Words Yield Power

April 23rd, 2011 Thomasso

I was reading the Tweets shuffling down my monitor this afternoon when an Tweep posted a Tweet that grabbed my attention. It had a YouTube link on it, so with out hesitation I pointed my mouse pointer over to it and clicked on the link. This video popped up on the screen.

I love the message that this video sends because it transcends the power of communication on so many levels. But it also conveys a danger too of how we use these words. The misuse of that power can be deadly in terms of embellishment of the truth and meanings that these words hold. I do not want to diminish the message of this video, but for me, I love the purity of the message, so I will leave it at that.

Here is the Tweet that lead me to this video by @gmarkham AKA Mark Hamilton, who wrote: “The Power of Words, a short, touching, powerful video. http://youtu.be/Hzgzim5m7oU (via http://drewvigal.tumblr.com/)”

Nice video eh?

Source, who Tweeted this on Twitter: Mr. Mark Hamilton is a Journalism instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Richmond, BC, Canada.

I was not a student of his, nor have I ever had the privilege of meeting him in person. And he does not follow me on the Twitter at this point in time.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Socail Media, Twitter, Video | Comments Off

Alone to be Alone is to be with Yourself is Cool

April 11th, 2011 Thomasso

I have to give credit to my Twitter friend, JENNIQUA, who is a former Kwantlen Polytechnic University student, that tweeted this You Tube video called ‘How To Be Alone.” For those of you who do not like poetry, or are not into the spoken and visual arts, perhaps this will enlighten you, as it did for me.

I think concept of being alone is a scary one for most people that I know of, myself included. And as the words from this video so eloquently are put, sometimes that is exactly what we are looking for in spite of our feelings and needs of wanting to not be alone. I know there are times when I so desperately want to be alone, being with someone seems to be what I really wanted anyway. So, perhaps the search for companionship is in turn not the answer, but what we are really asking for is to be alone.

As the poem states, there are different degrees of being alone. I like the park-bench idea of being alone, yet you are among people, strangers, randomly sitting beside you, and you have let go of any control of who sits there. That, I think, is cool, yet so socially unacceptable, but deep down that is what we want. Then there is not admitting that you are alone, embracing it, living with it, because that is were there is peace in the world. Those few moments where we are alone would then seem to be the time that we are most alive.

Enjoy the video! Thanks JEN!

ADDED April 13 2011: If you want to read the poem instead of watching the video, or would like to have the words, then here is the link to Tanya Davies’ website. Tanya Davis, How to be Alone.  And her website: www.tanyadavis.ca

Posted in Diatribe, General, Socail Media, Story Telling, Twitter, Video | Comments Off

Attack Ad that is Actually Funny

March 28th, 2011 Thomasso

First off, what am I doing promoting another attack ad, especially when I am so against them, and the whole concept that they represent? Well, I have a soft spot for humour, especially knowing that humour is also a tool for attacking someone, it is a change from the norm. It does rain differently than those that use negative style attacks, whoever. Added to this, I rarely use the term political ads anymore because of the way this tool is used.

Another reason that I am posting this ad is that this has nothing to do with the Federal election. Here in British Columbia we also have Provincial elections coming up soon, along with municipal, a referendum question on the HST, and the census too. For the rest of the country, you will be spared from these extra distractions. This ad is about the newly appointed Premier of BC, Christy Clark, taken from the opposition’s point of view.

We of BC can say that we will be suffering from election fatigue more so than the rest of the country!

I first seen this from one of my Twitter friends who posted a link to it last week. When I seen this, I was viewer number 68, but since then it has taken off. Over nine thousand, if I can recall. I never laughed so hard that whole day. I am still chuckling now because it was so unexpected amongst the Federal attack ads. Enjoy.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Humour, Social economics, Video | Comments Off

Time-Laps

March 25th, 2011 Thomasso

I was going through some of my archive disks, as I got so many now, and I came upon this little video. Actually there are about 2GBs of these little videos, and I forgot that made so many over a one year term. The significance of this video was that I made it on March 25th, of 2007, so it is sort of an anniversary video, slash, post.

Hope you enjoy it.

To make a time-laps video is fairly simple. You need a webcam, of course the computer, or laptop, and some software that will capture the  images from the webcam and store them on your hard disk in a sequential manor. Then one more program that will convert the images into your favourite video format. Lastly, you will need lots of patients. This video was done over eight hours, at 1 min interval, at twenty-four frames per second.

Posted in Blog and Web Tech, General, Software, Video | Comments Off

Super Moon Over Fort Langley: the Video

March 23rd, 2011 Thomasso

I almost gave up on this video. I had never had so much trouble with grabbing a video from a digital camera before.

I have a little Samsung mini Digital video camera that I have had for a long time. I think the camera is over six years old now, and just barely works. I think the battery has had it?

Anyway, my problem was first setting up the camera so that it would fit on my new tripod. Then came the three hours of figuring out how to kick-start my firewire or IEEE1394 connection because the camera seems to only want to work with legacy drivers. This is the story of my life. Oh, but it does not stop there. I had to download a whole new set of CODECs for it becuase I never used DV CODECs in so long, my stuff was outdated compared to the latest greatest. Well, the whole process took a long time.

Then there was the task of getting it uploaded to YouTube. For whatever reason, I had to compromise on the shittiest video CODEC I had becuase with my top-of-the-line video drivers, all I could see was video-noise. So that took about two hours to figure out, including the time it took to re-edit it on my Desktop. Just to put things into perspective for you, the raw DV was 1.5GB at about twelve mins long, and the finished product was a crappy MS, AVI file that was less than thirteen MB in size at two mins long.

So here it is on Youtube, the Super Moon from last Sunday, March 20th, 2011 just as the Moon was rising.

Posted in Astronomy, Blog and Web Tech, Diatribe, Events, General, Socail Media, Video | Comments Off

Attacking Attack Ads

March 7th, 2011 Thomasso

I have to admit, when I turned on my computer, and clicked on my TV turner and was greeted by this really weird political add this morning, I was shocked. But is it really a political ad, or just a political ad to get us talking before the writ is really dropped?

Sure, the Green Party’s ad is a different take on an old idea, but it is clever. I mean it conveys the Green Party’s existence. It got them some prime ad time, with a couple of spots on the evening news shows. It combined all the other parties into one lump, shinning the same light on them as shameful, by using their attack ads on each other. And it makes the Green Party look, morally higher. But was this ad really a change?

I for one am sick and tired of seeing these ads mixed in with rest of the marketing garbage we call television commercials. I hate commercials, period, and like everyone else, I do not want to be disturbed when I turn on my monitor, especially when absorbed in the program that I am watching. I even go so far as to edit them out when I prerecord programs on my PVR. I usually spend an hour chopping out the ads for a whole weeks worth of programming and then store them on my hard drive for future viewing.

My friends laughed at me when I tell them that attack ads really work. There are numerous case studies and a few really good authors who wrote on this subject, but my friends just seem to think that they are far more intelligent to be persuaded by the ads anyway. However, when one friend in particular talked about voting and the political landscape, they are, whether they realise it or not, victims of these ads. For example, one of my friends told me that he would not vote for a certain politician because an attack ad said that this particular politician spent most of his time living outside of Canada. That mattered to my friend. My friend would not believe me when I told him that that ad was not true and that it was factious. But hey, when you are beamed with the same messages countless times per day, the truth is almost unobtainable and hard to be believed. The attack ads worked.

So a hardy hi-dee-hoo to the Green Party ad, and may it happily get skipped over on the millions of PVRs across this great land of ours.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Humour, Socail Media, Social economics, Video | 2 Comments »

Northern Lights in Vancouver?

February 17th, 2011 Thomasso

I love astronomy, and have being since I was a little kid big enough to look down the eye piece of a telescope. So whenever I hear snippets of news about astrological events taking place, or about to take place, I usually jump on board and try and follow them. Today, I was haphazardly surfing the channels on TV when a news story broke out stating that there were reportedly three mass ejection from the Sun at the beginning of the week. Wow, I thought, Power grid failures, Northern Lights, how cool is that!

So I started surfing the net to find more information about the Solar event taking place. In the usual two to there seconds it takes to Google “Solar Flares” I got my answer. It appears that the Sun made up to three coronal mass ejections around Monday and Tues, which means that they should be heading this way, reaching us, by today and tomorrow.

For those who are not into astronomy, I think some things need to be cleared up and explained before you all get excited and start building bomb-shelters and buying up a years supply of food and water. The Earth will not be destroyed from this event. We get them all the time. But Solar Flares effect us in two ways.

First, they give us Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. However, becuase of the mass ejections, and their effect on the Earth’s Magnetosphere, people a lot further South will see them too. And the Lights should be entertaining with all the extra energy out from the ejections. So, if the clouds are not too overcast in your area, you should be in for a real treat.

Second, becuase these are charged partials hitting the Earth with lots of energy and speed, they play havoc with our technology, mainly our power grids and communications networks. Radio and power disruptions have happened before, so be prepared for that, but it will be temporary.

It takes light roughly Eight minutes and Thirty seconds to reach earth given off by the Sun. Since these particles are made of energy and matter, they travel a lot slower than light. It usually takes about three days for these particles to reach Earth.

So starting tonight, look up at the sky, if you can, and hopefully you will be entertained by the Northern Light reaching this far South. However, Vancouver, BC is notorious for its clouds, so do not hold your breath as the weather forecast does not look good.

Source:

Solar Flare 2011: Northern Lights So Hot They’re Cool

Sun Unleashes Biggest Flare of the Current Cycle

Keep tabs on the Sun, Up to the minute Data: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Video | 2 Comments »

Website Proxy

September 20th, 2010 Thomasso

I have gotten a lot of questions thrown at me when I tell people that I can freely serf the net without big brother following me, knowing where I have been, and what I have looked at, but best of all, not having geographical restrictions placed on my access to the Intranet. “The net is slowly becoming corporatize,” as one of my Criminology professors put it. The more we believe it to be free, in reality it is becoming more restrictive, as we fall trapped to the various forms of controls being developed on it.

Everything from your Operating System (OS), to your Intranet Service Provider (ISP), are slowly trapping you each day as new tools are being developed to trim, tailor and subject you to where you can go, and more importantly, were you can’t go on the Internet. The culprit that does this is your Intranet Protocol address, or (IP address). This is truly a huge topic, and I will leave it up to you if you want to do more research on this.

As I was surfing around the net looking for solutions to another problem, I came across this little YouTub video that seems explain enough about the topic of Proxy Servers so the common layperson can wrap their head around this and use it practically without too much background knowledge.  Of course, using proxies is a very in-depth topic, as I personally take a slightly more technical approach where I bought IP addresses from various places around the glob so that I can access information that otherwise would not be accessible to the average Canadian. The Author of the YouTube video I am presenting here has some “Poor Man’s” options that you can try.

I tried her methods, mainly the website that she uses, and the bandwidth for streaming video was expectable, but I can see that as being problematic during certain times of the day or week.

Why use a proxy? I think the most common reason is, if your access to information has been blocked becuase of the region that you live in, you then will want an IP address that will be recognized by the source that you are wanting to gain access to. Your IP address ties you to your geographical location, so software has being developed to screen those address to prohibit access, and vice versa. Proxy ties you to another IP address that resides in any geographical location you choose. For example, Web TV. I enjoy the TV show “Lost,” while it ran, but was unable to view it on the ABC website because I am not living in the USA. So, with a click of the mouse, I now, virtually, live in the USA, and could watch “Lost” on streaming video while sitting in my home in Vancouver, BC. The YouTube clip does a very good job of showing you this.

Post Script: In the YoutTube clip, she mentions the United Nations Charter, Article Twelve, from the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights. It is a bit of a stretch becuase depending on what kind of authoritarian, or totalitarian government you have running your country, the country’s sovereignty would trump any weight that the UN Charter would give in this argument. Here is Article Twelve of the UN Charter:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks

Though most countries have signed the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights, including Canada, many countries have been accused of violating human rights at some level, or just ignored it altogether, as enforceability by UN is somewhat lacking.

Posted in Blog and Web Tech, Criminology, General, Law, Video | Comments Off

Rain On, Rain On

September 6th, 2010 Thomasso

There are less than twenty-three hours left of freedom before I head back to classes. I was really hoping that today would be a great day, but the weather held everything back. With the cold and damp weather came the gloomy attitudes and low self-esteem that makes conjuring up fun activities almost impossible.

Today I was invited to a Labour day BBQ, sponsored by the Labour Federation of British Columbia, but I decided not to go becuase of the weather. I was told through Twitter from my friends that half of the activities were cancelled, and the rest were moved indoors so seating was limited. I had set aside most of today for that event.

Tonight I was invited to a stargazer party and told to bring my telescope and binoculars. I love these parties becuase you get to meet great people who have a shared love for astronomy, and you can see the latest gadgetry used by astronomers. It does not look promising for a really great stargazer party. The clouds are really socked in, and the drizzle will make being outside very unpleasant. Stargazing indoors just does not cut it–if you know what I mean.

I guess all I can do today is work on stuff around the house. Cleaning is what I have been doing most of this morning. I may fix a minor plumbing problem I got, but that may require taking a trip down to the hardware store for some parts. I really do not want to spend a whole lot of money right now.

The most disgusting thing I saw on the net today was the news story about Indonesian Two Year Old boy who quit smoking. Ya, a two year old boy smoking! I have heard of messed up parents and weird cultures before, but letting a kid smoke before the age of two, that has taken “dumb” to new levels?

Well, back to cleaning and working around the place. Enjoy what is left of the long weekend!

Posted in Astronomy, Events, General, Holiday, Humour, Photographs, Video | 2 Comments »

Lady Gaga in Vancouver

August 24th, 2010 Thomasso

Like other pop stars of yesteryear, and no doubt still to come, it is the best in “media manipulation” that rises to the top. Lady Gaga is no exception. She seems to be cleaning house on the net and through her concerts, but hardly registering on the traditional charts where albums sales determine an artist’s worth. Her Youtube videos are in the millions of views, and every bit-torrent is a buzz with peers bouncing bits back and forth like mad of her mp3s.

Lady Gaga played in Vancouver last night, The Monster Ball, inviting people to dress up in their monster ball costumes. To see photos of Lady Gaga, courtesy of the VancouverSUN, click here.

I first learned about Lady Gaga through my technical writing prof who proclaimed that she was undoubtedly a master in communication.  Not because her music is good, or that she has a face of a, err, angel, but through her PR and huge networking on the Internet. She has more hits and downloads that most other pop stars combined. Her news feed on Google are so busy that I noticed that it stalls sometimes when waiting for updates. Over 31 million views on her on-line VEVO video “Poker face”  page is nothing to scoff at.

While I was in downtown Vancouver over the last week I saw two women who had their hair done up with the hair-bow, which seems to be the fashion statement for the next fifteen days. You can see this in the “Poker face” video. Also, the outfits that she wears seems to be hitting the streets too. Though I like to see someone who has the guts to wear the Latex Nun dress that she wore at the concert last night. I was not at the concert, but I have a friend who was there because he loves Lady Gaga, and it seemed to be a great opportunity to meet the weird (females of Vancouver). Through the magic of his iphone, he took pictures galore, and even of the security too.

Does sex sell? The stereotype of female pop stars holds true with Gaga. Show lots of skin, wear daunting costumes and have lots of sexual choreography in your videos and stage shows, and that seem to lure the teenagers with money to buy CDs and tickets.

Does her songs have messages in them? Sure, but so did Madonna, but does that matter with the people who listen to it? Her lyrics are not that provocative compared to stars of the past.

Lady Gaga is one of the undisputed masters of marketing according to my technical writing and communications prof, and that speaks volumes when a fifty plus male professor of business communications proclaims this in front of classroom full of twenty-something year old students.  The proof is in the 200 million made from her concerts this year and dominance on the net through her marketing.

Posted in General, Humour, Video | Comments Off