Tim Can’t Reid|Ghey Visual Menstruation

What can I say? I’m sorry — life happens. I missed Day 2 of Video Blogging Week 2009 and I feel awful about it. And now here it is, Day 4, and I’m just uploading my second video. I truly am a loozer. I wish I had a better excuse than “I fell asleep while I was editing”.

A couple quick notes here:
1) When using a green screen, make sure you have PLENTY of EVEN lighting on your subject.
2) If you’re using a cheap little Canon ZR800 to tape your green screen epic, make sure it’s in 4×3 mode, not “widescreen”. Your subject will look all squished.
3) Try to have something interesting and compelling to talk about.

I can honestly say I failed miserably on those three points here. I hope to do much better on my next cinematic effort.

Download for iPod / iPhone (Quicktime .mov, 39.0 MB, 480×270, 24fps, 7 min 0 sec)

Sorry — I’m a little bit late to the party. I threw together this quick intro video to announce my participation in Video Blogging Week 2009. Please excuse my tardiness, I’ll try to do better with the next six. I fell asleep while it was rendering and didn’t wake up until midnight. Lame.

Download for iPod / iPhone (Quicktime .mov, 26.2 MB, 480×360, 24fps, 5 min 4 sec)

Hey, it’s me — Tim.
No, I’m not dead. Not quite yet… But that’s another story.

So, this is year three for the big Macheist bundle offering. If you’re not familiar with Macheist, it’s a yearly event where several developers get together and offer their applications to the community in this small bundle at a VERY discounted price. This year’s bundle contains 12 apps and is being sold for $39.

Apps in this year’s bundle are:
iSale ($39.95 makes your eBay sale pages look professional and appealing)
Picturesque ($34.95 a light-weight photo manipulation app with some kewl tricks)
SousChef ($30 an interface to a sort of “social cooking” network)
World of Goo ($20 very fun little physics/construction game)
PhoneView ($19 view your iPhone/Touch notes & data on your desktop)
LittleSnapper ($39 nice little screen capture utility)
Acorn ($49.95 another fairly light-weight photo manipulation app)
Kinemac ($299 awesome 3-D animation program)
WireTap Studio ($69 powerhouse audio recording/organizing app)
BoinxTV ($199 hardcore video editing/organization app)
The Hit List ($49.95 simple GTD “Get Things Done” application)
Espresso ($80 amazing CSS/XHTML/Javascript text editor)

The total value, if you bought each app seperately, would cost you a little over $930. In addition, 25% of your $39 goes to charity. You can choose which charity you’d like your chunk to go to from Macheist’s list, or by default they will divy it up between all the charities.

There is a catch to the “12 apps for just $39″ though; Macheist says you’ll get these 12 apps for your $39 — and you do — but until they raise $400,000 for charity, the last three apps on the list will remain locked (i.e. you can download them, but you don’t get a serial number to unlock them). At this time, those apps are BoinxTV, The Hit List and Espresso. Macheist has currently sold 28,501 bundles which raised $264,993 for charity. Actually, that’s pretty awesome. I checked the box to send my 25% to the AIDS Research Alliance, but other charities they support include Action Against Hunger, the Prevent Cancer Fund and The Nature Conservancy, to name a few.

So, with only 9 days left, I hope Macheist reaches its goal. Yes, because of the charitable intrinsic goodness they’re doing for the world, but also so I can get serial numbers for BoinxTV, The Hit List and Espresso. I hope you’ll do your part to make sure I do. Thank you, that is all.

While doing a little online Christmas shopping this afternoon, I was overcome by the realization that I’ve REALLY been wanting a new camera. I’ve been making due with my 6-year-old (maybe 7?) 2-megapixel Fuji Finepix for FAR too long. Even in its day, it wasn’t much of a camera. My cellphone actually takes better pictures than it does. So, to that end, I navigated my way to Amazon dot com and dropped a little of my hard earned coin on a brand new Ruby Red, 8-megapixel, Nikon Coolpix L18. With the addition of a 4 gigabyte SD card, plus shipping, the grand total came to around $113. That’s less than half what I paid for the old Fuji, back in 2002 or 2003, as I recall. And the Ruby Red, well, who could resist?

I’m looking forward to getting back into the point-and-shoot photography thing again. And as added bonus for a wanna-be video-blogger, this Coolpix L18 also does 640×480 video w/sound. Could be an interesting alternative to camcorder video. I’m looking forward to trying it out.

Okay, that’s all for now. Check back in in a week or two to view some of my stunning photography. I’m no Andy Melton, but I try.

@j3ph says my videos are boring. He says I say “ummm” too much and that I make “weird noises” with my mouth. Sadly, he’s right. And this video-blog entry is no exception. Ever since he told me that the other day, I’ve become quite conscious of it, too. And even though I tried to avoid these eccentricities in the making of this entry, they’re still painfully obvious. I even tried to edit them out in post, but you can see the results. Plus, it’s pretty hard to edit out “boring”. Sorry, but I guess that’s just who I am. Old, boring, and makes funny noises with his mouth — that’d be me.

So forgive me. From this day on, I will aspire to produce intelligent, riveting, thought provoking content that will leave my viewers mesmerized and crying for more. I hope.

In the meantime, you might as well view this piece of shit (you notice I didn’t say “enjoy”?). In it you can view my thoughts on my new Elgato Eye TV 250 Plus, my thoughts on Another Gay Movie and Naked Boys Singing DVD’s, my plea for you to vote this November, and finally, a beautiful PSA from the one and only Andy Melton.

Next time, if there is a next time, I won’t be so boring. Promise.

Download for iPod / iPhone (Quicktime .mov, 108.9MB, 464×352, 24fps, 13 min 58 sec)

Yes indeed, been awhile. I’m back now though, if only for this short video entry. In this episode, I try to mix some of the imagery from the recent Pride event in Spokane, WA, with my usual babbling about what I thought about the whole thing. Being my first Pride, I wasn’t quite sure how to act. Anyway, see for yourself.

CORRECTION: I’m an idiot — I mentioned in this video that Palouse Pride, in Moscow, ID, is on August 11th. THAT IS WRONG. It’s actually on Saturday, August 2nd. For more info on the upcoming Palouse Pride festivities, go to their myspace page. Sorry about the mixup. I’m old.

Download for iPod / iPhone (Quicktime .mov, 37.62MB, 480×270, 15fps, 7 min 15 sec) 

I made this video entry a week ago Sunday (March 16th), but due to some unforeseen glitches, as in a small mental breakdown that led to a complete wipe and reinstall of my operating system, I’m just today getting it uploaded. Like you really care… Anyway, here it is. More boring news and video reviews from the last month or so. I’m not posting any links to anything, ‘cuz it’s all old news now.

Download video for iPod (Quicktime 7.0+, 320×240, 15fps, 88.53 MB, Duration: 20 min 18 sec)

If it’s really true that you “learn from your mistakes”, then this video would qualify me as a fucking genius. This vlog contains a MAJOR plethora of mistakes, not the least of which is that I thought chroma-keying was easy to do. Anywho, as usual, no pertinent content in this 24th installment of the every-other-month edition of my ever-so-compelling video blog. There’s a shocker. Especially when you consider I’ve been futzing with this damn thing since a week ago Sunday.  Almost 2 weeks later, I decided to just put it up and strive to do better on the next one. Sometime in May, probably… 

I’ll shorten your boredom and just list the links I mentioned below.

MacHeads Movie trailer

Cult of Mac Blog

Tech Live: Full Coverage

Spokane Pride

My next Mac

Ren & Stimpy are GAY

SO there you have it. Feel free to waste the next 13 minutes and 26 seconds of your life. Feedback is encouraged and always appreciated. I love you guys.

Download video for iPod (Quicktime 7.0+, 320×240, 24fps, 56.7 MB, Duration: 13 min 27 sec)