A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
To catch up on any Oscar nominated films you may have missed, before the Oscars roll around, check out http://oscartorrents.com/.
OscarTorrents is the Oscars as it should be—everyone can download the year’s nominations using the popular BitTorrent service, watch the movies, then use our rating system to choose their favourites. Why restrict the voting to a few bought-off jurors when the whole world can have their say?
(via waxy)
The scoop on what it’s like to be a kid growing up in a fundamentalist extremist Evangelical Christian environment.
Hit play or watch at Google Video.
Update: Looks like the video is no longer up at Google Video. Try Oscar Torrents instead.
Update: The full movie is posted on Vimeo:
Jesus Camp from Loki Films on Vimeo.
This excellent documentary (one hour in length) takes a look at the amazing career of Steven Spielberg.
Click Play or watch it at YouTube.
Update: The old documentary is long gone but here is new one from 2019.
Spielberg’s Story: The Life And Career Of Steven Spielberg (Full Documentary)
Here’s a useful tip for Firefox users. Typing in dict followed by a word you want to lookup in the address bar will send you to the definition page for that word.
For people that love keyboard shortcuts:
Alt-d (focuses cursor on the address bar)
type: “dict + word”
Takes you to dictionary.com with the definition you wanted.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could setup custom quick searches on other sites? Well you can; here’s how! Find a search box on the site you’d like to add a quick search for, (currently it’s on the top right side of the main page sidebar at this site), right click on the search bar, and click on “Add a Keyword for this Search” you should see something like this:
Then, enter a title for the search and a keyword you’ll use to execute it, like this:
Once you click the ok button (it might say “Add” in other OS versions), your quick search is setup and ready to search jeffmilner.com. Now, as an example type jm backmasking into your firefox address bar and Firefox will bring you to the search results for backmasking related posts on this site.
(via).
As anyone that cares to listen knows, I’m a big Flickr fan.
It’s bothered me that Flickr has decided that all the original members need to update the way they login by merging their accounts with Yahoo! accounts.
Here is a copy of the announcement:
Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,
On March 15th we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.We’re making this change now to simplify the sign in process in advance of several large projects launching this year, but some Flickr features and tools already require Yahoo! IDs for sign in — like the mobile site at m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles, available at: http://go.yahoo.com.
95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and their experience is just the same as yours is now, except they sign in on a different page. It’s easy to switch: it takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and about five minutes if you don’t.You can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you’ll be required to merge before you continue using your account.) To switch, start at this page:
http://flickr.com/account/associate/Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and notifications sent to any email address at any domain and your screenname will remain the same.
Complete details and answers to most common questions are available here:
http://flickr.com/help/signin/Thanks for your patience and understanding – and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you’re reading this, you’ve been around for a while and that means a lot to us!
Warmest regards,– The Flickreenos
Obviously in the end I’m going to stay a Flickr user, but I will admit, I did take this opportunity to shop around, just in case there was something else out there that compares. For a hard core flickr fan like myself, that’s a serious statement.
I know I shouldn’t admit that a change in the way I login to Flickr bothers me, but it does. I really don’t like Yahoo! and so I’ll try not to let my hatred of companies that play dirty get in the way of enjoying the world’s best photo sharing site.
Here is the Official Old Skool Merge Topic on Flickr. The backlash has been fierce. I’ve found reading the comments fuels my disappointment, but also the way the Flickr staff has handled it has me feeling good about the long term future of the site.
“When you walk through the garden, you gotta watch your back.”
I’ve been watching HBO’s The Wire religiously and I’m compelled to say, it’s got to be hands down the best show on the air. Check out the Wikipedia article on the show for the rundown. I also recommend Salan’s article Breaking down The Wire.
This show is fantastic. If you haven’t seen it, find Season 1 and just start watching. No sense jumping in in the middle. I accidentally found myself watching an episode out of season 2 when I had only seen a couple of the episodes from season 1 and I was totally confused.
It’s a double-edged sword, but the design of the show is very dependent on the story arch continuing from episode to episode which means you can’t jump in the middle. However, it makes every episode twice as great because instead of rehashing plot points to make sure everybody is caught up, the time is spent on character development and moving the story forward.
I’m just finishing up season four, but I recommend you check out this show. Start with season 1 episode 1; you won’t regret it.
Three friends of mine are travelling the South Pacific (currently they’re in New Zealand). One of them mentioned to me that he is having trouble accessing gmail from his laptop. I was wondering if anyone has heard about anything like this:
Whenever anyone tries to access their gmail account from our laptop it logs in and then automatically logs out and shuts down that window. I think an add-on has been enabled or disabled to some how to prevent this gmail thing from working.
I think their best bet will be to contact the gmail team and see if they have any suggestions, although my gut tells me it’s a malicious script/virus. What do you think?
Today marks the two year anniversary of the first photo I ever posted to flickr. I’ve since uploaded over 4,300 photos and had almost 71,000 views of my photostream, so of course I still love flickr!
Youtube has a copy of the backmasking episode of The Paul & Jan Crouch Show. Paul Jr. plays clips from Rock and Roll music both forward and backward. Much like the examples on my backmasking page, the examples are hard to decipher until the listener is primed as to what he or she should be hearing.
Part 1
Update: The videos have been pulled — see below for a new YouTube video.
The next part focuses on the album artwork and the symbols and general symbolism that musicians apparently use to promote a satanic agenda. It also talks about famous satanist Aleister Crowley.
Part 2
Update: The videos have been pulled
Part 3 focuses on backmasking and gives examples of both intentional and unintentional messages within Rock music.
Part 3
Update: The videos have been pulled
Part four has more examples of backmasking and a little misdirection about what some psychologists believe about the human subconscious.
There’s actually two dangers, as far as backward masking. One is, yeah, I know a lot of kids play their albums backwards—more for a joke, but they get these messages. What’s even scarier and it’s still a little controversial, but I do have some documentation from psychologists that believe the subconscious mind is probably the most incredible computer ever—you know, God did a great job when he invented our self sub conscious. That’s why we don’t have to breath at night when we are sleeping, our subconscious takes over, that’s when it’s the most active and anything that’s stored in our subconscious forward can be recalled backwards just as easily and this again, backwards masking is a form or subliminal suggestion.
Part 4 continues with more examples and then ends with Stairway to Heaven. Paul Jr. takes a more extensive look at the song than just the little section I have posted on my page.
Part 4
Update: The videos have been pulled
Part 5 continues with Stairway to Heaven. The lyrics that Paul Jr. describes are slightly different than the ones I hear and as a result, the ones he tells them to listen for, are the ones they hear.
Part 5
Update: The videos have been pulled
I’m not trying to setup a straw man argument, but I found it interesting to learn that years later Paul Crouch Sr. would find himself in his own scandal involving a settlement to a former employee who accused Paul of sexually harassing him. (Wikipedia entry on Paul Crouch).
Update: Here’s another copy of one part of the video:
With a wide spread of PVR adoption comes a new form of “subliminal advertising”. Ads that last only 1 frame (that’s 1/24th of a second) probably aren’t able to influence viewers even subliminally, however, the following McDonald’s ad works because it is noticeable enough that someone watching on TV might pause, rewind, see the ad and then talk about it or better yet, post it on YouTube and create an instant viral ad.
(via)