Hunter S. Thompson Film: Gonzo June 7, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : News, Quotes, Video, Beer, Film, Orlando Weekly, Storytelling , 2 commentsThe man who invented Gonzo journalism is a guy who I’ve really been meaning to check out on a deeper level for quite some time. I love the film versions of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I actually share a birthday with him - we were born 45 years apart, and he ended up living to be 68.
One of my favorite things about Gonzo Otaku is Flying Dog’s Gonzo Porter - a seasonal beer dedicated to Hunter, featuring the artwork of Ralph Steadman (he does all the art for Flying Dog), with a dog-portrait of the author, clutching his signature cigarette holder and wearing sunglasses. Apparently H.S.T. was a friend of the brewers. He is quoted on their site as saying:
“Good People Drink Good Beer”
So far the closest opening for the film is 4th of July in Atlanta, at Midtown Art Cinemas 8 (an eight-screen art-house? Que?)
In other Gonzo trivia, I would classify local Orlando Weekly columnist Billy Manes as a disciple of that style of journalism, if you’ve never read his weekly back-page column, Blister, you don’t know what you’re getting in to.
Hopefully I’ll have a chance to see the film some time soon, until then, do some LSD, smoke, drink, go for a drive, and don’t forget to bring your lawyer with you!
This is Internet TV May 31, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Video, Reviews, TV, Trends , add a comment
I’ve been hearing Leo Laporte talk about setting up his video streaming for weeks now, but he’s constantly down-playing the awesomeness of the whole thing. Today I finally had a few spare moments to check it out, and I have to say that this is what Internet TV is supposed to be. He’s got some great cameras and awesome lighting, and apparently he’s able to have guests in the studio as well.
This is every podcaster’s dream - you get to time-shift your shows, but you can have interactive features and discussion during the recording - there is a chat room under the video window at all times with a deluge of rolling comments from the TWiT Army.
Maybe Leo is a fluke because of all of his built-in celebrity, but I’m just happy he’s making this happen, paving the way for the little guys.
Nice work.
This is a full-sized version of the video stream - that’s just a pretty thing - it looks and sounds fantastic.
I’m in Axis Magazine talking about Internet Video April 9, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Career, Video, Trends, Newspaper, floridacreatives, Magazine , 3 comments
No, that’s not me in the white suit and glasses.
I was interviewed this month by John Theisen, who runs the Enzian FilmSLAM, the FMF Indie Film Jam, and works for United Arts.
Go pick up the magazine, on Newstands all over Orlando, but here’s a teaser:
Yes, that’s a picture of a network cable next to a planet. I think I was supposed to get John some pics or logos… sorry!
“Ryan Price, producer of OrlandoScene.TV and FloridaCreatives.com has been making his mark in Central Florida’s web forums and has tried to add his own quality content to its ever-shifting environment.”
Video Uploads to Flickr
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Orlando, Events, Video, Film, Reviews, Trends, MySpace, photos, Facebook, BarCamp, Storytelling, Viddler, Web Services, Flickr , add a comment
My First Video on Flickr fit the new requirements perfectly: less than 90 seconds, and less than 150MB. That’s fantastic, and the streaming in good, embed codes, tagging, fits right into my flickr photo/video stream, awesome.
The videos on Flickr are going to make YouTube obsolete, or rather, the MySpace to Flickr’s metaphorical Facebook. The content in each place is different. I don’t go to MySpace or YouTube expecting quality, art, or intellectual content of the least kind. However, I know some real life people on Facebook, and some really serious photographers on Flickr.
By creating a constraint like this, the “90-second short film” will gain a place on the internet. I wouldn’t doubt if the next set of consumer-level cameras have an option to limit video clips to 90 seconds to allow for easy Flickr uploading.
…and it is SO easy. The same exact experience as working with a photo - I haven’t tried geotagging, but I bet it works. Now if they can get Viddler-style deep tagging working just like Notes on photos, I’ll be a very happy man.
David is a total goofball, now you can see it at 30FPS. Thanks Flickr!
BarCampOrlando IZEA Geekout Party April 7, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Orlando, Links, Events, Video, Beer, floridacreatives, Entrepreneurship, photos, Contributors, OrlandoScene, BarCamp, Social Media Events , 1 comment so far
This was how I spend 90% of the time at the IZEA GeekOut Party - talking to Tara Lamberson and Dan Kinchen about a Central Florida Tech Association, or something like it.
Thanks to Ted Murphy for throwing the party - we hope to see you on the 21st for Florida Creatives. Also thanks to Adam Teece for hosting the podcasts.
Also appearing in this video: Ted Murphy, Gregg Pollack and a widdle baby
See more videos by Adam at the GeekOut
What every small town local bookstore should do April 1, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Markteting, HowTo, Video, Film, Shopping, Trends, Books, Travel, Contributors, OrlandoScene, Teaching, open source, Branding, Storytelling, Love , 2 commentsI jsut finished reading Rent Girl
However Michelle Tea and this book are not the subject of this blog. At least, not directly.
I picked up this indy book at an indy book shop - I was on vacation, visiting Tempe, Arizona, walking to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, hiking the Grand Canyon, getting yummy sandwiches from the co-op and drinking local beer. And next to the Trader Joe’s in the adobe-colored shopping center (really, they all were) was this little book store, Changing Hands.
Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe Arizona, corner of McClintock and Guadalupe. There was a café, I think, and there was a section up front with fun games - the kinds of stuff you’d see on the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble next year once they hit critical mass. Like all indy book shops, there was a table near the customer service desk with eye-catching books, new arrivals, and the ever-present signed-or-to-be-signed books. And here was Rent Girl
I only read a few pages on the plane, it was too naughty. I actually couldn’t wrap my head around this book until recently, somehow I feel that by absorbing some women’s media I can try to understand the industry a bit better - things aimed at guys are too easy to understand, low hanging fruit - women’s music, film and books are another beast.
But I digress. I want to plant a seed at Changing Hands in Tempe and Urban Think in Orlando and the Bookmine in Jacksonville, and all the other places where you feel proud buying a naughty graphic novel. This advice isn’t exactly ground-shaking, but I think it makes sense:
Every small town book shop should:
- Print their own books.
- Teach classes about how to print your own books.
- Sell said hand-made and self-published books.
- Sell books by local authors on the internet.
- Show and sell art on the walls.
- Have free and open wi-fi.
- Record video/audio podcasts with visiting authors.
- Have a space in-store and online for customers to have a conversation, either about books or what happened on last night’s LOST.
- Be a place where you want to come to read a book.
- Be a place where you would hang out with your friends.
- Be the first place you want to visit when you get off of work.
- Have space for local groups to hold meetings.
In London I saw a store that only sells Chess and Bridge supplies. They’ve got the largest selection of that stuff you’ve ever seen - no big box store could compete. And on the same block is a store that only sells Flutes. I’m told there’s a store on the other side of the river that only sells French Horns. Granted, in a big city there is a need for places that specialized, but I think even a small town book store can take some tips from these places.
I saw another place that was a grocery, bookstore, gift shop and restaurant all in one. They wouldn’t let me take pictures in there, it was so unique. They press their own olive oil.
In a certain way, Stardust Video & Coffee here in Orlando has achieved so much of what’s on my list, but the utility of the store, renting movies, was not lucrative enough for them, so they opened up to being more cafe-and-performance-space than video rental space. They’ve recently added a second stage with a strict “no dry-humping” policy, and they also sell hard liquor in addition to their amazing selection of beers, decent wine, tea, coffee, baked goods and original food.
I suppose if there was a local printer, they could achieve something similar without needing to do the actual printing themselves, but I guess that’s part of the point of the bookstore, yes?
As a “video and coffee” establishment, I don’t see where Stardust is the last word on video other than the selection, but I always felt like I wasn’t smart enough to rent there, that the right to rent a film was reserved for someone with a more cultured taste than I. However, the Thursday night Broken Speech Poetry Slam or the local rock shows they have are completely accessible, and I’ve played drums on stage at Stardust many times. Maybe that’s just partly attributed to my training as a musician, but why do I feel I’m below the film?
I guess I’m trying to encourage these book shops to become the Third Place that we are all craving here in Orlando right now. In the land of corporate coffee, the local coffee shop has evolved, mostly in order to survive. I think the local bookstore has a few more steps to take before they’re all grown up.
Which bookstores have you noticed fitting into their niche?
…continued…
This is an old meme I found via Tara Hunt and Pinko Marketing. I’ve been trying to describe local media (or at least the goals of the media I’ve been trying to produce) and what’s supposed to be for sale at Petentials and similar sites. The point isn’t to sell 24,000 of an item priced $1 but 1,000 of an item priced $24, let’s say.
Boutique (from my mac dictionary): French, literally ‘small shop,’ via Latin from Greek apothēkē ‘storehouse.’ Compare with bodega .
Some people are getting my reference to boutique mixed up with luxury brands. Personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead with Louis Vuitton bag and I’m sure most Boutiquers wouldn’t be either. The difference, as the diagram suggests (and there are many more differences than I quickly plotted in this image) is the motivations for buying. I said, “Bought for connection” because, as Sanford commented in the previous posts comment section:
“People go out of their way to purchase certain goods - like moleskine notebooks - or buy cheese from specific vendors because it broadcasts something about who they are. This statement can be personal/internal, shared with a small audience…”
The “small shop” concept is the feeling I got at Villandry in London - it was right in the heart of downtown, near the international embassy district, but instead of being generic, they were hyper-specialized. It was the kind of place you’d bring your aunts and uncles who were visiting town, to show off the awesome places that can grown up in your backyard, and they’d sit back and go “I would never buy anything in here, but I’m in awe of the place.” That’s how I feel at Stardust, that’s likely how some folks feel in the front room at Dandelion Communitea, or the co-op area at Infusion Tea in College Park. What does it all mean? How did these people come to create this art, or this custom stationery, or eco-friendly teacups, or press their own olive oil? Why are there hundreds of movies I’ve never heard of, and how in the hell can they organize them by country and director instead of genre? Who does that?
Boutiques do that. The perfect local bookstore would do that.
Take a look at people who use open source software, you’ll find the same aesthetic. Hand-made, personalized, specific, and powerful in the hands of a well-informed user, but you don’t need to be the guy who wrote it to use it or change it. You think there should be a French translation? That’s up to you. A sixth checkbox? Hack it in, contribute it to the repository. Make this the best tool for you, and therefore the best tool for folks who know where to look.
I could go on all night. Maybe I’ll go on this weekend at BarCamp. But I don’t title it “indy bookstore”. What is it?
BarCampOrlando Downtown April 5th and 6th, 10AM - 6PM
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Orlando, SEO, Music, Links, Events, Video, Coworking, Trends, Standards, floridacreatives, mashups, Graphics, OrlandoScene, Teaching, open source, BarCamp, PodCamp, Storytelling, phone, Web Services, Social Media Events, Social Networking, Programming , add a comment
BarCamp Orlando is a weekend for all types of creative folks to come together and share with each other. The event is dubbed an “unconference”, a format which derives power from the people instead of the event organizers or the presenters. Everyone has an equal opportunity to get on stage and speak, teach or lead a discussion, playing off of the idea that at any given conference, the people in the audience have more knowledge collectively than the presenter(s) on stage.
This second installment of BarCamp will be held over 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, April 5th and 6th, in downtown Orlando at the Wall Street complex, from 10AM - 6PM each day. Registration is free, and a registration promises a shirt and lunch on the sponsors of BarCamp, businesses who are passionate about the technology and media communities of Central Florida.
Saturday is the designated “Dev Day”, playing host to everything from web programming to robot building and video game development and everything in between. iPhone hackers, guys with soldering irons, the latest technologies, and plenty that haven’t been realized yet. Every 30 minutes, both venues will have a different talk going on, so if you’re feeling lost in the jargon, apply the “rule of 2 feet” and check out what’s happening in the other room!
Sunday is dubbed “Media Day”, and is the place for storytellers, journalists, writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, 2D and 3D artists, podcasters, bloggers and social networkers to show off their work, share their tricks or talk about the state of the industry. From 12 to 1 we will be talking about the “Past, Present and Future of Media in Central Florida”, hoping to give our community a sense of our story, and where we’re headed.
Registration is free, and the event runs from 10AM - 6PM both days with a lunch break at 1PM. The event will be housed in Slingapour’s and One-Eyed-Jack’s, with Wall St Cantina acting as our “hallway”. There will be projectors and microphones, chairs and a space to speak. All you have to do is write your name on the whiteboard and you get 20-25 minutes to share your passions with a group of energetic, engaged geeks and creatives. I would not use the words “captive audience” to describe the BarCamp crowd, because they all want to get involved.
Visit www.barcamporlando.org today and register for Dev Day, Media Day or both days. Wall Street Plaza is at 18 Wall Street Plaza, Orlando, FL 32801 - barcamporlando.org/where has a map to the venue and information about parking.
The 80/20 Rule and Win-Win-Win March 21, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Markteting, Podcasts, Links, Quotes, Video, Trends, Entrepreneurship, open source, Love , 2 commentsGary Vaynerchuk talks about a secret that he thinks is at the core of much of his success.
Reposted from: The 80/20 Business rule…..heck Life - my 2 minute take on life
Many folks who were at Future of Web Apps in Miami had nice things to say about Gary V’s talk. I’ve also seen some other really nice videos by this guy on the web, and probably bookmarked them on my Ma.gnolia - check the RSS or link over there to check my bookmarks.
I can’t say that Gary has all these ideas himself, and he does credit Kathy Sierra and Tara Hunt at the beginning of his video (google those people if you don’t know who we’re talking about).
Right, I don’t think all his ideas are too super-original, but he has a very large and very rabid audience, and he understands how he got them, and he also presents it in a very down-to-earth manner. There is no barrier to entry for Gary unless you’re afraid of spelling his name or people from New York.
I also like how he tells us not to channel Calacanis (or whoever), but just to be ourselves and do it really well and look out for other people.
If you look at your seemingly selfless (my brother would say altruistic) efforts in the ways you are benefiting yourself, the other person and those around you (or you, your partners in business and the community, or you, your fellow artists and the people who enjoy your art), you’re going to have not only success, but a great feeling about how you got there.
Win-Win is not enough, you have to look for Win3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, true, but if you paid attention in physics, there is always a release of heat or some byproduct of the reaction. If you can find the way to set up a reaction with a happy byproduct, everyone wins.
Take Hydrogen Fuel Cells. They last longer, they’re sustainable to produce (I think), and the waste product is water. The customers are happy because of the small powerful battery, the business should be happy because they’re not working with a limited supply of something like oil, and the people of the world should be happy because there isn’t a battery rotting in the ground.
Open source is the same. When everyone is giving 80%, expecting 20%, the products are amazing, the community is healthy and the users of the products are happy. Win-Win-Win.
I can see this especially given my new situation with Petentials. We have all been giving so much for so long, but it’s getting so easy to do things now, our vision is getting really razor-sharp, we’re having a napalm-like burst of awesome ideas, and we can see the next plateau.
Things are just going really well right now. I have my complaints, but if there was nothing to reach for, I think I would lock myself in my apartment and curl up in a ball for lack of something to do. I am addicted to this stuff, and I’m starting to see the rewards.
How to add subtitles to video podcasts March 2, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, HowTo, Video, mashups, interface, flash, Web Services , 2 commentsAt BarCampMiami, one of the folks in my podcast session had a question about creating a multi-lingual podcast. I instantly suggested that photocasting with something like SlideFlickr and including an audio file would be simplest and very shareable. Visuals certainly have the power to transcend the barriers of language (if not culture). Still, she was hoping for a more flexible answer, like subtitling videos.
I had certainly seen Rocketboom and other vlogs include subtitles and have mutli-language support, but I was skeptical about finding a cross-platform tool that could get the job done.
I did some searching and found out Google Video supports subtitles if you’ve already made the file - OK, but how do I make one? Linux has lots of tools available, but I don’t think that will help my friend in this case. 
Then I started finding the web-based subtitle solutions via del.icio.us, and at the bottom of page 3 hit paydirt. There was a compelling cross-platform downloadable tool in Java (cross-platform), but I had trouble getting video playback to work on my mac. I could see the video frames alright, but for moving pictures Jubler was no help. It required MPlayer to work, which I have, but something wasn’t right, so I gave up and went to the web.
Next on my past-tense journey was subtitle.in, the best subtitler of the bunch (I also tried a tool that required use of Google Video and wouldn’t allow YouTubage). I have two complaints about subtitle.in:
- Poor support for scrubbing (I assume this is the fault of the video compressing party, YouTube in this case)
- Inability to edit the starting time of a subtitle, just duration and text (but they have a workaround)
After some playing around, I noticed you could move the start time of the subtitle by half-a-second, but the controls for this were unintuitive at best. Try to see if you understand from this image. Me either. They’re under the list of titles and say “< Prev 0.5 sec" and "Forward 0.5 sec >“. Since I figured out that the “Delete” key removed the currently selected title, this was a logical next step, but I don’t know why we couldn’t just type in the time. My anal self needs that level of granularity.
Time appears to be broken into 100-frames per second? Not sure how that works, but the titles seemed to play back fine.
Tip: Type out all of your titles before you get them in this tool or any other subtitling utility, and make notes about when each phrase starts, with a minute:second attached; this will go much more quickly for you. If you’re like my friend and you want to translate the video into 4 languages (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese), keeping your notes and times straight will be a huge boost in throughput.
Check out a sample video at subtitle.in - as of this writing, I only did 3 screens of subtitles, so don’t go looking for anything past the first blackout.
You are not your own boss, a puppet told me so February 26, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Video, Puppets, Trends, Arts, Politics, monochrom , 1 comment so farmonochrom: Kiki and Bubu and The Shift
Maybe the first and last time I get to use the “puppets” and “politics” tags for one post…
