Tag Archives: videos

Reviews

Animation is hard work!

A wonderful video from the late 1930s, a newsreel, has been posted to YouTube. It depicts Fleischer studios in action, making a Popeye cartoon. In this age of computer animation, when things work differently, it’s a real treat to see animators in action, drawing for a change. Golly, cartoons were sure hard to make! We, as spectators, can’t possibly imagine the incredible amount of work that goes on to produce a 7 or 8 minute cartoon, but this video does a pretty good job of setting us straight on that subject. This is why old cartoons are still relevant. The sheer amount of work it took to make them qualifies them as works of art. We should do our best to preserve them and share them with generations to come.

[via Cartoon Brew]

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Places

White's Ferry and Edwards Ferry (part 2)

On 10/2, I wrote about our trip to these two sites along the C&O Canal here in Maryland. I couldn’t post the videos at that time. With the aid of YouTube, here they are, in chronological order, for your enjoyment.

I filmed this as the ferry pulled up to the Maryland side of the Potomac, and cars started to drive off:

This one shows the C&O Canal Trail near White’s Ferry. It’s a peaceful walk through the forest, with Ligia up ahead:

These next two show us driving through the Maryland countryside, on an unpaved road in a field somewhere between White’s Ferry and Edwards Ferry. I believe the road is River Road, although the map is unclear on this.

This is the launch point at Edwards Ferry, which has no ferry any more, but it’s a nice and peaceful place to visit. The fact that is has no ferry is actually a plus, since there are no crowds there. You can park your car and hike around, taking lots of photos. What’s also interesting about Edwards Ferry is that the C&O Canal’s water stops right there. The canal wasn’t maintained between it and White’s Ferry. So it’s kind of cool to see water on one side of the lock gate, and grass on the other. This isn’t depicted in the video.

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Places

A trip to the C&O Canal Park (part 2)

On 10/8, I wrote about our trip to the C&O Canal Park here on the Maryland side of the Potomac River, and I posted the photos we took there. I forgot to post the video we made as well. The quality isn’t fantastic, I used our digital camera, not a camcorder, but it’ll give you another dimension of the place. So, without further ado, here it is:

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Lists

Two wonderful short movies

I recently found out about two videos, both found on YouTube. The first, called I Can Only Imagine – Mercy Me, is a wonderfully inspirational video showing the amazing willpower of two people, a father-son team, who compete in triathlons. The catch is that the son is completely disabled, and the father carries him all the way through each leg of the competitions.

The second is called Fast Film, and is a stop-motion animation mash-up made with paper cutouts and live action from past movies. Must see both!

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Reviews

Want to watch your recorded shows and movies over the Internet?

OrbWith all of the media hype surrounding Slingbox, and the Sony LocationFree Player, an easy and inexpensive (as in FREE) solution is getting overlooked: My Orb. But that’s to be expected. They haven’t advertised heavily, and they’re fairly unassuming. But don’t think that their product is underrated, because it’s not.

To use it Orb, all you do is install their software on your desktop system (only works with Windows XP machines), and it’ll let you access your photos, music and movies right through the Internet, right away. It’ll even stream your music in Windows Media Player or Quicktime streams, depending on what computer you access your files with (PC or Mac).

I wouldn’t have known about it myself, except that I bought a Creative web cam for my laptop, and found the software bundled onto the install CD. I tried it, and it really works like a charm! I simply installed the software, set up my account at My Orb, and logged in. All of my photos, music and videos were listed right in my account. I was able to stream my movies from my home machine, and watch them over the internet, at work. And if you’ve got a Media Center PC, it’ll even let you access your recorded TV shows, or the live TV stream. Cool!

And, what’s even cooler is that they’ve got this service called Orb Secure, which they make available for free to Creative web cam buyers, that’ll let you use your camera as a surveillance device. You can access the camera’s video stream at any time to see what’s going on at home, or even better, use it as a motion sensor, and set it to record video for a pre-set amount of time whenever movement is sensed. What’s more, this service will even email or SMS you whenever motion is detected. You can then watch either the live video stream, or the recorded video portions, right on the Orb site, and take action if needed (i.e., call the police). How cool is that!

So why spend your money on yet another piece of hardware? Use what you already have, and get your money’s worth. Look into Orb.

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