Information Contraband » Miscellaneous

SOPA/PROTECT IP Bullshit

Andrew — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 21:40:39 +0000

Bigger weapons will not help against decentralized guerrilla individuals with nothing to lose. They will only hurt the innocent.

When the innocent casualties of war exceed the damage inflicted on the enemy, something has gone terribly wrong.

In the First World, anyway*, the fight isn’t about ownership, it’s about perceived fair play. If you don’t believe that, look at the success Louis CK** has had with his recent comedy video sale, and the success various artists have had on Kickstarter. If the consumer thinks you’re a giant corporation out to screw everyone, they will steal your product and justify it to themselves. So, the answer is to change their perception of you, not to threaten them with yet another set of rules and regulations and penalties. They WILL steal your stuff. It’s as easy as pie, and you can’t stop those who want to do it any more than you can stop the rain. All you can do is make them like you enough to treat you with respect. Is that “right”? No. So what? You can either do what works, or be right and lose everything.

* Piracy in third-world countries is unstoppable, and it’s pointless to try. They aren’t going to buy your product at a rate you like no matter what you do, so you are losing nothing. The people don’t know you, don’t care about you, and will never see that some whiny rich person in a first-world country should get any more than they already have. If your morning coffee costs more than they make in a week, you lose the mind-war. As a side note: the more you spend trying to stop piracy in places where it has no effect on your bottom line, the more you charge the average First World consumer, and the less inclined that consumer is to pay your inflated rate. Not to mention the bad PR/image costs.

** Mashable article
Tech Crunch Article

Do a loam from childlike stoolie.

Andrew — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:32:00 +0000

Somebody is using an autotranslater to hilarious effect in this Photoshop resumé (tutorial?).

A few gems:

“… i inject some changes in Hue and Saturation value and sharpness of whimsy to display sediment.”

“Well, here are some instructions on how to grind your whimsy.”

“If you name one’s fiddle with on exaggerated sharpening then diet the impermeability of this layer.”

The whole thing wraps up with this common Photoshop technique:

“To smarmy in default the effect, apart out to Filter – Noise – Median and into a value of 3.”

I’ve started a photo-blog

Andrew — Sat, 23 May 2009 17:18:53 +0000

Started a new photo blog as a place to display things I’ve shot. Let me know what you think of the design (and the pictures).

Grand Theft Lego Evolution Video

Andrew — Sun, 10 May 2009 06:34:50 +0000

Click here. I’ll figure out how to do the direct embed later.

Andrew — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:06:02 +0000

SlowMo: SprintCamV3

No Mo: Phillips/stinkdigital

Baaa!

Andrew — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 05:28:57 +0000

@pixeljammer. Knock yourself out.

Grand Theft Lego, Part 1 Behind the Scenes

Andrew — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:17:55 +0000

HDR is all too often over-the-top, sort of illustrated looking. I’ve done it myself—there’s a strange pull to see how Three-Dee you can get those clouds to look. But it can also be more subtle, and that’s what we are shooting for in the Legos Gone Bad series. (Yes, there are more to come)

Partner in crime David Pahl shot twelve exposures of each element, and I merged three to five of each together so that I had complete control over the amount of light falling on every part of the shot.

A little dodging, a lot of burning, some serious pounding on the color, and we got this:

(click images for bigger versions)

Thanks to Jay Roth, James Pelz and Tom Pounders for all the help and ideas.

Blogs are Yucky

Andrew — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:24:17 +0000

“I hate blogs. I even hate the word blog. It’s ugly in print and it’s ugly rolling off the tongue. And, as a class, the content in them is just as bad. Simplistic, repetitive, puerile, self-indulgent twaddle that nine times out of 10 I’m almost embarrassed to look at (and I avoid looking as much as possible). A serious waste of bandwidth and a club with which I do not wish to be associated, thank you very much.” —Ctein in the comments at theonlinephotographer.com

It’s a Telecom Tower and a hotel.

Andrew — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:38:09 +0000

Jested Telecommunications Tower and Hotel – Cold War Modern.

Coldly beautiful.

YouTube Goes Wide

Andrew — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:08:41 +0000

“We’re expanding the width of the page to 960 pixels to better reflect the quality of the videos you create and the screens that you use to watch them. This new, wider player is in a widescreen aspect ratio which we hope will provide you with a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience. And don’t worry, your 4:3 aspect ratio videos will play just fine in this new player. ” —YouTube Blog

“The cachet of widescreen should do wonders to bolster YouTube’s already high reputation for quality. Suddenly, watching a cat flush a toilet in 4:3 doesn’t seem right.” —Ken Broomfield, After Effects artist and developer of the iRider browser.

On the other hand, it does look a whole lot better fullscreen than it used to.