Thru-you: Amazing YouTube Mashup

Mar 11, 2009 by Dan Taylor    6 Comments    Posted under: Social Media, Technology, Video

This came to me today courtesey of Lisa Johnson of Modern Pilates Boston.  Since words alone can not express the true awesomeness of this mashup, I’ll simply bow out and let the video do the talking:

Creator Kutiman lists credits in the video description, and I’ll list them here as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU8gmo… Theremin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FX_84… drums

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl-CxM… bass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvw2Uu… Funk Guitar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7IFYh… gts-solo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NutUFs… Blues Harp & Vocals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBS_6P… Rock Guitar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXitAt… Contrabass trombone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ged039… Trombone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tZQpK… Rhodes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgwHtf… mute Guitar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnbrUw… Tuba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ0z4v… Bass 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRM81J… Tenor Saxophone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHuein… guitar bridge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJqqNE… Guitar bend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE8Mv5… Hammond

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnMa9c… Orange team cheer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJEcQs… Crazy Sax

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__aTf1… Theremin Sex?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw756f… guitar Licks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Ke39… Trumpet kid

Rob Spence and his bionic camera

Mar 9, 2009 by Dan Taylor    4 Comments    Posted under: Technology, Video

Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence lost an eye.  So what does he do?  Creates a film about it of course.  Known for his documentary work, Spence is planning to outfit his prosthetic eye with a tiny wireless camera.  Together with his partner Kosta Grammatis, Spence’s “EyeBorg Project”, seeks to raise awareness of surveillance society in general, but more specifically about the team’s hometown, Toronto, Ontario, which is currently home to 12,000 surveillance cameras.

EYEBORG– The Two Week Trial from eyeborg on Vimeo.

Putting a camera inside a prosthetic eye is no easy task.  The smallest, lightest, most powerful image technologies are being utilized to make this seemingly ‘Sci-Fi’ chapter a reality.  Inside Spence’s eye is the world’s smallest CMOS camera, measuring a paltry 1.5mm square.  To put that into perspective, a sneeze aimed in the wrong direction could easily send this camera flying across the room, never to be found again.  While the lithium polymer powered camera rests in the iris of the prosthetic eye, the actual footage is transmitted via an RF transmitter and recorded elsewhere.  This tiny RF transmitter is roughly the size of a pencil eraser.  Kosta envisions that the data will be sent to a backpack to be recorded.

To me, this is truly a working, living, breathing version of the old adage; When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  Spence lost the use of his eye at a very young age.  Instead of letting his impairment dictate his career path, he chose a vacation that not even some with two eyes can get right: making great films.  Fast forward 20 years, and Spence is bravely forging ahead; and not just working, but working on something that could have massive implications for future generations.  If Spence and his team can successfully make the EyeBorg project work, how far off are we from utilizing this technology in fully sighted humans?  Granted, now I’m taking a page from the ‘Sci-Fi’ chapter, but it all has to start somewhere.

Find out more about Rob Spence and his EyeBorg project at EyeBorgBlog.com.

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Movie Review: Quantum of Solace

Nov 21, 2008 by Dan Taylor    16 Comments    Posted under: News, Video

Alternate title: Quantum of Whatness?

Spoiler alert: I will be discussing scenes and topics from the film, so if you’ve not yet seen it and/or don’t want to know about it, move on to the next article.

Before I even begin, let me make this clear: I LOVE JAMES BOND films.  I have some very found memories of Bond films, and I’m pretty sure that For Your Eyes Only might have included on of my first views of a semi-naked woman, while Mr. Connery introduced me to Baccarat, fine whiskeys, and men that can drive like experts, and run marathons, all while smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

So with much enthusiasm and vigor I headed out to see a Quantum of Solace with a small group of friends the other night.  Where to even begin with the problems here.  One of my favorite things about a Bond film is the opening credits sequence.  The opening of Octopussy ranks high on my list, while Die Another Day might come in at a close second.  These intros often have cutting edge effects, and can hold their own as artistic short works.  These opening credits did very little for me, with only the sand shifting into nude female silhouettes providing any interest at all.  The rocking camera inside a longitude/latitude globe has already been over used, and I was left baffled as to what the film was/is even all about before the opening sequence.  Not so with other openers.  Ah, que sara sara – perhaps the rest of the film will explain it all to me….

Cut to the opening scene.  Ok, NOW we’re talkin’!  James Bond doing what James Bond does best: Driving fast cars fast while being shot at through impossible situations.  Hot damn, now I feel like we’re getting somewhere.  If this is the opening scene, I can’t WAIT to see the main car chase featured (usually about an hour or so into the film).  The problem is – it never came.  It’s almost as if the car chase shot it’s wad within the first 5 minutes.  Come to think of it, that’s exactly what happened.  Ok, no biggie, car chase down, bring on the double entendres, super bad guys and smokin’ hot babes!

Super Bad guys, check.  This was one of the highlights of the film for me: the variety and depth of the villains.  One crazy assed French (was he French?) guy scheming to control vast tracks of land in Boliva via supporting and facilitating a coup d’ etat, advisors to high British officials, and corrupt Bolivian generals to name a few.  And while there was plenty of action involving Bond v. Villains, I found the lack of witty dialogue a bit of a letdown.  If you think back to Connery or Moore, some of the best and most memorable scenes often involved a pun or two and some scintillating back and forth.  And having seen Casino Royale, I’m quite sure that Mr. Craig is capable of not only delivering, but also delivering with Bond style.  Ok, bad guys, check…bring on the smokin’ Bond girl.

Hello?  Bond Girl…enter stage left.  Bond girl????

And herein lies the problem.  There was no Bond girl.  One might argue that there were actually 2 Bond girls in the film, but to be honest, neither one of them are memorable, there was absolutely no steamy hot sex scene, and to top it all off, no beautiful bare breasts, or even super skimpy bikini (love you Halle Berry).

Is it water?  Is it Oil?  Is it Quantum?

With car chase blown in the first five minutes, no sex, and pithy dialogue thrown out the window, all we’re left with is the decent amount of Bad Guys.  Even this gets a bit twisted and wtf’d as I’m still unclear about what exactly environmentalist/evil villain Mr. Greene was really after out there in the desert in Boliva.  After one weak plane chase (I’m assuming this was the substitute for the car chase?) we find Bond and Bond girl #1 at the bottom of a cave where they soon discover that Greene is creating dams and planning to monopolize a nations water supply.  But then later in the film we’re confronted with Bond girl #2 turning up dead in Bond’s hotel room covered completely, and presumably drown in, Oil.  So really – what are we after here, water or oil?

Oh, and then we’ve got a retired MI6 agent living the good life in Italy, only to be dragged off to South America by an ‘on the run’ Bond, who then later turns up dead at the hands of the Bolivian police only a short 20-30 minutes later.  I’m assuming that this plot line involved framing/implicating Bond in an agent murder, but fails to really deliver the point of this sideline.

All in all, I’m pretty disappointed.  Casino Royale was an outstanding debut for Mr. Craig, and Quantum of Solace is a severe letdown, almost to the point of being an embarrassment to the Bond genre.  Quantum of Solace is the 22nd Bond film made, and well, Let’s just skip over On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and call 20 out of 22 outstanding pictures.  Hopefully the video game will be better than the film.

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Wassup 2008

Oct 30, 2008 by Dan Taylor    6 Comments    Posted under: Video

Ok, really quick one here, but I think this is pure genius.  Whether you’re standing in the Red Line or the Blue Line next Tuesday matters not to me.  The important thing is that you vote.

With that said, Brian sent this over to me a few days ago, and I just have to comment on 60frame’s brilliant film.  To understand this, you’ve got to be old enough to remember the circa 2000 Anheuser-Busch Budweiser commercial featuring the Wassup crew:

Fast forward 8 years:

Like I said, it could be a McCain ad, or an Obama ad.  It matters not, but the brilliance of reaching back 8 years to re-create a popular ad, and wrap it around a message of WTF happened, is simply brilliant.