Slipr

Doing some research for work on the existing science / tech / green shows out there, and I keep coming across cool ones on Veoh. Except that they’re all pirated.

Someone at Discovery Networks needs to wake up and send the takedown notices. In the meantime, I’ll continue to enjoy downloading full episodes of Extreme Engineering and Man vs. Wild.

Didn’t we learn this lesson over a year ago with Youtube?

While I’m on the subject, another expression of Discovery’s apparent paralysis in the face of the web is that this network doesn’t even bother with their own YouTube page (unlike National Geographic and, well, just about everyone else) which leads fans of Discovery programming to re-post material from their itunes teaser feed for them. This kind of sloppiness just kills me.

Spotted accompanying a Telegraph UK article about a man who has sex with cars:

Not to be missed: the accompanying hilarious / disturbing video and gallery.

Here’s an interview with the man behind Battlestar Galactica, in which he agrees with his interlocutor that making a “highly serialized” show like BSG, in which it’s easy to lose viewers who miss only an episode or two, and hard to gain new ones because the enormous back-story is daunting to viewers new to the series, is a problem TV can’t solve: it makes for better storytelling, but worse ratings.

But of course Netflix has already solved this problem. And the internet can really solve it: whatever you want, whenever you want it, on whatever device you like, means you can jump into any series at any time in your life. Shows like BSG won’t be judged on their ratings when the show first hits the ‘net — instead, in a trend reminiscent of the behavior patterns you see with downloadable media, peak viewership will be spread across a long period of time, with spikes corresponding with coverage of the series.

Shows will become properties that are continually generating income, spanning years. This happens now, but it’s contingent on releases of DVDs — and not everyone wants a boxed set.

This means that the penalty for creating “highly serialized” narratives will be reduced. Indeed, the whole equation might be flipped on its head — individual hit shows in properties that aren’t serialized will be nice, but for a network to have a steady stream of income, they’re going to need more serialized shows, not fewer.

Matthew Myers is a painter who puts funny, slightly cartoonish images on just about anything he can get his hands on–headboards, the tops of toilet tanks, a stretcher–even other paintings.

He also has a rare ability to give them thoughtful and amusing captions… at least one of his works constitutes one of the few pieces of social commentary I’ve ever encountered that actually made me laugh out loud (being somewhat epic, the captions are too small for viewing on the web on that one, alas).

Despite decades as an award-winning creative director for various advertising agencies, he’s relatively new to the fine art world, in terms of that being his main thing… I’ve little doubt that I’ll see his work on the cover of Juxtapoz in the near future, or his forthcoming children’s book on the shelves of B&N.

You can see more of Matthew Myers’ work at his online gallery.

I would totally do this if I was really hungry. Maybe I’d kill it before eating it though. On the other hand, it’s hard to kill something with a distributed nervous system without first turning it into an even less-appetizing scorpion mash.

(Click on the image to be redirected to the source video, which is one ep in Discovery’s iTunes feed, which is basically just snippets of their cable shows and is, frustratingly, solely focused on pushing you to watch their real cash cow–television–rather than creating a satisfying experience for fans who would prefer to consume the content through iTunes and on portable devices.)

http://fluidapp.com/

Here’s a demo of what one dude accomplished with Fluid and a muxtape. Looks pretty, but the real value of Fluid is in making those apps you have open all day (e.g., Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Googe Docs, Muxtape/Seekpod/Youtube) behave like actual applications (i.e., living in the applications dock and not in a browser window, and not all having to be closed at once when Firefox locks up on a single page).

from blip.tv posted with vodpod

Boo f*cking hoo. I’d like to sue God for giving me an abusive childhood which left me unequipped to function normally in school and then university and then adult life, but instead I just SUCK IT UP.

Ivy League Prof Sues Students For Being Mean to Her