prog | Entries tagged with itunes

woodlander pointed me at this video for the song "Lollipop" by Mika, whom I hadn't heard of before. I can take or leave the music by itself, but mixed with this Peter Max-meets-Tex Avery animation from the French studio Bonzom, the result is three minutes of overwhelmingly positive energy (and just a little bit of naughtiness).

If you're like me, you'll watch it through, and then watch it through again, and the whole time feel a desperate need to see it through some channel other than YouTube's teeny tiny blur-o-vision. Here's one link to a less cruddy version. I ended up buying the video from iTunes for $1.50. I've vaguely wondered for a long time what would move me to spend ten bits on a music video, and now I know.

(Postscript: Have also taken to dropping two-dollah bills on Cartoon Brew Films' offerings, lately.)

I have a doctor's appointment next month. I was hoping to fit one in at the start of this week, but there were some insurance registration hangups that ended up with the completion of my 2006 tax return as a dependency, so I had to kick it forward. (They wanted to see my Schedule C as proof of self-employment, but they didn't want to see my 2005 Schedule C with its ~$1.75 in O'Reilly royalties, which doesn't appear to be the tax filing of an independent software contractor).

MICHAEL: I almost had Pop-pop in Reno.
GEORGE MICHAEL: [Sadly] Yeah, me too.

On the third and final season of my Arrested Development download bolus. I feel almost bad about laughing at jokes that are only there as rewards for long-time viewers, but then again "long-time viewer" for me means that I started with the pilot episode only four months ago.

Finally got around to gluing graphics (via <itunes:image> tags) onto my two podcasts. Hmm, and now that I look I see that the Gameshelf one shows up in iTMS but not the Arcade's pretty graphic. I tried to go with the rectangular one with old-skool screen dimensions. I guess Apple insists on squares. All right then.

I also got an email from Apple, asking us video podcasters to start exporting at 640x480 because that looks nice on both AppleTV and iPod (which scales it down). Very well.

There's a Gameshelf shoot in less than two weeks and I still don't know what's gonna be shot! I've been on such a Volity jag that I really haven't thought about the video-production pillar in weeks. No complaints from me, mind, but I nonetheless must figure out what I'm doing there.

I experimentally bought an episode of Battlestar from iTunes last night. It was a nice experience, other than the long download time - it took about as long to obtain as the length of the show itself. The video quality was fine, though, better than the miniseries rips I got offa BitTorrent. I played it on my TV and to my eye it was as good as a cable broadcast. Or at least a cable broadcast saved to TiVo and then replayed.

Curiously, after the show ends and the credits are done, there's a minute of black screen followed by the mysterious title TEXTLESS MATERIAL. The next few minutes contain a silent reprise of all the episode's video sequences that contained title overlays, except with the titles removed. So the whole opening-credits sequence is there - with no credits - and then several snippets of scenes that contained either further credits or narrative titles (the datelines & timestamps that sometimes appear with a computery noise during establishing shots), now denuded.

What was that doing there? I can't imagine that it was included for the benefit of iTunes customers. It must have served some other purpose on the source medium, and whoever created the iTunes export was too lazy to crop it. Interesting.

Update Yes, I know about Google. I knew one of you pugnosed wiseniks would call me on it. Tpppth. Last time I think out loud

The Gameshelf is on iTunes Music Store now! I'm not going be one of those podcasters who begs for popularity, but: you should go subscribe to it.

Now I feel ill and am going to bed.

My roster is almost full for Saturday's Gameshelf shoot; if I haven't contacted you about it already this week, and you wanted in, let me know ASAP. We have quorum as it is, though, including a camera volunteer.

If you have to miss it to your regret, I think there will be more shoots after this one. I'm feeling pretty good about the project (it's snugly filling my hobby slot now that Volity's been promoted to Actual Work), and I think I can see myself spinning it into a whole series, but time will tell. I'll have a much better idea after I actually construct an entire, multi-segment episode.

I got my copy of Final Cut Pro last week but I haven't fired it up yet. I don't really have anything to apply it to, anyway. That will change soon enough.

Thanks to the latest iTunes update, I've finally started listening to podcasts. They're great for commuting, or any other time I'm dooping around away from the computer. (Like a lot of people I can't work and listen to someone talking at the same time, unless I'm doing a rote task.)

My current subscription list (no links coz iTunes won't let my copy the URLs even though I can see them?! but they're all findable in the Music Store):

What's New in Fansubs, by daerr: Mr. d talks about fan-subtitled Japanese TV cartoon shows, available for download via BitTorrent. This show is the first podcast I actually knew about, because he told me about it. Rough start but immediately started getting better with later shows, and I like to think that this is in part because I called him to complain about the parts I didn't like, ha ha.
rserocki's audioblog, by rserocki: Ghost stories and coffee doggerel and reminiscences about things. He has a very distinct voice. Quietly mind-blowing, at least for me.
Gaming Steve: When I was searching for "video" in the Music Store, hoping to find podcasts about videomaking, I found 1000 shows about video games. I figured I may as well pick one up, and this one sounded the least annoying. And it's pretty good... this Steve guy is smart, articulate and experienced.
The Al Franken Show: A mishmash of interviews from random time periods of Al Franken's Air America radio show. The only one I've listened to so far was a pre-election bit with Barack Obama, which I didn't really want to hear, because: pre-election.
Electric Larryland: A show about A/V production by a seasoned professional with a mellow voice. I have listened to one show, where he interviewed a friend who ran a business that produced software-based music synthesizers. I didn't really know what they were talking about but they were pleasant to listen to, and sometimes interjected relevant music samples. I let it all just wash over me while I went grocery shopping. It was really nice.
iTunes New Music Tuesday: Sure, why not.
A Pixelriffic Podcast: Some dude talking about digital video. Haven't listened to it much yet.
GeekSpeak: The official podcast of boardgamegeek.com. Two guys riffing about tabletop games for an hour or two, often with guests; I've so far heard them with Reiner Knizia, Guido "Son of Klaus" Teuber, and the fellow who published "Time's Up". Their attitude is kind of grating at times, and the place smells a little boys-clubby, but it's still interesting.

Random Amusement for you: Fire up iTunes and search for constant sorrow.

More variations on the super-catchy O Brother, Where Art Thou? ballad than you can shake a gopher on a stick at, from Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and BATTLESTAR AMERICA!!! whom I haven't heard of until just now but I just felt like yelling it at you.

N turned me on to Music for Hackers last night. It may unseat Groove Salad as my iTunes techno-stream default.

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A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

That's awful high, Jason. That's awful high.

Entries tagged with itunes

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