And don't forget to check out Justin's first vlog post.

so back in the day... when i was about 19 or so and a full time nanny for a beautiful baby girl named sammy, i grew quite a crush on this guy from one of her favorite shows... blues clues. his name is Steve Burns. i liked that he said stuff like "cool" on a kids show... something about him was just different.

anyway... a few years later when i met mike he played this song off of his itunes called troposphere. he said it was by "that guy from blues clues"... i couldn't believe it. the song was amazing. i checked out his website and saw this totally honest looking guy... all scruffy and unshaven... he seemed so goofy but completely down to earth.

i couldn't believe that the guy i was looking at and listening to was the same guy from the kids show. i craved more. i tried to download more songs online but couldn't find any. i checked his website periodically but it never seemed to change.

over time it was just this 2:30 song i fell in love with.

recently the adorable baby boy i currently watch has gotten into blue clues and we watched a video together. it got me all inspired again to track down this mysterious children's icon. i tried to search for free downloads again... nothing. i revisited the website... it appeared to be the same. so i broke down and bought the CD off of amazon. it only took a couple of days. i got it on saturday and my life will never be the same.

the best damn $11.58 i ever spent.

First off, I know I'm not the "only" one who saw this, because I was watching the Emmys with three other people, but "am I" sounded better than "were the 4 of us".

Near the end of the Emmys when the Office won for best show - the entire cast had come up onto stage and Mindy Kaling, after hugging someone, came very much out of her strapless dress. If you know what I'm saying. If you don't know what I'm saying, I'm saying that there was about 60% slippage.

I'm surprised it's not all over the internet yet - on a more important note: 'Arrested Development' didn't win a single Emmy... which is... very shitty. I think I'm left with no choice but to boycott the Emmys until they right this wrong.

About an hour ago I took a walk around two construction sites in North Hollywood & Universal City and snapped a few photos of the posters that plaster the sidewalk overhangs. I plan on continuing to take more of these when they tear the olds one down and put up newer ones. Yep, that's all the intro I have for them:

I'm feeling very inspired right now. I just returned from a "Meet the Vloggers" introduction at the Grove Apple store. It's a class or a basic run-thru of video-blogging that is held at least once a month... it's something I've been meaning to see for myself for months, Ryanne had persuaded me to go early in the year, but with Pedal and just routine-in-general keeping me busy it took me longer than it should have. Ryanne had even went so far as to say I should host a class myself - but I defiantly didn't feel comfortable or ready to do that without having even been to anything similar before.

Anyways, it was hosted by Zadi (from Karmagrrrl) & her husband - and there was about 15 people there who sat through the entire presentation. It really does have me thinking about what approach(s) I would take in running an event like that... whether I'll work up the nerve to actually do it...

I really wish Amanda could have gone with me - maybe I'll take her to a "Meet the Vloggers" next month. I think getting involved in the vlogger-community for this area could really inspire her to do an outdoors'ish-organic-farming-gardening project with likeminded people near us. We are both into an Ypsilanti project right now called 'Growing Hope', and I can see Amanda going to one of these intro's and working towards building her own Growing Hope-styled project but with video-blogging... and having a lot of success.

As I was getting ready for work today - I heard a loud "crunch" outside our bedroom window [where the alley-way to our parking spots runs], unfortunately the way the second story of our building is shaped, I wasn't able to see if two cars had just hit each other or if someone had just bumped a pole.

Turns out what happened was a new woman moving into an apartment next-door to us, smashed a dresser in the flatbed of her truck on the water-pipes that hang down from the parking-spot's ceiling. Which is about two feet from a dumpster, so she said her goodbyes to the smashed dresser and tossed the broken pieces into the trash.

This is where our crazy... intoxicated... dickhead of a neighbor comes into the story. This neighbor is from the apartment complex across from our building, luckily we don't share the same building or I'd freak out from all the bullshit he would pull on a regular basis.

He comes down stairs, in his saggy underwear, a wife-beater and, of course, socks & sandals, and starts freaking out in something besides comprehendible-English at this woman who is literally five minutes into moving-in. He digs through the dumpster, because it's "his" dumpster and not the dumpster that is located further away towards our building... something she probably didn't think about since she was, again, new. First he tossed the two broken dresser pieces in the middle of the alley-way, completely blocking anyone who would want to come in or out of the apartments. Then he just keeps going, he pulls out a mirror and shatters it on the cement, some bags of trash, some dirty air-filters, on & on, until the dumpster is empty.



The entire time shouting to himself about something that I'm sure only makes sense to other people who are piss-drunk at 3 in the afternoon.

So - this is not too surprising behavior from this guy, he's a pretty consistent asshole to everyone and anyone. I called the cops but they never did come - I would have loved for that fat drunken bastard to spend a few hours in jail sobering up.



Then after all this child-like throwing is done, the girl and her boyfriend clean it up and get back to moving in... this jerk goes inside to put on pants and then comes back out to stand several feet away from their moving truck and just stare. Not moving. Just watching them unload like a hawk. Just thinking about him makes me... want to... smash a keyboard covered in dog-feces across his face.

Last week Amanda & I went with our friend, Angela, to The Grove to help her pick out a new Mac Book. Unfortunately she had to wait a few days for it to arrive, she wanted a larger hard-drive put in and the Apple Stores don't do any modifying themselves... unless it's to repair something.

But it showed up a few days later, along with a free printer and jet-black 2GB iPod Nano. Angela seemed very excited, it's her first Mac. Last night she sent a text asking if we wanted to meet at the Solar De Cahuenga Cafe to geek it out with our laptops [well... not me, but Amanda's laptop, I own a desktop]. Also Angela wanted to steal some of my music, especially my Faulty Chromosome collection.

Seeing as how it was her first Mac, I knew there was a long list of App's that she wouldn't be privy to yet. For example, on her desktop she had MSN Messenger - so I helped her set up the Mac-only chat program Adium. Which is not only small, slick and unobtrusive - it allows you to sign into to multiple accounts, under multiple services, all at the same time. The only thing it's missing is video chat, but they are supposed to be working very hard on that.

Some other App's I put on her Mac:

Coverflow - which is something I can't even really explain, so I decided to cut & pasted the video from their website:

Firefox - Safari is a great browser, but I still use Firefox for the most part. Although with some of the new features in Safari coming out in the next OS release, I might switch back.

Acqlite - this is my favorite peer-to-peer file sharing program, it's a stripped down version of Acqisition, which I really love, but am too broke to purchase, and it's gotten very naggy the last few updates. But Acqlite is completely free and fast.

It was funny though because she had forgot to charge her laptop before coming to the Cafe, so I couldn't do much for her Mac before it was running red. If you're reading this Angela, here are some other apps' I use a lot:

GimmeSomeTune - this is a tiny plug-in for iTunes, you can set it up to fetch artwork for whatever song you are listening to automatically, and it's usually very good about finding good quality album covers.

PearLyrics Widget - I'm obviously a little anal with my music collection, this widget hides out in your dashboard and works much like GimmeSomeTune, except this fetched the lyrics for whatever song you are listening to and adds them to the song's information.

Virtue Desktop - this is great if you have a small screen to work with. It allows to set-up multiple desktops... which is kinda' hard to explain. Amanda really doesn't like to use it - but I'd go crazy without if I didn't have it. The way mine desktops are set up now - I have three separate [virtual] screens, the one to the far left has my on-all-the-time apps, like Mail, Vienna [my RSS reader], iTunes, iCal, etc... the screen in the center is my main stuff, just whatever I'm working on at the moment, and the screen to the far right, has my internet apps'. And you can rotate from desktop to desktop in an instant... I should have just linked to this YouTube video.

Democracy - the best RSS video player out there [and it's for Windows too], this really opens up a lot of doors for online distribution of people's films and vlogs. And don't forget to add the Four Eyed Monstors podcast - it's the best podcast out there.

Vienna - the only way I manage to keep up with all the blogs I read.

AppZapper - the best way to delete programs and all the hidden junk that comes with them. If you drag, for example, Internet Explorer into AppZapper, it will find every last file that is related to I.E. and erase that also.

SMART Reporter - this isn't really anything I "use", but it is open on my computer 24/7, it hangs out in your top menu and as long as it's green, you can be sure you have no issues with your hard-drive. But if ever turns red, it means your drive is showing signs of corruption or failure and it gives you a chance to turn your computer off and take it in before things get serious and you loose important files. I guess the idea behind this program is 'better safe than sorry'.

I feel very dorky for writing this post - but hopefully Angela and someone else out there finds it useful.

So far no one has made use of our "speak your comment" option. I thought I'd mention how it works just for those who haven't clicked the link yet... it's very straight forward, much like when you click on the "type your comment" link a pop-up window appears with a large 'record' button.

The only difference is - your audio comments aren't made public for other people to listen to - they are sent to an Odeo inbox for Caliblog. I guess the idea is, if it's an interesting comment I'd post it by itself or add to the foot of the related post.


That's it really - obviously you don't have to leave one right away, but in case you're tempted soon you'll know what to expect.

I have several things I really need to write about - but I've been lazy about it the last few days. Our weekend in San Diego was fun, but very short, I can't wait to go back and check out the Zoo again.

As soon as we got back into town, literally, we changed as quickly as possible and headed over to Amber's place for a '70s pool party. For the time being, here are a handful of recent pics' off flickr:

Okay - false alarm on the leaving - looks like I have a few more minutes. I just wanted to mention that my flickr account is now pro and I've been going crazy the last few days uploading, tagging and organizing over 1,500 pictures.

I know it hasn't been that long since the last post - but I still felt neglectful of the site.

Amanda & I are in San Diego for the weekend helper Emily [her sister] and Stan move into their new apartment - they just arrived from Detroit. I'll have to write more later, we're leaving now to eat some breakfast and pick up a free mattress.

Earlier today I posted a nine minute clip I stumbled across on YouTube - it was taken from a fantastic documentary that was released in '03 by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott & Joel Baken, titled 'The Corporation' [it's one of my favorite documentaries - I highly, highly recommend it... "ahem Brian ahem"].

Now, I'm assuming, for two reasons, that my Uncle Brian did not watch the clip I posted before leaving his comment because a) he is at home right now and therefor would never be able to watch a nine minute streaming movie on a dial-up connection. And b) his comment seems more generic than related to the court case...

So to clarify where I'm coming from: The clip touches on a whistle-blower stand-off in which Fox "news" eventually went to Court arguing that it, being a corporation and therefor a legal person, had the right, under the 1st amendment, to knowingly lie. And the judge ruled in Fox's favor!

Here is Brian's semi-related comment:

mike, i have seen you recently post "news" or semi-fictional information as all news SHOULD be called but my question is why do you believe the so called independent media or the media that is "supposedly" not ruled by money but you question every other news program. I think alot of people (possibly you) who have this "question authority" mentality seem to believe more of the "off the wall" news or information programs then they do their local news. Is it because its different and they are not mass media so it gives the illusion that they tell the truth? i think ALL NEWS MEDIA should be taken with a grain of salt. I used to be a die hard Fox news fan but i no longer follow any one source..i feel learning from all types of news is best and then i can draw my own conclusions but you posted a radio show of a guy that honestly i never heard of... and you seem to believe him... I'm curious to know why him vs. the horrible mass media...

I don't want to blow past any points Brian made - so I'll respond piece by piece. First I want to talk about who owns what and show the changes over a period of 20-some years. In the early '80s, U.S. media was controlled by 50 separate corporations, not even a decade later that number had dropped in half...



As of recently, 90% of U.S. media is owned by half-a-dozen corporations: Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, News Corp, Bertelsmann, and General Electric. This is a very, very unhealthy situation to be in - media, the more it consolidates, the more it becomes self-censoring and in doing so, serves more as a propaganda-tool than a government watch-dog. News was the intended fourth leg of our democracy - it is the only business mentioned in our Constitution. And I doubt this is what our founding fathers had in mind.

As for my "question-authority mentality" - my views on the media do not stem from a problem or bias towards any authority, my views stem from educating myself on cases like the one talked about in the clip I posted earlier, where "News" stations are willing to openly go to court to reassure themselves they are in no way burdened with the responsibility to inform the people - to legally justify the deluding the intelligence of the most important branch of our government: the people.

On one hand I agree that some information should be taken with a grain of salt - but I think that mentality becomes more problematic than it does cautionary. For example: your taking "all" news with a grain of salt might have been the very reason it took you six years to shift to your current unfavorable position towards Bush. It allows for easy dismissal of unwanted or hard-to-stomach information. As for "learning from all types of news" - I wouldn't encourage you to continue to wade through the muck of mass-media just to make your way to outside sources that don't have a long track record of lying... or to put it more casually: being dead wrong in retrospect.



As for the Alex Jones reference - I don't believe him as much as I hope he is wrong this time, the first and only other time he has made such an urgent public claim, he was, unfortunately, 100% right.

I almost forgot: I wouldn't go around telling too many people you used to be a die-hard Fox "News" fan - as a matter of fact, I wouldn't go around telling anyone that I watch or watched Fox "News" period. Unless, of course, it was for entertainment purposes only... you know, like Andy Kaufman anti-humor.

FOX News told reporter: "We'll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is." "We just paid $3 Billion dollars for these television stations." Reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre were first asked by FOX News and later bribed, to downplay a story they had on a cancer-causing growth hormone called Posilac. The reporters decided to blow the whistle on FOX News and filed a law suit. After the ordeal was over, it was discovered in the appeals court that it's actually not against the law to falsify the "News." To make matters worse, Monsanto Corphttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giforation (makers of Posilac), lobbied dearly to prevent consumer awareness and labeling of their products.

I've been waiting since Saturday for my Flickr account to go Pro... when it finally does I have loads and loads of iPhoto pics' I'll be uploading - also Amanda has been dying to get all 3,000-some Project Pedal pictures off her account and onto mine.

That's really all I have to say about it - I'm just anxious.

But as a judge eventually pointed out, something else was amiss: Benatta was never charged with a crime. [...] The man detained at 27 was now 32. [...] Prison guards, he said, dispensed humiliation in steady doses - rapping on his cell door every half hour to interrupt his sleep, stepping on his leg shackles hard enough to scar his ankles, locking him in an outdoor exercise cage despite freezing temperatures, conducting arbitrary strip searches.

[...]

Today, there's no more soul-numbing confinement. But he's still caught in waiting game, this time to see whether Canada will grant him asylum - a decision at least six months away. He also wonders if he can regain enough spirit to start a new life.

"Now I'm not the same person," he said. "When I came to the United States, I was optimistic. I had so much energy. That's not the case now." Read the whole artical here...

Originally posted at Project Pedal:

Editing for me is currently on hold - my Mac is currently at the Grove Apple store getting a new super-drive. For the time being, I'm using my PC laptop with it's 4 GB hard-drive.

It took three separate exports & uploads of the pilot-opening to fix the aspect-ratio problem, now I just have a quality issue - I uploaded at the original HD size and quality. When I opened the exported file on my computer the video was so large it wouldn't even fit on my screen... yet after uploading it to Google the "original size" option in the embedded player shows the video to be only three inches wide. Not to mention it suddenly has a mysterious black border... In any case, it's close enough to share:

Please embed this video into your site:

I just finished watching a few clips on Video Bomb, one of my favorite community-controlled sites... and I feel somewhat beside myself at the moment. I hope so badly that the video I just watched proves to be wrong or false, if not I'm absolutely terrified as to what it might mean.

[...]

I just deleted about two paragraphs of this post because the videos speak for themselves. Watch this recent clip first, from August 6th of this year - and then watch this clip which was broadcasted live in 2001 on July 25th.

My bestfriend, Crystal, welcomed her second daughter into the world this morning! Isabelle Rene was born at 8:01 am (Michigan time), wieghed in at 7lbs 14ozs, and is 20 3/4 inches long, with a full head of hair. I spoke with Crystal late last night, after she arrived at the hospital and I got the good news when I woke up this morning. Mom and baby are both doing well. Though very tired.

After Crystal was only a few months pregnant she asked if I would be the babys Godmother. Of corse I said yes, my first God-daughter, yay! Mike and I planned to make it back to Michigan for a visit over the summer and I was looking forward to meeting the baby then. Crystal asked if I would like to be in the delvery room with her. We talked for weeks leading up to my visit and I read all kinds of stuff so I would know what to do, but she didn't end up having her while I was there. I wish I could've held her in my arms at least once. Sleep-tight, Isabelle, I'll see you soon! ;)

I had heard that a recent national survey of 1,010 adults found over a third of Americans suspect that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East.


I guess when I read those numbers it was under the assumption that our government is on the same page... meaning the government, all branches and bodies of it, is united in it's story of 9/11. Until I read this article:

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden's Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden's Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11."

I don't even know what to add to this... it leaves me speechless and scared.

My political-interest stem from a relationship with my Uncle Brian, in the summer of 2003 I worked with Brian under his Jackson landscaping business. We spent a lot of long lunches at Freddy's Freeze off US 12 discussing any number of political topics, I was very wet behind the ears and reluctant, at first, because I didn't follow politics. Brian argued that politics is just how you feel, which I strongly agree with. But there's a big difference in how a person feels when their going off knee-jerk emotions as opposed to educated-opinion.

I bring all this up because something very rare happened the other day, Brian left a comment on a political-post I'd written. It's rare because Brian makes an effort to avoid politics these days, something I strongly disagree with - consciously or unconsciously not participating in politics is undemocratic and laziness in a person's responsibility to be an active member of society.

But I didn't want to simply respond in a comment to Brian's thoughts - I thought it was a special and rare enough occasion that it warranted an entire post. My response will be on this part in particular:

...Also, as far as unions helping this country???? ha! this is why cars cost 40,000. because a guy pushing a broom makes 25.00 per hour at one of the big three car makers but at kmart the guy pushing the broom makes 6.00 per hour. unions reward time in job not performance. its great if you have worked somewhere for 20 years but that doesn't mean you are the best person for the job. but in a union, thats the way its done.

Perhaps in my younger [political] days I would have been begrudgingly persuaded into this mindset - but those conversations in-front of Freddy's Freeze are long behind me and I've spend a considerable amount of time learning of Unions [including Guilds] and their history in this country and outside of it. And I have two simple to points to make:

1) The cost of cars, or anything for that matter, is in no way directly effected or influenced by labor unions. Price is determined by supply and demand in the marketplace. What labor unions fight for is a livable-wage in reference to profits their company earns from their work.

2) Unions must also remain where they already exist and become organized in other areas because they provide the last foothold for democracy in the workplace - without unions or people's ability to have influence you have laissez faire Capitalism... which leads to things like the Great Depression in it's inevitable dismantling of the middle class.

And as Jefferson said, "That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone."


Anyways - thanks Brian for leaving a comment - I hope I responded in a clear way and also thanks for sparking my political interest... I had been walking around with my head in the sand for far too long.

Originally posted at Project Pedal...

I've been waiting since Saturday morning for a rough cut of the pilot-episode to go live on Google, but I'm having issues... instead of waiting for the tech' team to response, I've uploaded a scaled down version that will fit on Pedal's main page. When the high-resolution version clears, I'll swap it below and it will give you the choice of watching full screen.


Again, this is a rough cut - but I'm not planning on editing it much further because with the producer gone, Pedal is no longer being geared towards Discovery, but a feature length documentary. Which changes editing style drastically. The above clip acts as the opening to the 2nd or 3rd would-be episode in the "series". It moves pretty quick, covering the events of the morning up until the Ferry Terminal in about 4 minutes - if I were to continue to cut this, the story & narrative here would slow down considerably. And we'd begin to set-up one of the episode's main story lines.


Instead what will happen is I'll begin from scratch on the footage, trying to find a way to structure a long preview for the full-scale project that could be shown to possible investors or even donors.

Note: The music used is by Donn Delicate - check out his myspace page.

The last day I was in Michigan, I woke up very early to spend a few hours with my Mom before she went to bed at noon', she is a nurse at Foote and works the overnight shift. I don't remember how it came up, but at one point she said something along the lines of: "the Democrats will win [the mid-term elections], Bush has ruined it for us Republicans."

Now - I didn't really respond to this, I started to say that Bush was neither Republican nor Conservative, but knowing that I only had a another two hours to hang out, I left it alone. But it's been on my mind, off and on, the last week, and knowing that my Mom does read this blog - I think I'll finish my thoughts here.

When I started to say that Bush is neither Republican nor Conservative I was getting to a point that Bush is the last person who ruined it for the right. And here is why, Bush could have tried to do everything he has done in his last 6 years - he could have tried to stonewall the 9/11 intelligence failures... he could have tried to operate secret & highly illegal torture prisons that would hold "enemy combatants" without charge for undisclosed periods of time, he could have tried to tap and sift through thousands upon thousands of American's phone records without a court order... he could have tried to cut taxes for the richest two-tenths of one percent and dump the bill on the growing poor and shrinking middle-class... he could have tried to gut this countries' health care system and in doing so giving a massive, massive handout to the pharmaceutical industry... he could have tried to claim that in a time of war (or in this case, illegal occupation) he has unlimited and unrestricted power... he could have tried to destroy FEMA and privatize it out to the highest bidder...

Obviously the point I'm getting to is this - if the Republican-controlled Congress had done it's job, which is oversight, then they would have stopped Bush from doing the above - and in doing so, avoided the disaster that is now our Country.


But I want to make two closing points: 1) I don't think it's a given that the Democrats will win back a majority in the house and senate... mostly this is because I don't have any faith in the voting structure for this Country. It doesn't help that 80% of all votes are counted by two corporations, each owned by brothers, of one of which has gone on record as saying he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to [Bush] next year."

And 2) I'm not arguing that the Democrats will fix everything up for us in a jiffy - mostly because where our Country is at now is the result of a 30 year effort to dismantle the middle class, something that started with Reagan when he began busting up unions and trashing tariffs. It will take a long time to get us on a sustainable track again, hopefully I'll see it happen in my life time. But there is hope in the Democrats for the very basic reason that the left believes Government is a tool for good... that it is there to help the people it is made up of, that it is a safety net for society... not, as these Republicans obviously feel, a tool to enrich their already rich friends.

I'm alone at the office on a Saturday night - the a/c, located directly above my head, that I have no idea how to shut off or turn down, has been blasting ice-cold air on me the last four hours. This is my first night back in the office since before I left for Michigan ...

I'm overdue for a video-post, which I am really in the mood right now to do, but I didn't bring my camera to work today, I'll make an effort to put one up in the next few days. It's actually a bit tricky for me now because we've filled up our server space.

I'm thinking about taking away the "rate this post" set-up, located at the foot of each post, because no one really uses it - and I don't blame them, I didn't realize while embedding it that it required people to start an account. But I'd like to replace it with a voice-comment link. It's fairly straight forward, you're just taken to a page with a flash voice recorder - as long as you have a mic' on your computer somewhere, you can record a comment for us and it does all the work. I doubt that anyone would use it - but what the hell.

This video I took of some baby birds on our balcony has been sitting my google-video files for over a month - I think I'll post it now... just because:



I obviously don't have anything interesting to talk about.

Originally posted at Project Pedal:

I have some "bad news" and some "good news", which do you want first? Hopefully you went with the 'bad' because it will make much more sense in this order.

The lemons: To be straight-to-the-point about it, Matt, the Producer, is out. There are a handful of reasons, but before I get into them - I want to clarify that, as far as I can see, this relationship didn't end ugly. There was no fall-out or heated argument and slamming doors. I do feel that our working-together ended a little prematurely... maybe "prematurely" isn't the right word, a better way of explaining it would be - before it got an honest chance to get off the ground.

I think the best way to break down the recent happenings is to just cut & paste the last few emails between Matt & I. The words inside the quotation boxes are mine, the rest is Matt's response. Here we go:

Click here to finish reading this post...