Say hello to our newest arrival, a 4 1/4-month-old Senegal Parrot, who has yet to be named. I’m thinking Fannie, ’cause she makes this sound like a car with a loose fan belt. But, it’s not really my decision — this is Donna’s bird, though we’re going to try to help her to learn to like both of us.
For those wondering, upside down is a “normal” position for Senegals, and many other types of parrots, too. Donna will, at some point, probably write about how this cute new critter came be ours (aside from the business of handing the credit card to the nice lady at the bird store).
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July 13th, 2008 in
Flutterings |
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Tonight, we removed all of our images from Flickr. Why? Because of Flickr’s complete and utter lack of diligence with regards to their API programming, and it’s inability to work as advertised with regard to correctly filtering copyright protected images. It seems that images, even those flagged by the account holder as "copyright, all rights reserved," are freely available via RSS feeds. This allows people to write programs to scrape images from Flickr for use for, well, whatever.
The latest violation involved every image on Flickr being available for sale to anyone by third party vendors, regardless of copyright status, with no compensation or even credit to the original photographer.
So, why do I say "Yahoo!ed?" Because Flickr is no owned and operated by Yahoo!, long known for selling user information and other major violations of their own terms of service. They have managed to, in my opinion, ruin every well-run web business they’ve purchased (witness OneList’s transformation into Yahoo!Groups, where users security and e-mail preferences are randomly reset, allowing e-mail addresses to be had by third party spammers).
This action on our part will break some of the image and embedded video links on this site as well, since the source files were stored on Flickr. It is unlikely that we will bother to replace the missing images or videos at this time.
For those interested in seeing or purchasing our images, you can visit our Orchard Studios web site. It will take us some time to recreate and upload all of the images we had on Flickr. However, this will give us time to refine our available images.
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Now, this is rap!
This is a great live version of B Movie, by Gil Scott-Heron, possibly one of the best raps of all time.
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Back in 1988, Enya released a song called Orinoco Flow (Sail Away). Out and about on the internet, she seems to be credited as the creator of this song. I know, however, that she is not. I distinctly remember hearing this song on WBAL radio in the late sixties or early seventies. However, I can’t seem to track down an original version of this song. Does anyone have an idea who did the original version?
BTW, the Orinoco is the 3rd largest river system in South America, has the world’s third largest flow, and runs through part of Colombia and the full length of Venezuala.
Pictures on or near the Orinoco River.
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Hello again, everyone. I thought it might be good to update you all on how this all worked out — for those who care…
Yesterday was the last day for Howard County GTV as a government operation. We all turned in our keys, locked the doors, and walked away, off to the new phases of our lives. All but a couple of the staff members have new jobs.
I landed at HCCTV, the Howard Community College cable operation, in support of what’s left of the government operation. However, in the long run, it appears that will be the least of my responsibilities. I will, of course, be directing live broadcasts of the various Council meetings and press conferences and such. But, in addition, I’ll be assisting with new equipment specifications and all phases of production for the college’s productions as well. What’s really exciting is that this will be a truly state-of-the-art facility — fully digital, and with hi def growth potential.
My first projects include coordinating the move of the GTV master control plant with Comcast and Verizon to limit station down-time; design of the integrated ProTools audio-for-video production environment; and the design of a pair of three-camera, two-operator remote production flypacks. I have no clue what I’m going to do my second week. Just joking, but, these little projects do have to be done pretty quickly, as we only have limited time to spend the money!
The little issues I spoke of yesterday are well on the way to being resolved, too. So, my first day at the new job worked out to be quite a good one.
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Today was the day … the last day for GTV. The lights at the station were turned out for the last time, and we all turned in our keys and walked away.
Tomorrow, I start a new position at Howard Community College, doing much the same as I was at GTV, with the added benefit that I’m officially full-time with full benefits. And, I’m excited at the opportunity to learn and grow in a new, cutting-edge environment. The catch (there’s always a catch) is that it’s a grant-funded contract position, and the grantor is none other than the Howard County Government, and that aspect (along with a couple of last-minute developments) lends some trepidation to the venture.
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Here’s some video from under the sea. The octopi are the most incredible part!
You can see more cool stuff at the TED site.
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June 22nd, 2008 in
Environment |
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Timecatcher.com is a website featuring some spectacular landscape photographs from around the world. It’s the work of six fantastic photographers. You need to check it out.
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As some of you may know, I’ve been fooling around with the idea of building my own video camera stabilization rig. There are a bunch of commercial units available from Steadicam/Tiffen, Glidecam, and a collection of eBay stores based somewhere in India. These are all fairly impressive units, but some also have some pretty impressive price tags (Steadicam, for instance, doesn’t make a model for my camera with less than a four-figure price tag!).
Today, I cobbled up my first test rig — a Manfrotto monopod with a ball head and quick release plate, and an old flywheel/head assembly from an ancient GYYR 1/2" helical scan VTR for a counterweight. I mounted my Canon XL2, balanced the rig as best I could and wandered around the house for a couple of minutes, making no particular attempt at slow, smooth camera work.
There are a couple of more severe bumps — one when I inadvertently kicked the counterweight as I was walking, and one when the counterweight hit a stair-tread as I was walking down a short flight of steps. But, the basic concept really seems quite doable, if I decide the savings in cost is worth my time and effort to fully design and build the thing.
Of course, I could always try to sell a few of them…
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Okay, I know. Really crappy, badly backlit picture, I know. But the only camera I had within quick, easy reach was my iPhone.
The point is, if Kiah the bird, and Darjha the cat can both happily relax on Donna at the same time, why can’t the supposedly "enlightened" and "intelligent" humans get along?
Moments after this, Kiah fluttered over to my shoulder, then back towards Donna, but tried to land on Darjha. Darjha’s, who’s still afraid of Kiah, is not quite sure what happened.
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Say hello to our newest arrival, a 4 1/4-month-old Senegal Parrot, who has yet to be named. I’m thinking Fannie, ’cause she makes this sound like a car with a loose fan belt. But, it’s not really my decision — this is Donna’s bird, though we’re going to try to help her to learn to like both of us.
