When I finally opened the Ruffus The Dog web site to the public I knew it wasn’t really finished - nothing ever is.
There are always changes, tweaks and inevitable corrections to be made as any site grows and gets road-tested by those who arrive first at the gates. There were some issues with bandwidth and file size for the videos - they tended to choke, stutter and endlessly buffer, thus degrading the viewing experience. I’ve made a few changes in that regard so it’s a smaller file size that plays on the web while still providing a broadcast quality version for download.
I suspect I may have to do some re-encoding to get the data rate just right so it all plays to my satisfaction.
There are also download links now for the episodes (in a variety of formats) so the shows can be viewed freely on other devices. I wish that functionality was built right into the player but since it’s not I need to provide it for each post on the site. Fair enough.
Eventually there will be more outlets for the full episodes - YouTube, Vimeo etc. - and I’ll likely use a service like TubeMogul to make placement of the files easier. Right now I’m content to do everything by hand so I can get a better grip on the formats, file sizes and general layout before attempting to automate the process. One step at a time.
There are also new badges which link to the Twitter and Facebook pages for Ruffus.
Overall I’m not completely satisfied with the graphic layout of the site - I want to keep playing with some ideas - but it was important to finally get it out there for everyone else to see, otherwise I’d be fiddling with it for an eternity. First thing is to make sure all the basic bells and whistles work with a minimum of fuss and bther - then I can do more work on making it pretty.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting two more episodes: Ruffus & Hyde and our own version of The Frog Prince. After that it will be one new show each week - usually on a Tuesday.
Once I get into a comfortable routine of posting episodes I can concentrate on more Behind-The-Scenes material and the writing of the Storybooks.
Cheers.
P. S. I won’t be offering many caveats for the shows themselves - there’s a lot of good shit in Ruffus The Dog - but I feel obliged to mention that the late Karen Ohland, one of our key puppet builders, absolutely despised the Little Jane puppet and kept asking if we could re-shoot the entire episode just so we could change that character.
This is a cool video Cory Doctorow posted over at BoingBoing. It’s just some neat footage of a neutrally bouyant balloon that is placidly hovering in a room.
A pink balloon.
Those of you who have been reading this blog for some time will know where this going.
Last year, over the Christmas holidays, I posted here (and on Twitter) about the plight of a small, homeless pink balloon named - appropriately enough - Pinky. I can’t replay the old blog post here because when I fucked up my blog it disappeared into the ether of the interwebs along with 2 to 3 years worth of mental gems and turds - but if anyone can find it for me I’d appreciate it. Nor can I lay out the original tweets - entitled Teh Saga Of Pinky - which inspired the blog post in the first place because apparently time to Twitter is like the flat Earth or the simulated reality of the button-eyed freaks in Gaiman’s Coraline. Twitter Time is only visible within a limited distance after which it simply ceases to be and all sense of history drops over the edge into a timeless abyss and is lost forever.
But I digress.
Here’s what I can recount:
We had a small pink balloon show up on our doorstep in the midst of winter. It lingered there but we (myself and my immediate family) being heartless cretins, left it there - just to see what would happen.
It was a loyal balloon that stayed true to its desire to find a home with us until finally I could take it no longer and posted a series of tweets that ended with this picture and asked the question:
“Should we bring Pinky inside & offer protection from the elements - or should we let nature take its course?”
Note: For the record - TwitPic has all my photo posts still archived. Perhaps I should stick pictures with all my tweets from now on.
The response to my Twitter question was an undeniable “Yes! Rescue Pinky!” - and so I did.
In my original post I also tucked in a bit of blather about how human beings like to anthropomorphize things, imbue them with character and feelings, and all too often bestow our care and affection upon objects more than we do on other human beings in our midst. We are all some really fucked up monkeys.
While my original Twitter posts and blog entry have vanished forever I did manage to dig out of my email files this late night drunken missive I wrote to myself on the couch with my iPhone as a nudge to make the blog post the next day about Pinky:
For what is a balloon? Any balloon? It is but a container - a vessel of a moment in time - the encapsulization of the breath of life. And here we have this feeble artifact, this minor player in the grand theatre and parade of life - a lowly, singular, lonesome sagged pink balloon - a vessel of the breath of life constrained, held back, diminished, neglected, buried - and yet persevering against all odds, unrelenting in it’s obdurant determination to not just survive but to also be noticed, to be made note of, to be recognized, named and accepted. Each one of us may only play upon these doorsteps for the most brief of times and yet we are most definitely here and not to be neglected nor discounted nor, worse still, ignored - we are here - as in Horton Hears A Who - we are here, we are here, we are here!
One balloon serves as a rather frail and tepid metaphor for all the many things each of us may ascribe to the story. But it serves well enough -that lone sad semi-deflated rubber sack of air is all of us; it is what we are, how we are perceived and what we yearn to be.
One little balloon - on a doorstep - in a snowstorm.
What a wonderous world this would be when we are finally capable of setting aside the metaphors and allegories and heart warming images to clearly see that all of these stories - that all stories - are about us - about you and me - about us all.
Perhaps one day.
Until then we shall have to be content and find solace for our hearts in the tales of the trials and tribulations of a small pink balloon on a snowy doorstep.
Shortly thereafter my friend Jill Gollick also had an encounter with a pink balloon. She had been away for the holiday season but, via Twitter, got my posts about Teh Saga Of Pinky.
When she got home this was waiting at her doorstep:
I didn’t put it there.
Honest.
While Jill’s tale of Pinky The Second ended in horrible tragedy, our Pinky lived happily ever after.
But this whole errant pink balloon thing is starting to get on my nerves.
First me.
Then Jill.
And now this hovering version of the same.
Where are these balloons coming from? What do they want? Where is all this leading?
Perhaps time will tell.
But not Twitter time, of course - that’s too short.
Should you or anyone you know have any pink balloon stories to share with us please be sure to let me know.
In the meantime, here’s some balloons who don’t need rescuing.
UPDATE:- I added a relevant TED talk at the bottom of this post.
The past several days have seen great upheaval in Iranian society and this has drawn the attention of the world. There have already been many blogs, articles, cartoons and op-eds posted about the protests, the crackdowns and the innovative use of internet social media in response to the clumsy and blatant subversion of an already flawed democratic process in Iran. I was among those online, within the Twitter community, watching and commenting in real time as these events unfolded - astonished and inspired by the level of participation in helping people to continue to communicate their experiences of the situation in the streets of Iran, to travel safely and to find relative anonymity and escape from immediate persecution.
The major news media, complacent with their level of professionalism and their entrenched foreign bureaus remained blind and mute for an extraordinary length of time whilst the online community rallied to provide the means to evade censorship, pass along reports, photos & videos, facilitate communication amongst allied groups and demonstrate a disruptive solidarity by not only turning their Twitter avatars green (the emblematic colour of the protest movement) but by also altering their Twitter location & time-zone to create a mass of Twitter traffic from Tehran in an effort to dilute and confuse the efforts of the authorities to track down vocal dissidents.
Some of it was, admittedly, childish stuff. It was fun and it was thrilling for the most part - and downright scary and tragic from time to time as reports came in of beatings, shootings, arson and thuggery. The overall tone within the Twitter community was one of somber determination to keep the lines of communication open. Those efforts continue as I write these words.
Last night CBC television aired a report on the events and, as the major news media so often do, characterized the protests as a battle between candidates - carving out the tired icons of good guy and bad guy in their dramatic scenario that attempted to pass as news. In doing so they entirely missed the point of what the protests are fundamentally about.
Process.
Regardless of which candidate may be favoured by one group or another the major source of discontent within the protesting Iranian citizenry is how the results of their votes were ignored and a winner was decreed. The process of voting - regardless of how skewed it may have been by virtue of a ruling theocracy - was negated. Therein lies the justified fury of the public. It’s not one group getting snippy cuz they lost the election - it’s a pantload of people getting outraged because there was no fucking election at all.
We live in an age of ever increasing transparency. You can’t get away with shit anymore. Want to abuse your authority and taze someone to death? Okay - just be prepared to watch your sorry guilty ass doing it over and over again for all the world to see for all time on YouTube. You want to run a dictatorship? Go ahead - call it that and carry on about your business - lots of big companies will continue to invest in you - and eventually, inevitably, you’ll be eaten alive by those you oppress. You want to call it a democracy and get folks involved? Great! Just don’t be surprized at how pissed off they get when you dick with the results.
We must always remember that the internet isn’t about LOLCats and funny videos and porn and gossip and pirated music & movies - well, it is all that - and more. The internet is communication; the ability to see, hear, speak and act on a global scale instantaneously. The repercussions of that ability are only just now being felt in the way it is dissolving old media business models, triggering new economies, crafting new cultural works and entirely new cultures and, perhaps most importantly, forever altering how politics is conducted.
I’m under no illusions that Twitter or Google are some sort of progressive saving force for humanity. They’re not. They’re just part of a larger and growing process we are experiencing that is the direct result of increased communication amongst all people.
The idea of democracy is still relatively new to most of the world - hell, America is still trying to figure out how to make that one actually work. It isn’t something that can be imposed or imported from one country or culture to another. It is, at it’s most basic level, the will of the people. When people have the ability to communicate freely, democracy - true democracy - flourishes. When people have the ability to communicate and act freely, imposed authority will be challenged.
Many wags will refer to this time as being The Twitter Revolution. Believe me, this is just the tip of the iceberg. While revolutions may occur around this world as our abilities to listen, speak and move as one continues to increase, a more important singular event is emerging and we will come to recognize this slim period of time not as a revolution but as part of our evolution.
All part of the process of growing up.
Growing pains will, without doubt, be experienced. The child cannot be commanded to stay a child and once youth finds a voice it will speak and demand to be heard. And then we will put away our childish things.
And that’s when the process really gets interesting.
UPDATE: Have a listen to Clay Shirky speaking at TED just this past May on how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.
Almost apropos of something, every time I hear someone speak intelligently about the net I keep getting reminded of McLuhan and his observation that old media becomes the content of new media. Fascinating.
There was a great article in the Globe & Mail a few days ago that I wanted to point your attention to, about how mobile tech will be changing the world.
I know I tend to wax poetic from time to time on the coming evolution of humanity through the advent of our technological extensions of self - becoming better people in a better world - in spite of our basic primitive and pathetic human nature.
It’s not all gonna be sunshine and roses - I know that - but it sure as shit will be an interesting slow motion train wreck to watch; and we got ourselves the front row seats!
Here’s part of the article that caught my attention:
“The best parallel that I use is when they first came out with motion picture projectors, the whole thought of those was ‘Hey, now I can do a stage play and play it at a different location at a different time,’ ” Mr. Balsillie said. “The concept of a ‘movie’ wasn’t in anybody’s mind at the time because they couldn’t see how the media could change the nature of the entertainment, it was just time and place shifting the pre-existing entertainment.”
“In the case of smart phones, we’re just time and place shifting some of the applications. Will it actually change the nature of the application? Absolutely. Do we know exactly how it’s going to change it? I don’t think so.”
The whole article covers the range of changes that have already been wrought by the emergence of handheld connectivity to the growing wash of information and sensorial input available through the internet. It also points out that only one in six human beings on Earth has access to the Internet which, naturally, begs the question: What happens when the rest of the world starts coming online?
When the next billion come online, many of them will not experience the Web through a PC, but rather through smart phones and handheld devices. That new influx of ideas and perspectives is bound to have a profound impact on the next decade of Internet innovation and change how information is disseminated and consumed.
Over the weekend I had a great Twitter conversation with @michaelkinney about the “flow” of content on the web, feeding the insatiable maw of the all consuming interwebs and how that affects the creation of the content from a business perspective and from the position of the individual artists. This factor of how mobile devices are and will continue to impact the way we access that flow should also form a part of that discussion. We agreed that linear narrative will most certainly survive - it’s hardwired into our living experience as animals on this planet and until such time as we conquer death or the flow of time itself that narrative line will continue to play a role in how we define and express ourselves.
But just as the cinema transformed storytelling from the oral traditions of the theatre - time shifting the experience of performance with repeatable product, as well as playing with time within the structure of the stories themselves (for that I refer you to Walter Murch and his book In The Blink Of An Eye) - so too will we see the emergence of wholly unimagined forms of storytelling that will be born into existence purely as a result of the technologies that carry them.
Entertainment is but one small part of the larger puzzle of what lies in store for us as we become increasingly connected in every way possible; but it is safe to assume the world will indeed seem to be a smaller place when we can hold it in our grasp - and perhaps, in the process of that change, we’ll gain a larger sense of ourselves upon that very world and learn to cradle it (and each other) more gently than we have in past, knowing that every gaze and every whisper with which we grace that which we hold in our hands will be conveyed to everyone around us and back again.
Be kind to your neighbours. Shake hands. Gently.
Cheers.
P. S. The stunning image above has been culled from monti_84’s blog. Beautiful stuff. Thnx.
I am guilty of using and abusing my phone to tweet and surf while in conversation with others. It’s annoying. It’s annoying when others do it to me. When I do it I’m not being annoying - I’m just connected with the world in ways you couldn’t possibly understand so stop looking at me like I just shit in your mouth.
You can probably guess I don’t get very far with that attitude.
Apropos of this one-sided conversation here’s Renny Gleeson giving a brief and funny talk at TED on how our ability to communicate simultaneously in many social spheres is impacting on our basic humanity. Of course things are in a state of change - the world itself is being transformed by our technologies and how we choose to use them. I like Gleeson’s plea to the audience at the end of it.
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.
There was a great 
) - so too will we see the emergence of wholly unimagined forms of storytelling that will be born into existence purely as a result of the technologies that carry them.
