BryanSays.com

Episode 10: DSLR & Comic Advice, Apple News

bryan — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:02:12 +0000

This episode was packed full of guests and goodness where we discussed what to look for when buying your first Digital SLR Camera, good comics to get for a comic book newbie, and Apple’s latest announcements.

What to look for in your first DSLR?

Marc Weintraub and Lee Benoit start off the show with their takes on DSLRs. Marc started first with a series of questions to ask yourself before deciding to get a DSLR from a still picture point of view:

Are you upgrading?
Why are you upgrading?
What did you like about your old camera?
Are you just getting a camera that focuses/shoots faster than your P&S?
Do you plan on changing lenses (getting more lenses)?
Are you creative?
Do you like the shallow depth of field look?
Do you shoot a lot in low light?
Do you plan on getting “good” at this?
Will you shoot video?
Do you want to shoot good video/audio?

Lee followed up the discussion with the viewpoint of using the DSLR for shooting video. Lee also provided some good links for those looking to use your DSLR for video:
The DSLR Filmmaker’s Workflow
DSLRFilm.com

Camera models mentioned:

Good Comics to get for a Comic Newbie (like me)

Justin Vactor, Jason Huebel, and Clay Harrison took the stage next with their takes on good comics to read for a new comic book reader like myself. Just like cameras, its hard to suggest comics without knowing the person since everyone has different tastes. Below is the list they came up with of notable series for the major comic companies:

Marvel	DC	Vertigo	Independent
- Amazing Spider-man	- Batman/Superman Comic	- Losers	- Locke & Key
- Invincible Iron Man	- Wonder Woman	- American Vampire	- Walking Dead
- Ultimate Books (Fantastic 4, Spider-man, X-Men)	- Brightest Day Series	- Fable	- Bone
- Ultimates	- Superman: Last Family of Krypton	- Preacher	- Chew
- Runaways	- Green Lantern	- Sandman	- Invincible
	- Batman: Year One	- The Unwritten	- The Goon
	- The Dark Knight Returns	- Pride of Baghdad
	- Starman: Sins of the Father

New iPods / iTunes 10 / Ping / Apple TV

We cap off the episode discussing Apple’s latest announcement of new iPods, iTunes 10 with Ping, and a new Apple TV.

News Stories:

AppleTV vs the Competition
10 Things you need to know about Apple’s Ping
All the Cool Stuff from Apple

Guest Host Info

Justin Vactor: FusedFilm.com / GeeksofDoom.com / @vactor
Lee Benoit: 337Studios.com / @skettalee
Marc Weintraub: WhatsWrongPhoto.com / @mrdat
Jason Huebel: JasonHuebel.name / @jhuebel
Clay Harrison: ClayHarrison.net / TheHumanCinemapede.com / @clay_harrison

Das Racist’s “Who’s That? Brooown!” 8bit Lovin

bryan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:33:26 +0000

The latest Music video from the self proclaimed “Ethnic Electronic Band,” Das Racist mixes tons of 8bit video game references from Frogger, Double Dragon, Tetris, and more. The video is essentially an 8 bit game itself taking you on a adventure with Himanshu and Victor to substitute for Justin Beiber and Jay-Z, who were bit by a meteor shower. Along they way they fight street thugs, yuppies, and do a dance-off. Crazy I know! Check out the video below:

Notable Screenshots from the video:

You can also play the game in the music video as well on Das Racist’s site.

Sources: [Pitchfork.com] [DasRacist.net]

Episode 9: iTV, Epic Win, phone calls in my gmail

bryan — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:23:47 +0000

I welcome Justin Vactor from FusedFilm.com and RJ Hudecek from sparekarma.com for this episode. We talk about the apple rumors of the $99 iTV and will it be the catalyst for the demise of cable. We debate the pros and cons to of the current apple tv. Two iphone apps are previewed: Epic Win, the task list RPG and MessageParty, basically chatroom + geolocation. We talk privacy and Facebook Places. I voice my love for Google’s addition of Google Voice calls through gmail.

You can find Justin Vactor on his various podcasts:

You can find RJ Hudecek at on SpareKarma.com or check out his two iphone apps:

The Yin-Yang Meal

bryan — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 06:04:09 +0000

Having a little fun with photoshop. Had Pizza and Salad for dinner last night and thought, “This is the perfect Yin-Yang Meal. Got your good and bad on the same plate.” I’ll be back with some real content soon. Recording a podcast tomorrow with Justin Vactor and RJ Hudecek.

Episode 8: Top 5 Twitter Followers and Fall TV 2010

bryan — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 08:59:39 +0000

In this episode we list the Top 5 people on twitter we all follow. We voice our opinions on our favorite summer TV shows. We also delve into the new TV shows coming out in the fall from the major networks. I’m joined by guest hosts: Clay Harrison, Marc Weintraub, and Lee Benoit.

Top 5 People We Follow on Twitter

	Bryan	Clay	Marc	Lee
1	arstechnica	pattonoswalt	NikonRumors	nickvegas
2	GeekTyrant	3rdand10	wizwow	Me_ow
3	rainnwilson	WhitneyCummings	common_squirrel	AdamCarolla
4	nerdist	SarahKSilverman	photojack	videocopilot
5	AmazonMP3	rstevens	bryansays	SignalNoise

Read on to see the rundown of the Fall shows we discussed and listen to the podcast.

Fall 2010 TV Shows

The reference list we used to rate the fall shows is TV Guide’s Fall 2010 Preview. There were 29 shows on the list, so I had everyone rate the shows based on the descriptions and previews on each station’s website. Below is the list all the new fall shows we talked about during the podcast:

We sure to check out these sites and projects by the podcast guests:

Our Show 4.0 – Lee’s new podcast with his son (Lee)
OpenCamp – Workshop in Dallas providing classes on WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and .Net (Clay)
The Human Cinemapede – Site dedicated to discussing film, TV and anything entertainment (Clay)
What’s Wrong Photo – Photography blog geared towards helping notice photogs with their gear (Marc)

Episode 7: Battle of the Check-ins

bryan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:34:28 +0000

In this episode we talk about the many location based social networks out there now. My guests are Herman Davis, who is a local twitter friend that is heavy into these location services. He was also interviewed in the local paper for using services like foursquare and gowalla. We are also joined by Lee Benoit, who’s a regular to the show. We all chime in discussing the various pros and cons for each of the services. We discuss why Foursquare seems to be the leader of the bunch. We also discuss all of the others like gowalla, brightkite, whrrl, scvngr, check.in, and google latitude. We also gossip on who will come out the leader of the bunch and who might die off. Also discussed was whether or not google or facebook might create their own location based network.

Herman Davis can be found online at http://hdavis.buildlastingsuccess.com and Lee Benoit can be found at http://337studios.com

July 2010 SETX Tweetup

bryan — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:01:16 +0000

Thanks everyone that showed up for the Southeast Texas tweetup. This had to be one of our biggest turnouts to date! We had the tweetup at Starvin Marvins Bar & Grill, a new restaurant/bar that opened up here in the last two months. I was fortunate enough to reserve their private room for free. It was nice being in a cool air-conditioned room instead of out on the patio in muggy Texas heat. We had a good mix of new and old faces. We had tweeters, facebookers and a couple that were neither. I counted 14 people in total. That’s a lot in lil Beaumont,TX. It was a far cry from our humble beginnings of 4-5 we had at the first tweetup. I think everyone had a good time. Some people socialized while others took the opportunity for some social networking.

I did make up some nametags this time around, where I had people write their twitter handles instead of their real names. This gave people the opportunity to match up a face to one’s twitter identity. Since we had a lot of people who used social media at the tweetup, I also broke the news about the Social Media Club of Beaumont that Justin McCullough and I have been working on the past few months. All in all a great event and I can’t wait to have the next one soon.

Thanks to @409now, @beaumartian, @beaumontbeth, @cookingoutloud, @curatorgirl, @irishplague, @jess_benton, @laurawxx @mccjustin @mickster09 @reneeintx , chad and steve.

UPDATE 07/30/10: Justin McCullough sent in this video he took from his Droid.

My audio review of Inception

bryan — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:05:51 +0000

I recorded my audio review with a social network service called cinchcast. This service allows me to record audio messages by calling in their phone number,recording via their iphone app, or via my PC. I can then share the posts with twitter, facebook, or embedding it in a blog post like I did below. Well the review itself is pretty spoiler free. I do agree with firstshowing.net that this “IS the movie event of the summer.” I really can’t wait to get a second viewing just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. There’s a lot of speculation as to what happened in the ending. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Episode 6: Glitter Puked Double Rainbows

bryan — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:09:52 +0000

We have a new guest Paul Noyola who’s a local friend and musician from the area. We are also joined by the always hilarious RJ Hudecek. This episode we explore the world of YouTube and the popular viral (meme) internet videos out now. We discuss the Double Rainbow explosion. Jewel punks a karaoke bar for funny or die. We chat about all the Ke$ha parodies out there on the internet. Let’s all go on an acid quest with Adrien Brody‘s cutout. We debate the marketing genius of the Old Spice ads but do we really want to smell like a 65 year old man?

Be sure and check out Paul’s music at http://noyolamusic.com and RJ has two iPhone apps now at http://sparekarma.com

Intro Music: Noyola “Feed My Pain”

7 Ways a Blogger Can Add Value to News Conversation

bryan — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 23:05:44 +0000

First of all these are not my ideas but I wanted to share them with my readers as well. These tips are courtesy of Marshall Kirkpatrick, technology journalist for Read Write Web. I frequently listen to his “audio thoughts” podcast or cinchcast. I highly recommend following him on twitter and cinchcast. You will get an insightful look on his thought processes In his most recent recording, Marshall discussions the seven ways a news blogger can add value to a news conversation.

1. You can be First

If you are first to comment or write about a breaking topic or news event, you are sure to get lots of traffic assuming its a topic people are interested in reading.

2. You can be Funny

Oh yes! Funny is the Number 1 thing women look for a man and there are more women on the planet then men. So there you go

3. Synthesize / Summarize / Clarify

Do so in a way that the conversation can be really used. This is key, especially for topics that are not easily digestible to the average reader. If you can take a complex topic and summarize it into layman’s terms, other news sources will go to you or at least copy you. Especially if you are First and Funny.

4. Curate other high quality perspectives

Curation seems to be all of the buzz today. Many of us out there don’t want to scour the net to find every single source over a single topic so we go to certain blogs that do all of the grunt work to find the best sources and put them all together.

5. Add new details

Add new details to an existing conversation.

6. Add a new perspective to the story

Find a new angle to a story that all the other stories out may have overlooked.

7. Writing in a more compelling way

Mechanically you put the writing together in a more compelling way than anybody else.

I’m sure Marshall was “thinking out loud” with he recorded this for an upcoming blog post so expect a more detailed writeup from him on Read Write Web. At the end of his recording he asked the audience for more tips, so if you have more tips for him, be sure to send him a reply on twitter.

Below is Marshall Kirkpatrick’s cinch