June 2013

Joe McKay, Light Wave

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Unauthorized GIF I made of McKay's installation.
It was a struggle to optimize his 8.3 MB GIF down to 225 KB, but I did it.
Didn't see this in person but the image grabbed attention.
The actual installation is a game -- you hit a pedestal with a mallet and try to time the movement of the lights just so. The interactive part doesn't interest me much but I like the "stop motion"-like movement of lights through the lamps. It's a physical GIF, or a steampunk version of The Matrix's bullet time camera setup.

End of Mac Homepage, 2009

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Have got some dead links to web pages on http://homepage.mac.com/, including Joe McKay's old site and his joke movie review page I used to submit to, "preReview." Was wondering when Apple's attempt at hosting went down, exactly, and found this announcement:

endofmac_homepage

With all the discussion of the Yahoo Tumblr takeover let's pause a moment and think how fleeting web content is. Someone at Apple, in the late '90s, decides the company needs to host Web content to be cool. Thousands of innocent civilians create web pages, and even use the service as their main portfolio location. A few years later another executive decides the site is no longer useful and all those URLs, those investments of energy, go dark. As the above screenshotted post states:

Of course, Apple recommends that customers consider MobileMe Galleries and iWeb as an alternative. You can get the full run-down here [dead Apple link].

The dumb-sounding "MobileMe" (a la Slate's "Me Zines" - the name they were pushing before "blog" took hold) also met an ignominious end. Per Wikipedia:

On February 24, 2011, Apple discontinued offering MobileMe at its retail stores, with MobileMe retail boxes eventually removed from resellers as well. Additionally, Apple no longer accepted new subscribers for MobileMe. On June 6, 2011, Apple announced that a new service called iCloud was to replace MobileMe, sometime in the fall. At the iPhone special event on October 4, 2011, Apple announced it would finally launch iCloud on October 12, 2011, to replace MobileMe for new users, with current users having access until June 30, 2012, when the service would cease. MobileMe was shut down on June 30, 2012, but data was still able to be retrieved for an advertised "limited time", until July 31, 2012, when the site finally closed completely.

And iWeb, home of iCarly? Wikipedia again:

iWeb allow[ed] users to create websites and blogs and customize them with their own text, photos and movies. Users could then publish their websites to MobileMe or another hosting service. In addition to its ability to publish to MobileMe, iWeb integrate[d] with other services, including Facebook, YouTube, Google AdSense and Google Maps. Apple ceased development in 2011.

iCloud is sure to be a winner. But let's concede that Apple makes nice-looking hardware.

"Nine Inch Bells (Hardware Version)" (Music Video)

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Posted on Vimeo.
An embedded version is here.
"HD" or hi def should be on by default (see button on right side of controller).
If it isn't initially showing HD on your player, please shoot me an email.

The song was posted previously. It's short so I used it for further testing of Vimeo. Their transcoding decisions seemed designed to torture the sensitive artist. What they call "hi def" is 1280 x 720 pixels, but their player is 960 x 540.
So, trying to see if I could get my videos any sharper, I did screen captures of GIFs at 1280 x 720. The captures are flawless. When I mix them with music and save them as an .mp4 they are near-flawless.
Vimeo's mandatory transcode turns my 27 MB .mp4 into a 14 MB .mp4. It's a hair under near-flawless (you can see it under "download"). Then they downsize the .mp4 to fit the player and it's mushier (not flawless but acceptable, I guess).

An alternative is what I did in the first four videos I posted. Capture at 960 x 540; Vimeo's transcode enlarges it to 1280 x 720 and then it is shrunk to its original size to fit in the player and doesn't look near as sharp as the captures.

Getting fitted for my white jacket with the straps and buckles on the arms. Thanks Vimeo.

(The captured GIFs are recycled from my BYOB presentation from 2010. They had already been sized to fit a 1280 x 800 Netbook screen.)

A Record Breaking Pig

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The Weather Channel web page runs video clips from other channels over on its right-hand sidebar.
Currently they have a story called "A Record Breaking Pig."
If you watch with the sound off you never find out what record the pig broke.
Instead, you witness:
A Fox News announcer inside a pigpen speaking into a mic and occasionally patting a pig's back.
Close ups of a very shabby and fat (but not record-breakingly fat) pig, with flies hovering around and landing on its face.
Shots of an owner from rural America also inside the pen, embracing the pig.
Shots of children watching the pig and (in another location) having a party, with a cake that says "Happy Birthday Mr. Chops."
We can infer from this that Mr. Chops is very old, but an intermittent Fox News banner overlaying the video reads: "Pig going for world record." So assuming it's age, no record has been broken, and it's just an excuse to show video of a pig, kids, and some hay.