A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything (in Stop Motion)

Filed Under Art, Video on 2010-02-11, 14:13 | 1 Comment

For his final piece in an art course, Jamie Bell (an art student from the UK) made a flipbook video titled “A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything”. It’s comprised of 2100 pages of pen doodles and took roughly 3 weeks to complete. It chronicles several key moments in the history of the universe, including an important one at 1:35.

via Giannii

Tagged: flipbook

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Call the Mayor Day – Feb 9th, 2010

Filed Under Art, Events, SF Bay Area on 2010-02-09, 14:41 | 2 Comments

I moved to San Francisco because of the art scene and the amount of all around fun you can have in this city. I now call SF my home for both me and my business. Unfortunately there is currently a “War on Fun” that is attacking the venues and events in our city. It is slowly chipping away at what makes San Francisco unique.

On Tuesday, February 8th you are invited to make your voice heard and help stop the tearing apart of the essence of San Francisco. From the Facebook event:

Before you say no, read this article.
http://sfappeal.com/culture/2010/01/whats-shaking-down-sf-venues-call-the-mayor-day-thats-what.php

Call Gavin Newsom and tell him we do not want our clubs and venues raided by the police department, and we seek better solutions to preserve SF Venues, Arts & Culture. Be sure to remind him you are a registered voter in the city of San Francisco.

Telephone: (415) 554-6141
Fax: (415) 554-6160
Email: gavin.newsom@sfgov.org

Many thanks to Debra Walker, candidate for dist 6 Supervisor for this idea, presented at Flux Summit on Jan 21, 2010 at the “What’s Shaking Down SF Venues” panel.

In addition to encouraging people to call from home, my friend Ani Niow is also a temporary phone booth being setup in front of City Hall that you can use to call Gavin from his doorstep.

If you’re not sure what to say, metaphorge has a good list of talking points.

image via SFAppeal

Tagged: War on Fun

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Protesting the Westboro Baptist Church in San Francisco

Filed Under Pranks on 2010-01-29, 12:27 | 35 Comments

I couldn’t resist joining in the fun of an absurdist “counter protest” of the Westboro Baptist Church’s protest in front of Twitter’s office building. My sign:

Photo by LiveSoMa

After the WBC packed up and left, one of the officers stopped me and asked if they could have my sign to give to their sergeant. How could you say no to that? In seconds it was stashed in his car for him to find later.

Photo by Rubin Starset

I also stashed my Flip camera in my front pocket to record the event. I got a lot of shots of people’s waists, but pasted together a bit of video to show what the scene was like.

UPDATE:
Sam? also got a shot with my “backup sign”: God Hates Retweets.

There were quite a few people with cameras there. Here are the ones I’ve found so far:
Photos from LiveSoMa
Photos from asylum.com
Photos from sam?
Photos from chada
Photos from EDW Lynch
Photos from Zack L

Tagged: God hates retweets, I was promised donuts, Westboro Baptist Church

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Join us on the SXSW Nerd Bird Flight

Filed Under Events, Geek, SF Bay Area on 2010-01-28, 13:18 | 5 Comments

SXSW Interactive 2010 is only a few weeks away. If you’re like us, you’re still procrastinating on buying plane tickets to Austin. If that’s the case and you’re flying from either San Francisco or Los Angeles, then you’ll want to book the following flights on Southwest. We’ll all meet up in Las Vegas for the second flight to Austin. If you’re flying in from somewhere else on the west coast, look to hook up with Southwest Flight 718 from Las Vegas.

If you’re flying from San Francisco (SFO->LAS->AUS):
3/11/2010 (Flights 674/718)
Depart 10:00am Arrive 5:25pm

If you’re flying from L.A. (LAX->LAS->AUS):
3/11/2010 (Flights 853/718)
Depart 10:30am Arrive 5:25pm

Southwest has an open seating policy (we all love ‘open’ things, right?) so all the geeks will be able to congregate on the plane, confusing other passengers by speaking in acronyms, websites, and snippets of code. Southwest does have a couple of planes that have WiFi service, but it’s not possible to know whether we’ll be lucky enough to snag one. Maybe we can get some strings pulled…

Thanks to @dotBen for starting this idea. He’s even got a Google Spreadsheet going with who will be on the plane and some FAQ. Dave McClure has also setup a Plancast.

Tagged: nerd bird, sxsw

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Mahalo Is Breaking Creative Commons And Their Own Rules

Filed Under News on 2010-01-22, 14:32 | 4 Comments

You would think that a site as “large” as Mahalo would be respectful of Creative Commons, as well as the quality of the information they are providing. Mahalo bills itself as “a human-powered search engine and a knowledge sharing service…” but it turns out they’re using algorithms to provide some of this knowledge. Algorithms that get it embarrassingly wrong sometimes.

There was a math teacher by the name of Heather Kennedy that was found guilty of sleeping with one of her 16 year old students. Mahalo has a page on her. On that page Mahalo is crawling Flickr and Google for related images. Great, automating information retrieval is useful in some case. However, presenting it on a page where it’s intended to be informational without specifying that this is simply a search for images based on keywords is bad form. Especially when Mahalo bills itself as “human-powered” and hand picked information. Either Heather Kennedy has had facial reconstructive surgery multiple times or Mahalo is automatically searching for images using the keywords “Heather Kennedy” and Creative Commons.

Only Mahalo apparently doesn’t understand Creative Commons, even thought their own content is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Most people classify their images as Creative Commons with Attribution, which requires anyone using the photos to “attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor”. In addition, many people specify that their images can’t be used for commercial purposes. Mahalo links to the image, but doesn’t give proper attribution, and it could very easily argued that Mahalo is for commercial purposes with the half a dozen ads on the page.

But what really gets me personally is the fact that Mahalo was using an image my friend, Rubin Starset, posted on Flickr that contains several friends (one with the last name “Kennedy”) and my fiance, Heather. It was the headline image with no links to the source or attribution. It’s obvious why this would come up in a search for “Heather Kennedy”, but it’s absolutely not related and was not attributed.

After contacting Mahalo, it appears they’ve pulled it as well as all images on the Heather Kennedy page, but if you look at any other pages you’ll see the very same method of retrieving images in use.

Tagged: Creative Commons, Mahalo

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Thunder and Lightning in SF

Filed Under Photography, SF Bay Area, Video on 2010-01-19, 17:34 | 2 Comments

The way that Twitter blows up during large thunderstorms, you’d think that lightning and thunder in the Bay Area is rarer than earthquakes. Well, I’m not sure of the stats, but it just might be. Early this morning I ~~woke up~~ gained some semblance of consciousness as thunder rolled through San Francisco along with storms that have continued on and off all day.

After seeing the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder half a dozen times, I decided to setup my Zoom H2 audio recorder and Flip video camera to see what I could capture. Only three minutes later lightning struck again. My Flip video camera isn’t quite up to the task of recording lightning, but you can see a flickr and hear the thunder (along with some guy on the street yelling). The audio recorder is slightly better at it’s job, picking up the echoing thunder as it traveled across the city.

[audio:http://www.geeked.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ThunderInSF.mp3|titles=ThunderInSF]

And of course, once the rain tapered off, it was up to the roof with a camera to catch the awesome light as blue skies returned.

Tagged: lightning, San Francisco, storm, thunder

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SXSW 2010 Proposal Was Accepted!

Filed Under Events, Personal on 2010-01-19, 13:16 | 8 Comments

I think it’s safe to officially say that my proposal for SXSW 2010 has been accepted. “How To Not Be A Douchebag At SXSW” will be a core conversation at this year’s South By Southwest. A huge thanks to everyone that voted in the PanelPicker (apparently we were pretty popular), and of course thanks to SXSW for accepting the idea!

I’m organizing the conversation, but I won’t be educating alone. Violet Blue, John Adams, and several others will be helping lead the conversation. I’m excited that this was chosen to be a core conversation since it means we’ll get to hear the opinions of everyone that attends.

The rough draft of some of the questions you can expect to be answered during our session:

Who is “that guy” and how do I avoid being him?
How do I self-promote without being a douchebag?
What words instantly make me sound like I don’t know what I’m talking about?
How do I not come off looking like an obnoxious PR flack?
How do I pitch my product/service/technology?
How do I handle an open bar?
How should I ask questions at panels and presentations?
What is the proper Twitter/Foursquare etiquette at SXSW?
How can I treat the locals graciously?
How can I make a connection with someone I’m attracted to and not come across like a marketing dweeb? (i.e. — hooking up, the undouche way)

It’s looking like we’ll be scheduled on Friday, March 12th, so make sure your flights get in the day before because you won’t want to miss this! Not only will you get educated, there will also be a limited number of appropriate stickers and buttons.

Tagged: douchebags, sxsw, sxsw2010

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Santa’s Defense Forces Engage in Operation Yule Storm

Filed Under Events, Pranks, SF Bay Area on 2009-12-24, 12:11 | 2 Comments

December 12th, 2009 – Santa’s Defense Forces (consisting of the 12th Nutcracker Regiment, the 103rd Sleighborne Division, and the Sugar Plum Service) converged on San Francisco, CA. The primary purpose of the mission: to protect Santa during the annual Santacon (aka Santarchy) gathering in SF. Additional orders included protecting other high value individuals such as Jesus and Frank Chu as well as spreading holiday cheer to civilians.

I was part of the embedded press corp and took photos and video of this highly successful mission. You can check out all my photos in the Operation Yule Storm set. I also highly recommend checking out the full mission report for Operation Yule Storm as well as the back-stories for both the 12th Nutcracker Regiment and the Sugar Plum Service.

Some live reporting on the scene during the Castro Dance Party:

And some of my favorite photos:

Tagged: Christmas, San Francisco, Santa, Santa's Little Secret Service, Santacon, Santarchy, SLSS

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How Registering a Domain Can Cost Almost $2,000

Filed Under Geek, Scam on 2009-12-15, 16:46 | 7 Comments

or Why I Don’t Recommend Anyone Use Go Daddy

I register a lot of domains. In fact so many ( around ~~285~~ 286) that I have my own disease. I generally use DomainSite and recommend them (even though they don’t have an affiliate program). They’re simple, to the point and don’t have all the unnecessary bells and whistles. Plus they have bulk update tools which are essential for me. Only thing they don’t have is auto-renew, but I have domains to renew every month, so it’s just part of my monthly workflow. But this post isn’t about DomainSite, it’s about Go Daddy.

I don’t like Go Daddy. Plain and simple. I feel like they take advantage of people that perhaps don’t know much about domain registration, don’t care about customers, and have a bad reputation based on past behaviors. They’re famous for their upselling and the pushing of features you don’t need. It had been awhile since I’d actually checked out GoDaddy before swearing to never use them again, so I figured I’d give them a visit to see how they were these days. Nothing’s changed.

For the sake of this post, let’s pretend for a minute that I’m your everyday user that’s heard about this internet thing and I want to start my own website cause I heard you could make money blogging online. I’ve heard that you should have your own domain, so I’m going to go with edsinterwebsiteblog.com since everything else is already taken. I jump onto godaddy.com to register it and I’m greeted by a page with a hot chick that has nothing to do with domains and I plug in the domain name I want:

Ed Note: Why in the world is this page so unbelievably busy?! GoDaddy’s use of “hot chicks” to sell domains and services just feels dirty. Wanna read a post where someone analyzes their poor UI?

After clicking “GO!” I’m greeted with the exciting news that “edsinterwebsiteblog.com is available! Just $10.69*” Great, that’s really affordable! Let’s get it. I’m smart enough to know that I don’t need all those other domains like .net, .info, etc. So I select edsinterwebsiteblog.com and add it to my cart and click to continue my registration.

Oh noes, popup! Go Daddy says I could save money if I get a bunch of other domains. That’s silly, I know this trick. I click the little “No Thanks” at the bottom.

Ed Note: Nice touch of making the “No Thanks” a link rather than something people are more inclined to click, like a button.

Normally at this point you’d be asked to create an account with Go Daddy and provide all your info and whatnot. For the sake of brevity and privacy I’m just using my pre-created account and skipping that part.

Great, I’m at the Registration and Checkout. I’m only seconds away from owning my own domain name! Apparently I have to pick some options first though. Let’s take a look:

Registration Length: That’s great, 5 years for $10.69 sounds awesome.
Ed Note: Go Daddy conveniently baits and switches the customer with their low price which is just for 1 year, but they default to 5 years on this page

Certified Domain: I really want people to take edsinterwebsiteblog.com seriously, I should get it certified. It’s only $2.99 per year, that’s not that much.
Ed Note: What the heck is a Certified Domain? This “certification” is something that Go Daddy issues themselves. They are basically certifying that the Whois info is correct, which is a requirement of ICANN for ALL domains, not just certified ones.

Add Hosting: Oh, yes I need hosting! Deluxe is only $1.90 more than Economy? Check in the Deluxe box for $6.64.
Add Email: Go Daddy says I “will benefit tremendously” from having multiple addresses/mailboxes. Unlimited email address is only $2.50! Check.
Ed Note: Now is the time to note that there are cheaper hosting and email alternatives (we’ll get to them). But more importantly is Go Daddy’s shift from yearly pricing to monthly pricing.

Select Type of Registration: I’m being asked to choose between a Standard, Deluxe, or Protected registration. What does that even mean? All this domain stuff is sooooo confusing! Oh good, Go Daddy gives us this handy chart:
— Private registration “Helps protect yourself from spam, scams, prying eyes and more by shielding your personal information from public view” – OMG, I need protection from spam, I’m sick of all those emails about making my love machine last longer.
— Business registration – Well, I’m not a business, but it’s included in Deluxe which I’m already getting to stop the spam.
— Expiration Protection “Protects your domain against loss due to credit card expiration or failure, outdated contact information and more” – Oh man, my credit card is going to expire some day, I better get this or I might lose my domain! Guess I’m getting the Protected registration.
— Deadbolt Transfer Protection “Protects your domain against any accidental or malicious transfer” – I’m not very smart and I have accidents, so I’m glad I have this. I have no idea what this means, but accidental and malicious sounds bad. It’s probably like rental car insurance so I’m glad I’m getting it with the Protected registration.

Ed Note: I find it difficult to believe that Go Daddy charges for these features.
– A Private registration is an acceptable feature. DomainSite charges 50 cents for it.
– Expiration Protection seems like a no-brainer that should be included by domain registrars. Do you really think they’re going to let your domain expire without notifying you to renew it and pay them more money?
– Deadbolt Transfer Protection is basically locking the domain to prevent unauthorized transferring. This is a feature that all domain registrars should offer by default. DomainSite does.

Also interesting is how when you Add one of these registration types, the page changes so that you can’t switch it back.

Add SmartSpace(tm) – “Perfect for the home or business, SmartSpace™ is the fast, easy way to turn EDSINTERWEBSITEBLOG.COM into a Web site with all your favorite content.” That sounds great! I really don’t know anything about this AJAXHTMLPHPJAVAPAGE programming stuff. This sounds easy and it’s only $4.74. Added for the length of my domain!
Ed Note: SmartSpace appears to be a legit feature that Go Daddy offers. I have no idea what’s behind it, but it has a monthly cost associated with what is probably just a script that gets installed once when they setup your account? Also want to point out how they don’t show the price to “Match domain length”. Come on guys, it’s a little bit of javascript to check the registration length field and do some math to show the user what they’re going to be billed.

I click Continue and get excited that I’m almost done registering my new domain. Oh wait, I have more customizing to do? *sigh* Ok, what else do I need to do?

Make your domain registration private! – Oh yes, this is easy, my sister’s boyfriend’s uncle had his identity stolen on the Internet so I don’t want my personal information out there. I definitely want private registration. I also want the Deluxe Registration because it “boosts traffic” to my site and I want everyone to read my site! I thought I had added privacy when I selected the Protected Registration, but I guess not. Adding Deluxe Registration for $9.99.
Ed Note: Why is this being asked again? Shouldn’t this be included in the Protected Registration we already selected for $14.99?

Clicking Add & Continue! Oh boy, even more customizing of my order! Let’s see, what do I want?

SSL Certificates – “Guarantee protection of your customers’ information!” – Well I don’t have any customers and this is expensive, so I guess I don’t need this. Whew, saved a lot of money.

Drive traffic to your Web site and increase online visibility! – I really want people to visit my website! I should Add Search Engine Visibility, it’s only $25.49 per year if I add it for all 5 years that I’ll have the domain. Oh wait, I can also get 12 months of Site Analytics if I go with Search Engine Visibility Premium. Let’s do that. It’s pricey, but you’ve got to spend money to make money online, right?
Ed Note: WTF is “Search Engine Visibility”?! Try this: Post a tweet with a link to your website, watch your logs and I almost guarantee you that within minutes you’ll have a search engine crawling your site. Better yet, get your friends to post links to your website on their sites. Boom, you’re indexed within days. And as far as analytics, if you’re not aware that Google Analytics is 100% free, well… [REDACTED]

Another interesting thing I noticed when getting screenshots for this post. If you scroll down and add Site Analytics before you choose Search Engine Visibility Premium, you’ll get charged for both when Site Analytics should be included in the former. (screenshot)

Quick Shopping Cart – I’m not going to be selling anything on my site, so I don’t need this.

Customize - Join the Go Daddy Savings Network

Join the Go Daddy Savings Network – Hmm, I enroll for $9.99 and I get a $10 Go Daddy Gift Card in return? Sounds great! Let me just plug in my email address.
Ed Note: What is this? There’s no additional information on exactly what the Go Daddy Saving Network is. Do people really just blindly give their email addresses away like this? Oh, if you click on Help Me Choose it takes you to some additional pages where from what I can gather it’s an online coupon code site for members only. go Daddy says: “We’ve used our reputation as the world’s #1 domain name registrar to negotiate deep discounts for Savings Network members.” Huh, I didn’t know domain name registrar reputation had any pull with merchants. Oh wait, if by reputation you mean “ability to send customers” then it makes sense.

Blog or Podcast your news online with Quick Blogcast! – Oh, I want to blog, I guess I need this! I plan on being very popular so I should get Quick Blogcast Premium since my harddrive is 500GB. Hmm, I can’t get it for 5 years like my domain, so I guess I’m just doing 36 months for $16 a month.
Ed Note: Not sure exactly what this is, but I imagine it’s a combination of some scripts (probably WordPress for blogging) that setup a blog and/or podcast for you. Plus this appears to be where you are specifying the amount of space and bandwidth you’d like for your site. To give some sort of indication, Dreamhost (a web hosting company) gives you unlimited space and bandwidth for $9-11 a month depending on length of contract.

Go Daddy Site Surveys – Oh I love surveys! I do them all the time on Facebook to see what kind of Buffy character I am. I definitely want to be able to make my own. Nuts, no 5 year option, guess I’m going with 36 months again. It’s only $2.84, that’s like half a cup of coffee that I get every day!
Ed Note: I imagine this is just a script install and database setup that should be a 1 time fee since there’s not really any upkeep to it.
One really interesting thing to note on this page is that after you click “Add to Cart” for each option, it disappears! You’re not giving an option to modify your choice on this page.

Ok, whew got those decisions made. I can’t wait to get started blogging and podcasting! Let’s click Add & Continue and pay for this baby.

HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF !#$(*#%!#$)%&*$@^*$#!% $1,855.10?!?!?!

Total: $1,855.10

On top of the simple used salesman sort of techniques, there are even more serious things to be concerned about with GoDaddy. Gordon Lyon setup NoDaddy.com to expose the behaviors of Go Daddy that should not be tolerated. Everything from holding domains for ransom, exposing personal information, and more.

Tagged: Domains, GoDaddy

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The Matrix Bullet Scene In Lego Stop Motion

Filed Under Art, Movies and Music, Video on 2009-11-25, 13:46 | 4 Comments

I love stop motion and I love Legos. LegoMatrix put them together to recreate the classic roof-top bullet-time scene from The Matrix. The accuracy with which they’ve recreated this defining scene is amazing. They took each frame of the 44 seconds of this scene and recreated it with as much accuracy as Legos would allow, and then some. While the video itself is amazing, even more impressive is the “behind the scenes” of how they actually put it all together. Building camera rigs, figuring out all the tricks they’d have to do to make it accurate, let alone what Lego pieces to choose!