today, ellen allien @ APT
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yummy-yummy!
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you may want to hear an mp3 of her (right-click on windows, alt-click on a mac), straight from her website

applescript wish list
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an applescript that automatically pauses itunes (be it on my personality, or another) whenever a quicktime or windows media video is playing.
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and resumes the song after it stops.
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isight does that, when you start a conversation… it asks for your undivided attention, and tho it’s kinda blunt (no fade out, just plain pause), it works fine.

promethea DVD
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I’m used to read comics on my computer (all I have to do is to turn my notebook to the side, and view the pages as a slideshow) and since I installed iDVD, i was dying to try it out.
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so, I decided to make a comics DVD, which means, a slideshow DVD with an entire comic collection. I wanted to make sure the navigation was the same or better than the paper version, so I decided for a comic I didn’t read it yet and I would surely love. alan moore’s promethea seemed like a good bet.
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below are some screenshots of my progress. sadly, I realized I had no more blank DVDs to spare, so I have to wait till I’ll buy a new batch.
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click on each image to view it bigger, with technical notes (another nice feature of flickr). then, roll the mouse over each square to read them.
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DVD cover menu: this one is default from iDVD. since you can’t use more than 12 chapters and I had 31 issues, I organized each 3 issues on one.
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chapter detail: iDVD shows the exact same folders and organization from iPhoto (pictures) and iTunes (music). it’s no good at refreshing, tho, so the best move is to organize all folders & pictures on iPhoto, and then start on iDVD.
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project map: iDVD has a limit of 99 images on each slideshow, so a manga has to be chopped down, for example. it worked fine with american comics, tho.
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disclaimer: I made it for my own consumption, and although I downloaded the entire collection from bittorrent (bad boy) I also own the editions. i guess I don’t have to bother about it, since ABC comics is a small company, and instead of think “ohmygod, those little rascals found another way to rip us off” they’ll probably think “hey, another source of revenue for our collections, and look: it’s cheaper to produce than our trade paperbacks!” (sadly, it only works good on dvd notebooks - you have to rotate the monitor to read it)
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update:sadly, ABC comics is a branch of wildstorm comics, which is an offshot of DC comics, owned by warner. shoud I wait the media conglomerate unleash its minion of ferocious lawyers upon my (literaly) poor soul, or is the plutocratic police state of amerika not done yet?

you’re not welcome
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if you search for RNC on flickr, you’ll find a lot of pictures of the protest. enjoy it, you won’t find that much on the mass media.

“Where did this backup copy thing come from? A digital thing lasts forever.”
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engadget interviews jack valenti, the president of MPAA. I’ve seen the same silly ideas from some CEOs I worked with. a mix of wonder and fear of the “technology”. after an idiot analogy and clueless statements (like the title, above), i had to reply.
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ok, I tried to listen to him with open mind, but the faulty analogies (they really want to sell ideas as products, right?), just pisses me off.
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“A digital thing lasts forever”. thing? what thing? the “thing” with digital is that we finally separated the content from its representation (the vessel, so to speak). the digital is always experienced by some vessel, but it can jump around to new vessels, and that’s what makes it last forever. the name of this game is SHARING (if it’s for others) and BACKING UP (if it’s for yourself).
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i mean, it only lasts forever if you BACKUP YOUR STUFF constantly. otherwise, it will just die away with the media. and guess what, our media are fragile, real fragile. any oxidation, or magnectic pulse can destroy it. if we don’t share or backup (same technique here, remember) it just inherits the physical properties of its vessel, and dies away.
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sharing and backing up digital data is precisely the only way to keep it eternal. and that’s what we’re doing.
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please, don’t patronize me with this talk. either he doesn’t get it, or he thinks he can dupe us with silly words.

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and remembering that those guys have more power to shape our laws than our elected politicians… democracy my ass, we’re already living in a corporate plutocracy.

getting organized
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in this week alone, i started three new projects. all easy and fun, but I can be overwelmed by small details (i’m an ADHD-type person, and i’m more confortable with abstract concepts than with this cold hash reality, sniff!).
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so i built this calendar, to be printed (and cut in half, and glued together) and shown poster-like, so you can write down every new appointment or timeframe and consult it to get organized.
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BTW, this flashpaper was made on a mac, thanks to contribute 3.
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I don’t give a flying fuck for contribute features - to depend your project updates on a corporate communications system is simply insanity for my open source tastes - but flashpaper (macromedia’s solution for adobe acrobat, give or take) is da bomb!

ted turner on media consolidation:

“Big media today wants to own the faucet, pipeline, water, and the reservoir. The rain clouds come next.”

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nice article, and perfect timming: outfoxed (a documentary denouncing rupert murdoch policies) is #1 on dvd listings at amazon.