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Copy Protection Rant

I’m doing some work for a client this morning. I’m updating his portfolio for his acting career and ironically, trying to download the tv show which he plays in is proving to be more difficult than I imagined. The CBC is streaming the show in SWF format, however, they’ve made it nearly impossible (as far as I can tell) to save it locally.

After spending nearly a half hour trying to work it out, I finally decided to check my favourite bit torrent site. The show in question will be downloaded in about 30 minutes—so much for trying to do things the CBC’s way.

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Sasquatch! Music Festival Photos

A week ago I was up early at 4:30am to ride down to the States with some friends to enjoy the festivities at the Sasquatch! Music Festival. After nearly 12 hours on the road, we arrived at the festival grounds, set up camp and watched as thousands of others did the same.

The Festival takes place in the most beautiful venue I’ve ever seen. It’s a gigantic amphitheatre called The Gorge. There were so many interesting people and so many great artists—check out some of the photos and videos I captured from the event:

Sasquatch! Music Festival 2009

[Sasquatch! Music Festival Slideshow – Flickr]

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Google Wave

Google Wave LogoThe other day a friend and I were talking about the history of messaging mediums and what the next generation of communication tools will look like. Snail mail, the telegraph, the telephone, fax, email, and instant messages have each taken their turn as the communication technology of the day but we wondered what the next iteration of such technology would do and how it would either replace or compliment our existing tools.

I’m happy to say we’re about to find out. I just learned about a brand new tool that is about to change everything. Google Wave is an amazing mash-up of chat, email, blogging, event planning, and document sharing all in one. I was sceptical too, at first, but check this out (at least some of it):


[Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009 – YouTube]

Will it mean the beginning of the end of existing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter? How will it affect usage of collaborative tools like Sharepoint and Basecamp? Well, I’ve always felt that outside of its core search business, Google has faced an uphill battle for user acceptance. I’m still shocked when I find friends refusing to upgrade from whatever ridiculous email provider they’re using to the super efficient and powerful Gmail.

I think that Google Wave’s openness and flexibility will be enough to overcome the tipping point of adoption though because of its inherent backwards compatibility. Twitter users can tweet from Twitter, while Facebook users can update their statuses from Facebook. Meanwhile Google Wave will consolidate everything into the interface of my choice and I can even respond back without reloading my browser.

I have seen the future; it is Google Wave.

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Outsourcing for Humour

Ze Frank’s been creating videos specifically for Buzz Feed. Here’s one on dealing with the economic downturn from his series Hard Times:

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ShamWow Guy in Prison

Vince Shlomi, the phenomenally successful television pitchman for products like the ShamWow and Slap Chop, was arrested at a swank Miami hotel last March after a violent confrontation with a prostitute.

From The Smoking Gun:

MARCH 27 – Meet Vince Shlomi. He’s probably better known to you as the ShamWow Guy, the ubiquitous television pitchman who has been phenomenally successful peddling absorbent towels and food choppers. Shlomi, 44, was arrested last month on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room. According to an arrest affidavit, Shlomi met Sasha Harris, 26, at a Miami Beach nightclub on February 7 and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she "propositioned him for straight sex." Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly "bit his tongue and would not let go." Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue.

For those of you that are not familiar with Vince:


[Vince with Slap Chop – YouTube]

Here he is peddling the ShamWow:


[ShamWow – YouTube]

I’ve saved the best for last. Guess what he’s doing now that he’s in prison?


[Shamwow Guy in Prison – CollegeHumor]

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Carousel

Carousel is a short film by Adam Berg created around the idea of a frozen moment with cops and robbers engaged in an epic shootout that includes clowns, explosions, a decimated hospital, lots of broken glass, and plenty of bullet casings.


[Carousel – YouTube]

See how clever they were with the title? It’s designed to be played as a loop.

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Herschel Launch

An Ariane 5 rocket launched two scientific space observatories, Herschel and Planck, at 13:12 GMT this morning that will help scientists better understand the formation of the universe.

The launch took the better part of 30 minutes from ignition to spin-up and separation of the Planck and Herschel.

The launch:


[Herschel and Planck Launch – YouTube]

My physicist friend Richard Querel works with the group that built SPIRE, an infrared imaging camera and low-resolution spectrometer that was aboard the Herschel. He tells me the instruments will be sensitive down to picojoules, which is the equivalent to the energy emitted by one living cell, or to a dim star, very far away.

It’ll take 3 months for them to get to their orbit, but they’ll likely start collecting science validation data immediately.

Herschel has the largest mirror of any space telescope now in orbit. Its 3.5 metre diameter primary mirror is one-and-a-half-times the size of the Hubble Telescope’s main reflector.

From the Herschel Space Observatory entry on Wikipedia:

The mission, formerly titled the Far Infrared and Sub-millimetre Telescope (FIRST), will be the first space observatory to cover the full far infrared and submillimetre waveband. At 3.5 meters wide, its telescope will incorporate the largest mirror ever deployed in space. The light will be focused onto three instruments with detectors kept at temperatures below 2 K. The instruments will be cooled with liquid helium, boiling away in a near vacuum at a temperature of approximately 1.4 K. The 2,000 litres of helium on board the satellite will limit its operational lifetime. The satellite is expected to be operational for at least 3 years.