Events

Alexandra Fits in concert in Medias

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of attending a concert given by Alexandra Fits in Medias, as part of the seventh edition of the annual Medieval Festival. Alexandra sang French songs, in a style reminiscent of Edith Piaf and Georges Moustaki. We were thrilled to hear and see how good she was, especially since we’d never heard of her before.

If you do a search for her on the internet, only a few hits come up. In an interview with Mircea Hodarnau (from Radio Ring) after the concert, she admitted she needs to work on her internet presence, but knows little about how to do that. She has a MySpace page, where a few of her songs are posted, and there are a few videos on YouTube as well.

Thanks to a collaboration between Mircea Hodarnau and the nice folks at Nova TV, I’m thrilled to let you watch what we heard the night of the concert. They’ve posted the full length concert on YouTube, and I think you’ll agree that Alexandra Fits has a talent for music that more people ought to hear.

Let’s hope we see and hear more of her! I for one would love to buy a CD of her music, but she hasn’t yet published one.

Events

Father and Son: STS-1 and STS-135

Here’s Chris Bray and his father at the space shuttle launch, in 1981 and 30 years later, in 2011.

Excerpts from an interview with him done by the Flickr staff:

Early on the morning of April 12, 1981, after a couple of delays, the space shuttle Columbia was finally getting ready for lift-off to the first ever shuttle mission into space. One of the spectators, Flickr member arockalypse, was standing in the crowd, being terribly excited and anxious. He told us he grew up loving astronomy and following the space program, but until that day he had only seen Apollo launches on TV, so this was a huge thrill.
30 years later, when STS-135, the last space shuttle mission before retiring of the program, was planned, arockalypse and his family entered a lottery for tickets and managed to score passes to the Astronaut Hall of Fame viewing area.
When the launch finally took place, “it was bittersweet. We are big supporters and followers of the space program, and it is somewhat sad to see this great era come to an end. However, the Shuttle was a fantastic program and despite 2 horrible tragedies, it was an amazingly successful one. I’m looking forward to what comes next!”

via Father & Son « Flickr Blog. Photo by Chris Bray.

Events

YouTube and WordPress update oEmbed player to include CC button

This is big news for those of us providing captions or subtitles for the videos published on YouTube. I noticed today that the oEmbed video player for YouTube videos, the one used for all WordPress blogs, has been updated to include the CC button. It didn’t have it the last time I checked, which was yesterday. My site subscribers would always ask me where the CC button was, and how to see the subtitles, and I had to tell them to go see the video directly on YouTube if they wanted subtitles, which was a bit of a chore, and it certainly didn’t make things obvious and easy for folks who were using that feature for the first time.

Well, I’m glad to announce that from now on, you’ll be able to turn video subtitles on or off right here, on my website, and for those videos of mine where I’m providing two separate subtitles tracks, you’ll be able to switch between them as well.

I can’t tell you enough how pleased I am about this. For someone like me, who produces video shows for international audiences, YouTube’s CC feature is key, and the ability to control subtitles from within the oEmbed player used on my websites is key as well. So I’d like to thank both WordPress and YouTube for updating the video player and for making my life easier!

Events

Dr. Brian Clement on Stopping the Aging Process

Ligia and I attended a talk given by Dr. Brian Clement of the Hippocrates Health Institute — the foremost center of natural and complementary health care in the world. The event took place at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton, FL, on March 22, 2010, and the talk was on aging, and what we can do to stop it. It may sound like the stuff of fairy tales, but the advice given is common sense, and it works. Dr. Clement himself is almost 70 years old, though he doesn’t look it.

In a nutshell, we must change our nutrition to include a large proportion of raw vegan foods, particularly sprouts and vegetable juices. I invite you to watch the entire video, which is about 45 minutes long. It’s quite interesting, and the Q&A section at the end also provides actionable and important advice.

Sorry about the somewhat unsteady video. I recorded this handheld. And the focus is a bit off for the first 1:30 minutes, but it does get better after that, so hang in there!

I’d also like to thank the folks at YouTube for allowing me to post the entire video without cutting it up into smaller parts. This summer, they raised the limit to 15 minutes for each video, then did away with it completely a few weeks ago, which meant I could upload the entire 45-minute video, in 720p HD, at over 3GB in size, without any problems. Thank you YouTube!

We had a wonderful time last night, as we counted down the seconds to the New Year and watched the fireworks show put on by the Medias City Hall, followed by a cozy party at our home.

I hope you’ll enjoy the video I recorded during the fireworks. It was freezing outside, which is the perfect weather for the holidays. On a side note, I was a bit let down by the Christmas weather this year. We had a ton of snow in the days before Christmas, then warm weather moved in and melted all of it just before Christmas Eve. At least winter redeemed itself in time for New Year’s Eve, with lots of snow and cold weather to boot. Very nice indeed!