Wayne D's Blog

Somehow i forgot to tell my faithful readers that my little web video won me a free ticket to Mesh U. It was a very productive day, I met tonnes of interesting people and next year I am paying to go. As conferences go it's great value. Thanks to CommandN for running the contest and for giving me the prize. The presentations were great, people kept asking me about my EEEPC and someone even accused me of being a microcelebrity. I aspire to microcelebrity status so that was quite gratifying. I regret that I didn't register for Mesh before they sold out, I won't make the same mistake next year. The one good thing is that my Mesh U badge will get me into the afterparties for the next few days so all is not lost. I hope to meet Amber Mac and thank her in person tomorrow.

I bailed on the after party at the Drake after smoozing for an appropriate time to attend the Marlies game at the Ricoh. The Marlies unfortunately did not prevail over Chicago. After I dry out I will write more about Mesh U but for now I wanted to give my first impressions.

Having previously blogged about my trouble find shoes I felt my twitter friend Shopping Notes notes pain in her most recent blog post Who’s Wearing Christian Louboutin?
as she recounted her unsuccessful shoe shopping trip. This is where the dumb as a post computers take over. Her blog host wordpress.com includes links to possibly related posts. On e of the links was to another blog article HAUTE Style: Beyonce’s Studded Tootsies. A cookie for out byte based friends here, the article does mention Christine Louboutin. The first pair of shoes mentioned in the posting are a pair of studded boots Beyonce was pictured wearing. The blog post has a picture of a pair of the boots in pink which linked to stylefinder.com.

. I thought it it would be amusing to send the picture to shopping notes as a suggested footwear option. I clicked the image which took me to stylefinder.com and informed me "The Ariella Studded Boots by Christian Louboutin has sold out. This is Stylefinder.com's closest match."

I may not be a fashion mavin but I'm not sure I would recommend the fringed Muks to someone who was looking for a pair of hot pink studded boots with high heels. I suspect that a person didn't make this fashion suggestion. Computers are good with words but not so good with images.

I forgot to add that it also suggested that if I liked the Muks I would probably also love a hot pink bandeau bikini and pink flip flops. Click either image and you'll see what I mean.

OK, so last week I get an email from my brother. It's one of those joke emails but this one was different, it was funny, at least in my opinion. I showed it to everyone in my house and they thought it was funny too. I forward to the mailing list of my drinking buddies, where it was held for moderator approval because it was too large. It hasn't shown up yet so I suspect he thought it was inappropriate content for a serious mailing list. Information wants to be free and in the interest of information freedom I am reposting it here. Do you know how hard it is to get an HTML email into a b2evolution blog? I know the formatting sucks but I have wasted enough time this afternoon trying to bang this square peg into a round hole.

FEEL LIKE WORKING TODAY ???

I was hanging in twitter yesterday when I came across a tweet from Jason Calicanis telling us he was online and talking about Powerset's new semantic web search product. He issued a challenge, come up with a blog post comparing Powerset with Google and he would give out a sexy Mahalo mug. Being the swaghound I am I couldn't resist. My question was "How much does a Loonie weigh"? First result is from Powerset, the result an epic fail, The first four results don't contain the answer, the fifth does.

Result two is from Google with site:wikipedia.org to limit searching to Wikipedia. Result, epic pass. The first result is the same as result 5 from Powerset and contains the answer.

Result three is the gold standard, a search on Google for the answer unfettered. First result is the question, second result is the question answered. The best part is that the results marked with the check contain the answer in Google's synopsis, no need to even go to the page.

Ok, Mr. Mahalo, I'm ready for my mug now.

I was lying on my couch Sunday afternoon, EEEPC perched on my chest, living vicariously through the tweets of other, trying to not hack my lungs out as I suffered from a late spring cold, when a tweet went by from Amber MacArthur about an awesome entry in the CommandN-Mesh contest. How was that for a run on sentence? After whining about there not being enough camps and conferences in Toronto I find that the Mesh conference is less than two weeks away. I watch the entry Amber is tweeting about and figure there is no way that I can put something together in one day to compete with the mad scientist. But wait, this guy is in Vancouver, Air Canada has just added another surcharge to their fares. If he hasn't booked yet it's going to cost him a fortune to fly to Toronto on short notice. There is hope, now I just have to put together a concept, record it and get it in by midnight. I come up with a minimalist concept inspired by the Cali Lewis style of broadcasting, jam as many words as possible into as short a time as possible. Luckily I have a facility for fast talking. I write my script on the EEEPC, turn on the webcam and shoot. Problem, for some reason the file the EEEPC produces an .ogg movie doesn't seem to play properly on anything I have including the EEEPC. The other problem is that my 30 second video runs about a minute ten. I forgot to add that it's Mother's day and we are supposed to go out for dinner. Off to dinner we go.

While at dinner I rework my original concept into something that has a modicum of entertainment value. When we return I head downstairs and try to install VLC so I can capture the video. I struggle with dependencies for a while, get it installed and realize I don't know how to use it. The clock is ticking, I have to do something quick so off I go to ustream. I am pruning and paring my script, finally getting it down to 170 words. I don't have any video editing software installed and besides I don't have time to learn how to use it. I'm going to have to do it straight, without editing. Lacking a teleprompter I put my webcam on six pack CD magazine to put it at the right height and drop a box into the centre of my script page so the text flows around the camera. I carefully arrange the windows so I can click record and then move the mouse to centre my script on the page.

Take 1, I start and flub the line. Take 2 I pause for too long and screw that one up. Maybe I should learn how to edit video. Take after take, lines are flubbed, awkward pauses get in. Ok, let's rewrite that line so it flows better. Cali makes this fast talking look so easy. Next time I'm going to do this long enough in advance that I can memorize the script. Damn, another line flubbed. This take is no good because I closed my eyes before stopping the recording. Finally I get one done that isn't too heinous. Then I lay another one down, that one seems a bit better. I'll keep that one. I play it back , crap the sound is going but there is no motion in the video. I download the .flv and try it with mplayer. Even worse, It plays back at 60 fps and the sound is completely hosed. I cross my fingers and submit it for conversion to .mov. I wait a tense few minutes download it, whew, it plays fine. Damn it has that goofy white dot noise at the bottom I have never bothered troubleshooting. Almost 10 p.m., no time to fix it, must send it off. Maybe someone will get a laugh out of it. The next morning I get a short email "That is awesome!!!! Thank you! Seriously, great work...". Hmmm, maybe I'm not such a hack. I decide I'm tough enough to take the ridicule, I'll post it to my blog and see what happens. So here it is, please don't be too harsh.

Here is a link for the Flash impaired meshcontest.mov

I figured that when I didn't win the contest I could see if I could get the two days off and buy my way into Mesh. Today I see on their blog that the conference is sold out. Sigh, maybe next year.

I tried to find the Geekbrief episode where Cali Lewis explains her fast talking but was unsuccessful. If someone knows the link please post it in a comment. My estimate of my words per minute count is 242.