A lot of people ask, “What the heck is Twitter?” If you’ve not used Twitter before, it’s a tool for “micro-blogging”, where you send out updates kind of like on Facebook or myspace, but you have only 140 characters to do it. It’s being used for all kinds of things, and you might think “who cares what so-and-so is doing 24/7?” But rather than always answering their question “what are you doing?”, interesting Twitterers also answer the question “what has your attention right now?” I find links to interesting material online, thought-provoking questions, and more. You sign up to “follow” whoever you want, and when they post an update, you see it immediately.

So we’ll see how it goes. It’ll be an interesting experiment.

I just about choked. Now, I’ve known for a long time that big-box stores are overpriced for most things, especially things like cable. But this makes me crazy, and now I have an outlet to share with you just why.

Please please please consider buying cables like this online. (I know there is some mystique surrounding online shopping, but unless your credit card comapny believes it’s still the 1980’s, there is zero cost to you if your # should be compromised. It’s very safe, as long as you use a reputable dealer online.) I hopped over to monoprice.com, where I’ve ordered a multitude of cables. They don’t sell an 8-foot version, but they do have 6′ and 10′ versions, both with the same gold-plating as the big-box version.

Ready for this?

6′ – $8.26

10-’ – $12.02

Add a couple bucks for shipping, and you could buy 8…count ‘em – 8…10′ cables for the price of one 8′ cable at the big-box.

People need to know this. If anyone can see an 800% improvement by using a different cable, then by all means, get hosed. But I would bet a LOT of money that you can’t. Of course, online dealers don’t have the overhead that retail stores do, so there’s bound to be a little difference in price. But this is much more than that. I firmly believe it’s giant chains taking advantage of people who buy new TVs and monitors and preying on people who don’t understand new tech.

And it’s not just  DVI cables, or even cables for that matter. The same gouging happens with HDMI cables, which are used with new HDTV sets and some computer monitors too. A cable that costs $60 in the store will cost maybe $3 at a place like monoprice. And there is virtually no difference between them. Same with adapters. I saw an s-video to RCA adapter in Radio Shack for $24.99. Same adapter at monoprice? 84 cents. Same with other computer components like RAM – for half the price of 1GB of RAM locally, I can order 2GB including overnight shipping from newegg.com. Of course, there’s more risk and hassle if something goes wrong, but is it really worth paying four times the price for that convenience?

Especially in an economy like this, it is not worth getting hosed at your local retail outlet for this kind of thing. I know there’s the argument about buying local to help support local economies. But I cannot justify that with this kind of differences, especially at chain or big-box stores. Sure, they can have good deals on things from time-to-time, but you’ll never see sales on stuff like this.

Thank you for your attention to this Public Service Announcement. You may deposit half the money you saved in my Paypal account at your convenience, and we’ll call it even.

And now, back to your rergularly scheduled reading and surfing.

Yeah, I know. Geek.

So when I came across the chance to get a free book (via missiologist and pastor Ed Stetzer’s blog), I jumped at it. The deal he was offering was this: be one of the first 75 to email requesting the new book and commit to reviewing it through a blog, and they’ll send you a free copy. I emailed, I was fortunate enough to be one of those 75, and so now I’m awaiting the arrival of the book.

Now I know this happens all the time for famous people whose opinions on a book review matter. I know that most times review copies are given and usually only positive reviews are ever printed. And I know what the cynical among you are thinking: “oh, this is just a publicity stunt for the book”. I know. I thought it too. And then I got over it. If the book’s good, why shouldn’t it get some free publicity? (Plus, it was a risk on their part – they openly said the review didn’t have to be positive. Plus they’re asking for it to be reviewed by bloggers. If that’s not being transparent, I don’t know what is.

So I’ll be reviewing the book for the 5 of you that read this blog, and I pray it might be helpful to some. But as an exercise and experiment, I’ll also offer some thoughts and reflections on other books I’m reading too. And if those can be helpful, great. If not, then at least I get to process “out loud” and think through things as I like to do. (You know, because of my inner geek.)

Another prompt for this experiment is Goodreads. I have a Goodreads profile (it’s like Facebook for books, where you tell people what you have in your library and you can see theirs, and see what you have in common), and I’d invite you to add one too and connect with me there. But the one thing about Goodreads (or Shelfari or whatever book-social-networking tool you use) is that just because I have a book on my shelf doesn’t necessarily mean I endorse it. Yet they all have caused me to think and reflect, and especially when I read something I disagree with, it forces me to ask myself why I disagree, and in the end either changes my thinking or confirms it. Not a bad thing.

So over the next little while as I have time, I’ll offer some thoughts on books I’ve found especially noteworthy. I’m looking forward to the experiment, and we’ll just have to see where it leads.

My first question is what does this say about our culture and its approach to art, that this kind of tool is available so quickly after the original? (That’s not a rhetorical question – I’d really like to hear opinions.) Sure, people have been “Warhol-ing” themselves for years. But that the technology and participatory nature of our culture is intersecting so quickly is fascinating to me. (I wonder how Shepard Fairey feels about it.)

Secondly, does this de-value art, or does it enhance it? What’s it like for an artist now knowing that no matter what work is produced, in a matter of weeks anyone from anywhere can make derivatives and copy the style for free with a couple minutes worth of work?

I’m interested to hear from you…

All video is essentially stop-motion animation. You take a series of still pictures and play them back in order. The faster you play them, the more lifelike they become, until at some point they become “moving pictures”. Play one picture every 5 seconds, you have a slide show. Play one picture every 1/2 second, it’s hard to concentrate on any of them. Play one picture every 1/10 of a second (or 10 images (aka “frames”) per second) and you get really jerky “video”. Play 22 or 23 frames per second, it’s approaching fast enough to look like video.

Get to 24 fps, and all of a sudden, you’re watching a movie. Very cool.

Go to 30 fps and you’ve got TV. (Ok geek nitpickers, I know that regular TV is 60 fields interlaced, not true progressive 30 fps. And that it’s really 59.94 and 29.97 for NTSC video. But now you’re just ruining the fun of the journey with technical details.)

So with all that in mind, I give you another YouTube video. This one is a fan-generated video for the band Modest Mouse. Someone took the provided footage, printed each frame out on paper, then took digital pictures of each frame and re-assembled them digitally, playing them back fast enough to re-create the original video. The rest of the footage looks like very fast stop-motion animation (which it is).

It’s an amazing video, with an amazing amount of work behind it. I’m still amazed it didn’t win the contest. It’s one of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen.

Here ’tis…

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I continue to! 

An amazing stop-motion human tetris video. Youtube is always full of surprises.

Happy Eve of the New Year!