Fun Anymore

Video from my “Big Time” talk from Ignite Phoenix now aviailable

Last night we pulled off the first Ignite Phoenix series of presentations. My honest opinion? Outstanding. Your city needs an event like this, and Phoenix needs to do another one.Kudos to Jeff and Roger for pulling it together. And for twisting my arm to talk.

My presentation on “Big Time” won’t be terribly new for those of you who’ve been listening to my CultCast for years. It was the second and third topic I covered. But this time, I got to do it with slides and had to compress it down to five minutes exactly.

I did it, and you can now see that video on line. (I start around 11:00 in.) I screwed up when talking about humanity’s time on the planet (50K, not 50MM years as I said) ‘cuz I didn’t put a cue on my final preso (Note to self: Double check next time), and halfway screwed up the century slide (started out talking about decade — duh). Oh, and I walked around WAY too much, driving Clintus batshit crazy on the camera and making it tough to fit me and my slides in at the same time.

I may go back and record myself doing the talk “live” to create a screen cast. Quite a few people in the crowd said that they enjoyed the talk and would like a copy. So for now, suffice with the link above. When I get back from the NME, I’ll see if I can find the time to do the other.

And as I told the folks who asked, I have two other “Big” talks I can give — one on big numbers (like the real difference between a million and a billion) and one on big distances (think astronomically) that also might be fun to develop. I’ll start working on those (eventually) and then see if I can figure out how to do small next. Could be fun. Here’s to hoping there’s another Ignite Phoenix where I might present those next!

George Hrab is made of awesome

I have to constantly remind myself that George is a pro. That’s actually a compliment, not a dig on his work. He’s the consummate pro. Listen to his work and you’ll agree. But I know the guy. He’s a drinking buddy. Well, I drink beer, he drinks tea or something sans kick. And any time you know someone and really get all the behind-the-scenes stuff, you think of them less as a pro and more as a friend. Again, not a dig, but a reflection on how my perception changes when I really get to know them.

So when he cranks out something like this quick video for his song The Assumption, I’m blown all the way away, and I have to remind myself that yeah, he’s a godsdamned pro and very capable of doing stuff like this. He rocks. He has (as I said on Twitter) more talent in his taint than I have in my entire body. And yet he still takes my calls. How cool is that?

On Blip.tv, Clintus & Google Reader

I just found out that that iPod Touch can play videos straight from vlogs using Blip.tv. But not if you’re viewing those blogs through Google Reader. Well, not without some help.

Here’s my explanation of how I made it work, and a test to see if it works for me. It took a few rounds of this, but I managed to get it when I actually uploaded a .mv4 file to Blip. Works like a champ. None of my other videos will, but all will from now on. Unless Apple figures it out and actually puts Flash support on the iPod Touch. WTF?

Dust Storm in the Desert

Click to Play