On the event of my father's 80th birthday, family friends Paula & Charlie Glendinning dedicated the song, "The Humble (formerly 'Good') Shepherd" to the old man.
Here for your enjoyment is their birthday rendition of the tune that promises to be played by pipe bands around the world for decades to come.
Best gift imaginable from the best friends imaginable.
Brava y bravo, you two, for everything you make and do.
Thank you for making Dad's 80th perfectly memorable.
It's been a while since I played @ Seesmic, but their player - to which one may reply in video without ever leaving my page - brilliant - has grown up. Come of age.
All you need is a webcam, Camtwist, and a Seesmic account.
Everybody on set's got one.
Most sets have wi-fi.
Show folks what's what in 3 minutes or less.
It's really fucking easy.
We're all film makers, damnit. Superior technicians.
Why wouldn't we make media?
The question is: can we do it right? Will production trust us with the responsibility? Will something beautiful be made of it one day? What will the unions make of this? Are we not all bloggers / videobloggers / still photographers / prop masters / film makers?
Cheap tools & technology, baby.
Should we not reap benefits from this expanded endeavor all the way around?
Cleansing the film maker palate with instant media.
Make & distribute short films while working 18 hours a day as captain of a ship.
It can be done.
Nokia N-series phone.
Get some product placement from Nokia, yo :)
Seesmic. Web-cam-based conversations. Depak Chopra posts here. It's good. Find somebody with a MacBook Pro and say it. Add a title and bingo, Seesmic auto-posts a notice w/ link to Twitter.
Shozu. A small cellphone application that allows you to title, tag and add blog text to stills and videos. Auto cross-uploads to any number of sites, including YouTube, Blip, Flickr, Vimeo, Veoh, and any email address. All bypassing cellphone email size limits. That said,you should definitely have an unlimited data plan if you get serious about working this way.
Twitter. Any blog post here is automatically posted to Twitter with a link to the original blog page. I can also make posts directly to Twitter with a text message to my phone.
Utterz. Dial a phone number (speed dial), press '2', speak, press '#', hang up. Utterz auto-posts to any number of sites you tell it to. No password entering BS; Utters remembers you & your phone. From Utterz --> Blog --> Twitter --> RSS feed --> Subscribers.
Blip.TV. Free sound & video host with auto-crossposting for non-cellphone video. It also transcodes video from either Windows or Quicktime into high-quality flash. Created your own, branded show player. Blip talks to Blogger, YouTube, the Internet Archive, among others.
Shannon Noble's "Raw Footage" vlog strikes me for lots of reasons, not least of which is the vehemence with which he plays. Watched the footage many times, empathizing with the intense emotion displayed. It's been a month or two since he posted it. Thankfully downloaded the video because in the interim Noble wiped his site clean, hence no permalink to the entry is available.
Similarly, Robert Rowe's Cello Wireless Podcast of occasional cello improvs stays with me.
Both haunted me all summer from the hard drive.
Part of how I survive is to rent warehouse space to Tom, who recently invited me to his country lake-house for dinner and a swim.
Let this serve as a rejection of perfection and the consumption of images of olymipic-quality lives. Real life is imperfect and small and intensely beautiful, remarkable, shareable.
