for videoblogging week, day 6
lumière style videos are silent, 60 seconds long, with a fixed camera.
this breaks the silent rule, so i’ve called it a son et lumière.
i wanted to keep the crunch of the snow, the voices carrying in the crisp smoky air. this is really just a postcard to myself, to remind me what it was like to live in Cumberland in the snow.
See comments "Cumberland Snow – Son et Lumiere"Old clips given a home for videoblogging week 2009.
Château de Quéribus (map) is one of the Cathar Castles in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the south of France – the Pays Cathare, or “Cathar Country”. Quéribus is sometimes considered the last refuge of the Cathars – perhaps where the Cathar treasure (the Grail?) was carried to, by the four Cathars who escaped the bloody fall of Montségur.
It’s an eerie feeling to have it all to yourself before dawn.
iPhone / iPod compatible mp4 file
See comments "Capturing the castle before breakfast – Video blogging week day four"A post so boring that it’s taken at least 15 attempts to finish it. I doubt it even makes sense, but I’m so sick of it that I just have to post it or I’ll hate myself forever.
The WordPress plugins I mentioned are:
All in One SEO Pack
Google XML Sitemap Generator
(You can see that I’ve used the SEO pack to make an alternative Title for this post – see top of page. I also made custom Meta Description & Keywords for it.)
This is a great example of something that could have been done much more effectively with text than with video. I suppose somebody could’ve made a really densely illustrated screencast demonstration, instead of it just being me talking into Photobooth on my balcony. But, frankly, who would bother?
And I don’t know why it took me nearly 9 minutes to tell you, “Do SEO. Download these plugins. It’ll bring you more viewers” – but I do hope that it’ll bring you more viewers, if you actually managed to watch more than about 30 seconds of it without blowing your brains out.
Now I’ve got past this nightmare, I can move on to more fun things later this week. Please, God.
iPod/iPhone compatible mp4 file
See comments "Search Engine Optimization for video blogs"Suddenly this has turned into a text blog. Videos will return as soon as I get my face back.
I just had a wonderful three hour window from pain. And spent half of it transcribing a radio interview. Idiot.
Anyway, here it is. I typed it out because just before Christmas, Sull started a group called Artists in the Cloud, to discuss things related to online art, net cinema, etc. We’ve been talking about distribution models, Alternative Reality Games, live video streams of pre-recorded work – all sorts. I’ve been wondering how to triangulate the work we’re doing with trends and movements in the wider world (in art and society).
And tonight I heard something on BBC Radio 4’s art show Front Row, which I wanted to share with the group for that reason.
Since I’d done it for them, I thought I might as well also publish it here.
They were discussing the Tate Triennial 2009, which is called Altermodern – and were introducing the audience to the concept of Altermodernism.
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I have shingles.
You can see what I look like here.
Shingles (tagline: This Time It’s War) is the sequel to the popular virus Chicken Pox. It turns out that after you thought you’d defeated the Chicken Pox in childhood, your body failed to blow it out the airlock. It crept into the ganglion of your spine, where it stayed, hiding, waiting, until (woken by an unknown force) it bursts back out of your skin and clamps down on your head and bleeds acid all over your face, eyes and nerves.
It looks bad, feels a lot worse, and can cause blindness. RA. (It hurts too much to RA louder than that). I’ve had two eye check-ups (including one from an eye doctor who feigned horror when he saw me and jumped back going “AAAHHH!”), and I think I’m clear on that front – but even without the cornea damage, the pain is bad enough.
The strangest effect has been on my brain. It’s attacking the nerves on the right side of my face and eye – which is controlled by the left side of my brain – and that’s how I feel: like my rational brain is in lock-down.
At its height, at the end of last week, I could answer basic Yes and No questions, but anything more taxing sent me into a panic. I couldn’t process simple tasks, or retain any information – even before they gave me drugs.
Anyway, the real reason for my post is not to whine about my bad luck. I’m now half Canadian, so my British whining is starting to be tempered by irritatingly cheery optimism.
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It’s Oscar nominations day.
I know, I know – it’s all just a hideous, self-congratulatory, intellectually bankrupt fashion show. But I love it.
Today started off as a bad day, then the nominations cheered me up. And then technology brought me back down again. I tried three times to record a video to go with this, but my phone failed every time, so I’m just going with text.
Every year, my friend Lize and I swap Oscar predictions. This year, I thought I’d publish mine.
Fantastic Home Birth Video, about planning for natural childbirth at home with a midwife and birth pool in Virginia. It’s a beautifully told video birth story with an in-depth discussion of homebirthing.
I wanted to make a video about our own experiences of having two home births, but we were too close to it, and I felt I’d be doing a bad job of emulating a RyanIsHungry video.
So I was very happy when Ryanne & Jay told me that they were making a video about their friends Katherine & Todd having a home birth – they’re by far the best people for the job. This is it – and it’s fantastic. I hope a lot of parents and professionals find it and use it. Kate and I have a cameo via video chat about halfway through.
Their original post of this home birth video is here, where you can read the accompanying text and leave comments.
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See comments "Home Birth Video revlogged from RyanIsHungry"