Digital Impulses

A nice Sunday after the Wedding

So, I spent a good part of the morning and early afternoon today working on the pictures of my brother Pete's wedding.

I gotta say, I love how absolutely trouble-free it has been to transfer pictures from my Nikon D40 to my computer, be it on XP or in Vista.

Editing Pete's wedding pictures
My current rookie workflow is to create a folder on my Server's external drive that I am dedicating just to media and then manipulate the pictures once I have them safely transferred there.  Once I had all of the images off the Nikon D40, it was time to get them tagged.

I am excited at the possibilities offered by developing a real discipline in getting images tagged the instant they come off the camera.  I think the real trick is to split the task into manageable, bite-sized tasks, using multiple folders created by picture theme to tags bunches of images at a time.

Once the images are tagged, doing a search for a place or someone's name, having just those pictures show up in the search results really rocks.  I am really having fun with this digital photography hobby I am filling my time with.

Printing a CD Cover.  NOT.
After getting the pictures from the wedding sorted out, it was time to try and print to a CD.  Hah. In short, all I managed after nearly two hours was to get extremely frustrated and pent up with the desire to just throw my printer into the middle of the street.

It simply *REFUSED* to print on a CD, and all I can think is that the mechanism to pull the CD Tray in is broken.  time for a new printer.  I am not going to invest any more time in this.  I hand-wrote a title on the CD's and left it as a bad job.  *sigh*.

Windows Movie Maker in Windows Vista
I should note that I created a "movie" slide show of the images using the new version of Windows Movie Maker included in Windows Vista.  It was utterly simple to do and added value to the CD's that I turned over to my brother and his new bride.

1408
After that, my boy, his girlfriend and I took off for the movies in El Segundo and stopped by Pacific Theaters to see 1408, a horror flick starring John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson and Mary McCormack.

The movie was typical nowadays horror fare with a couple of genuinely scary moments and a so-so ending.  All in all, it was OK and served as a nice ending to a hectic weekend.  In any case, the kids enjoyed themselves and that's what matters ultimately, right?  Right.

Pete's Wedding

Getting Dressed
The afternoon of the wedding rolled around and after my son and I returned from getting manicures and haircuts, we proceeded to take showers and get ready for the wedding by dressing in our suits.  Actually, my son took all of his stuff and drove to his girlfriend's in Huntington Beach, where he proceeded to get dressed over there and brought her to the wedding later.

Getting ready was really stress free and much better than I expected, because I suspected that something (something missing, ill-fitting, etc.) was *bound* to happen.  Nothing did and that was great.  Having previously agreed with my wife that I would get ready and go on my own, I did just that.

Getting There
Nary a problem.  I took off by myself and arrived there about 20 minutes later.  I was very early and I seemed to be the 1st of the guests to arrive. I arrived early enough that set-up of the tables and everything else was still taking place. 

Camera Setup
Seeing as to how I arrived extra early, I took the time to set up my Nikon D40 and tripod in different places around the area where the wedding was going to take place.  I took a few reference images and just waited for my brother to arrive.

Seeing Family
Eventually, my son and his girlfriend arrived (after being lost for a good 1/2 an hour) and the rest of the invited family showed up as well.  It was good to see a lot of people that I don't see every day, including my cousin Perla and her mom my Aunt Romelia.

The Wedding
Eventually, 6:30 P.M rolled around and the wedding itself started.  The priest was a little long-winded but I thought he officiated a very beautiful ceremony.  My brother and my new sister-in-law Patricia looked great together and it was very touching to se how emotional Patricia got when it was her turn to recite her Wedding Vows.

The ceremony itself proceeded perfectly and was great.  My niece Tori behaved great and did an awesome job as a ring girl.  Yay Tori!

The "Toast"
As is routine in my life now-a-days, I was caught completely unprepared to offer a toast (100% my fault, I just flaked and never got around to preparing notes for it) to my brother and his wife.  I had to wing and I think I did a reasonable job.  At least no one has said anything rude about my performance. So Far. That has gotten back to me.  I wonder what they *really* think?  Hmm.

The Reception
After the ceremony and the toast, We all got seated and proceeded to eat, dance and listen to some great music.  The Italian food was great  and the music was excellent.  It was combination of Jazz, Pop and Opera selected by my brother Peter.  It included Frank Sinatra, Andrea Bochelli, Placido Domingo, and the Buena Vista Social Club. 

It was truly an awesome reception and I had a really relaxing and just overall fabulous time.

Going Home
At around 11:00  P.M., when it was decided that no trip to  club down the street for further dancing was going to happen, the wife and I walked out to our cars and headed home without any problems, taking Ocean to 3rd Street to the 710 Long Beach Freeway to the 405 San Diego Freeway.

All in all it was a very nice wedding that was remarkably drama-free.  I am very happy for my brother and his new bride.   I hope this works out for both of them and that they spend the rest of ther lives together.

Posting over 1,000 pictures

A HUGE project has just been dropped in my lap. 

An acquaintance needs assistance choosing, resizing, and posting on a web page over 1,000 images of some items he is trying to sell as one large lot. The drudgery involved is related to having to either rename the files to include their cost in the file name or editing the individual images to add their cost on the image itself.

Doing that would take oodles of time that I simply don't have.  I need to find a more efficient way of making it easy to see the cost of the image you are looking at.

Easy to estimate that this project is going to be taking up most of free time for the next month or so...

Canada Fulbright Chair Speaker Series: Steven Starr

USC
Annenberg School Center for Public Diplomacy
Room 207
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
1837 Hrs

I am sitting at USC in the Annenberg School for Communication waiting for the talk by Steven Starr to begin at 1900 hours. 

Cory Doctorow is holding an animated discussion with two gentlemen on the evils of DRM and what the MPAA and the RIAA in lockstep with the hardware manufacturers are planning to foist on the public in terms of DRM and your ability to do what you want with the media you pay for.

Cory just stated that if you update your Creative MP3 player to get the newest firmware, it surreptitiously disables the ability to record from the built-in FM receiver, all this under the guise of “added functionality”. This is precisely the reason I am here tonight.

 Here we go:
 (1903 hrs) 

• Steven Starr is the co-founder of a company called Revver.
• Revver pays MORE the MORE a media file gets played
• He just mentioned the sale of YouTube to Google
• Revver sets up technology to allow the distribution of media files
• They have developed ‘Super Distribution’, where media files fly through the      Internet, reporting back to Revver “Hey, I'm being watched! Send me an Ad!”. So people get paid on those terms.
• Revver splits ad revenue 50-50 with the media creator
• The Mentos and Coke creators got:
  • 5 – 6M views and
  • got $70K in Ad revenue that they split with Revver, thus
  • making 35K on a 2.5 minute video that cost
  • $100-200 to make
• Revver has a set of tools and technologies, with an API that allows you to create      your own site and become an affiliate of Revver that makes money as a      re-distributor who makes 20% of the Ad revenue
• Content creators can opt out of Ad categories that they do not wish to be associated with
• Revver released its BETA 11 months ago
• They do NOT allow copyrighted video
• Revver has been seen as a company that has taken UGC to the forfront of the ‘free media conversation”.
• Revver uses CC licenses. Every piece of video flies out with a 2.5 version CC license.
• Revver is NOT a video portal destination site, per se. They differentiate themselves as a tools and services company

All in all, it was a great talk, where a lot of very good questions and issues were raised on the legalities and dangers of content creation and rights retentions/ownership in the world of UGC or User Generated Content.

Gnomedex Day # 1: Dave Dederer

Dave Dederer is on stage talking about business models that work. He is a founding member (not with them anymore) of the Presidents of the United States of America.

Audience members explaining Monetization of their business models. 

Discussion Notes:

• Guy from Dogster.com and Catster.com
• Market Share for artists
• Taking advantage of the Music on the Internet and selling it
• Artists that sell on the Internet are not in the music business but moreso in the “on-line business”
• Small Passionate commuinities are centered around different subjects will make this space successful
• Cory from Iota represents independant artists.  They help artisits get paid
• Her site is Promonet
• You can LEGALLY PLAY MP3 files on your Podcast if you get them from Promonet.
• Eric Rice played a Nat King Cole song on his Podcast and it was OK ‘cause he got it from Promonet
• Brian from Eventful is speaking
• Wil Wheaton is a huge fan of Eventful
• Alex Williams from the Podcast Hotel
• Marc Canter from People Aggregator is speaking
• Senator John Edwards is late.  Dave Dederer is riffing to make time…

Gnomedex Day #1: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington from TechCrunch is on stage.  This is Discussion Leader # 1. He is ranting about the fact that the Web 2.0 is not an Echo Chamber.

Discussion Notes:

• Digg 3.0 is HUGE, Size of the NY Times
• He thinks that a % of these comaonies like Digg and YouTube are going to make the jump to Mainstream
• Advertising is growing Dramtically
• Net Neutrality
• Michael Arrington is arguing that Web 2.0 will succeed.
• Arguing is getting hot.  Steve Gillmor just yelled at Arrington to speak up.  Arrington just demanded that a guy have his mike turned off.
• Geeks should not name things
• Steve Rafer and Arrington are heatedly going back back and forth about Web 2.0 is bulllshit.
• Success is defined as do you make money and are you making the Internet a better place?
• Edgio was launched for $75,000
• In ‘99 it would have cost $10,000,000
• Netscape is a miserable failure that has nothing left but to be a pale Digg Clone

Gnomedex 6.0: Day # 1

Gnomedex 6.0 has kicked off.  Chris Pirillo is on stage and so far so good.  Chris is on stage taking questions and someone just asked him for a TV to watch the World Cup…

Gnomdex 6.0: Day 0

Gnomedex 6.0 kicked off with a super reception at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle.  Most of the industry luminaries were there including Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Steve Gillmor, Marc Canter, Plillip Torrone from Make Magazine and of course, Chris and Ponzi Pirillo.

The vibe was tremendous and the food was excellent. If this was any indication, this conference promises to rock.

More to follow later...