Karenism » web http://karenism.com/blog Deliciously geeky Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:40:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Bee.tv http://karenism.com/blog/2010/06/01/bee-tv/ http://karenism.com/blog/2010/06/01/bee-tv/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:50:00 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/?p=940 I made this video for a new company I’ve been working with called Bee.tv. They do tv & movie recommendations and they have a free iphone app. I’ve been playing with it and it’s pretty cool. It was really fun coming up with which tv shows & movies to spoof. Some of them are more recognizable than others. Can you guess them all?


It took an hour to gather all the props and get my hair like this, and I only shot about 10 seconds of footage. Video is tough!

Spoof tv for bee.tv

You should definitely try out their service and check out their web site here. It’s still in private beta, so use invite code bee.karen to get access. Let me know what you think!

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2010/06/01/bee-tv/feed/ 2 Cornified! http://karenism.com/blog/2009/04/10/cornified/ http://karenism.com/blog/2009/04/10/cornified/#comments Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:38:52 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/?p=828

Cornification IRL on Youtube

Jake went on vacation for a few days, and came back to find his desk protected (perhaps infested…) by unicorns.

Cornify is the #1 unicorn and rainbow service worldwide, giving websites sparkle around the world.  I think Yoko & Justin should start a brick and mortar Cornify business.  They obviously have the skillzzz.

Cornified

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2009/04/10/cornified/feed/ 5 Yes http://karenism.com/blog/2009/04/02/yes/ http://karenism.com/blog/2009/04/02/yes/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:33:32 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/?p=825 Like cornify, but meatier.

I've been bacolicioused

bacolicio.us

a delicious treat from Yoko

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2009/04/02/yes/feed/ 5 My first tweet! What was yours? http://karenism.com/blog/2009/03/10/my-first-tweet-what-was-yours/ http://karenism.com/blog/2009/03/10/my-first-tweet-what-was-yours/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:49:51 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/?p=799 It’s around that time again, when my twitter feed is flooded with conversations about sxsw. Many claim that Twitter was put on the map by SXSW 07, when throngs of geeks and bloggers used the service to praise and criticize panels and to find out where the partying was happening.

My first tweet!

Fortunately, Twitter has become much more stable since then, and is now a pretty reliable service. I got curious to see if I could find my first tweet. They still have the data! Check out the little video I made about my first tweet.

I want to know what was your first tweet? Tag your tweet #my1sttweet. It’ll make it much easier to search for your tweets. If you’re not on twitter, you should join!

If you’re not going to SXSW this year, and do not want the constant barrage of tweets from your friends, try Twitter Snooze to silence them for a few days.

EDIT: Looks like Twitter doesn’t keep the data for all users depending on how many tweets you have. Try finding your earliest tweet. :)

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2009/03/10/my-first-tweet-what-was-yours/feed/ 2 Booties (and getting high quality video on video sites that support it) http://karenism.com/blog/2008/12/28/booties-and-getting-high-quality-video-on-video-sites-that-support-it/ http://karenism.com/blog/2008/12/28/booties-and-getting-high-quality-video-on-video-sites-that-support-it/#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2008 08:45:48 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/?p=440 It’s been pretty cold lately (as in, 40 degrees at night! gasp!) and I’ve been trying all sorts of method to stay warm. I regularly wear several layers of socks, but I can’t bring myself to put on these adorable pink booties.


Let’s talk about booties on youtube

Even though the above video is not filmed in HD, it is available to watch in “high quality”. To get the higher quality video on youtube, I’ve been encoding my movies with the h.264 codec using ffmpegx (a mac gui for the command line).

ffmpegx with h264 codec selected

When the site detects this codec as the encoding of your video, it can play your video as is, instead of converting it to an flv*. Some codecs cannot be played by the flash player, which is why they are converted and that process decreases the quality of the video.

*more specifically, the files are converted using the on2vp6 codec. There is a big difference between a codec and a format, but for simplicity, h264 videos -> mp4 extension; On2VP6/Sorenson -> flv. Further reading at wiki pedia

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2008/12/28/booties-and-getting-high-quality-video-on-video-sites-that-support-it/feed/ 7 Lost in America – Austin http://karenism.com/blog/2008/11/19/lost-in-america-austin/ http://karenism.com/blog/2008/11/19/lost-in-america-austin/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:10:53 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/?p=382 Austin… what can I say? It was really weird. The story for Austin is full of silliness and definitely worth checking out. Watch episode 1 to get a taste of the absurdity:


Lost in America-Austin:cookies! (ep1) from Karen on Vimeo.

The other episodes are on my vimeo channel and a behind the scenes post about Austin here. Photos and more photos in case you’re not sick of us yet.

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2008/11/19/lost-in-america-austin/feed/ 1 Paypal sadness http://karenism.com/blog/2008/11/14/paypal-sadness/ http://karenism.com/blog/2008/11/14/paypal-sadness/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:01:40 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/?p=375 The biggest problem with having a limited paypal account is that they have the records for your credit cards. You cannot use the credit cards on paypal even if you try to pay as a guest user & don’t sign in. I wish there were something better than paypal (in functionality and ease of use, and at least close to equal in adoption rate). After several iterations to remove the swear words and condescending tone, this is what I sent to them.

____________________________
From: Karen Nguyen
To: Paypal

Dear Paypal,

I do not understand why you think my account is a nonprofit. Several months ago I sent an email to the support group requesting that my account be downgraded from a business account to a personal account. I do not have a business, and I no longer deal with finances for a nonprofit organization. I received an email confirming that my account was downgraded. Now, my account is limited and I cannot send or receive payments. I tried looking through the profile settings and did not find a way to change my account category. I also did a search and it did not have anything helpful to my situation. Could you please help explain how to fix my account?

Thanks,
Karen
——-
PayPal requires accounts within the charity / non profit category to provide us with some additional information regarding their organization. Upon a recent review, your account was identified as falling within this classification. Until we can collect this information, your access to sensitive account features will be limited. Please take a moment to provide us with this information so that we can restore your access as soon as possible.
_______________________

And now, I wait some more.

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2008/11/14/paypal-sadness/feed/ 5 Moving pictures http://karenism.com/blog/2008/04/09/moving-pictures/ http://karenism.com/blog/2008/04/09/moving-pictures/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:35:06 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/2008/04/09/moving-pictures/ Flickr now has video. YAY!! I love the play in place thumbnails. Click the bottom left play button on a thumbnail to see the video play without going to the view page. This puppet video they flickr peeps made is adorable.

Most cameras these days come with a video feature. I use Divx converter to compress all my videos before posting. My canon sd700 creates giant motion jpeg files and they would take forever to upload if I didn’t compress them.

There is a 90 second time limit on flickr videos, which isn’t a lot of time. I’m a big fan of short format content (looooove commercials) so the restriction is just an opportunity do a lot in a little chunk of time. Sometimes the good stuff is a few seconds into the video. For quick and easy trimming I use quicktime pro. I’ve also tried mpeg streamclip and it’s also quick and easy to use.

Here’s a little video I made today so I wouldn’t esploder.

And more chicken dancing at the Pownce brunch.
The royalty free music is by Kevin MacLeod. Pretty much all the music I use is from that site.

Go Flickr Video! Weeeee!

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2008/04/09/moving-pictures/feed/ 0 Color Wars! http://karenism.com/blog/2008/03/25/color-wars/ http://karenism.com/blog/2008/03/25/color-wars/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:45:11 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/2008/03/25/color-wars/

Colorwar is of those silly memes that caught & spread on twitter like syphilis in the old world. People were dashing to join teams without even knowing what the war holds. (hmmm sounds familiar…)

Do you want mp3 music download from online mp3 archive, You find where download mp3 music on player

The first challenge involved taking a picture of one of the ro-sham-bo moves. I made a movie in addition to taking the photo. Anyway, I’m on plaidteam so join if you want to ‘play’.

Audio is by NIN. I’ve been looking forward to using their music on a video ever since Ghosts came out. Hell ya creative commons.

]]> http://karenism.com/blog/2008/03/25/color-wars/feed/ 0 Amazon is brilliant http://karenism.com/blog/2008/03/06/amazon-is-brilliant/ http://karenism.com/blog/2008/03/06/amazon-is-brilliant/#comments Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:20:38 +0000 Karen http://karenism.com/blog/2008/03/06/amazon-is-brilliant/

Ashot explains how he shops on Amazon. It’s a pretty good method and I’ve started to do the same. Here are some of the things he actually bought through his process:
The Complete Far Side 1980-1994
Nikon D40
Griffin Headphone Adapter for iPhone
Senseo Coffee Pod System

He, saddly, does not have the Hello Kitty Toaster.

Paranoia aside Amazon is devilishly good at getting me to buy stuff by (1) holding things in my cart and (2) saving the things I looked at previously. I hate when I put things in my shopping cart, walk away for a few hours, and come back to an ‘expired session’. Usually I just give up on that site.

The video details
All the pictures are products from Amazon. I experimented with Pixelmator to compose the images used in this movie. (Some reviews if you’re interested) It’s a great application for general photo editing. In the past I’ve only used crop, resize and minor color tweaks.

While making these composites I found out that Pixelmator can’t make straight lines and the ‘glow’ feature didn’t work properly. I ended up finishing the last touches with Photoshop (Pixelmator can save as psd, which is pretty cool). For me, Pixelmator is not a Photoshop replacement, but I will continue to use Pixelmator since it loads faster than Photoshop.

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