When upgrading my site recently, I noticed that I no longer linked to the companies where I work, a fairly stupid oversight considering that I own them, and it is probably in my best interest to publicise them.

So on the side bar you’ll now see Aggmedia. We specialise in microcontent, software architecture/development and audio/video production. Underneath that, you’ll find Ludic Creative, providing improv tools and storytelling for business.

For those of you who know my main email address, and found that it has been bouncing for the last 5 days, well its back up. Five days of spamless bliss, oh what a joy. The provider hosting the domain decided to delete all the mailboxes, which is ever so nice of them.

And while I’m posting, I may as well point you to The PAN, a daily 15 minute video from a few of my favourite “independent media makers and artists”. Its a bit long for my liking, especially when it comes in every day, but you shall enjoy its wholesome goodness. They’ve included several of my videos at various times, so they can’t be that sane…

Hung over on a Sunday morning, and a deliberate attempt to yet again mess with the concept of videoclogging week. Just wave to the lady and the lady will wave back.

And I’m sorry about my cut off head. For the widescreen aspect ratio I’m now using, I have to stretch my arm out to its further length in order to contain my head properly. A hang over isn’t particularly conducive to maintain a fixed outstretched arm position…

Have you ever found out at a later date, that the history you experienced or believed, wasn’t exactly the truth? Or that the truth you thought you knew, wasn’t?

About 3 months of my recent history suddenly changed on me, and I was able to relive my past as it was, and not as I thought it was.

Confused? Here, have some muesli.

Music by Spatula, the song Minute Hand, from their album Even The Thorny Acacia.

Today is the first day of my second year of videoblogging. 156 videos in my first 12 months, that’s a video every two and a bit days.

To celebrate, I’ve decided to start shooting in widescreen. I’ve been gradually increasing the resolution and quality of my videos for a while now, and this just seemed like the next logical step. It wasn’t until I shot in widescreen that I realised why people probably aren’t using it more.

For starters, autofocus. What’s the point in being offset within the frame, if you’re out of focus? The solution is to either not to use distant backgrounds, or to set the manual focus before shooting, which means you can’t then pan out to an autofocused background. Thus more edits. Maybe if the camera had an easier way to shift the camera’s focus point with a simple finger or thumb press?

The second problem is that with my camera at least, while widescreen is encoded anamorphically, the CCD records in letterbox, effectively zooming in each shot. The result is that you need to hold the camera slightly further out than a regular 4:3 shoot, which for me was pretty much at arms length, causing my arm to tire more quickly.

Shoot video, put it online, hope people watch. If it weren’t about the audience, it wouldn’t be on the web. It’s not about the media, it’s about the me, duh. If we change the world at the same time, then that’s an added bonus. Causality. Deal with it.

I rarely shoot me, for me, but this is my 150th video, so please excuse me while I indulge myself with my first 99 or so videos.

The song “One day” is by The Jones’, a Canberra band from 1984. I think I have one of only 20 copies of their EP, which I ripped from vinyl a few years back. Not one of the better songs on the EP, but appropriate. Saw them live a couple of times, when they travelled up to Sydney. Another great record, lost in time.

One day, everybody will be happy… believe me…

I thought I’d do a fluff video.

I wrote this a year ago, and only just found that I’d emailed it to myself from work.

I’m always facinated by the way people’s opinions differ. We are the sum of what our senses pick up, and the ways we rationalise that information into thought and knowledge. Our opinions change over time, and our tolerance or intolerance of other opinions affect who we interact with. So what is a friend? And why do some of the bastards hang around so long?

Google gave many answers, although my favourite was:

Everybody who has the fortune to be out of the reach of your weaponery.

However the definition I think most accurate is:

A person you know well and regard with affection and trust.

I can know a person very well, but not call them a friend. I can regard someone with affection, but not call them a friend. Simplistically, what is important to me is trust, the definition of which is roughly:

Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing. To have or place confidence in; depend on.

This week I faced three separate situations which made me question what is meant by friendship. One was fairly minor, reinforcomg how different we are as individuals, and that no matter how much we know a person, we can never completely know or predict their opinions, so don’t be surprised when you don’t. Our typical immediate reaction is intolerance, but in conjunction with trust, a sort of moral tolerance, we are able to respect their individuality and difference of opinion.

The second incident involved a web site I accidentally stumbled across, which contained a discussion board full of redneck war mongering intolerant NRA and G.W. Bush supporters, who believed what the mainstream media fed them each day, perpetuated the classic misinterpretation of the U.S. second amendment for militias, and censored any opinion to the contrary. It was when I decided to move on, that I realised that the administrator of the site was someone I’d considered a friend many years ago, and ironically could be considered a father figure for online communities. As our interests always had non-political agendas, I had no idea of his political alignment. Have his opinions changed, or has he just been right wing his entire life?

The third incident involved another friend, in what they perceived as wanting to share a gift, but in reality was an attempt to sell me something. I have no problem buying something from a friend, if I’m the one doing the buying. It’s when a friend is trying to sell you something, that the problems start.

Life isn’t black and white, no matter how hard we try. It would be easy to re-classify each of these people as friend or no friend based upon the definition of friend and trust, and as a logician it was very tempting to do so. But there’s so much more to people than applying simple weighting algorithms to what they do and what they say.

So instead I decided to ask them all over for dinner.

Three memorable cultural things I heard today.

Girl 1: So when are you heading back to Uni?

Girl 2: Oh, probably in the fall.

In Australia we call it autumn. On American TV, our youth hear it as fall.

Begger woman: Hey mate, spare us a dollar.

Richard BF:

Begger woman: Fuck ya, faggot bowel licking cunt.

Sometimes my hair draws too much attention.

Girl A: And you found the place alright?

Girl B: Yeah, I looked it up online.

Interesting that online is not yet the default place to look something up.

I’m not a big fan of Christmas and New Year’s, in case you couldn’t tell, so I spent time at home with Singleton. He wasn’t particularly happy about it.

This video is part of a backlog from stumbling into the twelve days of Christmas for the last… ooh, twelve days or so. I just put together the first day of Christmas one afternoon because I had some spare footage I couldn’t think how to use, specifically the police and the posters, which I shot on Christmas day while walking around my local deserted area. Stupidly, that meant coming up with a new one each day, without realising how difficult the higher numbers were going to be. Anyway, what’s done is done. The amusing thing is, amongst all the video I spit out, especially all the what I think is interesting stuff, it took a parody of the twelve days of Christmas to bring in the next bunch of viewers. Yum, just in time to piss them off!

This coming week I’m editing a non-Internet project anyway, so the backlog will help keep the vlog active at least. I also have a full version of the twelve days, which I’ll post next month, once everyone has forgotten about it, and a few other interesting surprises over the next few weeks.