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

Excerpt from a recent letter from me to the Gameshelf crew:

If I may offer an aside, take a look at this:
http://putthison.com/post/231001982/episode-1-denim

It's an example of something I've been looking for for a while - a television-quality, web-based series on some nonfiction topic that isn't straight-up comedy (or games), but uses comedy to ease the topic along. In this case, it's a show about men's clothing. Seeing it makes me very happy.

The fundraising and sponsorship stuff evidenced is quite interesting, but it's the format that has me really on the edge of my seat. I watched the whole thing, and felt full - smarter _and_ entertained - and only ten minutes had gone by. And indeed, I'm not sure I would have sat and ate through the whole thing if the timer at the start had read, say, 30:00 rather than 10:00.

This show, and my experience of approaching it as audience, is the first hard evidence I've encountered for an argument I haven't properly had with myself: whether Gameshelf episodes should be shorter - a _lot_ shorter. I never really revisited the question of show length, even though I started considering the Gameshelf more of an internet-based TV show than a literal watch-it-on-a-television TV show. Seeing an excellent show like "Put This On", which aims way higher than typical YouTube fare, and yet still keeps to a YouTube-friendly length, is a strong argument in the make-it-shorter column.

I'm going to experiment with this for the next episode.

This is nice:



Interesting pattern develops here, if this is a viral for the next J.J. Abrams Trek film (which it almost surely is, since it looks too polished, and its credit roll is too absent, to be a fan video). It follows the same precedent for superhero-story reboots set by the Nolans' Batman films: in the first installment, pit the hero against a canonical but somewhat lame villain. This keeps the focus on how you've revitalized the hero - or, in Trek's case, the heroic ensemble. If that goes over well, then you can sustain fan-glee by rolling out the arch-nemesis for part two.

rikchik points out to me that the latter-day Dr. Who TV series follows this pattern as well. The first Eccleson episode had him shining as he dealt with the obscure-but-canonical Autons, and they waited a few episodes before the ol' Daleks showed up to steal his spotlight away.

Edit Oh, the glyphs at the end are totally a URL passed through a simple latin1-to-klingon-character cipher. I am too lazy to figure it out though.

Edit 2 OK, fine: it goes here. (Ripped from an IO9 comment. whee...)

Why was I not informed of this before? "Literal" version of the "Total Eclipse of the Heart" music video:



I like how the humor starts out at an eye-rolling, i-see-what-you-did-there level, but starts getting more comfortable and clever a little way in.

The whole series of these videos is pretty good, with several el-oh-el moments, if you're me.

Where the Hell is Matt? made me mist up more than a little. (from toonhead_npl)

Hey, the real Brian Atene finally showed up (as opposed to that prankster who had been pretending to be a grown-up Atene). He looks great, is funny, and is using his Internet Fame (based on a jawdropping 1983 audition tape that someone found and promptly youtubed several weeks ago) to encourage charitable donations to the Christopher Reeve foundation. He kinda reminds me of some of my more manic real-life friends, actually. I'm glad that crazy kid grew up into someone worth knowing. (Link from urbaniak.)

Wow, this indictment of "the Disney vault" is great. Even the animation is pretty good; it's clearly made by people who love the Disney characters even as they poke at their masters. And here I'd say "no" if you were to ask me yetsrday if NBC would have the guts to air a (lengthy! and spot-on) parody of Mickey Mouse and other lawyer-encrusted properties for the purposes of mocking their creator and their corporation. Fairusetastic! (From joecab.)

Edit It's been yanked already. Anyone have an archived copy?

I really like 1000 Years of Popcorn, a short film with lovely and creative low-budget animation, puppetry, and DV joy, even though it could use some editing around the middle. (As could we all, right?) Discovered through DTV, an interesting project to give us Mac people a TiVo-style view into the world of video podcasts.

So far everything else I've seen on "Some Pig" -- and, indeed, across all of DTV -- is kind of crap. (If often happy & energetic crap.) So I also downloaded their tool to publish one's own channels, as I'm more than happy to add to the pool myself. Plop.