Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

Recent Items
 
Malcolm Gladwell: Story Teller
 
Trusting Trust: Connections
 
Video Notes: Orcmid's Flying Kyte
 
Integration of Composite Applications
 
Interoperability: All About Collaboration?
 
Facebook: The Frenzy Continues
 
Facebook Applications: Photos
 
Facebook in my Face
 
Identity Crisis in Facebook?
 
Atom Protocol and Microsoft Support

Democracy 2007: U.S.A Independence Day

 I'm celebrating July 4, 2007, the U.S. Independence Day holiday, by focusing my blog and my video notes on topics related to the celebration of our democracy: nurturing a civil and just society, preservation of democracy, and maintaining trustworthy civil institutions.  I have a great many thoughts on the matter.  I will wrestle some of them into blog posts after I clear the decks by completing some promised household chores.

Video: orcmid.tv Democracy 2007: USA Independence Day

Here's another rendition of the video that might work better depending on your browser and plug-in setup:

kyte.tv Democracy 2007: USA Independence Day

Here are some July 4, 2007 topics that I see in my RSS feeds this morning:

• Jeff Sandquist: Happy 4th of July
  A post card from a Canadian at Microsoft.  Thanks Jeff.
    
• John Quarterman: Laugh in the Face
  A discussion of terrorism and security that has some bearing on how we choose to make ourselves safe (or not)
    
• Raymond Chen: Holiday for Fireworks (and Generally Blowing Up Stuff) from around the World
  Some of Raymond's dry humor with a great collection of comments
    
• Lenzius: Thoughts on Freedom (partisan blog site)
  I wasn't going to include this but it was in my RSS feeds and it takes a mainly-thoughtful approach.  One can disagree with the observations that are taken as accepted truths; they do reflect positions taken in the current political debate.    I do not recall hearing Robert Kennedy's "The Mindless Menace of Violence" until I watched the film, Bobby, the other night.  The speech was delivered on April 5, 1968, the day after the slaying of Martin Luther King, Jr.  The YouTube mashup included here has some partisan elements.  I commend it to you for the perspective on Robert Kennedy rather than the not-so-veiled linkage to current events.  Kennedy's address is as relevant today as it was in 1968, and I think we can tolerate any added spin enough to appreciate the fundamental message.
  

---

My two video posts are from the same original recording.  The kyte.tv titles were inserted at kyte.tv after uploading the video.  The SoapBox titles were inserted with Windows Movie Maker prior to upload there.  The file that was uploaded to SoapBox is here (40.8 MB WMV file).  This is one of my experiments to isolate where degradation from the original quality arises and at what part of the capture, edit, upload, retain, and view chain.  For the record, the original capture was with a Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 at its 1.3 megapixel resolution.  This netted out to a 720 x 480 frame at 30 frames per second and 2079 kilobits per second streaming rate.

There are many differences between Soapbox and kyte.tv, including quite different approaches to what is provided for embedding in web pages.

posted by orcmid at 7/04/2007 12:21:00 PM