June 18, 2007

We all love lovely Kelly

For the last two years Kelly is our guest when her owners are enjoying their holiday.
A cross between a Pekinese and a Boomer, Kelly is cute, Kelly is lovely. I love to walk Kelly, because all girls smile at me, but Kelly knows what she wants.
And what she doesn't like! I haven't got a clue why yet, but Kelly hates my Canon Ixus. Check out the video, and please push your sound settings to the max. Enjoy!

Posted by Leon at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2007

H.264 in every Mac?

After eighteen months of happy Maccing, I've become a Mac maniac, and I'm never going to use anything else but OS X. That's the good news, at least for those who also use a Mac. The bad news is that one never knows when to upgrade.

I know that I'm going to swap my 20 inch G5 iMac for a brand new Intel powered 24 inch , but the big question is: when?

I'm not waiting for a 30 inch, because it wouldn't fit on my desk under the open stairs in the living.

But behind that bigger screen, a lot of hardware might always change very fast. There's always an Apple event or keynote dawning behind the horizon, and I've learned the bad way not to buy anything in the months before super seller Steve has left the stage.

Yet faster Intel chips, who knows an iMac with two dual core processors, quicker than the quickest Mac Pro.

My choice as well as my timing are even more difficult now that I've read that Cupertino plans to add H.264 hardware support to its entire line.

At least, according to Robert X. Cringely: The Great Apple Video Encoder Attack of 2007.

Now what?

in Dutch at @ Dutch Cowboys

Posted by Leon at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2007

Carnaval 2007 @ The Beyerd: day 1 . . .

Sjakie doing a Dutch Delilah (top video), Gijs performing Johnny Be Good (bottom video),

One day down, four more to go . . .

More pics in the Carnaval 2007 album

Posted by Leon at 01:10 PM | Comments (1)

January 05, 2007

Hoezo, geen verstand van voetbal?

Waar een mailtje met een opmerking over een foutje in de VPRO gids al niet toe kan leiden. En nooit meer zeggen dat ik geen verstand van voetbal heb, want ik wist het echt nog uit mijn hoofd. Ha!

Link: Reminiscences of november 1985

Posted by Leon at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)

January 03, 2007

Revolution: (half) live or play back?

Hadn't checked GoogleVideo for a couple of weeks on 'Beatles'. Never seen this one before: performing 'Revolution' at the David Frost Show. Year?

Got my doubts about whether this is (half) live or play back. According to one commenter on GoogleVideo: 'many people think this is a lip-synced version, its not, its live vocals over the video'.

However; according to Wikipedia: A product of the recording sessions for The Beatles (aka The White Album), "Revolution" featured distorted guitars and an electric piano solo by session musician Nicky Hopkins. This track is one of the loudest and most aggressive Beatle songs; it begins abruptly with a loud, overdriven electric guitar played by John Lennon, a thundering, compressed drum beat from Ringo Starr and a wailing scream from Lennon as the song launches into gear. (The scream was an overdub added when Lennon double tracked his vocal. Paul McCartney performed the scream on the 'David Frost Show' semi-live television performance, because Lennon could not deliver the scream and catch his breath again in time to launch into the first verse.)

Another search on Google delivered this date: Revolution (4 Sep 1968, Promo TV David Frost Show)

Posted by Leon at 10:13 AM | Comments (2)

November 03, 2006

Bitten by the Video Bug

Almost an old geezer, finally bitten by the video bug. Two reasons that it took so long: no bandwidth, no affection. Until recently useless to do something with video and Internet, like sucking Haagen Dasz trough a straw. I must admit the lack of affection was due to the fact that I left The Utrecht School for Journalism as a writer. In a paper past, when one could graduate without having done 'Radio and Television', as it was called way back in the late seventies.

I visit my old school every once in a while, earned a certificate English writing for the Media there three years ago - but it's all called multi media, or (mass) communication now. It might even be impossible to leave that school as only a writer now.

My late calling is the result of bandwidth galore these days, a Canon Ixus 800is that is delivering pristine video, and my iMac that screams to me from almost every application that she wants to handle the task I'm performing different, something with multi media. Like any good server, I see my iMac as a ship, so she is a she. I haven't bought the Ixus, as well as the iMac because of video, but click something and something starts to move.

Ixus produces video at 640 by 480, en swallows some one hundred megabyte flashcard a minute. Bit too big for Google Video or YouTube, but no worries, Quick Time Pro is running on the Mac and coverts the video to mp4, so it;s shrinking a factor ten to twenty.

I'm daily practicing now, cutting and pasting frames, adding or changing background music, and I'm not only learning a lot, I'm having a very good time.

To learn all the Mac can do, I need a bloody lot of time. To begin with the new release of iPod; it can do so much that I need some days to check that out. The there's iMovie,to handle high definition video, iDVD iWeb, mighty come in handy with a makeover of my website, and GarageBand, that turns the Mac into a full blown sound studio.

With the use of the Insight camera, built in on top of the iMac, it's possible to produce a Video Podcast, but I can also put the Ixus on a tripod, and point it to myself.

Biggest problem, as always; time. Almost election day over here in The Netherlands, (November 22nd). No politician making any promises yet, but the one who starts talking about it, gets my vote: the Google workplace policy.

Anyone over there is allowed to spent ten percent of his working day as he likes, as long as it's in the good for Google.

Are you reading this, mister editor in chief?

Posted by Leon at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2006

The Real Origin of Spam

'Spam' is a very popular Monty Python sketch, first on television in 1970, 36 years ago. In the sketch, two customers are trying to order a breakfast from a menu that includes the processed meat product in almost every item. In the sketch, a restaurant serves all its food with lots of spam, and the waitress repeats the word several times in describing how much spam is in the items. When she does this, the Vikings (don't ask what they are doing there) in the corner start a song:

"Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

As we all know by now, the term spam (in electronic communication) is derived from this sketch. So the big question is: how did the term spam get connected with spam as we know it?

Personally I like this one, out of many answers on the net: the analysis form Brad Templeton: Origin of the term 'spam' to mean net abuse.

Posted by Leon at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2006

Sweet Little Sixteen

Saturday night Oktober 21, 2006, @ Cafe De Beyerd in Breda, during the 32nd Belgian Beer Week: The Cyranose Live. Sound was a little bit to much for the poor Canon Ixus, but look and listen . . .

Posted by Leon at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2006

Bye bye house

No words . . .

Posted by Leon at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2006

Start (video) blogging, now!

Wanna see how two twenty somethings feel who just cashed a cool 700 million each? Check out this YouTube video. It shows the interview held on a San Francisco Street, minutes after YouTube, owned by Chad Hurley (29) and Steve Chen (28), is acquired by Google, that paid 1.65 billion in shares. No wonder the two video wonder boys are behaving like they're leaving a Dutch coffee shop, where one can legally enjoy a big joint.

They not only cashed, they also will receive a nice salary, because they start working for Google, while some small change - 300 mil - goes to the investor who smelled in time what was going to happen to video and Internet.

Where YouTube was a dubious, uncertain platform to build upon, I think Google video is a more stable base that bloggers or digital publishers can use without any investment, bind or confer. All you need is some kind of video camera, upload, ready and done.

It probably won't take long before Google will start every video with ten or so commercial seconds, like the model that a lot of video providers are using already.

We do it on our corporate portal, and while some visitors seem to be used to it, I myself have to be very, very curious, before I accept fifteen appetizer seconds.

Anyway, the very moment your video is uploaded tot YouTube or Google Video, you can embed a link on your own blog or website, where you can surround them with your own advertisements. Or put Google ads next to them, so that your free video host is making some money - and you too.

All to good to be true? Google the web and you will find business models that explain how to make money on the web with a number of free Google products. High in the top ten of working case a smart couple - he does the website, she does the CRM calls - who make some 300,000, a month that is, bye means of Google AdSense.

Keep Googling and you will find a picture of another one proudly showing his latest monthly mega check.

It even isn't a hoax. Start blogging, now!

Posted by Leon at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2006

Beatles live on Swedish tv, 1963

Little jewel, found on GoogleVideo. So you young guys want to know how good those The Beatles really were, live on stage?

Check out for yourself: a rare video of the Beatles in Stockholm, 1963. live on Swedish television. Grrrrreat!

Posted by Leon at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2006

Blue Oyster Spiral Fractal Zoom

No matter how deep you go, there's always more. According to maker Dave Klimann this movie took quite a few days to calculate in 1993.

'When i first made a poster of ... all » the image i call 'blue oyster spiral', which is a zoom at about the 100 Billion X magnification level inside the Mandelbrot Fractal, it took 34 computers 3 days to render it. But today, the same poster can be rendered on one typical PC in just a few hours'.

Posted by Leon at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2006

New Numa - The Return of Gary Brolsma

Gary Brolsma, the Numa Numa Guy, is back in his return video: New Numa! With the video comes a $45,000 worldwide New Numa contest where you can make your own New Numa video for a chance at the Grand Prize of $25,000 cash and a whole lot of internet fame.

Go to www.NewNuma.com to enter the contest, chat with Gary, check out the New Numa music and new music by Dan Balan (the producer/songwriter of Dragostea din Tei, the original numa numa!) Most importantly: Don't forget to laugh and have fun.

Posted by Leon at 10:21 AM | Comments (3)

September 12, 2006

Burning Man Festival

One of the trips we haven't been able to do yet: The Burning Man Festival, every august in the Black Rock Desert. Check out this video at YouTube! I would love to make things like this one :-)

Posted by Leon at 03:33 PM | Comments (0)