Swing States: Let's Get Obama Elected

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it was august 29th, the day after an inspiring speech by barack obama at the DNC. mccain announces palin as his running mate. as the hype for palin started reaching a fever pitch, i started feeling, pretty much what the repubs wanted me to feel- apathetic, hopeless and helpless. this is what i decided to do...

i have been inspired by the following independent media (too much to list but...):
Michael Verdi: Obama Landslide
Tanya Tarr: Not My Gal Blog and Thank You Sarah Palin
Kent Bye: Rhetorical Visualization of Palin's Supreme Court Non-Answer

Beijing, China: August 2008

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Jay and I spent the better part of August in Beijing during the Olympics to help document protests happening there. We blogged more in depth about it on RyanIsHungry. Here is the momentshowing version of the trip. As you can see the Olympics were everywhere. Shopping centers, cafes, buses, subway cars and stations. You could not escape the games. It was fascinating. Enjoy.

P.S. A majority of this video was recorded with the Flip Video Mino. I thought it did pretty well for an inexpensive pocket cam. Though the zoom is digital and kinda crappy and you can't go macro. The rest was captured with the Xacti E1.

The Grand Tour

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I've been meaning to make this video for weeks. Check out our place and our gardens! If you can't see the QuickTime video, click here for the Flash version. We're gardening using the Grow Biointensive methods we learned in Willits, CA from John Jeavons and Carol Cox. All hand tilled baby. Everything is growing wonderfully.

Xacti HD1000 Green MP4 Fix

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Do you use a Sanyo Xacti HD1000 camera? Have you seen the green mp4 of death? Not sure why? Well, my friend Mary Matthews of Videopancakes.com also had this problem recently and she pointed me to this Apple discussion thread to help her decipher the solution. Seems that the QuickTime H264 component that came with your Xacti software worked great with your camera, but then again QuickTime gets updated by Apple every few months and that little bit of software that makes your HD files actually work gets replaced. Huge bummer if you want to, oh um, use your footage. I sat down with Mary and helped her reinstate this little component and I thought I'd make a screencast walking through it so others could fix their systems too. There are some other solutions on that Apple thread if this doesn't work, but I hope it does. Good Luck!

p.s. if you right click and save this video... you can watch it at 640x480, a bit easier to see.

Virginia: First Month

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it's been about a month since we arrived in virginia. been having trouble picking up my camera as much or editing my own videos. we're offline a lot, so that might have something to do with it... i feel i'm on a roll here though so there is more to come!

Dora and Freddie take me for a walk

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we stopped in virginia before we headed up to new england for a couple weeks. i took jay's dad's dogs for a little walk, or rather they took me...

Northern Vermont: Nelson's House

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we made it to nelson's house.

Going Through Things: Reading, Erasing

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as we finish moving cross country, i am starting to go through my stuff at my mom's house which she is also moving out of. all this moving... it's really strange reading old journals and seeing old photos and videos. keep some, throw most away.

p.s. don't my mom's cats look like some alternate reality version of battle cat and white baby?

p.p.s it's videobloggging week 2008. go get 'em!

San Antonio: Verdi's House

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i was laughing my ass off when verdi and jay picked up the wii. i've never actually seen anyone use this, oddly, and i thought it was so funny. also this is one of the only clips i recorded during our trip on my xacti. i just never picked it up. jay took lots of photos though. have a lot of stuff for ryanishungry on tapes though! i think that was enough for me. videoblogging week 2008 starts tomorrow. time to video things for real!

On Our Way: Goodbye California

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we left california 14 days ago. can't believe it's been 2 weeks already. and we're only half way across the US in missouri at richard and maureen's house. we've been taking our time and staying with people for a few days at a time. have not actually been taping a lot, except for a few ryanishungry shoots (soon to come).