Hayes also posted a lot of cool videos to illustrate his points - here’s one of them:
The very near future is starting to look like a Harry Potter movie - on acid. You think I jest? Check this out.
The possible uses of AR is mind boggling - everything from education, art, entertainment, military, porn, medicine, research, and - yes - business. In his post Hayes is focusing on the potential business models which are likely to erupt from the widespread adoption of AR and even in that limited context he paints an extremely interesting image of what our world is going to look like.
Picture downtown Tokyo - all around you - all the time.
I’m just farting around here so please bear with me. Kaltura is a new open source video company that provides software and services that allow for the easy posting, uploading and online editing of video. This is pretty cool shit for independent bloggers because it allows for communities to develop and grow where video, and not just text, becomes the means by which ideas are expressed and shared.
It’s sort of like what you can do through YouTube; posting your own video comments connected to other videos, but running it all from your own web pages. The variety of options (free & paid) available are overwhelming and I’m only just getting my head wrapped around them. Using it here and now was dead simple - it’s just a Wordpress plugin that allows me a pantload of options. Very cool.
The video above has been posted here using Kaltura but the video source itself is from archive.org. It’s Superman and the Mechanical Monsters, an old Fleischer Bros. cartoon that is now in the public domain. One of the unique things about this particular cartoon is it was one of the key sources of inspiration for Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow; in fact you can spot some sequences that were reproduced in the Sky Captain feature virtually shot for shot.
I’ll blab more about Kultura and Open Video later.
Cheers.
UPDATE:ReadWriteWeb reports on Wikipedia going forward with open source video - in concert with Kaltura - and the possibilities inherent in such an expansive library of shared knowledge being wrought in video is making my head spin. More later.
Every morning when I get up I make a school lunch for my son, Henry. I also make a little folded comic that I stick in with the lunch. I’ve been doing that for a number of years now and the collection that has amassed is still calling to be posted online.
I also make quick little notes for him to read while he eats his breakfast. Usually these are just short little things that serve to brighten the start of his day and get his brain ready for school.
The comics are bizarre because they are more detailed than the breakfast notes, being a serialized story featuring Henry, his sandwich and a trio of demented coconuts; they also reflect some of the stuff he (and I) are going through as we grow older; they are always done before I’ve finished my first cup of coffee; and I never know what’s going to happen next.
Some very weird shit falls out of my skull early in the morning but every once in a while, amidst that morning mental detritus, a small gem pops out.
This is the short breakfast note I made for Henry this morning:
I want to thank you, Mark for your kind words about the show, my work and myself. And, yes, I will admit I used to work out of my home office in my bathrobe - and I used to direct in the studio wearing my slippers. I am built for comfort not for speed.
Speaking of which, I am woefully late in getting the next episode of In Teh Toobs online but that’s because — oh wait, I said no more excuses, didn’t I?
Okay - no excuses. You’ll just have to wait until the end of this week to see what I’ve been up to.
In the shameless self-promotion and recursive blog reference department I give you the post from Jill Golick’s Running With Eyes Closed blog wherein she heaps praise upon my efforts with In Teh Toobs.
I’ve known Jill for about 25 years now since we first worked together on Canadian Sesame Street. Since that time her work as a writer in series television and as an active member in the Writer’s Guild of Canada has been exemplary. More recently she’s been wading into the same trough of cultural chaos I’ve been wallowing in, pursuing the various forms of storytelling and narrative emerging across and throughout the interwebs.
Jill also organizes the Writers Watching TV events held each month at the Camera Lounge, the last one being a Web Creators Show & Tell where I got to show off the first bits and pieces of my work on In Teh Toobs.
Be sure to check out her Story2Oh web series and her most recent venture Hailey Hacks - which is a really cool intro to web wizardry for and by our young digital natives.
So here’s the next installment of In Teh Toobs. In a way it’s just an extension of the Prelude, advancing the concept of the show further and finally introducing Riley.
Future episodes will carry further forward faster - and the audio will be better too. My excuse is that Riley is having technical issues from inside the tubes and that’s the only caveat I’ll ever offer from now on.
Later this week I’m gonna post a video here with me talking about this web series and the other projects I’m working on.
Cheers.
P. S. I’d really appreciate any comments you may have about it. Good or bad, I don’t care, I just wanna hear something. And please be sure to comment on the In Teh Toobs site itself. Many thanks. :)
At long last I’ve opened up the web site for In Teh Toobs - a new weekly web series featuring the intrepid but hapless canine Cmdr. Riley aboard his trusty and rusty spacecraft, the STFU-1138, as he journeys through the interwebs.
This isn’t a full episode - just a prelude:
Tonight I’ll be at the Camera Lounge talking about In Teh Toobs and other projects for the Web Creators Show & Tell evening organized by Jill Golick. It’s part of a larger series of monthly events Jill has put together under the auspices of the Writers Guild Of Canada called Writers Watching TV.
Also participating tonight are Scott Albert and Christopher Guest with their web series Team Leader and Jill will talk about her new web series Hailey Hacks.
Should be a fun night. If you drop by please be sure to say Howdy.
Cheers.
P. S. I’m trying out a number of different video hosting options for the In Teh Toobs site and while although pretty much set on Blip.tv I must admit I was pleasantly surprised to see the quality of the YouTube post:
Maybe it just looks better on the YouTube site. Let me know what you think - I want to be sure I’m making the right choices.
The name of my website is millsworks - as in: As little as possible. I have been described by those close to me as the world’s busiest lazy man. I’m built for comfort, not for speed. I prefer being horizontal.
Mike Rowe is the host of the television series Dirty Jobs where he explores (so we don’t have to) the filthiest crappiest jobs on the planet. I’m sure he’s only just begun to scratch the surface of the myriad of human toil considered to be less than worthy for the rest of us wallowing in this declining mess once called Western Civilization.
I’ve had my share of shitty gigs. I won’t bore you with the alleged street credentials of my god awful, mind numbing and soul destroying minimum wage days. Been there, done that, don’t want to go back.
Please understand - I’m not completely adverse to hard work. I have often worked myself sick doing the very things I love so dearly. Finishing a production and ending up in hospital as a result is not a rare experience for me. I just figure if I’m gonna wear myself to the bone for something it had damn well better be something I actually care about. Finding that sort of thing these days seems to be getting harder but that’s territory for a different blog post.
I like watching Rowe’s show and I enjoy his take on the gritty realities of life around us that we choose to ignore or separate ourselves from on a daily basis. The very things that make our lives of comfort possible are based upon the backs of those who do the work the rest of us so assiduously avoid.
In this TED Talk from last December, Rowe explores his experiences and comes to some common sense conclusions about the nature of hard work and why we need to support it.
Now if you’ll excuse me - I gotta get busy with my own shit.
At the risk of being mysterious or a bit of a tease I thought I’d give you a brief glimpse into what this new thing is I’ve been working on. This is me standing on the set of teh new thing.
And that’s just one of the sets. It’s going to take a couple of more weeks to get it all sorted out before I actually start posting anything. I’m pretty excited about it all and hope it’s well received. As we get closer to unveiling the full deal I’ll be posting photos and videos of the behind-the-scenes process.
In the meantime, you’ll just have to be satisfied with my usual curmudgeonly blog posts, my relentless and inane Twitter blurbs and the occasional 12second.tv video blurbs.
Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter speaks at TED about how the users of Twitter are finding unexpected ways of using their ability to tweet which, in turn, is driving the explosive growth of what many are discovering to be a highly addictive, dynamic and (I suspect) life changing way of communicating with our fellow human beings.
Neat stuff.
After a full day of disheartening and frustrating effort, I’m not holding out much hope now for being able to reconstruct the old pages of this blog. That’s a shame but I can’t dwell on trying to rebuild it - there’s new stuff I have to concentrate on completing. If anyone wants to search for specific posts feel free to visit archive.org and use their Wayback Machine and see what you can find.
My dear friend Mark Achtenberg has posted on his 
