tacky than Facebook, since users can customize their profile with sparkly obnoxious things, but all of the main things that caused adults to shun MySpace are fully present in the FBook! You can still talk to people you don’t know, people can lie about who they are,  you can still post saucy pictures of yourself, you can expose too much information to people, and pervo-rapers can still lie about their age to get to kids. But for some reason, it is ok on Facebook. 

I think the difference is that adults have actually tried Facebook, where with MySpace they just judged it based on what they read about it. They listened to the news go on about how dangerous it is and so they believed it was some sort of Internet contraption that sprays you with pedophile attractant. People fear what they don’t understand. But now that adults are finally trying the whole ‘social networking’ thing out, they are seeing it isn’t all bad. They are starting to understand how if you have a little common sense, you can tell who you know and who you shouldn’t talk to. The same people who once asked “How do you know that you are talking to your friend and not some criminal?” are now chatting online with people they haven’t seen in twenty years. They finally realize that the Internet can be a decent place and that not every link you click takes to a rapist hotline. 

The old people have finally discovered the internet. Let’s just hope that parents don’t discover Twitter.

(Update:) Looks like Facebook is going back to their old terms of agreement. 

Fringe (I’m sensing a pattern)

I’m sure most have you have heard of the show “Fringe” by now. I’ve been a bit lazy getting into it. I’ve heard people rave about how good it is and I’ve watched a few episodes, but haven’t had time to start from the first episode. Well tonight I was awake with nothing better to do, so I downloaded the Pilot. It seems decent, and I definitely plan to catch up on the rest of the episodes in time for the re-opening in April.

It seems to me though, that J.J. Abrams has some kind of fetish for female lead characters who are Federal agents, and who’s boyfriends get severely dead in the first episode. Also he seems to have a thing for main male characters who can go days without their beard getting longer, or without shaving. I guess the homeless look is in this decade. Oh, he also seems to have a fascination with terrible things happening involving planes. I’ve only seen a few episodes, but I get the feeling no one is ever going to actually be dead.

I’m going to go ahead and call it now, Walter is a polar bear, and Olivia is actually Jennifer Garner’s mother.

Smiley Faces Video (this really doesn’t make any sense)

Today in film class we watched a video on editing, where famous film editors and directors talked about editing techniques and how they like to cut a film. They discussed things like how long the camera should stay on someone and where there eyes should be looking, about longs shots and close shots etc. etc. Long story short, this inspired Jason and I to make a movie! 

We spent awhile coming up with ideas until we thought of one we liked. We decided we would play all of the characters (there are about 5) and that it would be a music video following a story, rather than just random shots of people dancing. The main character would wake up, put on happy music, and suddenly his face would become a smiley face, like the one to the right. We planned to superimpose the face over the footage. He would dance around the street and come across various other people listening to other genres of music, and with different smiley faced heads. For instance, the first guy he runs into is dressed in all black and listening to ‘Crawling’ by Linkin Park, and has a crying smiley face. They’d look at each other, then the sad guy would get a happy face too and he’d go on dancing down the street with the first guy.

This would happen several times as they stop by random music people who join the group and go on dancing. In the end they run into a screamo/death metal guy who’s face doesn’t change, and he ends up just beating the crap out of everyone. 

In the end though we didn’t have time to film everything we needed, and we didn’t have a version of final cut that would let us edit HD video. We also needed final cut to make it appear as if we were in the shot multiple times, and to superimpose the smiley faces. We ended up just editing what we had in iMovie to see how it would look. And..well… you can see how it looked. Makes no sense, right?

We definitely plan to take another whack at this when we have more time and daylight to set up each shot and do everything right. I also need to work on getting a copy of a newer version of Final Cut…

Pull the Auxiliary Hobs! (New YouTube Channel)

I just finished creating a new YouTube channel where I will post extra random videos in addition to the ones I post on my main account. There I will post random unfinished videos that I haven’t had time to complete, or don’t plan to finish, random clips from projects I’m working on, behind the scenes stuff, and just anything that doesn’t seem to fit on my main channel. 

Incoming fun-fact! I first created an account called ‘AUXILARY’ hobs, where I blatantly misspelled auxiliary. I had to make a new one, along with a new graphic for this blog post. Hooray for misspellings! 

Go ahead and check it out when you have time.