So I Started a Tumblelog

My Tumblr

If you don’t know what a tumblelog is, read this:

A tumblelog is a variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary. – Wikipedia

It is kind of like twitter, but in my opinion better. And it is because I think it is better that I think I will actually use it, unlike twitter.

Time Lapse – Dashboard Lights Swap

This is a time lapse of me changing out the light of the instrument cluster in my 1996 Toyota Tacoma. In total, it took about an hour to an hour and a half. This is the second time I did it. The first time I put in blue LEDs that weren’t bright enough. I bought some super bright lights from Japan and put those in this time around. They are much better.

This is 504 shots that I took with my Nikon D80. I used Nikon Camera Control Pro to control my camera. I told it to take a picture every second, but with processing time, I think it ended up being once every four or five seconds.

The music is part of Morning Rain by Joel Steeves (me). I know it doesn’t fit the best, but this way I don’t have to worry about copyright.

What’s really fun to watch is the screws on the right hand side. There isn’t many pictures of me putting them there or taking them away, so they just kind of appear and disappear.

I’m working on getting the high res version up on Vimeo, but it’s not liking me right now.

EDIT: HD Version – http://www.vimeo.com/2263676

Digg Problems

I actually wrote most of this last night, but I didn’t publish it. I now see that Lahni wrote a very similar post, which is strictly a coincidence.

If you know me well, you know that I love Digg. I am constantly checking Digg throughout the day. I would bet that I spend hours on Digg everyday. I find everything on Digg, from hot news items to hilarious videos/pictures to cool science stuff. Lately, however, Digg and I have been having some problems. Really, it boils down to one thing: the other Diggers. I am so sick of the hypocrisy that runs rampant in the comments. I have found most diggers to be left leaning atheists, which is fine. The problem, however, is that many of these fine souls do not practice what they preach. They love to think that they are open-minded and respectful of others. They aren’t though. Any story that mentions religion is immediately filled with comments that basically say that if you believe in God you are a complete idiot who deserves no respect. They lump anyone who has any believes in God into the same category as the religious zealots. They have become very much like the religious zealots whom they despise so much. They are closed-minded individuals who can’t see past their own beliefs. They are egotistical in their belief of the non-existence of God. They label anyone who does believe an idiot, a sheeple, a nut etc. It really bothers me. I agree that there are some people out there who are religious zealots that are rather extreme, but to lump all religious people together, as the comments on digg frequently do, is unfair and wrong. And if you try to explain that to them, they will quickly point out that they are not trying to convert people and digg you down. However, a lot of the comments are about how people have been fed lies by organized religion and telling them they’re wrong. I’d say that that is the same thing.

On a related note, I really dislike how one-sided digg can be and how quickly allegiances can change. Take for instances the American election. First it was Ron Paul. It seemed like every story was about Ron Paul and everyone loved him. A story that brought up some bad points about Ron Paul was immediately buried. Then, when Ron Paul was no longer in the race, Digg switched to Obama. No story could bash Obama. Anything that bashed Hilary or any Republican (except Ron Paul as I pointed out earlier) during the primaries was dugg straight to the top. No pro-Hilary or pro-McCain/Romney/Huckabee article could do that. After the primaries were over it was the same thing, except it was all against McCain and Palin.

The other thing that bothers me is that, no matter what the story is about, someone will turn it into a political or religious discussion. Not only that, but it will end just as I described above. I mean you could have a picture of a cute puppy and someone would say “Palin will probably shoot it from a helicopter” or “The religious right want to ban puppies too! Watch out!” You get the point.

I think the last verse of the song Angry Mob by the Kaiser Chiefs describes digg very well.

We are the angry mob
We read the papers everyday day
We like who like
We hate who we hate
But we’re also easily swayed

A Shot in the Dark

Remember that photography site I was thinking about making? Yeah, I made it. It was one of those things that I start and can’t stop until it is finished. It has actually been “done” for about a week now, but there was some stuff that I wanted to fix/update. I decided today that it is good enough for now.

As I am way too lazy to design my own stuff now, I decided to go with 3formed’s Clean Grey. I then used Zenphoto as my photo backend. I didn’t like the way Zenphoto displayed each image on a separate page, so I wrote a theme for Zenphoto using LightboxEx, which is a modified version of Lightbox 2 that includes slideshow functionality.  I am pretty happy with how it turned out. Hopefully, you feel the same.

Check it out at http://www.ashotinthedark.ca

Canadian DMCA is Here

Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced his new copyright legislation today and it is not good.

As expected, the Canadian DMCA is big, complicated, and a close model of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Industry Canada provides a large number of fact sheets here).  I’ll have much more to say once I’ve had a careful read, but these are my five key points to take away:

1.   As expected, Prentice has provided a series of attention-grabbing provisions to consumers including time shifting, private copying of music (transferring a song to your iPod), and format shifting (changing format from analog to digital).  These are good provisions that did not exist in the delayed December bill.  However, check the fine print since the rules are subject to a host of strict limitations and, more importantly, undermined by the digital lock provisions.  The effect of the digital lock provisions is to render these rights virtually meaningless in the digital environment because anything that is locked down (ie. copy-controlled CD, no-copy mandate on a digital television broadcast) cannot be copied. As for every day activities like transferring a DVD to your iPod – those are infringing too. Indeed, the law makes it an infringement to circumvent the locks for these purposes.

2.   The digital lock provisions are worse than the DMCA.  Yes – worse.  The law creates a blanket prohibition on circumvention with very limited exceptions and creates a ban against distributing the tools that can be used to circumvent.  While Prentice could have adopted a more balanced approach (as New Zealand and Canada’s Bill C-60 did), the effect of these provisions will be to make Canadians infringers for a host of activities that are common today including watching out-of-region-coded DVDs, copying and pasting materials from a DRM’d book, or even unlocking a cellphone.

While that is the similar to the U.S. law, the exceptions are worse.  The Canadian law includes a few limited exceptions for privacy, encryption research, interoperable computer programs, people with sight disabilities, and security, yet Canadians can’t actually use these exceptions since the tools needed to pick the digital lock in order to protect their privacy are banned.  In other words, check the fine print again – you can protect your privacy but the tools to do so are now illegal.  Dig deeper and it gets worse.  Under the U.S. law, there is mandatory review process every three years to identify new exceptions.  Under the Canadian law, its up to the government to introduce new exceptions if it thinks it is needed. Overall, these anti-circumvention provisions go far beyond what is needed to comply with the WIPO Internet treaties and represents an astonishing abdication of the principles of copyright balance that have guided Canadian policy for many years.

3.   The other headline grabber is the $500 fine for private use infringement.  This will be heralded as a reasonable compromise, but check the fine print.  Canadian law already allows a court to order damages below $500 per infringement, so the change may not be as dramatic as expected (though $500 in damages is the maximum for private use infringement).  Moreover, it is already arguably legal to download sound recordings in Canada.  Under the proposal, there are exceptions for uploading or posting music online (ie. making available) and even the suggestion that posting a copyright-protected work to YouTube could result in the larger $20,000 per infringement damage award.

4.   The ISP provisions are precisely as expected with a statutory notice-and-notice system.  However, check the fine print.  The role of the ISP may be undermined by the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which the government trumpets in its press release.

5.   The education community received several provisions that are largely gutted by the fine print.  For example, library materials can be distributed in electronic form, but must not extend beyond five days.  In other words, it turns librarians into locksmiths.  Moreover, there is an Internet exception that educators wanted but it does not apply for any works that are either password protected or include a notification that they cannot be used.  In other words, online materials that are available under a Creative Commons license are fair game (as they are already), but most everything else is still potentially subject to a restriction.  This was precisely what many feared – rather than pursuing the far superior expansion of fair dealing, the education community got a provision that does little to enhance classroom learning.

I’ll have more to say soon, but the takeaway is that the DMCA provisions are worse than the U.S. and the consumer exceptions riddled with limitations as the government promotes a strategy of locking down content and launching lawsuits against Internet users.

Michael Geist – The Canadian DMCA: Check the Fine Print

This legislation must be stopped. There is a new letter to send. This one is sent to your MP, Industry Minister Jim Prentice and Heritage Minister Josée Verner. To send it click here.

Canadian Copyright Reform

It looks like Industry Minister Jim Prentice will introduce his new copyright reform bill tomorrow.

Multiple sources advise that Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s current plan is to introduce the Canadian DMCA this week, likely on Wednesday.  While things could change, it would appear that Prentice’s communication strategy is to do as little communicating as possible. Plans for a possible press conference have apparently been put on hold given concerns that the press might actually ask questions and Prentice has even entertained thoughts of shuffling the bill quickly to a committee for summer hearings so that he would not have to deal with the issue all summer long. The Minister will also head for Japan and South Korea late the following week as part of the OECD Future of the Internet Economy conference, so out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

Michael Geist – The Unoffical Canadian DMCA Background Document

I recommend that you read his post in its entirety. He lists what he expects to be in the bill and things that Mr. Prentice likely won’t talk about. Canada needs balanced copyright reform and adopting a US-style DMCA is not the answer. From what I’ve heard and read about the bill, it is not looking good. We need to act now in order to prevent this bill from becoming law and to give Canada a chance at fair and balanced copyright reform. I urge you to write to your MP, the Prime Minister, Industry Minister Jim Prentice, and Heritage Minister Josée Verner. One way of doing this is to use this pre-written letter and use the form on that page to send it via email. I would also recommend printing it out and mailing it. Letters mailed to Parliament/MPs/Ministers do not require postage. Simply print it off, put it in an envelope, address it and drop it in the mail box.

If you don’t know who your MP is, you can find out by clicking here and entering your postal code. Please send a letter. We were able to stop Mr. Prentice’s bill in December and we can do it again.

More Videos

Well, I have more videos to share. The first one is one of my projects for my video arts class back in high school. The second one is another time lapse, which some of you have seen. When I posted those other two videos on here, I got a lot more traffic, so I am hoping to do the same with the other time lapse. The first video is on Youtube, the other on Vimeo. I put the music video on Youtube because I thought it might get more views. I like Vimeo better though. Anyway, enjoy!

This one is a music video for Rise Against’s “Swing Life Away”.

This is a trip up to the University. Normally, I wouldn’t go this way because it takes longer, but the way I do go isn’t nearly as exciting. The music in this one is by me. The full version is 1:30 long. If you want it for some strange reason, email me and you can have it.

Trip to the University from maple on Vimeo.

Time Lapse Photography

I recently decided to try my hand at some time lapse photography. Here are some of my results. In the first video, I used the continuous shooting mode on my Nikon D50. It was taken at the Devonian Gardens in downtown Calgary. For the second video, I used Nikon’s Camera Control Pro to control my camera, which had been rigged up in my truck.

Devonian Gardens from Joel Steeves on Vimeo.

Driving Time Lapse from Joel Steeves on Vimeo.

Cool Time Lapse Video

This is by far the coolest time lapse video I have ever seen. The guy who did, Ross Ching, went out to a bunch of different places and took photos at certain time intervals. He then edited them into one really cool time lapse video. It is definitely worth checking out.

The entire movie was shot using a digital SLR still camera and pieced together using Quicktime Pro and Final cut Pro. Since it was shot on a still camera, all the raw footage is 1080p HD.

Check it out at RossChing.com

3 & 1/2 Months Later…

Remember this? Yeah, fun times eh? Well, I put in a warranty claim and it was accepted and I was told to ship it to Seagate’s warranty department. Unlike other tech companies I’ve had to deal with, I had to pay for the shipping. They didn’t send out a box, and they sure didn’t pay for it. It cost me $50 to Fed Ex that piece of crap to them. And I couldn’t just send it regular mail because they said that it had to have insurance and a tracking number (which is fine, because I wanted that too). Plus, they had all these stupid packing guidelines, like it had to be in an ESD bag, which is an electrostatic discharge bag. I was not to happy about that. I mean, it’s not like I just happen to have one of those lying around. It isn’t even necessary since the drive is an external, so it should already be protected from static. If it was internal drive then I would understand, but it wasn’t. After talking to a customer service rep over their website chat thing, I decided to just ship it in its original packaging. The guy said that would be okay. Well, I get it shipped off and I see that they received it on October 15th, 2007 thanks to my Fed Ex tracking number. I didn’t expect it to take very long.

A day or so after I knew they had received it, I checked on their website to see what it’s status was. I wasn’t expecting it to be shipping or anything, but I sure didn’t expect what I saw. My order was somehow canceled. So they had my stupid Maxtor One Touch III 300 GB hard drive and my order got canceled. Right. I phoned them and was told that after a certain amount of time if they do not receive the drive they cancel the order. They guy said he would reopen it and hopefully the problem would resolve itself. Yeah, that didn’t happen.

I kept checking the website and it still said they hadn’t received it. I was getting pretty fed up at this point. After a few weeks I phoned back and told the customer service rep my story. He asked for my tracking number and then went to check out the situation. He came back and acknowledged from the tracking number that they had received it. He said that he would elevate the importance of the issue and that it should be resolved in a couple of days. Well, it didn’t. I phoned back and had to retell my whole story. By now they had had my hard drive for a month and there had been no action. It still said they had not received it.

The guy I talked to this time, again asked for my tracking number. He went away and came back only to tell me basically the same thing the last guy said. He said that it had been transfered to another department and they were waiting from a response from that department. A couple of hours later the customer service rep phones me to tell me that the tracking number I gave him was invalid. I reconfirmed the tracking number and he still said it was invalid. I was looking at the Fed Ex tracking page as I was on the phone with him, so I knew that it wasn’t. As it turns out, he somehow got Canada Post out of Fed Ex. After we got that sorted out, he said it would be like a week or two.

It is now two months later and I still haven’t received my drive. The website still says they haven’t got it yet, and it is once again canceled. I phone them again. I get to go through the song and dance once again. This guy tells me to phone back in a few days and hopefully by that time it will be resolved. Well, it was right around Christmas, so I couldn’t phone in a couple of days. When I finally get around to it, it is now January and they have had my drive for three months. By now I have phoned them at least 5 times and I would have thought that my story would have been in the file for this return. Was it? No. I had to retell it to the guy. I had to give him my tracking number again. No wonder nothing happened, they didn’t ever seem to record anything. It was like I had never phoned.

I told this guy my whole story and how I had phoned in numerous times before and how unhappy I was. He said that the tracking number checks out and that they did receive it and that he would re-prioritize it. The next day I checked the website and finally it said something different. No longer did it say open or canceled, it said “In process”. Last Friday I received a shipping notice from Seagate. They had finally shipped a replacement. I got it yesterday and it has been three and a half months since they received it.

This has been the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had. It far exceeds that of Xbox’s in terms of crappiness. It makes me so mad to think that something that should have taken a couple weeks tops took three and a half months. What really made it annoying was that when ever I phoned Seagate I had to re-explain everything. You would think that the first time I contacted them they would have added all that information into the RMA report, but apparently not.

I realized as I was taking photos for this article that they sent me a 500 GB drive instead of the 300 GB version that I sent them. I guess that is their way of compensating for how long this took. I’ll take it, but I’m still not very happy about this whole situation.

In the time that I have been without this hard drive, I have purchased two other small external drives. Now with the 500 GB drive I have over 1 TB of storage at home and a 1 TB server. I don’t think I’ll be running out of space any time soon.