12 posts tagged “video”

Who couldn't want to watch or at least laugh at a song on YouTube with a musical "handle" like "Bongwater"! LOL
Enjoy and have a nice "trip"....

Harry Potter in the 'Hood. You digg? Hysterical!

APB out of Aberdeen, Scotland is one of my all time favorite 80s alternative bands, although they are fairly obscure. They are best known for their song "Shoot You Down" off their "Something To Believe In" album, and although they never put out much material (two albums, one EP), I like just about every track they made. Here is a live sample of APB, although I think their recorded work is what really shines:

A Little APB History:

During the'80s, one of the most popular underground alternative bands to make a splash in the New York Tri-State area was, surprisingly, not a local band. In fact, APB hailed from across the pond in Scotland. While most alternative bands of the'80s used chiming guitars and/or icy synths to get their points across, APB were an anomaly, as it was funk bass that led the charge (quite comparable to Gang of Four -- minus the political lyrics). In fact, their early work served as a blueprint for what the Red Hot Chili Peppers would follow on their first few releases. Formed in Aberdeen, Scotland, APB were comprised of singer/bassist Iain Slater , guitarist Glenn Roberts , and drummer George Cheyne , with a pair of percussionists added over the years ( Nick Jones from 1982-1983 and Mikey Craighead taking Jones 'spot from 1984-1989).

The group initially caused a buzz in Europe, which lead to several sessions for BBC Radio 1 between 1981 and 1984 (the John Peel Sessiontwice, and the David Jensen Sessionand Peter Powell Sessiononce apiece). Several singles were issued as well, which served as the basis for APB 's debut full-length, Something to Believe In , in 1985. New York radio soon embraced these singles (namely"Palace Filled with Love,""Rainy Day,""One Day,""What Kind of Girl?,"and especially the infectious"Shoot You Down"), which led to several U. S. tours -- including spots over the years opening for both the Clash and James Brown . Additionally, APB headlined their own New York gigs (including a performance at the famous venue the Ritz).

In 1986 a sophomore effort, Cure for the Blues , was released, as well as a four-song EP, Missing You Already , later that same year. The group would continue to perform sporadically for the remainder of the'80s, but would not issue any more new recordings. Interest in APB increased by the early 21st century, thanks to the emergence of countless new wave revival acts, which led to a double-disc reissue of their debut in 2005, Something to Believe In: 20th Anniversary Edition , as well as a compilation of their early radio sessions, The Radio 1 Sessions , a year later.

Smart bookmarks bar

Although I try to keep Firefox from becoming bloated by too many extensions, I do have a cadre of them I just can't do without. I do go through them periodically to see if I can weed out and uninstall any of those that I do not use regularly. About 5 of them made that cut tonight, but I also replaced one of the five with a new extension called "Mobilizer" (since I'm now in love with my Moto Q and have completely tricked it out) which with a right click will select, convert to the proper format and send the object to the mobile phone of your choice. I have yet to test drive it, but will review it after I have. In theory, it's brilliant. Let's hope it lives up to expectations.

A few other extensions I find invaluable:

• Download Status Bar - I am a downloading maniac and this extension has streamlined that process. I can watch the progress of my downloads in the lower status bar, with speed of download, name, and pause, resume, etc. without taking up much real estate. I can click on them when done and launch installation, view it or what have you and I can easily clear them one at a time or all at once. Tried and true, this is a MUST if you are an obsessive down loader like myself.
• The next two work hand in hand. I like to maximize my browser viewing area (don't we all?) and so Smart Bookmarks Bar & Favicon Picker have been a boon to saving space, improving the functionality of my links bar and my overall browsing experience. Smart Bookmarks Bar will allow you to make all your bookmarks into favicons. Instead of say, having only 10 or 1 so links in your links bar and then having to use the drop down or wade through your bookmarks, I now have 45 (yes, FORTY FIVE) of my favorites in my links bar, all denoted by favicons, and it takes two seconds to visually locate and open my favorites. If you forget what an icon links to, hovering over gives you a text reminder.

TIP: If your favorite site doesn't have a favicon, or it won't load, here is where Favicon Picker comes in. That extension lets you go to a bookmark's properties and chose a favicon or icon for it. You can use one of your own, or I just "Google" the sight, and if it does have a favicon, I save the favicon that didn't load in my icon folder, renaming it to match the sight. For the most part, you can just drag and drop and the favicon loads, but for the rare instance it doesn't, you're trying to save real estate and easily identify your bookmark, so it's a good "fix".)

• FastVideo Download - from a tiny icon in your lower status bar, quickly and easily download any embedded video, from YouTube or pretty much anywhere, in a flash. Sweet!
  

From the Gothamist:

"Davey “Dance” Fishel has danced his way around the world, and landed back in his hometown of New York. Armed only with an iPod, a famous landmark, a Canon PowerShot, and the gift of improvised dance...he's moved his feet just about everywhere. Now he's got some amazing footage to show the grandkids one day, and of course to share with the rest of us now. Here's a dance number filmed at Coney Island, and below from the Brooklyn Bridge (complete with back-up dancers and disaffected passerby)":

A few weeks ago, I went into a well known chain of office supply stores to pick up some printer ink and some odds and ends since I have a business account, and happened to see a "special" clearance item that caught my eye. I usually don't shop at office supply chains for the best price or for anything for my computer, but again, having business account there means is a convenience and it's not directly coming out of my pocket. Anyway, they were practically giving away a discontinued or to me a "throw away" external USB [Lite-On who rebadges for many companies, including SONY] DVD-RW with Dual Layer recording technology (I happened to want an external drive with LightScribe, but the price was right on this one) for $39, including tax, so I figured, "What the heck?" and went for it. I really only need it to burn an occasional DVD and to back up larger files from my back up drive (yeah, I'm paranoid, my good stuff goes in a fire safe box) and to archive older material for which a CD is too small. (Who would have thought an external DVD-RW would be cheaper than dirt, literally, a couple years ago?)

Well I unpacked it, hooked up the power and the USB cord. Then I fired it up and XP automatically assigned drivers and we were all good, right? Launched Nero and got ready to burn baby burn. No burned disc, but I was burning. Yeah, el cheapo drive-o couldn't work that easily or flawlessly, right? Right. So due to Murphy's Law, I kept getting error messages saying the drive couldn't handle the media, even though the media was correct and other such nonsense. It wasn't the price of the drive though, it was the fact that sometimes XP has problems with external USB drives when it assigns drive letters.

I had Alcohol 120% on my machine at one point, which had assigned several virtual drives, which may not have been recovered on removing it. I don't know if XP assigned/mapped it to one of those old drives, but the drive wasn't showing up anywhere except when I went into Control Panel>System>Device Manager>DVD/CD-ROM Drives. The only way to hopefully rectify the situation was to go into XP's Disk Management by typing diskmgmt.msc at the run command prompt. If the drive shows up there, as mine did, the fix is to rename it. Mine was originally drive L. I right clicked the drive letter and highlighted "change drive letter or path". From the drop down box of available drive letters, I took the easy road and chose Z, knowing for sure it had never been used. Then I right clicked "properties" and ticked the hardware tab. I highlighted the Lite On drive and right clicked "properties" once again and then went under the "Volumes" tab and clicked the "Populate" button.  After saving out of all that, I was good to go. My drive was now showing up in Explorer. I dragged and dropped the drive shortcut onto my desktop (being a USB device, it doesn't show up under "My Computer") and this time, my throw away external drive worked "like butta" and I'm still in the process of slashin' and burning the excess fat from my internal hard drives...and except that I don't have my light scribe, I'm happy as a clam.