Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Introducing Opera Face Gestures for Controlling Your Browser



Opera Face Gestures for Controlling Your Browser. A droll tech Opera blog entry here. It's gotta be the best April Fool's joke I've found on the World Wide Net today. Or maybe they're seriously developing this technology.

Watch the video, then try the facial gestures out on your own screen, then imagine everyone in Starbucks doing this.

I laughed for a long time. I laughed hysterically like a hyena let out of the zoo.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Jade Heart



Am I writing? Am I painting? Am I watching a film? Am I laughing with friends?
No.
I'm beading.

Some of us become true hippies late.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Home-Office...



The 'home-office' (studio/bedroom/meditation space), as is, without any tidying up! Yes, that's a thick plastic sheet on the desk for the painting that's not happening, and another one under the layers of dog blankets. See, I am like a "little ol' Italian lady in that way - with my plastic-covered furniture'! I buy it at Honest Ed's for $3./yard, what a great price - anyone'd go crazy with the stuff! Great for painters and pets. Hey, not tooo much knicker-knacker clitter-clatter on the desk; it could be cleaned up in minutes for a painting space, now couldn't it? :::Grins::: How about your workspace?

Friday, March 20, 2009

'Collision' of Dance and Disability

Beautiful, powerful, affirming, and, wow, can these folks dance!

A video of dance & disability, a mind-heart opening for the viewer who may be stunned to see the (im)/PERFECT body in ecstatic motion like this, yet we love the courage, energy, expansion of self, and feel, ourselves, joyful in our participatory watching...of an energetic release into what is a sophisticated aesthetics of dance and an accompanying joy.



Source: video.nytimes.com

A New York City dance company called Gimp turns a prevailing notion of physical handicaps on its head. Then comes a leap, a pirouette, a lift....

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(NYTimes doesn't give an option to share with Blogger, but I wanted an image of the video, so copied and pasted it. While the image seems to be an active link, please note that the titles are definitely active links, or click here.)

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Tiled Discus Thrower



For days I have been trying to upload an image to tile like this on my home page at Twitter, but Twitter is hesitant, no, downright resistant.

Actually, there are currently issues with uploading background images and their technical department is 'working on it.'

Being impatient, I made a tiled image of my little discus thrower to see what it would look like!

(click on image for larger size)

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Chinese zither:GuZheng 風雨 /古箏獨奏: 毛ㄚ



If you have 8 1/2 minutes, this is an amazing GuZheng, or Chinese zither, performance. Such musicianship!

This woman, who plays the GuZheng, and whose name I am not sure of, the Chinese is impossible for me, is a true virtuoso. A pure artist: a "living angel." Her performance is a dance, sensitive, powerful, and above all, graceful, with the Chinese zither, what an instrument, who is like her lover. A lover who sings to her. I've watched it over & over, transfixed.

direct url: here.

A day later, after reading the comments at YouTube I discover her name is 毛ㄚ Maoya, that she was born in Beijing in 1979, and that her latest album was issued 6 years ago in China. The piece that she plays was for a competition and is actually not Chinese, but Japanese (why I probably like it so much). As one commenter said, "Just found out that this is actually a Japanese piece that was written by a Japanese Master. Which was not meant to be played on a Chinese guzheng but rather a Japanese one. 毛ㄚtook it to another level and proved the master wrong and inspired us once again that nothing is impossible. Not only her dedication to this instrument but the way she carried herself while playing is truly masterful. Too bad she's not a performer but a music researcher. A true one-of-a-kind treasure."

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

'Frozen View Count' issue at You Tube

I do not make any money from my videos at YouTube, I am just an artist sharing my work. I recently posted this at a community board at YouTube:

I am wondering, since it's only one of my videos that has a view count frozen at 201, if it's because after I uploaded the video I sent links to all my friends through my private email (rather than YouTube's service since some people had complained about their addresses used for spam by YouTube).

If I sent a link to that video, which is a small 'dance/art film' piece of work to 50 people in Toronto, where I live, and they all dropped by to view it, would that appear as spammers?

Which they most definitely are not.

I spent some time writing and editing the comment in the editorial, and I've posted that video quite a few places and hence have started the viewer on it myself a number of times each time I go in to grab the code.

Meaning, is either of these two possibilities- a number of views in a short time span in one location, the city I live in, or personally going in to the site and starting the viewer each time -why that particular video's view counts has been inexplicably 'frozen'?

Or have I been targeted by actual spammers, and YouTube just hasn't informed me that my work has been hit by that kind of attack?

I'd personally like more information on what is going on with the frozen view count - re: telling us exactly what it is that's caused the lock down.

Thanks!

Brenda

Oh, the video in question is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6Fgg1mx2sA&feature=channel_page

Can anyone at YouTube tell me exactly what the infringement on thisparticular video is? What exactly has caused the frozen view counts?

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Also, I earlier posted this query:

Besides the view count issue that I'm currently having with YouTube, and that hasn't been addressed, or even acknowledged, I am wondering why this site is able to post one of my videos when I have DIS-enabled embedding? Why is YouTube allowing this?

http://video.baamboo.com/watch/1/video/nOlfVVwa5BE/phim-video-clip-On-Butoh-based-Dance-A-Saturday-morning-amble-Brenda-.html

I am not happy with YouTube presently.

Problems. No response. Equals Unhappy YouTuber!

Addendum: YouTube suddenly released the view count on my video today, March 19th, 4 days later, without any explanation.

Addendum 2: YouTube froze the view count at 307 views on the same video, White, for 4 days about mid-April, and then resumed without explanation.

Why is YouTube picking on this small video?

Woman with Flowers 7.1

(7th sketch in series, first iteration of this one) Woman with Flowers  Flowers, props  upholding the woman. The flowers, fragrant, imaginar...