Month: August 2014

Movie: Team Cornell Icy Buckets (direct download) Youtube link

[fvplayer src=”http://teamcornell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ALS_Challenge-2014.mp4″ width=”640″ height=”480″    splash=”http://teamcornell.com/files/ALS_screenshot.jpg” ]

 

Thank you Team Gregory for thinking of us when you met this challenge. We did not understand the challenge part. 24 hours is not enough time to learn about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis , let alone think up some way to deliver water that we hadn’t seen yet.  Waiting past 24 hours also gives us a chance we could see dread of the challenge on the weekend family video chat.

We got 40 pounds of ice, a meat thermometer, some slipshod garage engineering, and a good reason to chat up the kids about ALS.

We’re trying to share our new awareness with:

Kristin Cornell  ( and Christian Langlois)
and Rebecca Cornell Stone (and Harley Stone)

Heather Ray and the Rays

Mike Homer

Have fun.

http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge.html

Tatum’s Quite Nice Luke-warm San Diegan Ambient Temperature Bucket Challenge

[fvplayer src=”http://teamcornell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ALS_Tatum-2014.mp4″ width=”1280″ height=”720″ splash=”http://teamcornell.com/files/ALS_screenshot3.jpg”]

 Dexter’s icy bath

[fvplayer src=”http://teamcornell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ALS_Dex-2014.mp4″ width=”1280″ height=”720″ splash=”http://teamcornell.com/files/ALS_screenshot4.jpg”]

 Mariel and Chase

[fvplayer src=”http://teamcornell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ALS_Mariel-2014.mp4″ width=”1280″ height=”720″ splash=”http://teamcornell.com/files/ALS_screenshot.jpg” ]

Matt

[fvplayer src=”http://teamcornell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ALS_Matt-2014.mp4″ width=”1280″ height=”720″ splash=”http://teamcornell.com/files/ALS_screenshot2.jpg”]

 

This is a placeholder for a better post that I’ll get to some day.

Ubuntu linux is a great operating system… or at least it /has/ been great and is a great alternative to running windows.

These are the first steps to correct the caveats I have with the direction of the new ubuntus.

 

First install the regular old ubuntu 14.04 (as of right now) and then log in for the first time.

The big problem with the default set up is the graphical interface – it is called Unity and it makes the best case for “Why you should always stay with windows”

First step to clean up unity is to remove the “shopping” lens action which will constantly try and get you to buy stuff from Amazon when all you want to do is start up a program.

apt-get remove unity-lens*

sudo apt-get purge libzeitgeist-1.0-1 python-zeitgeist zeitgeist-core  zeitgeist-datahub zeitgeist

The next step is get a completely new alternative to Unity

apt-get install gnome-shell

Then you’ll need to log out of your current session and, before entering your password, click on the nondescript circle type thingee after choosing your user name from the list. 2014-08-29_2042-27

2014-08-29_2043-06

Select “GNOME” from the list and log back in.

To start up programs hit the “Windows” key and start typing what you’d like run.

The next thing you should do is go to
https://extensions.gnome.org/

and install a few tweaks to gnome that will help – there are a bunch to try and they are easy to install and uninstall so you can play with stuff.

Most importantly is to fix the “ALT_TAB” action because they screwed that up royally by segmenting /types/ of programs so if you have multiple terminals up it can take seconds to switch between them if you forget the “ALT_`” keypress.
Use this plugin to normalize that:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/

Here is a picture of the extensions I happen to have installed right now:

2014-08-29_13:44:45

Install a clipboard manager that allows you to combine the “mouse highlighted” clip buffer and the “CTRL-C” buffer.
apt-get install parcellite
(This is a great thing… hit CTRL-ALT-H and it’ll give you a copy paste history so you can redo)

Install Google Chrome:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/chromium-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

Install VirtualBox and openssh-server
apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-dkms openssh-server

Besides binding your Terminal (My favorite is called roxterm) to a handy one button launch (F4) and getting your web browser up to snuff

I have run afoul of copyright law recently. The first infraction was when a friend couldn’t view the video from a newscast of my parent’s house burning down on their phone. So I just quickly downloaded the 4 minute video, uploaded to youtube as a unlisted video and shared it without thinking. I’d blame the stress of the situation but I knew it was probably shady content sharing.   So my account has been flagged and because that video was video 3 times (probably twice by me before sending the link) and was unlisted I have caused some damage to that news channel selling ads while people tuned in to see our house burn down.

I wonder if the house burning down could be declared a copyrightable performance piece….

I tried to clean it up when I saw that notification and the video had only been viewed a few times but then /all/ of my unlisted videos were switched over to /public/. So that’s not cool. I was trying to keep things out of the lime light, like home videos I wanted to share with a wider audience.

So then, I also posted a video of the family just sitting around the kitchen and strumming out any old song that we thought we could trudge through. Turns out THAT cause some copyright flags.

The first one is for a song called “Marry Me”  – I had to check our video to see if anyone was playing that, perhaps on their phones near the camera, or maybe even if everyone else tried to cover that when I left the room.

If we were playing it I could /almost/ understand if that was a problem for auto-content scanners – you know /IF/ we were that close to the real performance but I don’t know that frigging song [hypothetical to real situation coming up].

So I disputed it through the form and stated: “We weren’t playing that song, and we were all performing to /no/ audience so this claim probably isn’t all that valid”. But as the picture below shows at least one rights holder rejected my dispute! Fantastic.

Here is the video at 5:20, we’re not playing Marry Me

Marry_me-copyright_dispute

So the next challenge is at least the song we were trying to play

“Hotel California (Eagles Tribute Mix)”, musical composition administered by:”

But I can’t even… I … We can’t /play/ a song by someone else, even poorly, to no audience, on an unlisted link on an account that does not generate ad revenue ?

It might have lasted longer than I thought it would but Youtube is done.

Here is us playing through it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETE4kXTe-10

California_Hotel-copyright_dispute