Behind the Curtain - The Techno Bohemia Blog

"OMG Shoes!"

2008-12-04T09:30:00.001-05:00

I've never been much of a shoe owner. I usually have a beat up pair of black walking shoes that I can wear with just about anything and that's it.

That's why Piperlime fascinates me so. They have an assortment of vintage and unique boots that I'm going to have to buy!

The women's shoes section, by all accounts is amazing, especially the boots.

Trouble Shooters Podcast Coming Soon!

2008-12-01T10:39:00.001-05:00

At ELearning, we are frantically working on a short tech help podcast called The Trouble Shooters! We are going to answer questions from the ETSU student body about everything from campus OIT issues to ipods.

If you have a tech question of any kind, leave it here as a comment or contact us! We are fuelled on questions, so fill the tank!

Postage FAIL

2008-11-07T14:25:00.001-05:00

see more pwn and owned pictures

Crack Problem

2008-10-27T19:39:00.002-04:00

I broke 2 fingers last weekend.

I've gotten my work under control finally.

Now I really want to write, but it is frustrating to do it with this stupid hand cast/splint!

I'm doing most of it long-hand.

Workin' for the Future

2008-10-10T09:07:00.002-04:00

This week has been gruelling. I've not taken time to update my online sites because I've just been too run down from the long hours.

Monday and Tuesday we set up and did a live video conference for the Presidential Debate. We connected universities across Tennessee to allow students to voice their thoughts on the debate. This represented 3 weeks of R & D, building a remote unit that can patch into existing multimedia room equipment. It also saw our new deluxe light kit used on the same day it was unboxed! Fortunately, it went off without any problems at all! I got home after midnight Tuesday, physically and mentally exhausted.

Early the next morning I was back at work. I had to drive to Knoxville to fix a bad camera in our Division Street room. Fortunately, my buddy Xyon42 went with me on some City business. We didn't get back until 6pm, then some friends dropped by to watch some TV.

Thursday, we did a shoot at the Culp Center. Students participating in the Job Fair could come to us to leave a "Virtual Annual" video message. 10am - 5pm I interviewed students. We ended up with just about 3 hours of footage. The new light kit is awesome! It was nice to properly light a project! This was a big deal because it's the first scheduled video shoot on a weekday. We're now a production house!

Meanwhile, in normal work, I am flooded with emails from Kingsport. Lots of unrelated stuff. The guys do what they can, but I need to give it some personal attention. Unfortunately, I have no control over the network, where 90% of the problems live. I'm stretched pretty thin right now.

All this has left little time for my personal projects (or life.) I've twittered a little, but that's it. Now that my main computer is working again, I can get back into my proper routine.

Here's an update on the projects I'm working on:

Trouble Shooters Podcast...I passionately want to do this tech podcast, but it's too late in the semester to really do it justice. I need to get ONE out as a preview for spring and encourage students to send questions.

Audio Dramas: I hate that I've had to back-burner this one. When I started on it, I was under the impression that I would have MORE free time once school began, but I now seem to have LESS free time. I need to find a co-producer for this one. Someone who can do the heavy lifting so I'm free to finesse it.

Roller Girl Doc-Series - I'm considering doing a weekly documentary on the Little City Rollergirls. It's not only good for them, I think it's interesting and kooky enough to be irresistible to the college crowd. I'll have an inside view anyhow since I'm announcing for them.

MORE STUFF - Some major work developments are going to open up the world of production to us! I've just got to learn to manage my time so I can have time to work on them!

Finally, we're heading to the Unknown Hinson show tonight at the Hideaway! If you see me, give a shout!

SNL Digital Short - People Getting Punched Just Before Eating

2008-10-02T11:29:00.001-04:00

The Digital Shorts are the best part of SNL!

Sign Fail

2008-10-01T09:29:00.000-04:00

see more pwn and owned pictures

Steampunk is Dead

2008-09-30T09:07:00.002-04:00

MTV has made a special about it.

RIP Steampunk.

Qik Streaming from Asheville Tonight!

2008-09-27T15:40:00.002-04:00

I'll be playing with Qik on my iPhone while at the Blue Ridge Roller Girls bout in Asheville tonight!

Feel free to chat away!

Blue Ridge Roller Girls vs Big River Roller Girls - Asheville, Saturday Sept 27 6pm

2008-09-24T23:09:00.003-04:00

I'm a supporter of Johnson City's Little City Roller Girls!

Why, you ask?

Because I'm a fan of violent, hot chicks on wheels!

This weekend I'm heading to Asheville to catch a bout between Asheville's Blue Ridge Roller Girls and Richmond, VA's Big River Roller Girls! I'm doing a bit of research for my job announcing the Little City Roller's first official game November 9th! I want to see how over the top their announcer goes and try to go further.

Exciting!

Match time is 6pm!

Did an ETSU Student Make This?

2008-09-23T12:35:00.002-04:00

Did an ETSU Student Make This?
Originally uploaded by Shannon, The Ringmaster

I hope so, it's really nice! (It also blocks the dogpath that students have made across the lawn.)

If ETSU bought this, I'm going to be irritated.

UPDATE!
This is a piece by ETSU's Guest Artist. Err...I don't know his name yet, but I intend to find out!

Working on It

2008-09-22T07:49:00.002-04:00

Well, I had intended to get the first Snapper video up over the weekend, but I have hit a serious snag. I had to reinstall windows recently and erased my only copy of Photoshop! I have the disks at work, but I'm off today.

Snapper will arrive on the front page as soon as I can get the graphics made.

Sorry for the delay.

For those new to TechBo, Snapper is a short film about a redneck and a bloodthirsty giant snapping turtle. It was created by Southernecrology a while back and has a cult following among the TechBo crowd. It's not to be missed!

Coming Soon!

Bruce Sterling - The User's Guide to Steampunk

2008-09-21T10:29:00.002-04:00

Cut and pasted from GOGBOT 2008:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Sterling" bruceXXX@XX.com
To: "PLANETART" planetart@planet.nl

Bruce SterlingSent: Friday, July 11, 2008 6:18 PM
Subject: Re: steampunk at GOGBOT!

*Okay, here is a little essay for you.

bruces

The User's Guide to Steampunk

People like steampunk for two good reasons. First, it’s a great opportunity to dress up in a cool, weird way that baffles the straights. Second, steampunk set design looks great.The Industrial Revolution has grown old. So machines that Romantics considered satanic now look romantic.

If you like to play dress-up, good for you. You're probably young, and, being young, you have some identity issues. So while pretending to be a fireman, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever your parents want you to be, you should be sure to try on a few identities that are totally impossible.Steampunk will help you, because you cannot, ever, be an authentic denizen of the 19th century. You will meet interesting people your own age who share your vague discontent with today's status quo. Clutch them to your velvet-frilled bosom, because you will learn more from them than you ever will from your teachers.

Stretching your self-definition will help you when, in later life, you are forced to become something your parents could not even imagine. This is a likely fate for you.Your parents were born in the 20th century. Soon their 20th century world will seem even deader, weirder and more remote than the 19th. The 19th-century world was crude, limited and clanky, but the 20th-century world is calamitously unsustainable. I would advise you to get used to thinking of all your tools, toys and possessions as weird oddities destined for the recycle bin. Imagine starting all over with radically different material surroundings. Get used to that idea.

If you are European, you may further realize that you are surrounded by an ever-growing European "museum economy" that sells your heritage as a "heritage industry." Familiarity with steampunk will certainly help you here. The heritage industry does not sell heritage, because heritage is inherently unsellable. Instead, it sells the tourist-friendly, simplified, Photoshopped, price-tagged, Disneyized version of heritage. Steampunk is great at mocking and parodizing this activity. That's what makes steampunk a thoroughly contemporary act.

This dress-up costume play and these subcultural frolics will amuse and content 90 percent of the people involved in steampunk.

However, you may possibly be one of those troublesome 10 percent guys, not just in the scene but creating a scene. Frankly, the heaviest guys in the steampunk scene are not really all that into "steam." Instead, they are into punk. Specifically, punk's do-it-yourself aspects and its determination to take the means of production away from big, mind-deadening companies who want to package and sell shrink-wrapped cultural product.

Steampunks are modern crafts people who are very into spreading the means and methods of working in archaic technologies. If you meet a steampunk craftsman and he or she doesn't want to tell you how he or she creates her stuff, that's a poseur who should be avoided. Find the creative ones who want to help you, and who don't leave you feeling hollow, drained and betrayed. They exist. You might be one.

Steampunk began as a literary movement -- for some reason no one understands, it started with young Californian fantasists writing about Victorian Great Britain, specifically James P. Blaylock, Tim Powers and K. W. Jeter. This guy Jeter made up the term "steampunk." He made no money doing that, and you've likely never heard of him before now. I doubt this much bothers Jeter. Jeter was a major disciple of Philip K. Dick, so he always understood the inherent limits of bourgeois mundane reality.

Nowadays steampunk is not about historical pastiche with a sci-fi twist, because, although that's interesting, there's not a whole lot of room for literary maneuver there. Steampunk has become popular now because it is no longer just fiction. It is an international design and technology effort. Steampunk a counterculture arts and crafts movement in a 21st century guise.

If this idea makes your heart beat faster, I can save you a lot of trouble by recommending one brief essay called "On the Nature of the Gothic" by John Ruskin, the greatest design critic of the original steam era. Go read it. Read this manifesto with great care because it was the seed of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Jugendstil, Art Nouveau, William Morris wallpaper, Aubrey Beardsley Yellow Book decadence, romantic-nationalist architecture and about a thousand other things most steampunks would consider very cool.

Ruskin wrote an extremely influential and important essay which changed the world. Everything Ruskin says in that essay is wrong. The ideas in there don't work, have never worked and are never going to work. If you try to do the things Ruskin described in the spirit that Ruskin suggested, you are doomed.

However. If you try to do those things in a steampunk spirit, you might get somewhere useful. Steampunks are equipped with a number of creative tools and approaches that John Ruskin never imagined, such as design software, fabricators, Instructables videos, websites, wikis, cellphones, search engines and etsy.com. Successful steampunks are not anti-industrial as Ruskin was. They are digital natives and therefore post-industrial. This means that they can make their own, brand-new, fresh mistakes -- if they understand the old mistakes well enough not to repeat them.

Steampunk's key lessons are not about the past. They are about the instability and obsolescence of our own times. A host of objects and services that we see each day all around us are not sustainable. They will surely vanish, just as "Gone With the Wind" like Scarlett O'Hara's evil slave-based economy. Once they're gone, they'll seem every bit as weird and archaic as top hats, crinolines, magic lanterns, clockwork automatons, absinthe, walking-sticks and paper-scrolled player pianos.

We are a technological society. When we trifle, in our sly, Gothic, grave-robbing fashion, with archaic and eclipsed technologies, we are secretly preparing ourselves for the death of our own tech. Steampunk is popular now because people are unconsciously realizing that the way that we live has already died. We are sleepwalking. We are ruled by rapacious, dogmatic, heavily-armed fossil-moguls who rob us and force us to live like corpses. Steampunk is a pretty way of coping with this truth.

The hero of the funeral is already dead. He has no idea what is happening. A funeral is theater for the living.

Steampunk is funereal theater. It's a pageant. A pageant selectively pumps some life into the parts of the past that can excite us, such as the dandified gear of aristocrats, peculiar brass gadgets, rather stilted personal relationships and elaborate and slightly kinky underwear. Pageants repress the aspects of the past that are dark, gloomy, ugly, foul, shameful and catastrophic.But when you raise the dead, they bring their baggage.

There's not a lot we can do about the past; but we should never despair of it, because, as Czeslaw Milosz wisely said, the past takes its meaning from whatever we do right now. The past has a way of sticking to us, of sticking around, of just plain sticking.Even if we wrap the past around us like a snow-globe, so as to obscure our many discontents with our dangerous present, that willful act will change our future.Because that's already been tried. It was tried repeatedly. Look deep enough, try not to flinch, and it's all in the record. So: never mock those who went before you unless you have the courage to confront your own illusions.

The past is a kind of future that has already happened.

Time Spent By Artists

2008-09-21T09:11:00.001-04:00

more music charts

Good Times AND Gettin' Paid

2008-09-20T10:16:00.003-04:00

I love being busy with personal projects. Lately, I have been extra lucky in that my personal projects are becoming work projects! I would love to focus on producing web content for the university full time instead of doing system maintenance. Once the new engineer is hired, I may get my wish.

I met with Herb Parker, the director of ETSU Theatre's Hamlet on Monday. We discussed our vision for the show and I explained that I only needed two things from him. He was very gracious and accommodating, so I think that we are going to work very well together. I want this to be a DVD that they can be proud of. In fact, when I say "they," I mean the student-actors as well. I'm hoping to have them over for a party the first weekend in October to discuss their thoughts on having cameras stuffed in their faces for a few months.

My podcasts are frustrating me. I have two fairly straightforward shows planned, but I am having trouble getting either prepped to shoot! My schedule has lightened some, but I think I'm going to have to start working on them after hours if I want to get them done.

One is the audio podcast that I've been planning since early summer. This is a big production and each episode is going to take a couple weeks to produce properly. It's a major time sink, so it keeps getting bumped for more immediate plans.

The one I am pushing hard to get started on is a tech help and "life hacking" show called "Trouble Shooters." It relies on student questions to provide content, but I have yet to tap into a social space that reaches a major population of the ETSU student body to drum up questions! If you have any ideas, PLEASE let me know. Soon, I am going to see if I can get a news article on the ETSU website. Everything is in place except for the beginning content. I know we could make up questions, but that is betraying trust a little, to me. I'd rather gather some genuine, interesting questions about campus life and technology for the first ep.

The last video project is one that I've wanted to do since a luncheon last year where we set the direction for the podcasting production area. I want to find some improvisational comedians/actors for a bare-stage weekly improv show. Several months worth could be shot at a time and distributed throughout the year. CJ has been trying to motivate the campus Patchwork Players or the Improv Group in the Theater Department, but, so far, interest from performers seems to be lukewarm. If I get time near the end of the semester, I will hold auditions and make my own improv group that I KNOW will have the chops to do a good show.

Finally, I received an impassioned plea to put Southernecrology's giant turtles vs rednecks classic SNAPPER back online. I've got to admit, I have missed it to. ("OW! I hit my nuts on a rock!") I am trying to find time to get it posted with the original artwork intact, so it may be Sunday, Sept. 21 before it returns to the front page!

Thanks for sticking around! As always, keep in touch, contact us or use the forum.

I Will NOT Post a Cute Cat Video On This Site!

2008-09-16T16:00:00.004-04:00

The Title of this blog was a lie. I'm sorry, that was "Ninja Cat Comes Closer Without Moving" that I found on Laughing Squid.

"Talk Derby to Me"

2008-09-14T09:03:00.003-04:00

I am proud to say that Johnson City, TN's own Little City Roller Girls have asked me to announce their bouts live!

The Techno Bohemian crew have been supporting the Girls since they first began to resurrect Roller Derby in the area. If you haven't ever seen a flat track roller derby match, you're in for a treat!

Fast paced! Hot chicks! Unnecessary violence!

What's not to love?

Thanks to Stacie, Erin, and the ladies for giving me a chance to share the fun! In fact, they gave me a great compliment: "We thought you could sell the hell outta some spankin's!" They work hard to keep the bills paid and the girls in equipment, so please, if you can afford it, give to the Roller Girls. It won't solve any social problems, but you'll bring much happiness to the community!

I just hope they set up the spankin' booth at the match!

We're looking for a co-host! If you think you have what it takes to call a bought and keep up with the Ringmaster, drop me some feedback!

Roll on!

Gergeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show

2008-09-11T07:11:00.005-04:00

I just love this show! It's from one of the creators of The Guild!

"Lick Poop"

Watch all the episodes at Hulu.com!

A Remark on Denmark

2008-09-10T22:35:00.003-04:00

I'm perilously close to burning out at work again. I have been furiously dealing with constant technical issues for weeks now with little down time. However, there is one thing that will keep me going until next summer!

I have been asked to produce the DVD/Online release of the Theater Department's production of Hamlet this coming spring! Best of all, I am going to do my darndest to get the Techno Bohemia Productions imprint on the final package!

I should be meeting with the Director of Photography from the Theater Department later this week to hash out the details of the production! David seems to be a good guy who really knows video production, I am excited to work with him and all of the Theater Department. (I am a lucky guy, I've known many of the theater instructors for years and have been wanting to collaborate with them for some time! Now, all at once, here it is!)

This is not going to be some half assed student production. I want it to be slick and pro. That's why I'm calling in the A-Team for this one. Part of the instructions I received on the project was to pull in as many University resources as possible and I intend to do just that!

I'll drop more names of folks involved and more detail as work progresses. Watch this space because I'm going to be keeping a production journal!

I have been waiting to get paid for a project like this for a long time! I intend to make it something really special so I can do more!

Techno Bohemia is...

2008-09-09T08:26:00.003-04:00

Down again.

It was a script injection hack this time. I managed to catch the script before it fully executed last night, but it's going to take some time to restore from backups since I have a full work schedule today. Luckily, the server has been set up to compartmentalize these things, so no other hosted sites should be affected by this incident.

TechBo will be back soon.

Trailer - Tokyo Gore Police

2008-09-08T15:05:00.005-04:00

From geek-guru Steve at work, here's the trailer to "Tokyo Gore Police!" Rated R!

I had mentioned to him how much I loved The Machine Girl and her tempura hand scene so he sent me this! This looks even more over the top! What's not to love?

Steampunk Dalek

2008-09-07T21:07:00.001-04:00

Steampunk Dalek
Originally uploaded by Shannon, The Ringmaster

Amazing!

This is the ultimate realization of my two greatest scifi passions, Steampunk and Doctor Who!

Read the full story (and how it was made out of a shampoo bottle) on Boing Boing!

How Would I Look With Sideburns?

2008-09-07T03:05:00.006-04:00

DragonCon this year has reconnected me with one of my favorite forms of speculative fiction. It is one of the Old Ones, one of the foundations of modern science fiction that drew me into my lifelong obsession in the first place!

After nearly a century of slumber, steampunk is maturing! I will never forget being five years old and reading a child's version of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." It was abridged, but the illustrations are probably what captured my imagination and forced me to explore classic literature more. Captain Nemo had a submarine! A fantastic machine that only existed in fiction. Not only was it an astounding work of science, it kept the victorian sensibilities of the time, being largely iron decorated with brass and sumptous wood. It was a palace beneath the sea! A monument to futuristic technology, while at the same time, firmly rooted in that era's current technology, the industrial revolution. Brilliance! In the days before gasoline, nuclear power, or even the battery, our society was fuelled by a more primal technology...steam.

The steam engine, regardless of who gets credit for inventing it, made our current world of technology possible. It gave us the power to automate tasks and increase accuracy and consistency of products. It gave us the means to create the materials that would move us forward past steam to more efficient and powerful fuels.

Steampunk asks the question, what if technology never moved past water power, yet surpassed what we currently know? Robots fuelled by steam and coal, clockwork prosthetics, weapons using crystals and light. In steampunk, we live in the Victorian era, yet we have the steam powered technology of the distant future! Technology that is as artistic as it is futuristic! Copper, brass, wood, natural, mechanical objects that transcend their anachronistic appearance and become nearly magical in their technological magnificence! It's all about human ingenuity and craftsmanship!

An air of civility and manners surround Victorian steampunks! An adventurous lady will carry a pouch and a teacup on her belt, because no one should be without a cup of tea when all is dark. Men in tophats sporting goggles to deal with the winds while navigating their flying contraptions through the sunset clouds!

It has sparked my imagination as long as I can remember, and this year, I find that it has matured and begun to leak into the mainstream! The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, Brisco County, Jr., Captain Nemo, and even Wild Wild West have carried the tradition quietly and with great dignity, but I feel like steampunk is finally coming into its own! When I red William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine in the late 80s, I was astounded that someone had written a book in a genre that I believed was destined to be exclusively on the fringe of fandom, but now, there's hope that it might be stepping into the spotlight after all these years!

Chumley and I have been talking about going all out and designing some beautiful steampunk costumes for next year, and I've never been so excited! (His, of course, is going to be amazing and talked about for years!)

Maybe I should trim my beard into a more victorian look!

Poop.

2008-09-01T22:41:00.001-04:00

photo.jpg
Originally uploaded by Shannon, The Ringmaster

For Astrocomical...

It's official.

You have created a MOVEMENT!

Killers From Space!

2008-08-30T20:49:00.002-04:00

photo.jpg
Originally uploaded by Shannon, The Ringmaster

Killers from Space!