John Lagomarsino
Video · Photography · Music · Motion Graphics

While I was having dinner tonight at the local diner, I had the pleasure of sitting behind a group of four people that who are either in a community college philosophy course, a cult, or a self-help group. Whatever the scenario, the group “discussion” was being led by a 20-something deadbeat with an iPad (a white one, too). I’m not sure what he does for a living, because he “doesn’t put labels on himself,” but I was able to – for free – glean these gems of wisdom over the course of my meal:

• You only have to smile for a micro-minute for someone to know you smiled.
• Communication is only abstract so much as it is scientific.
• WordPress is computer code that makes websites.
• When criticizing someone, leave a long pause afterwards in order to impart the value of revelation.
• The field of Graphic Designs is evolving.
• Communication Skills dictate that you explain your thesis for 5-10 minutes.

Seriously, this was like reading spambot comments aloud for an hour. I hope these four people aren’t the voting kind, because this just shattered my faith in humanity.

The most popular post on this blog, by far, has been what I wrote about using Evernote like Instapaper. Well, time has passed, and that post is completely outdated, yet it continues to get hits. Here’s what’s different these days.

First, both Instapaper and Readability have become a lot more useful as standalone tools. Instapaper is supported in just about every reading app on every platform, mobile and web. Both Instapaper and Readbility support really rich Kindle delivery, and really nice rich formatting. And as of last week, both services are free. Personally, I’ve been using Readability to manage my reading list, and I’ve given up on Evernote.

However, I know a lot of you are still looking for a good method. The bookmarklet in my previous post linked Readability’s formatting to Evernote’s storage. Well, it turns out that Evernote has removed the middleman, and created a totally self-contained service called Clearly.

Their website does a nice job explaining it, but in a nutshell, it strips away the formatting from a page, presents it in a nice readable format, and allows you to save this unformatted article to your Evernote account. It even parses multi-page articles to present the whole thing at once. Essentially, it does what my bookmarklet did, but better.

So if you really want to use Evernote as your Read Later list, that’s the way to do it. No more janky javascript, no more hoping Readability still supports that script, and the whole thing is streamlined right into Evernote.

Check out this awesome trailer we created for the new show Lysistrata Jones. It’s a truly fun evening, and everyone should go check it out!

This was pretty much the most amazing day ever.

You know you’ve gotten them – those American Express or Chase gift cards that can be used just like a credit card, anywhere, to buy anything. Sounds great, except you can’t, really. Typically, these cards have pretty finite expirations, and after 12 months, a “service fee” starts being deducted from the card each month. Worse, you usually can’t use up the entire balance of the card, because you can’t overdraw them. Essentially, you have to keep track of the balance on your own, and hope that a merchant can split your purchase once you reach zero.

There’s a better way. Well, kind of. If you do a lot of online shopping from a single source, like Amazon or iTunes, you can easily apply the balance of your gift credit card to your account on one of theses services. This prevents the monthly charges, and allows you to use up the entire card on purchases.

The trick is to buy yourself a gift card. I’ll use Amazon as the example, but this should work for any other service that lets you maintain a gift balance in your account. From Amazon, simply click the “gift cards” like toward the top, and order a gift card (a digital one!) for the exact amount left on your gift credit card. Make sure you make your own email address the recipient.

When it comes time to check out, use your credit gift card number, its expiration, and whatever name the card company prefers you use. For some, like Chase, you’ll have to register the card on the bank’s website so it’s linked to your name. Others, like American Express, tell you to use a specific name, like “Gift Card Recipient,” and your own address. (Check the company’s website for how to use the cards online.)

Once you pay, you’ll get the gift code from Amazon in your email inbox. Simply copy-paste the code into the redemption center at Amazon, and this balance will hang around in your account until the next time you make a purchase. If you go over your balance, you can simply pay the difference with whatever real credit card you want, and actually use up the full amount of your gift!

Among the other benefits of this method is the fact that you can buy Kindle books this way. For some reason, Amazon only lets you purchase ebooks using 1-Click, which is linked to a specific credit card. However, if you have a gift balance, this is depleted first.

I should mention, too, that this is a great way of combining multiple credit gift cards. The amount in your Amazon account is one lump sum, so it doesn’t matter how many gift cards you send yourself – it all winds up in the same pot!

Last week, Netflix announced that it would be spinning off its physical disc rental business and rebranding it as “Qwikster.” A lot of pundits seem to think this is totally crazy, and anti-consumer. Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, has said multiple times that this move is forward-thinking, and will position the company better in the future. My suspicion (and I’m surprised I haven’t heard this elsewhere) is that this will indeed purposely kill their disc rental business, but it will also bolster their streaming offering pretty drastically.

Netflix has become a behemoth of a service. Blockbuster, their closest competitor in the disc rental space, was driven to Chapter 11, and Redbox isn’t really competing much at all with their kiosks. Other than those two, can anyone even name another disc rental chain? Netflix completely dominates physical rentals, which means that the majority of rental licenses paid to film studios comes from Netflix. In a nutshell, the rental business belongs to Netflix.

I suspect many of Quikster’s subscribers will wind up there just because they were Netflix subscribers. If that service fails, I doubt many will go out and seek a new disc rental option. They’ll learn to embrace streaming instead. This leaves the lion’s share of rental customers leaving physical discs behind altogether.

Then, what do content owners do? If the whole disc rental market tanks completely, there are vast swaths of content that no one can rent. Studios will have to make more of their catalogues available through steaming in order to make any money on those properties at all.

I think Qwikster is a calculated move not just to kill Netflix’s disc rental business, but to kill disc rentals entirely. Reed Hastings is making the bet that without the old-time distraction of physical disc rentals, the studios will be forced to focus on new streaming licenses, and Netflix will be ready and waiting to negotiate them. And that’s great news for consumers.

Family vacations can be mundane, but today was a little different. We took a little drive over to the Ostrich Farm!

The ostriches start out in the incubator, and when they’re about two weeks old, they wind up outside in the nursery.

Once they’re old enough, they’re moved to their permanent pens, where they pose for pictures. This one says “hey.”

Most of them are paired up. These two wouldn’t leave each other’s sides.

And of course, they love it when vistors come with gifts of food!

A side-effect of my years-long home video project is that I’m sifting through all the old media that’s lying around my hard drives. I found a few recently that are especially funny considering what I do for a living now. Let’s take a stroll through memory lane.

A little history. While all the other kids were outside learning how to play sports, or even play video games, I was too busy messing around with cameras and computers trying to make what the Big Kids did on TV. Around my ninth birthday (judging from file dates), my parents got me this thing called a QuickCam. It hooked up to your computer via serial port, had an apparent resolution of 320×240, and was black & white.

If you were recording live-action video with it, the frame rate was limited to something like 15fps, which is really noticeable to the eye. It had pretty poor optics, too, so the shutter had to be open a really long time. The result was choppy, streaky video that looked nothing like TV. Unacceptable to nine-year-old me.

But wait! It also shot frame-by-frame stop motion, and those movies would come out at 30fps. Big win. According to the files I found, I started doing this the morning after my birthday. Here’s the first attempt:

Not bad. Short, sweet, to the point. A couple months later, things got a little more complicated.

It’s got a plot, it’s whimsical, and it attempts some Looney Tunes-esque gags. Plus, everyone loves a panda wearing a T-shirt, right? Let’s move on.

The obligatory Gumby movie. Now we’re cooking. It’s got action, a plot, multiple shots, and a twist ending. I must have felt pretty good about this, because to my knowledge this was the end of the stop-motion QuickCam videos. Or maybe I just thought black & white was too limiting.