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The video camera is the most misused piece of technology ever used by the public. This is how it works; people buy a camera, they start recording things, often hours of footage. They then either never watch it, watch some of it once or make everyone watch the entire thing. What people don’t know is that they’re watching “raw footage”. 99% of this never gets edited down into a finished product.

We now have SD card based cameras which makes getting the raw footage to your computer insanely easy. Then you have editing software like Sony Vegas for $89 which is insanely easy to use. The mystery is gone, it’s now easy to make a properly edited-down video instead of shuttling through footage.

The video below is what happens when someone talented takes some good stock footage of kids being kids which can, sometimes only be cute for the parents, and make it into “media”. I love this clip and she will too, even later in life. Dare I say it’s cute.

Burning Mercury Thiocyanide. This stuff is just weird. Kids lighting something on fire that contains mercury and cyanide… Ok, where are the parents?? And, can I buy some?

I guess woodworkers are mad that welders have all the fun with the sparks, fire and loud noises so they decided to build a car. From wood. A sports car. A big, wooden, sports car. What I find cool is the use of many kinds of wood “technology” like CNC machines wooden and metal wheels. The Pilot Sports on them is a nice touch.

Steam pressed plywood, Eames style monocoque substructure is also very impressive. In fact, wood adds some unique and positive traits to cars with its flexibility. It’s just that whole rotting, flamable, termite food thing that makes it hard to see it as a daily driver. Or even something that can live anywhere but indoors.

At least bodywork will be easy to do.

I’m over our neighborhood. A developer opened up a little strip mall at the entrance to the hood and I thought, if I were developer trying to make a successful strip mall what would I put there…
1. A pack and ship
2. Coffee shop that serves breakfast stuff
3. Dry cleaner
4. A bank that people actually use
5. Twin Liquors

What did we get? The dry cleaner that never shows up to work and a Subway. Of all the franchises, Subway? And the bank… Some local bank that sits there with NO customers yet Wells Fargo seems to have lost the part of the map where I live because they’re EVERYWHERE else. Weird.

Asside from that, the local city govt. seems hell bent on pretending this part of town doesn’t exist going so far as to no build fly-overs to get to or from this part of town at highway intersections. So, it’s not my imagination, you can’t get here from there…

Solution found, we’re leaving. Going to the part of town we should have been living in when we moved here. Somewhere north of downtown, close enough for a good bike ride to work, near established businesses and, even a few local pubs. Instead of the burbs where we’re hoping someone will build what we want we’ll just go where it already is. I feel silly figuring this out now. Oh well, we’re on our way.

I hear some buzz over shows once in a while. The Wire, an obvious one to watch, The Shield, a great show but on a “cable network” which still has some sort of stigma. In the age of 1000 channels, the big 4 still have the most pull in spite of a worsening of shows.

It could be the combination of buzz and the fact that I now work in advertising (in IT so I get no ad cred whatsoever) I tuned into Mad Men and was hit as hard as I was when I first tuned into the Sopranos. And while I just now finished season 1, I have one big fat complaint… It’s not an HBO show. The limitation of language and what can be shown waters down the show. It could go all the way, it could but the need to stay in PG land makes it almost perfect.

I wont say I don’t love it. I do. But, the R version would make it a true expression of what it’s trying to say.

Loving the wordpress auto-upgrade plugin!!!

So… I’m a little curious about what law school this guy went to. It’s now OK to kill the owner of satellite “channels”? Does he know most of these stations belong to companies? That might end up being awkward…

While I have no great love for the Veyron, I do think that this is a very bad way to treat a car. Even a Kia Rio. So, I have to ask… What exactly were they thinking?

Now the camo 996 is pretty cool. Still, I’d vote to bean the guy for doing that to a Porsche.