Voting for panels for next year’s SXSW is up, and we’re part of a late entry submitted by Tim Shey! So head over to vote for it or any of the other great panels!

Our Galacticast video The Supermarios has been selected to be screened at the Mississauga Independent Film Festival on Sunday, July 13th, at 11am in the Short Program B category. So, if you’re in the Mississauga area, go check it out at the CineStarz Theatre!

Special thanks to Matt and Jeff Campagna for all their hard work organizing the event. Judging from the article in The Globe and Mail, all that work is finally paying off.

Galacticast is being featured as the Site of the Week in a great article on the AMC blogs this week. Special thanks to Alex Zalben for the promotion!

A “brief” stop over at the NextNewNetworks turned into a guest-star appearance on Indy Mogul, one of our favorite shows. Run by kindred spirits Erik Beck and Justin Johnson, it’s not only a wealth of DIY movie making projects, but genuinely funny too.

What: It’s Jonny’s Par-tay, an interactive, live, online video talkshow.

When to watch: Wednesday, October 31, 9PM Eastern

Interactivity: Participate in the show via the live chatroom, and we’ll even feature you on live video if you have a webcam and a free Operator11 Account

Who: Featured guests Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan, host Jonny Goldstein, and you.

How to watch: All you need is broadband internet access and a computer.

Where to watch: jonnygoldstein.com

What to bring: Your questions, comments, costumes, and desire to par-tay (lampshade not provided, that’s on you).

-Casey

PANEL: Friday, August 24
8:00-9:00 Sci Fi Superstars of the Internet – It is the age of video on the Internet, and science fiction fans all over the world are creating their own shows and building huge audiences! Come see some of the best-known sci-fi stars of the web and find out how they got to where they are today, and how you too can get involved. Panelists include the producers of Chad Vader, Galacticast, Pure Pwnage, Red vs. Blue, Star Trek: New Voyages, and Your Geeks News/BSGcast.

BOOTH: Galacticast and Your Geek News will be at FanExpo all weekend at booth #1308.

We’ve got a new video coming on Monday, August 27th… until then, ROBOJEW IS GO!!!

Download MP3 (512 KB)

Link: RoboJew vs. Giant Nazi Woman of the SS

• Best Fan Podcast
• Best Video Podcast
• Best Video Production

Cross your GalactiFingers for us… and if you plan to be at DragonCon, let us know by leaving a comment!

JETSET is not for freakin’ kids people. Get it straight. Cereal commercials?? You DON’T want to piss me off.

Well, it looks like Galacticast IS for freakin’ kids… and we’re frakkin’ proud of it too!

The above video was sent to us by supreme GalactiFan Rainlin and her exceptional mother KityKity! Thanks, girls!

Now… let’s watch those cereal sponsorships roll in… LOL

The worst villain of all time… returns on Galacticast!

Coming Monday, July 16, 2007.

http://www.parsecawards.com/node/39

Dear GALACTIFANS,

This week marks the official 1-year anniversary of Galacticast! To celebrate, we’d like to invite anyone in the Montreal area to a party on Friday, May 25, 2007 at Galacticast HQ.

The festivities begin at 8pm! Please RSVP at [casey at galacticast dot com] to get the address.

Hope to see you there!
Casey

—
Casey McKinnon,
Executive Producer, GALACTICAST

In celebration of Galacticast’s one-year anniversary, we’ve decided to donate all funds raised from sponsor credits to Child’s Play, a charity that provides video games to sick children. The organization was founded by the folks at Penny Arcade (only the best web comic.. ever), and we want to support them in their mission of gamer good will.

We’ve been so fortunate in this first year and want to spread the joy. We truly hope that you’ll help us help the kids.

Casey out.

Matt’s Panties visit New York City with Rudy and Casey…

Above: A still from our latest episode entitled Rose By Any Other Name

Thanks to a man named Stephen Schleicher, all we had to do to get the “Grindhouse” effect was follow his instructions here and play around with the settings a little bit to get it the way we wanted it.

After using his settings I then desaturated the video image a little and played around with the hue to get a redder finish.

This passed February, GALACTICAST episode Superman I.V was screened in New York City at the Pioneer Theatre. The above video footage was taken by our friend Bill Cammack to make us feel like we were there at the event. Yes… Bill rocks, doesn’t he…?

That’s right, folks. For only $20,000 you can become GOD EMPEROR of GALACTICAST… with all the benefits of a Producer (linked credit in
shownotes, full screen ad credit in our videos) but for AN ENTIRE YEAR!

Will it work? Who knows…

If it does work, the world will be a beautiful place. Of course, you can still get one of our other sponsorship credits starting at $5… every little bit counts

Link: GALACTICAST Sponsorships

Above: A clip from In A Mirror, Frakly that we posted as an April Fool’s joke.

Looking for kick ass content for your new Apple TV? Go ahead and subscribe to our new high quality QuickTime feed made especially for the Apple TV: Click here to subscribe in iTunes.

The Trailer…

The Entry…

Click here to vote for Casey to win the Silent Air Guitar Challenge!!!
(Voting ends Sunday, March 11, 2007 at Midnight PST – Only 2 votes allowed/IP)

FINALLY!!! For those of you interested in checking out our interview on This Morning Live, click here and do a search for Galacticast (01/02/07).

N.B. Notice that the interviewer is Barbarella from Bar Wars…

For all those Second Life fiends out there, we had the opportunity to be interviewed by SL beauty queen Britney Mason recently about Galacticast. Click here to visit her site and click on “play show” to watch the show.

This fulfills one of the wishes on our wish list and we are eternally grateful to Tim Shey and his cameraman for having the guts to do it. We’d also like to thank Kevin Smith for being a good enough guy to take a moment and check out a clip from our show. And, Kevin, if you’re listening… someday we hope to grab your attention again with a Degrassi parody… a little Zit Remedy cover, perhaps?

UPDATE: You can Digg this article here

Rudy did some fancy coding tonight to provide you with the embed codes to copy and paste any of our episodes in two easy steps:

1. Click on “embed”
2. Copy and paste the code on your site, profile or blog

Voila! Go forth and multiply…

-Casey

Special thanks to Blip.tv for organizing the event.

I apologize to anyone who would have liked to attend this screening, but we didn’t have much information about it in advance.

Link: BBC Two Listings

Link: http://podcast.reelhorror.com/episodes/episode_67/

To all the rest of you outside Quebec- Global TV has agreed to put the footage on their web site after it airs so that you can all see it at a later date… I’ll write a blog post to let you know when it’s up.

Who am I…?

We love it SO MUCH… and couldn’t wait to show the world. Don’t be surprised if you see this lovely image on the GalactiFridge sometime soon!

Chris was disappointed that we didn’t have an outtake at the end of Project Gamma this week. Don’t worry, Chris, it won’t happen again… we were just a little pressed for time this week and didn’t have time to go through all the footage to find our screw ups. SO… I hope you enjoy this little montage of outtakes we’ve put together to satisfy your cravings.

Links: Project Gamma; Viva Pinata Commercial (“That was ACTING, children!”)

Go forth and multiply,
The Galacticast Crew

The “For Your Consideration” Trailer

Widescreen

<embed wmode="transparent" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/blipplayer.swf?autoStart=false&file=http://blip.tv/file/get/Galacticastwiki-TheForYourConsiderationTrailerWidescreen826.flv%3Fsource%3D3" quality="high" width="480" height="290" name="movie" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

Click here for other available formats

Letterbox

<embed wmode="transparent" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/blipplayer.swf?autoStart=false&file=http://blip.tv/file/get/Galacticastwiki-TheForYourConsiderationTrailerLetterbox844.flv%3Fsource%3D3" quality="high" width="320" height="260" name="movie" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

Click here for other available formats

Revver

Click here to get the Revver embed codes

YouTube

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/H2Ge-czSErk"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/H2Ge-czSErk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

The Romantic Comedy Trailer

Widescreen

<embed wmode="transparent" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/blipplayer.swf?autoStart=false&file=http://blip.tv/file/get/Galacticastwiki-TheRomanticComedyTrailerWidescreen922.flv%3Fsource%3D3" quality="high" width="480" height="290" name="movie" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

Click here for other available formats

Letterbox

<embed wmode="transparent" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/blipplayer.swf?autoStart=false&file=http://blip.tv/file/get/Galacticastwiki-TheRomanticComedyTrailerLetterbox335.flv%3Fsource%3D3" quality="high" width="320" height="260" name="movie" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

Click here for other available formats

Revver

Click here to get the Revver embed codes

YouTube

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mlaF8u63IKg"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mlaF8u63IKg" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

The Extreme Action Trailer

Widescreen

<embed wmode="transparent" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/blipplayer.swf?autoStart=false&file=http://blip.tv/file/get/Galacticastwiki-TheExtremeActionTrailerWidescreen407.flv%3Fsource%3D3" quality="high" width="480" height="290" name="movie" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

Click here for other available formats

Letterbox

<embed wmode="transparent" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/blipplayer.swf?autoStart=false&file=http://blip.tv/file/get/Galacticastwiki-TheExtremeActionTrailerLetterbox243.flv%3Fsource%3D3" quality="high" width="320" height="260" name="movie" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

Click here for other available formats

Revver

Click here to get the Revver embed codes

YouTube

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/w0t_8ANWxQ0"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/w0t_8ANWxQ0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

Subject: Notice of Copyright Infringement

Dear MyHeavy,

I wish to inform you that you have been illegally re-posting our content on MyHeavy.com. Galacticast (http://www.galacticast.com) is a web video show that is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/), which means:

1. Attribution – There must be a link back to our original post at Galacticast.com
2. Non-Commercial – You may not make profit from re-distributing our work (unless we have signed a pre-arranged licensing agreement)
3. Share Alike – Our content must be re-distributed under an identical license.

MyHeavy has violated all three of the above clauses by not linking to our site, profiting by banner ad sales placed before and during our videos and by re-releasing our show under a “Copyright MyHeavy” license instead of the required identical Creative Commons license.

It has come to our attention that you have also infringed on the copyrights of other web video producers using other web hosts (Blip TV and Google Video) by re-posting their content without their knowledge. Be assured that we have already informed everybody in the Videoblogging community about this.

Please contact us to establish a licensing agreement. Otherwise, take this as notice to remove our content immediately. We expect you to reply directly to us (biz@galacticast.com) or to Mike Hudack at Blip TV (mike@blip.tv) within 24 hours.

Please note that a copy of this e-mail is being posted at http://www.galacticast.com.

Regards,
Casey McKinnon
Executive Producer, Galacticast
Web: http://www.galacticast.com/
E-mail: biz@galacticast.com
Phone: ###-###-####

Above: Our video response to Violet Blue’s Top Ten Sexiest Geeks of 2006

Other relevant Links: Ze Frank; Micki Krimmel, Kevin Rose, Mike Hudack, Violet’s 2005 List

1. Frosty the Snowman – Emily Chatrand
2. Santa Cylon is Coming to Town – El Cylono Dos Robotico
3. O Unholy Night – Minnie
4. Away on a Deathstar – The Emperor
5. Carol of the Bells – Monolith
6. Little Dalek Boy – Dalek
7. Baby It’s Cold Outside – Queen Kong and Andrew
8. Jingle Bells – Superman
9. 500 Sheep – The Procloners

Rudy and I were tagged by Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf for Blog-Tag: A game for a virtual cocktail party. Who were in turn tagged by Steve Garfield and Chris Brogan.

So without further ado, here are our five facts:

Casey McKinnon

1. She is a descendant of United Empire Loyalists who escaped the American Revolution, and is distinguished by the capitals U.E. affixed to her name: Casey Erin McKinnon U.E. (She rarely uses the title since she does not want to be perceived as arrogant)
2. She is blood related to two US Presidents: #41 and #43.
3. Other than English, she has studied Korean, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Gaelic, Spanish and French.
4. When applying to a Masters degree in International Security, she impressed a former CIA agent working at the University by spying on him and later reporting her findings to him during her interview… including information stating that he had died in the 1970s.
5. With $20 left to her name, she once headed out onto the streets of Edinburgh (Scotland) as an Elvis impersonator to collect money busking to passers by. Too shy to perform to the strangers on the street, she went home… and found a message on her answering machine offering her a job.

Rudy Jahchan

1. Went to British school in the Middle East and actually had a British accent until losing it after he moved to Canada.
2. His parents dated during the Lebanese Civil War and his father crossed the frontline every day to see his mother.
3. He once won second place in an art contest to create a poster with the theme “put Christ back into Christmas”.
4. He once tried to write a Titanic musical with his brother Dany.
5. He nearly flew off a cliff in the Swiss Alps while on a ski trip with his school.

So now we’re tagging Mario Librandi, Amanda Congdon, Josh Leo, Michael Tyas and Bonny Pierzina.

Today, the Gazette has released the article in the Urban Life column under the Arts & Life section: In a galaxy not so far, far away…

After being in the Hollywood Reporter and the BBC, it’s really nice to be featured in our local newspaper. Thanks Steve!

More Production pictures can be found here. Can YOU guess what we’ll be parodying?

“Galacticast, a weekly sci-fi comedy shot in a Montreal apartment, is one of the few with enough talent and imagination to be truly funny and watchable.”

Thanks BBC! We love you… and not only because you brought us The Young Ones and Doctor Who…

Come join us for a live chat on Thursday night for Reinventing Television. The show is online and interactive, so come by and ask us any question(s) you wish!

When: Thursday, Nov 30, 10PM Eastern (7PM Pacific)
Where: In the Reinventing Television Studio
What: A live interactive internet video talk show with special guests, the creators of Galacticast, host Jonny Goldstein, and you.

Hope to see you there!

More footage for you dirty GalactiFans…

Casey got this new wig last month and we LOVE it… it’s meant to look like Pamela Anderson, but we’re using it for a sexy Starfleet girl character in next week’s episode. More pics here.

Casey was interviewed by Steve Bryant from the Hollywood Reporter this week in New York about Galacticast’s five Vloggie win and the future of the show.

If you can’t guess what we’re parodying next week, you have a problem… click here to see more production photos.

Don’t even try to guess what famous Sci-Fi movie this is from… but if you know, you win BIG.

-Casey

We attended the first annual Vloggies this weekend and won not one, not two, but FIVE Vloggies!!!

Here is a list of our awards:

• Best Special Effects (Judges’ Award)
• Best Entertainment (Fiction) Vlog (Viewer’s Choice Award)
• Best Special Effects (Viewer’s Choice Award)
• Best Web Site Design (Viewer’s Choice Award)
• Best Collaboration, Node 666 (Viewer’s Choice Award)

[Click here for a complete list of winners.]

While in San Francisco, we stayed in the hotel room where Alfred Hitchcock shot Vertigo with James Stewart and Kim Novak.

It was a great weekend, with wonderful people like Dan McVicar…

Photo courtesy of Cirne

Rick Rey…

Zadi Diaz, Steve Woolf and many others.

We got to see a clip of Queen Kong on the big screen (making Queen Kong a true 50 ft. woman)…

Photo courtesy of Chuck Olsen

And we presented the award for best News Vlog to Andrew Michael Baron of Rocketboom.

Photo courtesy of Chuck Olsen

Thanks to everyone who voted for us. This weekend was truly a weekend of wonderful surprises!

-Casey

Galacticast’s Rudy Jahchan was interviewed by Weird America just before the Vloggies. Click here to check out the video.

Can you guess what we’ll be parodying next?

Voting for the first annual Vloggies (web video awards) closes this Friday (October 27th). If you haven’t already voted, make sure you go and pick your favorites before it’s too late! Click here to vote.

Related stories: The Vloggies: Go Vote!

This weekend, our good friends Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf from Smashface Productions in LA are organizing Halloween Videoblog Festival 2006 at the Yahoo! Santa Monica Offices. A couple of Galacticast episodes will be screened at the event and the party is open to all.

The details of the event are as follows:

When: Saturday, October 28th, 7pm-11pm
Where: Yahoo! Santa Monica Offices, 2450 Broadway, Santa Monica, CA 90404 (Parking entrance on Colorado Ave.)
Dress Code: Costumes optional, but encouraged!
RSVP: halloweenvlogfest@gmail.com (Space limited, RSVP early!)

Yahoo!, TV Guide, Network2.tv, Fishman Productions, Ltd., Next New Networks, and ActiveMaps are sponsoring the event. Also attending the event will be our good friends Amanda Congdon and Mario Librandi (finally arriving at their Amanda Across America destination), the Rey Brothers (Rick, Eric), The Bui Brothers and the adorable Bonny Pierzina of Noodle Scar.

Rudy and I really wish we could make it to LA for the event, but unfortunately we’re stuck in Montreal with lots of work.

Related links: Halloween Videoblog Festival 2006

I want to know how you guys did the light saber and Tron frisbee effects. I stumbled upon the video today at my desk. That video had all my favorite movie and show memories in it. What is up with the zombie thing are they still accepting videos? I love what you guys do.

We used Adobe After Effects for all our effects, we got detailed info on how to do a lightsaber effect from theforce.net:

The Tron effect I made from scratch. First, I made two different discs from frisbee images I got from the internet:

Above: Two different png images of the Tron Disc (Downloads: Image 1, Image 2)

Then I covered the frisbee or area where the disc should be and tracked the trajectory/position of the disc (helpful hint: make the image semi-transparent for tracking purposes and then make it opaque when you’re done). The image layer should be a 3D layer, but if you can’t make it 3D you can scale the disc to show perspective.

Above: Before and After

Here’s what layers you should see in your composition (frisbee not necessary, but it helps to control your hand movements when using the frisbee to block a strike):

Video track 3/4 – Copy of Video of Rudy throwing frisbee (with a mask to show his hand/hands on top of the disc)
Video track 2 – Animated image of Tron disc
Video track 1 – Video of Rudy throwing frisbee
Audio track 1 – Audio of Rudy throwing frisbee
Audio track 2 – Sound effect of disc (I used a lightsaber sound )

This gives a decent effect, but I went one step further by doing this:

I selected only the layer of the disc (Video track 2) making the rest of the screen transparent and saved it as its own file (we’ll call this TronDisc.avi). Then I imported TronDisc.avi into Adobe After Effects and added it as a layer in the composition I was working on before in the place of the original animated image:

Video track 3/4 – Copy of Video of Rudy throwing frisbee (with a mask to show his hand/hands on top of the disc)
Video track 2 – TronDisc.avi
Video track 1 – Video of Rudy throwing frisbee
Audio track 1 – Audio of Rudy throwing frisbee
Audio track 2 – Sound effect of disc

And lastly, I used the “echo” effect on Video track 2. Badda bing, badda boom.

Here’s some unused video footage of a Tiki Bar TV episode (Son of the Internet) I originally made this special effect for (no audio, just 4 short clips):

QuickTime Version

N.B.: The red disc in the above video was simply made by changing the hue of the blue disc to red in After Effects.

As for Node 666, yes we are still accepting videos… it’s now a subscribeable video blog at Node666.org.

- Casey

Galacticast France correspondent and good friend Yann Olejarz sent us an e-mail today with this HILARIOUS video… we just HAD to share it with the world!

At the end, Yann says that maybe he’ll see us in Montreal… well, Yann, we really hope we do!

Links: Yann on MySpace

Rudy and Casey were interviewed by Felt Up TV alongside friend Amanda Congdon at PodCamp Boston a couple of months ago. Click here to check it out!

Special thanks to Charles Hope of Blip.tv and the fine people at Quicktime for getting us listed on the Apple QuickTime Entertainment Guide this week, it’s a real honour.

If you’ve come here to visit from the Apple site, welcome to the wonderful world of Galacticast!

Voting has now opened on the Vloggies web site, click here to go vote for your favorites.

Galacticast is up for a number of awards including:

• Best Vlog – Galacticast
• Best Female Vlogger – Casey McKinnon
• Best Entertainment (Fiction) Videoblog – Galacticast
• Best Collaboration – Node 666
• Best Special Effects – Queen Kong
• Best Vlog Website Design – Galacticast

If you’re interested in making a difference in the world, we highley suggest voting for our friend Brian Conley from Alive in Baghdad… he’s doing amazing work and deserves all the promotion he can get.

Can you guess what we’ll be parodying next?

A behind the scenes video shot by Rudy to announce that he will soon restart his old blog at CodeRonin.net and to send shout outs to our vloggie homeboys.

Mentioned: Vloggies, Zardoz, Mario Librandi, Andrew Congdon, Amanda Congdon, Mike Hudack, Charles Hope, Steve Woolf, Rey brothers (Rick and Eric), Steve Garfield, Zadi Diaz, Bekah Havens, Ryanne Hodson, Michael Verdi, Schlomo Rubinovich, Chuck Olsen, Ted Tagami, Mooki, Brian Conley, Rudy’s brothers (Dany and Roy), Rudy’s mummy and daddy, Tony Katz, Bui Brothers, Dave Noiseux, 2-bit brownies, Rocketboom, Andrew Baron, Joanne Colan, Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble, Alec Baldwin, Dan McVicar, William Shatner, Casey’s Flickr Photos

Galacticast correspondents Dany Gehshan and Gregg Shanks were interviewed by Puppet Television as they were taking footage at FanExpo in Toronto a couple of months ago. Click here to check it out.

Related links: FanExpo Frenzy

If you don’t already know Rick Rey, go visit his web site immediately. Rick Rey is not only an awesome videoblogger, but also a smart forward-thinking man. In fact, those fancy little subscribe icons at the top right of our new web site layout are all thanks to Rick, who made the icons himself and sent us copies after we discovered them on his site a few days ago.

Rick is also in the lead at the first Vlog Death Match challenge, along with his equally awesome brother Eric. These boys are about to take over the world… so follow along before they reach super-stardom!

Thanks for the awesome icons, Rick… look forward to seeing you guys at the Vloggies.

Great news… Galacticast has been nominated for various awards at the Vloggies, including “Best Vlog”. The Vloggies will be held in San Francisco on Saturday, November 4th, at the Swedish American Hall. Check the web site for details.

If you would like to nominate your favorite videoblogs for a Vloggie, click here to see the categories and make a submission.

This weekend Rudy and his brother Dany filmed a scene from the graphic novel 300 by Frank Miller (which is soon to be released as a feature film). The video is part of Vlog Death Match, which has the following rules:

• A dramatic monologue (absolutely no comedy)
• No cuts or edits in the final piece
• 30-60 seconds
• Monologue MUST be a period piece (Shakespeare, Edwardian, whatev)
• Props are optional

The Jahchan/Gehshan brothers are currently in third place… go vote for your favorite entry here.

-Casey

When we first designed the Galacticast site, we wanted to give it an old B-movie feel… which we never really felt we attained since the site was so similar to our old sites and Rocketboom. With this new redesign we felt it was important to give it a full on B-movie poster feel without using the original Grind House image so as not to break any copyrights.

After preparing everything for the new layout, Rudy sent the draft image to Josh Leo asking him to muddy the poster up to make it look old and tatterred. What we got back was hilarious…

Since Josh sent us a Gimp xcf file, he added a layer with the Grind House poster and added my face to the image… frightening, but it made us laugh out loud!

If we had a league of awesomeness, Josh Leo would be the first one mentioned on the list. Thanks for all your help on our new layout, Josh! We love you.

-Casey

Rudy and I both made a brief appearance on Rocketboom’s coverage of the Podcast and Portable Media Expo last week. We had a great time in California and look forward to the next time we get to meet other videobloggers.

More to come on that subject at a later date

Click here for more.

Click on the above images to see the explanations and notes.

-Casey

This weekend, Blip hosted a launch/going away party for Amanda Congdon’s new videoblog Amanda Across America. We kept saying we couldn’t go because we’ve been so busy this month (with FanExpo, PodCamp, etc.), but after bonding with Amanda and Mario at PodCamp the weekend before and Rudy working closely with them all week on their web site, we felt a growing unease.

On Thursday night Rudy turned to me in bed and said “we should go”… I instantly jumped up and yelled “YES!!!”. It was as if we were both thinking the same thing.

On Friday I got most of the editing done for Node 666 and packed our bags to head on OUR road trip (if they’re driving to LA, the least we could do it drive to NYC).

On Saturday we left at noon and got to NYC around 7pm. The original idea involved Charles Hope giving Amanda/Mario a card saying “Extraordinary actions for extraordinary people” but then Rudy insisted on using a tagline that he shared with Amanda and Mario (making the message more cryptic): “understanding is ovlov”.

We walked in two minutes later and all hell broke loose… it made every second of our drive worth it!

Credits: Charles Hope (Original Post)

My personal favorites from Steve’s Sunday morning photo shoot were the homoerotic shots:

Above: Mario Librandi and Rudy Jahchan

Above: Amanda Congdon and Casey McKinnon

Click here to see the rest of the photo set.

It’s no secret how much we love Blip, but today we love them a little more. Last week, Mike Hudack (pictured above) was interviewed by TV Week and when discussing “semi-professional videos that provide a consistent audience for advertisers“, we were one of the names that came out of his mouth.

Though it’s just a brief mention it means a lot to us. Thanks Mike!

-Casey

Well, Rudy and I had a great time at PodCamp Boston this weekend and made some great new friends and contacts (I don’t even want to name any lest I forget to mention a few others!). This weekend was refreshing because we were in the company of like-minded people and we came away with some great ideas, like:

• Interesting marketability tips from Matthew Snodgrass and Dave Kawalec of Porter Novelli.
• Well-needed video and audio tips from David Tames from MIT ZigZag.
• Unorthodox marketing techniques from Christopher Penn of the Financial Aid Podcast.
• Intriguing behind the scenes information about Alive in Baghdad by Brian Conley.

Although we brought a digital camera and a DV cam with us, we didn’t take any pictures or video footage. Instead, here are some photos I added to my Flickr favorites and here is a short clip of our presentation (Hollywood 3.0 – The Challenge of Video Podcasting).

A special thanks goes out to Carol and Steve Garfield for all their hospitality! There is no honour greater than sitting in the Carol and Steve Show chairs

-Casey

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that our names appeared on Rocketboom this morning. They appeared as part of the PodCamp schedule, where we will be giving a presentation on Saturday at 10:45am called “Hollywood 3.0: The Challenge of Video-Podcasting”. Thanks for the tip, Steve!

Name: Josh | E-mail: none@none.com | IP: 69.22.212.4 | Date: September 5, 2006

Casey,
As harmless and cute as you present yourself, you comments here make you sound really clueless.

Oh, this is going to be good…

Are you seriously saying you’ve seen no black vloggers?? Then that’s your limited vision, there are plenty out there.

Funny you should mention this… we were not discussing black vloggers (who ARE, in fact, a minority). Our point, which you misunderstood, was that we don’t have any close black friends to use in our skits. As you may have noticed, everyone in our skits are old friends from high school… a Catholic suburban high school where we had 2-3 black kids in our grade (1 in 100).

As for Superman in blackface, I think you should have known better.

I apologize for your lack of humour, but my colourization of Rudy’s face was hilarious.

At this point I’m just surprised you guys didn’t hall off and have HAL say “n–ger”. Clearly, whoever did the HAL jive-talking (as if that is what makes a black person identifiably black) wanted to go there, but didn’t.

HAL was inspired by Mr. T; a black comedy figure, not a serious person. Again, you are lacking in a sense of humour and should be drug out to the street and slapped with a rubber chicken for your insolence.

And when you said this episode made you realize “Whoa! I ‘do’ have black friends!” I almost wretched. Hopefully you guys will never get very popular. And no, just because someone else you like (i.e. Colbert) does something doesn’t make it okay.

I honestly don’t think in terms of race very often… I don’t think of my friends as being black or white, but since we often need black actors to take black roles in our parodies, we are sometimes forced to think “do we know anyone who can play this role for us?”

In case you didn’t get it, yes, I thought the episode was stupid and offensive, as well profoundly lacking in any real humor. But as history has shown, true humor is normally born of intelligence… You guys are cute and all, but everyone can see you’re not the sharpest tacks in the bunch.

The truth, Josh, is that you are not the sharpest tack in the bunch. Had you been sharper, you would have understood that we were making a comedic commentary on pop culture about how the presence of visible minorities is, too often, to have that TOKEN presence.

Next time, have the balls to leave your real e-mail address. Leaving a false address only admits to your own fallacy and amplifies your cowardice.

-Casey

This all made logical sense since Andrew was higher up on Amanda’s links list… people probably linked to his site from Unboomed and later linked to us from his links list.

It wasn’t until we were featured on Kong is King last week that Andrew was overtaken by the mammoth site.

On Saturday night, though, Rudy and I checked our stats and noticed an interesting trend… our Queen Kong windows media file had been watched a ridiculous amount of times in the past 24-48 hours! In fact, judging from sites vs. views, the video had been watched 2-3 times by most people who saw it! This led Rudy to do some investigating…

We signed into our host account and had a look at our top referrers. To our surprise, Kong is King was no longer our top referrer… that place was now reserved for Giantess City, a forum for those enamored with the fantasy of 50 ft. women!

Wow… we never expected that! That said, though, we do understand it… As the proud owner of an original Attack of the 50 ft. Woman poster, it’s easy to see the appeal of a giant attractive girl gone wild!

Thanks for the traffic, Giantess City!

Toronto, ON – FanExpo 2006 (September 1-3)
Boston, MA – PodCamp (September 9-10)
Ontario, CA – Podcast & Portable Media Expo (September 29-30)
Los Angeles, CA – Visiting friends like Zadi & Steve from the Jet Set Show.

If you’ll be around when we’re there, let us know and perhaps we can organize a meetup. Send us an e-mail at galacticast [at] gmail.com.

-Casey

New behind the scenes photos of Dave as Andrew Farrow in Queen Kong, available here.

-Casey

Read the above text and guess at which point Rudy fell asleep… then, click on the above image to see the right answer.

-Casey

As soon as CarL announced this new concept for a show, I was lucky enough to be the first to suggest an idea… that idea was Planet of the Apes with Sea Monkeys! Well, I’m proud to announce that CarL’s Planet of the Sea Monkeys is now available on his videoblog at TheNameIWantedWasTaken.com.

Well done CarL!!! And thanks for the shoutout on the wall…

-Casey

Therefore, the details of the meet up are as follows:

Date: Thursday, 31 August 2006
Time: 7pm
Place: No Regrets Restaurant and Lounge (free wi-fi), 42 Mowat Avenue (Tel.: 416-535-0050)

A reservation has been made under the name “Vlogger” just in case we’re not all familiar with each other.

Spread the word! I look forward to killing meeting you soon!
-Casey

Node 666 (Background Story)

It began August 22nd, 2006. Escalating tensions in the Middle East resulted in Iran dropping a nuclear weapon unto Israel.

Into the valley of ARMAGEDDON!!!

This unearths a hidden portal to hell from which a demon army rises up to conquer the earth.

Seeing that the time has come, the alien overlords who have been watching over us as Angels initiate the Rapture protocol to save the human genetic code, randomly transporting a few million of us into their ships, to train for their final battle.

The rest of us are left behind, to face the final apocalypse. A world filled with roving biker gangs, zombie hordes, radiation fallout, and other fun things.

Many die. Some survive. And some …

Form a videoblogging network, to keep in touch during these grim times. They are the members of Node 666.

And so are you!!!

Tell us what happened to you during this apocalypse. Recreate an event during that day; show us your radioactive vegetable garden. Your mutant cat. Your pet zombie. Your freak children. Whatever.

You have a month. The deadline is Friday, September 15th and the episode will air on Galacticast on Monday, September 18th. Earlier submissions are appreciated.

We will help with special effects and final editing between segment to segment. You can either send us your video at galacticast [at] gmail.com or send us the link to your file online.

Please note that this work will be released under our usual CC license (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike). If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Thanks to everyone who has volunteered so far, this is going to be AWESOME!!!

-Casey

If you’re as concerned over the situation in Lebanon as we are… perhaps you’ll be interested to hear about this cause. SaveTheChildren.org raises money to take care of children in poverty and crisis, and they have a special donation page devoted to kids in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. Knowing that this money will go towards helping innocents caught in the crossfire of this ridiculous war makes donating to children on both sides a logical choice. I am proud to donate to Lebanese children as well as any other child that needs our help.

If you are looking for a good cause to donate to, please visit SaveTheChildren.org .

I uploaded and sent this video to Zadi & Steve of the Jet Set Show in late June, but didn’t want to make it public until I was sure their union was also public. Now that Amanda and Mario have posted their own well wishes, I thought it was a good time to let the world experience Rudy and my wishes for the newlyweds.

After visiting Steve Garfield’s Off On A Tangent and Chuck Olsen’s Blogumentary today, I felt the need to donate to the Josh Wolf legal fund. To find out ways to help:

• DONATE TO HIS LEGAL FUND
• FREE JOSH WOLF WIKI

For information on the injustice surrounding Josh Wolf’s recent incarceration and to see what others are saying about the case, check out the following links:

• Washington Post: Journalist Jailed Over Protest Footage
• NY Times – Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Robert Scoble’s blog
• Jeff Jarvis for the Guardian UK raises many excellent questions. “Blogging was a helluva lot easier when all we wrote about was our cats.”
• Blogging All the Way to Jail by Laura Locke for Time.com

“Help me Obi Wan, you’re my only hope…”

Technorati Tag: joshwolf

I just got in contact with Galacticast France correspondent (and dear friend) Yann Olejarz over a future skit collaboration and he wrote back with great news… he and his girlfriend tied the knot a couple of weeks ago!

Congratulations to them both!

-Casey

If only we had the same budget… can you imagine what we could do with all those resources?

-Casey

UPDATE: I just purchased two tickets for Rudy and I to see Muse in concert next Monday in Montreal, check out their site for tour dates in your area.

• Multiple video formats for each post.
• An automatic video player.
• A unique feed for each Post.

We reveal now the secrets behind all of this.

First, download the swanky theme created for this project called UFO ‘SPLODE (10000 Galacticast Dollars to the person who can guess who inspired that one). Then read the rest of this post to understand what the hell is going on.

This is about to get a bit technical, but stick with it, and you too can be vlogging the Galacticast way.

The Core

The key to how we get multiple formats support in our WordPress installation is using Custom Fields. When creating a post, users can enter custom fields, specifying a key and a value.

Enclosure

Some key values are actually recognized by WordPress for special handling. One of these is enclosure, which tells WordPress to include media for podcasting.

By default, if it finds a multimedia link in a post is creating, WordPress will try to create an enclosure field. The value is written on multiple lines, where the first line is line 0:

For example, let us say your latest video file is located at http://blip.tv/file/get/UFOSplode-23.mov, and its size is 12345678 bytes, an enclosure key would be created with the following value:

http://blip.tv/file/get/UFOSplode-23.mov
12345678
video/quicktime

Sounds great? Well it would be if this feature of WordPress actually worked. Unfortunately, while it does a pretty good job with MP3s, it seems to have some issues with video-files.

So we enter these values by hand. Any great hosting service (like Blip) would provide the necessary information.
Also, as good hackers, we expand the values to include our own lines of data:

So let us say we wanted that file to be delivered to iTunes, we would write the following as the enclosure value:

http://blip.tv/file/get/UFOSplode-23.mov
12345678
video/quicktime
itunes

And if we don’t want it to show up as a link on our site, we would add an additional line.

http://blip.tv/file/get/UFOSplode-23.mov
12345678
video/quicktime
itunes

For each format we want to add to a post, we create a new enclosure key and value pair.

Thumbnail

Another custom field is used to provide a thumbnail to the post. The key for this field is thumbnail (duh), and its value is the URL to the thumbnail.

The Theme Templates

The templates in the UFO ‘Splode theme takes care of displaying each post on its own page, and automatically create a Quicktime player if it sees a post has an enclosure for the quicktime platform. This is important to remember; when writing your post, don’t worry about creating any links to video or writing HTML to make your own player! As long as you create the proper enclosures, and one of them is a MOV file with the “quicktime” platform, or shall be well.

The player is created in the logic in post-content.php, which calls the Javascript function createVideoPlayer(). This function is found in the videoPlayer.js file under the js directory of the theme. It takes the following parameters:

• url – the URL to the video. This will be automatically filled by the template logic.
• width – how wide the player interface should be. Modify to suit your needs.
• height – how tall the player interface should be. Modify to suit your needs.

After the player is displayed, we loop over all enclosures, outputting a link to each URL with the platform as the text of the link.

The rest of the theme makes use of the enclosure and thumbnail custom fields to display links and images, and CSS to stylize the site. Out of the box the style is very clean and simple, so go crazy and change the colors, fonts, and the image links. The most important templates are:

• header.php – Displays the top of the site, and also lists the feed links. Change appropriately.
• footer.php – Displays the generic site sections below.
• index.php – Special main page, which will only display the latest post, and thumbnails for the last 4.
• post-content.php – where the magic happens, displaying the player, format links, and all.
• post-list.php – generates the post information for listing in archives and searches.
• style.css – controls all the layout, sizes, and colors of the site, so you should begin your changes here.

Make use of many of the great CSS sites on the in-tur-web (I recommend http://www.w3schools.com) to include your own pics and such.

Setting Up the Theme

While I would like the theme to work right out of the box it requires the installation of the following plug-ins.

• WpLicense – (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/WpLicense) A Creative Commons generator.
• WP-PageNavi – (http://www.lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming.php) Used for multi-page navigation. I actually find the WordPress navigation simply doesn’t work.
• Sociable – (http://push.cx/sociable) Outputs links so others can bookmark your post on social networking sites.

A Feed per Format

WordPress can of course generate a feed, and automatically will create the media enclosures needed for podcasting. You simply use the following URL structure:

http://www.ufosplode.com/?feed=rss2

where you of course replace the www.ufosplode.com to the path of your own blog.

However, if you check the XML of the feed, you will see that ALL enclosures are included in the field. Clearly, this does not help us with our desire to have each format to be delivered along a unique feed (without setting up separate websites, or posting multiple times). Even worse, our friendly neighborhood feedburner will only include one enclosure in its output. What to do?

Our usual answer: Hack.

We modified the WordPress logic so that either a media or a platform parameter can be passed to the feed URL.

The media parameter is used to only include enclosures matching that media format. For example:

http://www.ufosplode.com/?feed=rss2&media=video/quicktime

Will produce a version of your feed which only has the quicktime format files.

Alternatively, you can use the platform parameter to only include enclosures whose line #3 matches the passed value. For example:

http://www.ufosplode.com/?feed=rss2&platform=itunes

Will produce a version of your feed with enclosures for video meant for the iTunes platform.
Why do you need both media and platform support? We at Galacticast use this to make sure the m4v/iPod friendly version of the file goes to our iTunes feed (the “itunes” platform feed), while the .H264 version is just used on the site, (the “quicktime” platform enclosure). They are both video/quicktime media files, so we can’t use that parameter.

Installing the hack

The code change required to support this needs to be made in the rss_enclosure() function found in the feed-functions.php file under the wp-includes directory of your WordPress installation. This function is responsible for generating the enclosures in the feed.

Included with the theme UFOSplode is a file called rss_enclosure.php, which is our modification of the function. We have marked the beginning and end of our code change. All you have to do is copy this function and replace the function of the same name in feed-functions.php file.

Other Notes

We have introduced one more hack into our WordPress installations. WordPress, for whatever strange reason, will only allow enclosures of types that are video or audio. This sounds good enough for most vlogger needs, but what about supporting bittorrent enclosures? Or providing other types. If requested, we can supply the code needed for this.

Other Possibilities

I have been messing around with Broadcast Machine a tiny. It’s vlog centric approach is very appealing, and with it Channels concept provides a mechanism to have separate feeds for each channel.
However, you would still have to post the same title and body multiple times and it has no “in-browser player” where as our solution (while hack) saves you the trouble of all that.
Conclusion
So there you have it, a wondrous template and a look behind the curtain on how Galacticast pull off its multiple feed trick. We are giving it out to the community in hopes its functionality will be expanded.

Expanded how? Well I have a couple of ideas:

• Get Flash supported it, so if you have a flash version you want to play, you can easily drop in the code.
• Stop this “hacking” and make this a WordPress plugin. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear there are any hooks to modify the RSS feed. But a plugin could at the very least be useful for easy post creation. As for the RSS feed, maybe a special template would help.
• If combined with the ideas of Enric’s plugin, supporting multiple in-page players for a users preferred format could be created.
• Cross-posting from great hosting sites (a random example … um … Blip! ) could fill these fields appropriately.

What are your ideas? Whatever they are and whatever you do, tell us about it.

And recognize us as the Galactic Gods that we are …

For behind-the-scenes photos from our You Might Be A Cylon and Intergalactic Video Dating shoots, click here.

-Casey

Behind the scenes video footage from Galacticast’s latest skit Rudy’s Baby.

Well, Rudy and I went to Vloggercon a couple of weekends ago and in addition to taking a few pictures we have also appeared on a few videoblogs recently:

• Who is Your Secret Vlogger Crush (GETV) – Casey’s pick
• TV Quake – Fun interview with Casey and Rudy, conducted by Mark Pritchard
• My Road to a Better Smile – An odd interview with Casey and Rudy
• Noodle Scar – Hilarious montage of interviews conducted by the lovely Bonny
• Ukraine Romance Tour (The Richard Show) – On the fly Russian Ukrainian banter with Casey McKinnon and Chris Weagel [A MUST SEE]

Click here to see a video montage of “Hail Satan!” submissions from the vlogosphere. Chapters have been created for Josh Leo‘s convenience (ie. so that he can go straight to Bekah’s submission )

Includes clips from Patrick Delongchamp, Steve Garfield, Richard Hall, Bekah Havens, Charles Hope, Paul Knight, Monika Lyman, Mike Moon, Lisa Ours and The Right Reverend Chumley.

Related post: Rudy’s Baby

A behind the scenes video of Casey’s pre-practice speal about Galacticast… in French! (Reference: Attack of the 50 ft. Sountrack Wind Orchestra)

We ask that you:

• Do it facing the camera (close-up of face or head and shoulders);
• Try saying “HAIL SATAN” a few times (3 or 4) so we have a choice of which one fits in best with the other clips;
• Be over-enthusiastic and loud;
• If you can (and don’t mind) dressing loud will help;
• Please compress to iPod size (320×240) or to our widescreen size (480×270).

If the video is a small size you can send it to: galacticast at gmail dot com or you can send us the link to where you have uploaded the video. Please send us the video before Sunday.

-Casey

Video footage from our presentation at the Apple Store in San Francisco on Friday, June 9th, 2006.

Date : 7 juin 2006 18:36:41 HAEC
Objet : Toxie loves Galacticast

Thanks so much for your great report!
It is great to be a 50foot Lloyd Kaufman… That means my penis is also eight times as big!!!… so it now measures two full inches!… fully erect!

Troma Entertainment
by Lloyd Kaufman, Pres
www.troma.com
Coming soon: “POULTRYGEIST: Night of the Chicken Dead.”
www.Poultrygeistmovie.com

2007 Tromadance Film Festival www.tromadance.com

Yes… Lloyd Kaufman IS officially the coolest man ever. Hugh Hefner has nothing on this guy…

-Casey

A comedic behind the scenes video from Saturday night’s Kirk 45 shoot with Seska and James.

For behind-the-scenes photos from our Kirk 45 shoot this weekend, click here.

-Casey

We plan on posting Flash versions of our show there regularly, so if you like us and want to add us as a friend, go check out our space at http://myspace.com/galacticast

-Casey

Our promo for Vloggercon 2006. If you live in San Francisco, or plan on traveling there on June 10th and/or 11th, you should definitely come by and join us!

Tags: Vloggercon

It’s no secret that I love Rocketboom. Well, apparently the feeling is mutual… It was a really nice surprise to find out this morning that they had mentioned Galacticast and played a short clip of our Dr. Who parody on today’s show.

I seriously feel like jumping up and down like a contestant on the Price is Right!