an open source look at my life

Make 'em Accountable!

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:49:00 +0000

One of the most heartening things that I have participated in lately is the money bomb for Accountability Now. From their website:

The AccountabilityNowPAC was originally formed ... as a fundraising vehicle to block a Congressional leadership “compromise” on the corrupt FISA reauthorization bill... The goal of AccountabilityNowPAC is to become a permanent entity on the Washington DC political landscape which will let our politicians know that civil liberties MATTER. Our message to politicians in Washington is loud and clear: uphold constitutional rights and we will support you; abridge freedom in America and we will not be on your side. Democrat or Republican—it makes no difference to us. This is our vehicle to enforce the sworn oath our political leaders take to preserve and defend the constitution.

This effort, spearheaded by Glen Greenwald and Jane Hamsher, has already created some highly visible ads aimed at changing the behavior of specific members of congress.

I believe that this is one of the best vehicles for progressive political action that exists today. I would encourage anyone interested in lessening the corporate influence on congress and the flagrant abuse of the constitution by the executive branch to please contribute today.

Let's Downsize!

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:19:00 +0000

Hello friendly readers,

Why is it so hard to find time to get involved in politics these days? It seems like congress is always passing new legislation, and no one has the time to go and read the bills they are considering, let alone write out a comprehensive criticism of the legislation. And it's not like they care what you say anyways, right? Well I think that view is wrong. They do care, but they care a lot more if you and a few thousand others share the same critical opinion.

I may have touched on this subject in the past, but I would like to take this opportunity to advise you, my loyal readers, to point your attention towards the easiest way for stepping into the legislative debate:

Downsize DC

whose credo is:

We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. We want to end laws and programs that don't work, cause harm, and violate the Constitution. We want to restore the full force of the 9th and 10th amendments, which reserve most social functions to the people and the states.

Here are a few fun graphics with links to their respective campaigns:

These worthy campaigns, and many more, are being spearheaded by Downsize DC. The best part is that they make it so easy for the public to participate. They have done all the work for you! All you need to do is fill out your contact info (mandatory for all pleas to your representatives anyways) and it will give you a pre-written letter ready to send off to your representatives. Of course they encourage you to add your own voice to the process and they leave a space for personal comments.

I think this system is an extremely effective one for producing significant change in the exceedingly less public oriented congress.

Now you might be asking yourself, "What's so bad about a large government?". Well Downsize DC doesn't attack the size of government for its own sake, they attack bloated, ineffective, wasteful legislation that is genuinely harmful to our public interests. I challenge anyone to visit their site and find one of their campaigns that they completely disagree with. Let me know in the comments if you can find one!

Final Project - Basic Video

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 20:49:00 +0000

Here is the final version of my project for Basic Video:

Onomatopocussion

Body-Breath-Mind-Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:00:00 +0000

I just copied a handout a yoga teacher gave me for a friend and thought I would put it here for the world to enjoy. The original had tons of xerox noise on it so I made a new version in illustrator.

The aspect of the chart to pay the most attention to is the breath. This metaphor of the breath linking the mind and the body is a powerful way of looking at ourselves as organisms and it would do everyone some good to recognize how important the breath really is.

enjoy

Experimental Media v06

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:15:00 +0000

I ended up adding sound anyways, I love tones, what can I say?

It is a bit shorter than I would like and I might expand on this for a future project but I thought it turned out alright. I enjoyed messing around with the mirror filter a lot and did a little masking as well. I ended up creating quite a few draft effects and transitions before settling on this one and arranging it like this. The effect I like the most, the strobing at the end, was achieved just by copying and pasting the short clips over and over next to each other. A very effective technique.

here it is:LINK

Experimental Media v05

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:18:00 +0000

Well I have gotten into using the mirror effect in final cut and it is looking pretty abstract, I will post a screen shot soon as I am working on this a psychology paper at the same time! Nothing like procrastination to give the brain a good squeeze.

Experimental Media Project v03

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 05:40:00 +0000

This is starting to head into playing with some transitional effects, I will see how far I get with this avenue...

Experimental Media Project v03

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 04:46:00 +0000

I have started to craft my project and I thinking I will deviate a bit from my original approach of synchronized "notes" of color, instead concentrating more on strictly the colors and how I can manipulate them in a way that reflects the medium of video.

Experimental Media Project v02

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:13:00 +0000

I have been thinking more about this assignment and have decided that an effective way to achieve this effect would be some type of MIDI synchronization method. If I can assign clips of different colors in the test pattern to MIDI notes, then I could write out a simple melody in MIDI and translate that to a really cool looking color test pattern sequence. I am not sure how to do this.

Experimental Media Project

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:28:00 +0000

I am currently taking a survey class in experimental media and have been charged with creating a piece of media myself. This is to be an exploration of the media which I choose to create it on.

My idea so far is to explore the medium of video. My project will be centered on the color test pattern:

The color test also commonly occurs with a test tone with which folks calibrate their systems. I am thinking about possibly playing with a melody constructed of these tones while also manipulating the appearance, hue, saturation, brightness, etc. of the individual color bars.

Pluto

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:45:00 +0000

Pulp Fiction: F*cking Short Version

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:00:00 +0000

I found this through looking at typography videos for my new Dynamic Type class.

This is the video that linked to it which is also very good:

Examples of Republican hypocrisy on moral values

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 21:06:00 +0000

The Damning List

Despite this wonderfully depressing link above, I am still supporting Ron Paul as our next Republican President.

Giant anti-ad stencil project

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:52:00 +0000

THIS looks like a really fun weekend project!

Best 5 Second Video on the Interweb

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:05:00 +0000

Morford

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:20:00 +0000

Sorry for the hiatus, spending much less time surfing this summer...

Mark Morford has another scorching hot treatise on the state of society over at the SF Gate - he discusses the scientific hurtle towards, "...advances that open so many cans of ethical and spiritual worms it shakes us to the very core of what we believe, of who we think we are and where we fit in and What It All Means...Hence, religion. This (at least partially) explains why so many are so eager to cling to religious dogma, to some sort of immovable, reliable framework of understanding, something that can help make sense of it all, even if making sense of it all involves shutting off your brain and killing your divine intuition and soaking up giant gobs of blind faith so you don't have to actually swim in those bloody murky confusing pools of ethics and meaning and actually thinking for yourself. Mmm, numb groupthink. It's what's for dinner."

Go read the rest!

Ping Pong Door

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:28:00 +0000

A conventional door connects rooms, this door connects people.

Folk Cover of Baby Got Back - Jon Coulton

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:37:00 +0000

This is an amazing folk-style cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back:

I’ve wanted to cover this song for a long time, because it is excellent - there’s a wonderful message in there for those of you who have big butts. In the proud tradition of many white Americans who came before me I hereby steal and white-ify this thick and juicy piece of black culture. Watch for my album “Jonathan Coulton Sings Songs by Black People.”

Enjoy

Cobra vs. A Little Baby

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:58:00 +0000

Apparently this is how they train kids to be snake charmers, the snake's mouth is sewn shut. The last few seconds are the most brutal.

Link

from BoingBoing

Best Frisbee

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:32:00 +0000

I bought the Aerobie Superdisc Ultra a couple summers ago and I found it to be an awesome frisbee but it was a bit wide/wobbly and would be caught by the wind very easily so I am going to go ahead and order one of these, the original Superdisc right now!

and for the nighttime fun:

Stoned Cop Dials 911 Fearing Overdose

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Sat, 12 May 2007 20:39:00 +0000

From BoingBoing:

One Edward Sanchez, a police officer of Dearborn, Michigan met up with some serious karma recently. It seems that Ed confiscated some really good weed from some poor citizen and decided to throw the whole quarter ounce into some brownie batter with his wife.

Seems this was a tad more THC than the good officer had encountered previously, enough to claim that he was dying.

This mp3 of the 911 call is pure gold.

Make sure to listen until the end when he asks about the score of the Redwings game.

Peter, Bjorn, & John - Young Folks (f/ Victoria Bergsman)

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Fri, 11 May 2007 17:02:00 +0000

Fun breakbeat folk

Straight to Youtube

Lyrics stolen from Top Hits Online

Lyrics:

if i told you things i did before

told you how i used to be

would you go along with someone like me

if you knew my story word for word

had all of my history

would you go along with someone like me

i did before and had my share

it didn't lead nowhere

i would go along with someone like you

it doesn't matter what you did

who you were hanging with

we could stick around and see this night through

and we don't care about the young folks

talkin' bout the young style

and we don't care about the old folks

talkin' 'bout the old style too

and we don't care about their own faults

talkin' 'bout our own style

all we care 'bout is talking

talking only me and you

usually when things has gone this far

people tend to disappear

no-one will surprise me unless you do

i can tell there's something goin' on

hours seems to disappear

everyone is leaving i'm still with you

it doesn't matter what we do

where we are going to

we can stick around and see this night through

and we don't care about the young folks

talkin' bout the young style

and we don't care about the old folks

talkin' 'bout the old style too

and we don't care about their own faults

talkin' 'bout our own style

all we care 'bout is talking

talking only me and you

and we don't care about the young folks

talkin' bout the young style

and we don't care about the old folks

talkin' 'bout the old style too

and we don't care about their own faults

talkin' 'bout our own style

all we care 'bout is talking

talking only me and you

talking only me and you

talking only me and you

talking only me and you

Wheatpaste + Stop Motion = Love

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:20:00 +0000

Link

from BoingBoing

Wheatpaste, learn to love it!

A Better Browsing Experience (Noscript)

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Sun, 06 May 2007 17:44:00 +0000

The next extension that deserves your undevoted attention is Noscript. This extension will block potentially invasive and destructive JavaScript.

Most web developers these days use Javascript (little pieces of code) to give their webpages cool features like popup menus and embedded mp3 players. The problems come when someone figures out how to use Javascript to steal your personal information or otherwise breach the security of your personal computer. This is how many people get infected with spyware and malware and all that garbage.

So what does one do? Get Noscript.

A friendly chap named John Wilkerson has provided a video demonstrating exactly what this extension is all about.

I think he explains it pretty well but if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments or email me and I will do my best to help you out.

A Better Browsing Experience (Adblock)

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Teeple) — Sun, 06 May 2007 17:29:00 +0000

Ok, so getting back into the vein of my little credo on top of the blog, I would now like to discuss using a couple Firefox extensions to make your browsing experience safer and less stressful.

First off, if you are using a different browser I highly recommend going here and getting Firefox.

Now I know that other browsers like Opera have a lot going for them as well but I have found time and again that the extensions and development community surrounding Firefox makes it the easiest and most convenient to use for day to day surfing.

Whenever I reinstall Firefox or put it on a new computer the first extension I grab is Adblock Plus. This marvelous extension saves me from seeing almost every single advertisement on the internet that I might have otherwise been forced to ignore. It used to take a little more finesse to get Adblock working for you because you would have to define all the ads you wanted to block, but a new day is upon us and when you restart Firefox a box will pop up asking if you would like to subscribe to a filter list. These lists are maintained regularly by people whose singular goal is to save you, the surfing populace, from the mental vampires of banner advertising. It will even take the ads off of previously mentioned Pandora.

So go now! Install Adblock Plus and start enjoying the web ad-free.