* Our webmaster on this server, Adam, blogged about economist Peter Schiff who has been predicting the house bubble, oil prices, economy crash since the beginning of the decade. Watch the video on Adam’s page about how everyone laughs, live on TV, at Mr Schiff predictions — it’s so pathetic. I guess he laughed last. On a recent interview with him, he predicts very dire stuff, like this recession will be much worse than the 1930’s Great Depression, as the crime will rise a lot and there will be civil unrest. He predicts that the rest of the developed world won’t be in the same situation, only USA will pay the price of its own “consume a lot, and don’t produce enough” philosophy. You can read more of Schiff’s articles here. He made me think twice that bailing out failing businesses was the way to go.

* Handbrake 0.9.3 was released yesterday and it now allows for single file transcoding instead of just DVD ripping. It’s also available for Linux now, not just Mac/Win. I put up a tutorial on how to use it to export in 720p HD. Change the resolution to 640×360 and bitrate to 1500 if your camera is a widescreen miniDV instead.

* YouTube supports HD now. Sure, you did see the widescreen new page format, but that’s not what I am talking about. YouTube re-encodes videos 4 times: 192×144 3GP for cellphones, 320×240 FLV (this is what it loads by default), 480×270 h.264 (”high quality”), and 1280×720 h.264 (loads only if you append the &fmt=22 code at the end of the URL of a video that was originally a 720p uploaded video). My Android video was uploaded in 720/30p, so when you click on this specific URL you can view it in HD. I believe that YouTube’s h.264-based HD re-encoding is better than Vimeo’s, not only because of the video quality, but because they support 30 fps (Vimeo only goes up to 24), and also it seems that Adobe’s h.264 decoder is faster than its FLV HD one. However, I expect Vimeo to follow suit in terms of h.264/fps, so I am staying with them rather than moving my videos to Youtube’s ugly user base who know only how to discredit you and spam your comment section to hell.

* Speaking of YouTube, I watched a bit of the first YouTube Live show the other day: Katy Perry can barely sing. From all the Youtube internet personalities, Mr Safety, Smosh and Sxephil are my favorites. Smosh’s latest video is really funny.

* [BSG SPOILERS]: SyFyPortal says that one of these five people will be the last Cylon. Given that the… Xena Cylon said that “the last Cylon is not among you”, we can easily take out 3 people out of the list. It will be between Ellen Tigh and Cally Tyroll. And if Cally is indeed the last Cylon, I will do a big fat “I told you so, twice“, blog post.

* Hugh Jackman was named sexiest man on Earth. For once, I wholeheartedly agree. The guy is dreamy, one of a kind. What makes him irresistible is not his looks, but the gentlemanship, and loyalty his face emits. Evolution-wise-speaking, that’s the kind of thing most women ultimately want, and Jackman radiates these characteristics very strongly. Heck, he’s married to a (not-so-pretty) woman many years his senior, and he’s been very loyal to her and their family.

* I received the Kodak Z1012 IS for a review yesterday (review will appear on FreshDV). It has a 1/2.5″ sensor, and my tests revealed that its HD video capability yields the same amount of background blur as the HV20/30 do. You need to start zooming in at around 33% to start getting some blur (the equivalent amount of blur on the HV20/30 is 75% of zoom though).

* Bush is set to relax endangered species rules. God damn it, I wish that we didn’t have to wait until January for Obama to take office.

* Premiere 4.0.1 was released yesterday, it now supports the opening of Final Cut projects and reading RED’s R3D files.

* Neuros released a set-top box for TV entertainment. It’s important for us videophiles as it is able to playback 1080p h.264 files, and run a normal distribution of Ubuntu in it that allows for true Flash support. PC Linux’s Flash support is much superior to what you get on the PS3 for example, which doesn’t even do fullscreen. I might be able to get a unit and write a review for OSNews.

* I watched Coldplay on SNL the other night. Chris Martin, their singer, simply can’t sing. The guy just can’t hit the high notes, it was laughable watching him running around like a lunatic on the stage and not being able to actually sing. Note that I am a huge fan of Coldplay, I love their music. But seeing their singer performing live, it was an exercise in patience. Later, Dave Cook, the American Idol winner, was performing on SNL too, and while I hate his music (Bryan Adams-y kind of music), the guy can actually sing.

* I watched “Akira” last night. I really don’t know why it is rated so highly on IMDb. It’s probably the best anime out there, but overall it wasn’t amazing. Maybe I just don’t get anime, who knows.

* I am a pacifist, so Proposition H 2005 (applicable only to San Franciscans) is an interesting one to me. This local ordinance was meant to test the Supreme Court and the Constitution about the “right to keep and bear arms”. Now, here’s the thing. Depending on HOW you read that line of text in the Constitution, you either understand that every citizen should have the right to bear arms for whatever reason, or that this right is for militia purposes in case the people need to restore a fallen democracy. I am not against personal protection with a gun when and if required (e.g. in this recent rape case), but the militia argument is irrelevant in this day and age. If citizens need to revolt against a gone-bad government, then having some handguns in their closet won’t do jack. The wars today are fought with biological weapons, tanks, fighter planes. Unless citizens are allowed to buy an F-22 at an affordable price, the “right to bear arms” is just pointless. And so all we end up with, are just some crazies who buy guns and then they kill on a whim. In other words, the rest of us must endure the residue of a law that’s not applicable anymore. Some say that banning guns will make it easier for thugs and rapists to do harm. Well, citizens who want to protect themselves should get a taser gun (it’s not considered a “firearm” in the US), or even better, create special low-power non-lethal taser-like guns that can fire only up to three electrified blobs. I think that this would be a good middle ground for both camps: completely non-lethal, minimized functionality guns, used for protection only. Maybe what this law needs is such a provision to make sense to most traditionalists. I won’t even go into discussion about “guns used in hunting”, because I am against hunting altogether. Isn’t Safeway enough for you?

* A nice video against Proposition 8 from Larry Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, and Stanford law professor:

A previously unknown singer, Lady GaGa, is now on the front page of Youtube’s most popular, with her music video “Poker Face”. It’s her third single. But very conveniently, that music video got up on the front page the day her album came out. If that’s not Universal gaming Youtube’s algorithms when it’s required to, I don’t know what it is. At least they don’t seem to abuse it constantly, so they are clear from Youtube’s radars.

Same goes for Intel btw. They released their new Atom dual core processors, and the accompanied chipset can only support up to 1 GB of RAM (for market segmentation reasons, obviously). This makes DELL’s new 12″ netbook completely and utterly useless. This 12″ netbook would have been my No1 choice to replace my 12″ Powerbook (which is pretty much unusable browsing the web these days even with Flash/JS turned OFF). Therefore, both Intel and DELL can eat my shit now. Here’s a hot one.

Bah.

* We were driving towards our usual sushi restaurant with JBQ one day and there were people on the side of the road picketing with the message “Yes to Prop 8 means freedom of religion.” Now, how is the allowance of gay marriage means no religious freedom is a mystery to me. Except if what these people really meant was: “I am a religious fanatic and I want you to be one too. I want the freedom of removing your freedoms”.

* Ubuntu’s Shuttleworth: “I don’t think anyone can make money from the Linux desktop.” Well, duh.

* I was recently made aware of Always’ “Extra Heavy Overnight Maxi With Flexi Wings” panty. Best product of the year. What took them so long to stop our nightmares?

* Beyonce is a very beautiful woman, who has a very good voice. And she radiates in a good way, seems to be a really good person. However, for the life of me, I just can’t stand her music. From all the major female pop singers today, she is the only one that I can’t understand the melody of her songs. In fact, in some of her videos, like “B-Day”, she dances and sounds ridiculously. Are there really people who buy that kind of music?

* MTV launched a new site that looks like HULU, but it only has music videos. And I ask you: what was the point of this site? Every single of these music videos and a hell even more than these can be found on YouTube. The only reason for MTVMusic to exist would have been if they had VGA, 480p or HD versions of the said music videos. But all they have is the same — if not worse — quality than Youtube’s. In other words, they threw a pile of cash in the fire. For nothing.

* I might close this blog soon. I am getting tired of it all. I feel tired of everything really, and so this might be the first thing to go.

I own an unlocked iPhone. And while I would be pissed if my phone was to get bricked if I was to upgrade the firmware, the truth is, I have an unsupported phone. I would deserve the pain associated with that upgrade. The risk should be mine, not Apple’s.

And the bigger problem is, it’s difficult to be 100% backwards compatible in a 1.x release of any product. After the original release, it will take 1-2 more years to stabilize a big project in a way that nothing else is going to get broken again. The judge must understand this. That’s how software works. Apple should only get fined if they broke the compatibility on purpose, in order to take revenge on the unlockers. But how do you even prove that in a court of law without the engineers coming forward?

I have one thing to say to these people: prejudice.

You see, sure, there are the religious nutjob asshats who don’t want to allow gay marriage because they believe that God will send fire to burn them all if they allow the law to pass. Fair enough. We can’t mess with God’s will, now, can we?

However, California, which consists of many artists and techies, is NOT as overly religious as the Bible Belt states are. So why are there people in this state that are against gay people? And the reason for that, is prejudice.

The media, 99% of the times, has portrayed gay people negatively. When there is a gay plot in a movie or show, the gay person is usually the “easy” one, living an “unholy” life. People believe that all gay people are sluts. That’s the real crux of the issue. Not God. Not personal opinions on marriage. Not even that gay people “chose” to be gay. Sure, there are a lot of people who still put God, marriage opinions and choice as their reasons for hating gay people, but I truly believe that the main reason behind these excuses is that they think that gay people are slutty people, unworthy of marriage. That’s the information the average Joe has been fed by the media.

They don’t even think for one moment that right next door from that “slutty” gay club around the corner, there is a “straight” slutty club, where their 18 year old daughter goes anal in the restrooms with that 35 year old married man she just met. But they only see other people’s sluttiness and not the one inside their own home. What was that? Your daughter doesn’t do that kind of thing? Well, either you don’t know your daughter well, or your daughter is ugly as hell. Either way, if not all daughters are the same, then all gay people are not the same either.

We have many gay friends here in the Bay Area, but at least two of these gay friends have been together with their partners for years. Honestly people, when you see these two couples being together for 15-20 years each, how can you have the nerve to disallow these people from getting married? They deserve it much more than most of us, straight people.

Why not hire a professional photographer for less than an hour, either before or during the ceremony, and pay like, $150, and be done with it? Then, you can use friends and family to snap more pictures or shoot video. This is how it was done in my wedding, and how it was pretty much done at my brother in law’s wedding. And it’s the logical thing to do.

I mean, on my wedding, we got some pictures and some video (my father in law shot parts of it). I’ve only watched the video once, and I look at the pictures quickly only when I happen to clean up the shelves (something that doesn’t happen very often). So why spend crazy money on that kind of thing? Vimeo is full of such over the top expensive wedding videos, that I personally don’t see the point of.

I mean, look at this video. If that’s not overkill, I don’t know what is. Mind you, I find the video really well done, and very artistic. But I wouldn’t pay for it. If the director wanted to use me as a model for such a video idea I would volunteer, but I wouldn’t pay to create a short film just because I am getting married.

I guess I really don’t believe in weddings. Marriage itself is not a bad thing (although it’s not necessary, it is useful in many ways), but the weddings in general, and all the culture that surrounds them are useless shit.

And please, don’t give me the excuse of “you shoot nice videos/pics so you can remember your wedding better”.

I don’t have Alzheimer’s, I remember my wedding. And even if I wasn’t, what the big deal is? I don’t love my husband more or less because of it.

Its more impressive feature is its online video editor. You upload your clips, you go to the “remix” area, and then you cut the way you want it to. There is no ability to add an additional audio track though, or other niceties, it’s just a straight forward “cut and glue” editor. MotionBox told me that the videos used in the editor are the original clips and not any re-encoded versions.

MotionBox is undoubtedly going to be compared to Vimeo, the darling of the filmmaking community. The first difference is that MotionBox is more about families rather than filmmakers. So I don’t think that the two sites compete directly. The second difference is that Vimeo already has a vibrant community, while MotionBox has limited ways of creating such communities. Additionally, MotionBox only required ~30 seconds to re-encode to 720p my 17-second Golden Gate Bridge video, while it took Vimeo about 2 minutes. MotionBox also supports AVCHD uploading via Adobe AIR, while Vimeo doesn’t. Finally, the embedded videos on web pages serve the HD version, while Vimeo limits embeds to SD.

Quality is better than Vimeo’s. Their SD re-encodings are clearly better, and their HD versions edge out Vimeo again albeit the difference is not as glaring as in the SD re-encodings. Additionally, MotionBox re-encodes HD video at 30fps, while Vimeo had to go back to 24p as maximum, because many users could not play it back smoothly on their computers. And this is true for MotionBox too. While it’s an answer to the prayers of Vimeo users who don’t want the 24p limitation, it does require a faster PC decoding these files.

A few things need to be fixed though. For example, Motionbox allows you to download an MP4 h.264/AAC re-encoded file in the native resolution of the uploaded video, but the bitrate used is weird. For example, I got a 4.5 mbps for a 720p video re-encoding, and a 5.5 mbps re-encoding for a wide-VGA video. In the case of the VGA video, this is waste of bandwidth (it shouldn’t have been more than 1.5mbps). Plus, the video is encoded in some really high-level h.264, that even the VGA video doesn’t playback smoothly on my Quicktime! I believe that Motionbox should export a maximum of 720/25p video (just because AppleTV doesn’t do more), at low-complexity Baseline h.264, with a bitrate that’s variable depending on the resolution, so it’s compatible with the XBoX360, PS3 and AppleTV, in addition to Quicktime PC/Mac viewing. Their iPod export seems to be better in terms of bitrate/complexity. The original file is also download-able, if you have a free account with the service.

Another thing that irks me very badly at MotionBox is the fact that videos are downloading when you hit a page, even if you haven’t requested a play. This is really bad for Comcast users who use online video too much (like myself). The last thing I want is having Comcast closing down my internet account (don’t forget that from Oct 1st, Comcast is not unlimited).

Security needs tightening as well. The service did not request my current password to either change my password, or my email address.

I think that MotionBox can become a hit with families. It offers a way to burn and order DVDs, to “cut and glue” online, and share it with friends and family in a variety of ways. I think it has a nice future as a “family video sharing” service. To win some of Vimeo’s filmmaking crowd though, it needs to be more “hip”.

Same thing is true with politics, and entertainment. I read a lot of crap today about how many people disliked the “Disturbia” music video of Rihanna. They found it “disturbing, and Rihanna was scary”, most people wrote. Well, duh! The song is called “Disturbia”, and you wanted to see SnowWhite petting puppies instead? No. That’s what you thought you wanted to see. If that video indeed disturbed you then the director did an AMAZING job. Hats off to him.

Same thing goes with some films. Some people attack certain actors (not just characters) because of their role as the film’s villain. They just start disliking the actor himself because of the role. Which means one thing and one thing only: that this is a kick ass actor. Examples include but not limited to: James Callis on Battlestar Galactica, and Giovanni Ribisi on “Flight of the Phoenix”.