Here’s a quick video update from Buenos Aires on roughly day 34. And just to clarify – when I was talking about free kisses being awesome, I was referring to the ladies! ...

I just got back from a little walk around Palermo Soho. It’s about 32C right now, and it sure is a nice change to wear shorts and a t-shirt compared to the rain and cold gear I had on back home. Without further ado, here’s a little video I shot today with my new HD Kodak Playsport: I spent yesterday trying to get a SIM for my cell phone down here. I basically walked all the way from Palermo Soho to Recoleta, which took me about 45 minutes each way. It was quite the adventure, and it’s still not quite over. I’ll post more about the cell phone situation once there’s a bit of resolution ...

I was trapped in an elevator once for about 15 minutes. This poor guy was trapped in one for 41 hours. Check it out. ...

I saw this over on Matt’s blog and thought I should write about it too. Captured on digital film is the Vancouver police department tossing a pile of someone’s belongings into a garbage truck. The person who filmed the footage is David Eby, the Executive Director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. No doubt, police officers have a difficult job. They are asked to protect, to serve, and to make real-time decisions that are never easy. That being said, given the current conditions in the lower mainland with respect to violence and gangs, one has to question the actions of these officers, ...

My friend Jason sent me a link to this video this morning, and I thought it was pretty cool. I contacted the guy who made it, and he gave me permission to show it here. It’s a time lapse out a window during an airplane trip. Video by James Leng, All Rights Reserved. ...

As I alluded to in my previous post today, I’m definitely looking at getting into video sometime in the near future. Considering I ordered a camera shortly after writing that post, “near future” is actually more like “early next week”. I spent a solid twenty minutes or so trying to figure out what type of camera I wanted to purchase, and eventually narrowed it down to a few different ones. In terms of features, I’ve always wanted a camera that could do 24P. Most consumer cameras shoot at 30 frames per second in an interlaced format, which is quite different than how film is shot. Most ...

Lots of people in the WordPress community know about Dancing Matt, but I thought I’d put this up for those who haven’t heard of him. This guy named Matt has been bouncing around the world and doing a little YouTube-like video dance whenever he stops. I’m not entirely sure how it started or what it was supposed to be, but it’s amazing what it finally turned into. Here’s a little ensemble of shots from Matt’s journeys: It actually took me a minute or two to figure out where he was dancing in Vancouver. The background looked like Yaletown, but the foreground looked like the Inuqshuk at ...

I’ve been saving some money for that last little while, fully expecting to make two purchases in the not too distant future. One of the first items will be a full frame camera body. I was forced to make a purchase of the 40D last year simply because I didn’t trust my current camera enough to shoot a friend’s wedding, but truthfully really wanted to get a full-frame instead. Canon’s only affordable (at least to me) full frame is the Canon EOS 5D, but unfortunately it’s about 3 years old now and doesn’t have a lot of the new bells and whistles in it. Canon has been basically silent on ...

I was going through some of my old videos tonight, and realized I have a pile that I haven’t uploaded yet. Here’s one of Feist singing 1234 at the BC Festival 150 in Victoria. [easyvideo video=”http://blip.tv/play/AcnFUAA”] ...

So my friend Adrian is a really smart guy. I think he’s completed four or more years of post secondary education, and managed the entire IT department singlehandedly at my company. I put him up to a challenge to see how long it would take him to figure out how to get the case off my iPhone 3G. Here’s the end result. Only took him 43 seconds. Not bad. This entry was written for Blogathon 2008, and in support of the Union Gospel Mission charity. If you’d like to donate to the cause, please visit the blogathon donation page and fill out the form near the middle. You can also follow the blogathon ...

I thought I’d mix it up a bit and post something a little different. This is a cute little video that was shot at the Vancouver Aquarium a few years ago. Consequently, it has become one of the most watched videos on YouTube of all time. This one version has been viewed over ten million times. [easyvideo video=”http://www.youtube.com/v/epUk3T2Kfno&hl=en&fs=1″] This entry was written for Blogathon 2008, and in support of the Union Gospel Mission charity. If you’d like to donate to the cause, please visit the blogathon donation page and fill out the form near the middle. You ...

So, this is a fairly basic question. Lately, some people have been installing little rick roll blockers, thinking that it somehow protects them from being rick rolled simply because the video no longer plays. My take on that is that it’s basically a form of cheating, and that if you clicked the link, you were rick rolled. But let’s see what my knowledgeable readers have to say. Chime in below: [poll=12] ...

Good news is I’m fairly happy with the outcome, especially with the branding part of it. Plus transcoding only took about 3 or 4 minutes. I signed up for a Pro Account on a month by month basis for this upcoming weekend. It gives me priority transcoding and the ability to automatically generate iPod specific versions at the same time. The only question left is weather to shoot at 320×240 or 640×480. If I were at home, I’d just shoot 640×480, but the files end up rather large, and if I’m limited to a crappy hotel connection, might prefer speed over quality. Plus, 320×240 is basically ...

I wanted to pen this entry really quick before bed. A few days ago, one of the main encryption keys for the HD-DVD platform was leaked, apparently by an insider within the video industry. Basically, having this key will allow anyone with access to the hardware the full ability to decode and decrypt every HD-DVD that has been manufactured so far. Oops. The key, which amounts to no more than a 128 bit string, has been circling the internet, pulling a string of cease and desist orders along with it. Many a webowner has tried to publish the key online, only to be given a legal letter demanding they ...

I’ve had a few requests lately from people asking if I could send them a copy of my master’s thesis. So in the interest of saving time, I’m throwing it up here in case anyone wants to download it and read themselves to sleep. My research was primarily in the area of high definition video compression, specifically on a new codec called H.264 that is used in the new HD DVD formats such as Blue-Ray and HD-DVD. I proposed a novel scheme to combine concurrently broadcoast MPEG-2 standard definition (SD) streams with H.264 spatial difference information to create a HD broadcast stream at a ...

A few months ago, I wrote a flickr plugin for wordpress that integrated with a few different image galleries including Lightbox and Greybox. As last count, 126 different blogs were using the crossroads plugin to show their flickr images in their posts. While updating my blog theme last night, I realized one of the current problems I have with most of the themes I downloaded. Typically, a theme will present the full content of a few blog entries on the main page. A few of the “cooler” themes I’ve seen only show one post on the main page, which is sort of a neat idea if you don’t write very ...