In lieu of Random Monday, we have three items for Random Tuesday.
Folks in Macon (and Burma and Oklahoma) got hit hard by a tornado. One creative way you can help is to give money to a qualifying charity in the Swindle Industries Charity Bowl. It gives you an opportunity to shame a rival college football team for a good cause. Just click the link if you’re wondering how that’s possible.
The redesign of the Georgia Podcast Network is live! Most of you ought to be able to see it now, but if you can’t check back a little later. We switched the domain settings last night, and it may take a little while for them to take effect in some places.
The short version of what’s new is:
Create podcasts, add episodes to them, or add your affiliate podcast to the directory without having to go through an administrator. Podcasts now work sort of like diaries on Tondee’s Tavern and other group blogs. Everybody can have one, but not everything makes the front page.
Let other members post episodes to your podcast. You can name co-hosts individually, or set the “group podcast” option to let any registered member post an episode. For examples of group podcasts, see (un)ConCast and Politics is Vocal.
Album art, channel, and other meta information can be attached to podcasts
Better performance. Up to 8 times faster under normal server load
That’s not everything, but that’s the important stuff. There are still some minor CSS issues to work out in Internet Explorer 6, but it should be relatively bug-free other than that. Have a look and let us know what you think!
Dekalb County is spending over a million taxpayer dollars, cutting down 1000 trees, and irreparably damaging Atlanta’s second oldest, largest, intact, mature hardwood forest sanctuary without community approval. Join the Three Forks Heritage Alliance in their efforts to stop the Path of Shame. Go to www.3forksalliance.org for more information.
Like I’ve written earlier, I think on the whole PATH does more good than harm. But I also believe the behavior of both PATH and the DeKalb Commission in this situation have been inexcusable and that this design doesn’t pass the smell test.
We were watching The Office Thursday night, and this 11Alive promo came on. I thought it was so ridiculous that it needed to be posted. This has inspired me to collect all the ridiculous local news promos I see and to compile them into a bigger video.
Sorry about the crappy letterboxing that occured there. Here’s a better Quicktime file you can watch on your desktop.
Hot! If I looked half that graceful doing anything, then… well, I don’t know, I’d look pretty graceful.
This video was taken with her (ostensibly) still camera on auto focus, and the low light performance is pretty damn impressive if you ask me. Much better than my first go-round with the camcorder. This has inspired us to try some videos at home so I can work on figuring the damn thing out, and (obviously) so she can post more videos.
The most obvious place to look is shutter speed, something I wasn’t aware I could change when I made the Podcamp Nashville video. I read in the friendly manual that there’s an “auto slow” shutter speed I should try in dark conditions.
I know sometimes I’m prone to speaking in superlatives and using a phrase such as “the pinnacle of unintentional comedy.” I’m not shitting you this time, though, when I say that Lou Holtz’s pep talk monologues are the pinnacle of unintentional comedy. That statement is conditional on you having the remotest interest in college football or a taste for the macabre.
Behold: Lou Holtz offers a pep talk for Oklahoma State for their game against Kansas this weekend:
I’m reminded of this clip from Family Guy every time I watch one of these pep talks:
I’d feel guilty about laughing at the senile old cheater (Holtz, not Reagan, though Reagan also was a senile old cheater in his later years) if this weren’t such a splendid display of the right way for a big corporate media company to do viral video. These videos are designed for me to make fun of Lou Holtz (and provide free advertising for ESPN in the process) and I am happy to oblige.
In other news, I’ll be in Knoxville tonight and tomorrow to see if Tennessee can manage to hold Arkansas to under 400 yards rushing (typo: rashing…which might also be true).
Way to go SpaceyG landing that Huffington Post gig. Hopefully you can do this every Tuesday, and we can get progressively drunker as we film them. See how I threw “progressive” in there? And it’s a video for the Huffington Post? Nevermind.
I recorded footage of baby chicks while we were at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago yesterday. I’ve compiled it all together for you in this video:
This was also recorded with the snapshot camera I used to record “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Wrigley Field. Not sure what happened to the text, but I’m not going back to redo it now. You’ll just have to deal with seven minutes of adorable baby chickens running around without clear readable credits at the beginning and end.
I recorded this tonight with a snapshot camera that kinda-sorta does video, so be gentle. This spirited rendition didn’t help the Cubbies rally from a 4-1 deficit against Philadelphia. It really wasn’t as close as the final score made it look. The Phillies were hitting balls hard and leaving runners stranded even when they weren’t scoring, while the Cubs looked like they left their bats at home and were fortunate the starting pitcher (”send him back to the minors,” said several bleacher bums) didn’t walk more people than he did.
Also, earlier today I recorded baby chicks at the Museum of Science and Industry! I have several little videos I want to piece together and actually, like, edit together. I might do it on the plane ride home.
Christians who feel that "Happy Holidays" is, as Bill Hendrick reported, "a retreat from the very foundation of their faith" ought to examine why they are looking for that foundation in a shopping mall rather than within their hearts.
- Molly Bardsley
