Greenstorm Film is an independent production company from Moscow, Idaho. They make great short films, such as this one, called "The Package":

I find this really funny :). There's another one, more grotesque but no less amusing: The Great Couch Caper.

I like how creative these guys are, and how well they put everything in scene. Another example of their talent is this music video of a cover version of "Airplanes" by B.o.B. (which, by the way, also features some really good musicians!)

And now that I've hooked you up on their filmmaking, you'll be pleased to know they are working on a feature-length film named "The Protagonist" (trailer), due to be released in the fall. I, for one, can't wait to see it.

Thanks, Jenny, for pointing out Greenstorm, and thanks, Noah, for the cool performance in the video :)

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I just watched the pilot episode of Pioneer One, the "first ever made-for-torrent" TV series, and I liked it a lot!

The story is intriguing:

An object in the sky spreads radiation over North America. Fearing terrorism, U.S. Homeland Security agents are dispatched to investigate and contain the damage. What they discover will have implications for the entire world.

The pilot episode has been filmed on a budget of a mere 6000 dollars (all of it funded by private donations), and for that, the idea has been very well executed. I suggest you all see it, as the video is freely and legally available through VODO. Pioneer One is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Sharealike license.

What I find very impressive about the show is that unlike traditional producers, they embrace rather than demonize P2P file sharing. Therefore, the makers of Pioneer One have the chance to show that grassroots film-making (or rather, TV-series-making) that is successful beyond a tiny scale is possible by actively engaging the Internet community (for both funding and distribution) rather than using the Internet as a simple, tightly controlled broadcasting medium as if it was a glorified TV set.

When the article on Pioneer One faced (and fenced off) a deletion request due to alleged irrelevance on Wikipedia, I wrote the following in the deletion discussion:

Keep. Not for it being a low-funds TV series, as it is not exceptional in that respect, but for its attempt at being successful through Torrent distribution. [...] The main reason for its notability is that we see a huge effort on the side of traditional media distribution groups against P2P networking as a concept. They essentially argue that P2P is [not] tightly controllable and therefore it must be objectionable. Making an active effort to legally distribute media content via P2P is much more a political statement for the legitimacy of P2P as a cultural phenomenon than it is a way to keep distribution cost low. Compare this to other attempts at making a (mini-) series popular on the Internet (Dr. Horrible, for example) that while being free-as-in-beer (initially) did not use P2P technology (or any free-as-in-speech distribution channel), and you'll see how radically different Pioneer One is in that respect. [...]

Sure, it is not the first free-to-torrent project. But it's the first free-to-torrent series that might actually become successful. And it is a way for the filesharing community to show what it is really about: Free speech, not free beer.

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So, you have a bunch of .avi video files (from your cell phone, for example) that you'd like to combine into one (so you can upload the collection to YouTube)?

Here are two options on how to do this. The first one uses a tool from the transcode package:

avimerge -i one.avi two.avi three.avi -o output.avi

avimerge is appropriately named, and if it works, it works well. Sometimes, however, it produces out-of-sync audio, which is kind of lame if people are actually, you know, talking in your videos.

Second method to the rescue: mencoder is part of the MPlayer family and can also concatenate avi files:

mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy one.avi two.avi three.avi -o output.avi

Note: Both methods are lossless, as neither the video nor audio stream is re-encoded in any way, but they also require all input files to use the same stream formats. If you took the different videos with the same device though, that shouldn't be a problem.

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Da hat der niederländische Journalist Rob Savelberg die neu-und-alt-Kanzlerin Merkel aber ganz schön aus dem Konzept gebracht:

Natürlich ist das löblich, löblich, dass Merkel ihrem zukünftigen Kabinett voll und ganz vertraut. Hunderttausend deutsche Mark zu vergessen, kann schließlich jedem einmal passieren. Andererseits entbehrt es nicht einiger Ironie, dass ausgerechnet der scheinbar unter selektiver Amnesie in Finanzfragen leidende Schäuble zum Finanzminister ernannt wurde. Bleibt nur zu hoffen, dass er bei den Finanzen von 83 Millionen Deutschen nicht ab und an mal eine Milliarde vergisst. Und falls doch, müssen wir ihm eben noch ein bisschen mehr Vertrauensvorschuss gewähren -- schließlich hat sich Schäuble schon als Innenminister wichtige Vertrauenspunkte im Kampf gegen den Bürger gesichert, und mit seiner süßen Schäublone für immer einen Platz in unseren Herzen gewonnen.

PS: Cui fidem, fidem, heißt "Vertrauen, wem Vertrauen gebührt".

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Am 27. September Piratenpartei wählen.

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Nach der Verabschiedung des so genannten "Zugangserschwerungsgesetzes" wenden sich immer mehr Menschen gegen die Errichtung einer digitalen Zensurinfrastruktur in Deutschland, teils mit bitterem Zynismus, wie etwa dieser Zensursula-Sommerhit:

Die Zensurkritiker geben indes den Kampf gegen das unsägliche Gesetz nicht auf: Am heutigen Samstag fanden vielerorts in Deutschland Demonstrationen statt. In Karlsruhe wurde der Artikel 5 Grundgesetz symbolisch zu Grabe getragen. Sogar im Gästebuch des Bundespräsidenten wenden sich besorgte Bürger an das Staatsoberhaupt, mit der Bitte, das in ihren (und auch meinen) Augen offenkundig verfassungswidrige Gesetz nicht zu unterschreiben.

Wäre da nicht die massive Kritik ihres leichtfertigen Ausverkaufs der Grundrechte, müsste die Regierung in Berlin sich über so viel Basisdemokratie eigentlich freuen.

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This kid is awesome:


Fastest Firefox: World's Fastest Cup Stacker

He's 11 years old, and the world's fastest cup stacker. He made this "Fastest Firefox" video for the upcoming Firefox 3.5 launch. Of course Firefox can't stack cups, but its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is also one of the fastest in the world!

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Infinito
Creative Commons License photo credit: Baffs
Ich bin nicht sicher, ob es das schon einmal gegeben hat, aber dass man ein Fußball-Länderspiel live im Internet sehen kann, finde ich prima.

sport.ard.de schreibt:

Das Länderspiel zwischen China und Deutschland wird heute live im Ersten und bei sport.ARD.de zu sehen sein. Der Videostream startet um 14 Uhr und ist aus rechtlichen Gründen nur von Rechnern in Deutschland zu empfangen. Nach dem Spiel stellt sport.ARD.de die Höhepunkte als Video on demand zur Verfügung. Diese Videos sind territorial nicht eingeschränkt.

Die Einschränkung auf "nur Deutschland" ist natürlich ein wenig bedauerlich, vor allem für fußballinteressierte Auslandsdeutsche, aber das ist ja international keine Seltenheit.

Trotzdem: Fußball-Länderspiel als Livestream, die in Büros arbeitende Bevölkerung wird es Ihnen danken, liebe ARD.

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Interesting:

In this German video, Susi Neunmalklug (Susie Smartypants) explains the evolution to Mr. Hempelmann (who apparently is her religion teacher).

It is a promotional video for a new German children's book about the evolution.

(thanks for the link, Zach!)

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We all know that President Obama's internet team is undoubtedly the most advanced a US government ever had (and one could argue, even in the world). Now, we can't exactly say the same for his VP Joe Biden:

Hat tip to Joe for a fun new addition to our treasure chest of internet memes: We'll give it an honorable spot, right next to the series of tubes and the internets!

[via]

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