It's been a while

I've been taking a long break from video. I haven't uploaded a video, or even logged into youtube in quite some time. I'm doing this because, quite honestly, my grades suck. I have a week long break from school right now (yay president's week), so I have time to make a post.

So, some changes:

1. new banner


2. division of posting

Banner is done by my friend, James Peters, you can find him at deviantart.
The division of posting. I started a blog for more personal postings early in January. I've been neglecting that blog as well, but not as much as this one. The idea is that this blog is more professional, and my other one is more about my personal life.
You can find my other blog here.

And, that's about it.

Youtube channels in widescreen?!

Yay, now, my thumbnail for Ash (which really was in 16 by 9, slightly cropped because the camera cut off parts on the sides) looks to be in widescreen.

At least, that's what my new widescreen youtube channel says!

My youtube channel in widescreen!

Yeah, supposedly the link is for preview purposes, but expletive that!

-Michael

Linux time.

I try to keep this blog related to online video with at least one paragraph (hey, the one on yes on 8 had a paragraph on Tung's entry to Campus Movie Fest...) devoted to that topic. However, this a topic I feel strongly about, and, something I feel that I need to tell y'all about.
Ok, I lied, I will have an online video series made to "educate" people on linux. There's your relation to online video.

Anyway. I was reading slashdot today, one of the articles links to the HeliOS blog, where the founder tells of a letter he received from a teacher in Austin, TX. This letter boils down to "Cease and desist or I will sue".

That was the trigger to this post. I've been itching to write about linux, but honestly, even Windows has better video editing programs than linux does (though, you cannot beat iMovie 6 and final cut).

First, some backstory:
I was given an old (Gateway Solo 5350) laptop from a guy in my Ham Club (Amateur Radio).
It ran XP for about 2 of me owning it, then I installed antivirus, which bricked the machine.
So, I installed linux. I fooled around for a few months until I decided I liked Debian best.
Then, I broke that machine and aquired two IBM thinkpads. though, technically, one is a Lenovo thinkpad. I have Debian Lenny installed on both of them as of this post.

Enough backstory.

So, I recently remembered that I ought to check the district's website for information on getting the interblag. Much cheaper than my original plan of one of those interblag-anywhere cards (and I don't have to deal with driver problems). I do all the necessary stuff, and, once I get a thing from gnome network manager saying "you're connected" I open up a browser window, to celebrate the glory of being able to tell lying teachers "you're wrong" and then show them proof of why.
Imagine my disappointment when I get redirected to a page telling me I have to provide credentials again. Which directs me to another page telling me I need to download "Cisco Clean Access Agent". This is not a problem with my computer, because, I know for a fact that my computer identifies as a Linux machine (You can check this by taking your IP address, and entering it into your browser).
Right, so, I download this abomination because I need the interblag. Thinking maybe wine will run it.
Nope.
Wine installed it, and, it doesn't run.

Now for another story.

People, ESPECIALLY teenagers who grew up playing games on Windows, need to learn that the command line DOES NOT mean that I am hacking. Secondly, they need to learn the definition of hacking. These... dumbasses, think that hacking refers to what you'd find on this site as opposed to this site (Protip: the latter actually deals with the real definition of hacking, the former deals with the definition of cracking).
I used to enjoy their stupidity, I would just spend about 15 minutes cd-ing around, just waiting for them to realize that I'm not doing anything at all.
Now, I am getting incredibly tired having to tell them that I'm not doing anything.
Normal people would tell me "spend less time in the command line", my response is "but it's faster to type 'nano ********/chem/chapter6/chapter6-2.txt' than it is to go through the gui to it." (note: ******** is the name of my school, it's not that length of characters, by the way)
Also, I can honestly say that I have never cracked anything in my life, so people saying "4r3 j00 d01ng 50m3 1337 h4xx0r5?" [translation: "Are you doing some leet hacking?" (No, that's not what they're saying, but, for their level of education in this topic, they might as well be saying that, numbers and all)], my answer is "no, go fuck off". Sadly, they never do.

I shall end that block of text.

Another complaint:
When I am programming, I am not creating an exploit, mostly, when I program in school it's because I realized that I can write this program to do this and it'll my academic life easier. For example, I'm working on a program to do these damned word searches for me. Because I am fucking tired of busy work, and these are the one kinds of busy work I suck at.

Pretty much, I expect to do an entire series of these posts as I do my Linux edutainment stuff.

Black Friday sucks.

I even have a video stating how much black friday sucks.

watch!

Honestly. A 34 year old worker at Wal Mart DIED today. That's sad, you know? I mean, I'm all for capitalism and stuff, I don't see a problem with death, so long as it's not senseless death (I do, after all, play a black deck in Magic: The Gathering). But, people were so greedy for these sales that they managed to trample this worker to death.

Not much I can do about it though. Sucks.

Also, the video is in a bit of a lighter tone, it's purpose is just to get me subscribers, even if it does touch a bit on the death of the wal mart worker.

California Proposition 8 (2008)

For those who don't know, CA's Proposition 8 is the banning of Gay Marriage in CA. Legallized in June, 2008, Gay marriage, is, in my opinion, good. I have no religious qualms with it (I'm atheist), I have no other moral qualms with it, other than the following.

I do not think it should be legal for the judicial system to create law.

Why is that a problem? Easy, you see, the CA family code, had, since 2000, a law, stating that only marriage between a man and a woman are legal in CA. The law that put this in, CA Proposition 22 (wikipedia.org, it has sources, which check out, therefore it's ok in my opinion). Unfortunately, this was overturned by the CA supreme court in June 2008. Something I do not think should be legal.

Why shouldn't a court be allowed to overturn a law made 8 years previous? Because, at this point, it is not overturning a law (having expired the time for appeals to be made) it's creating new legislation. Creating legislation is something the LEGISLATIVE branch does, not the JUDICIAL branch. If the JUDICIAL branch is allowed to create LEGISLATION, then this is a breach of separation of powers, which, if not disallowed by the CA constitution, is definitely banned by the US constitution.

I therefore, am left in the gray area. You see, I do not think gay marriage should be banned, my best friend is gay, and I believe he should have the same rights as me. However, I also think that separation of powers should be maintained.

What are your thoughts?

As most people on the internet are aware of the reasons for voting no on prop 8 I didn't elaborate on them, I just stated why I may (if I could vote, damned age 16) vote yes on prop 8, for moral reasons, not homophobia reasons.

Oh, and this will probably be my only political posting. If there are others, expect them to come in at least a year from now. As a republican who lives in democrat country, I don't like to discuss politics because it just ends in me getting insulted.

Also, for film stuff (hey, this blog IS about film, right?), I am working on the screenplay for a film, so I should be done and ready for production once band ends/winter starts/Tung comes back up here.

Another film thing, Tung did DP (Director of Photography) for Campus Movie Fest down at UCLA, he didn't win, but here is a link to the video his roommates made. (requires quicktime 7)

weekly videos?

Instead of doing sporadic stuff that doesn't help my audience (right now at 26 subscribers on youtube), I'm going to post at least one video a week. Most of them will be vlogs, but I think it'll help me, a lot.

that said, because it's marching band season, I actually get a lot of videos recorded, because I have a lot to go to and do. Most of them are marching band related and those not interested aren't going to be very entertained, but hey.

Halloween screenplay, haunted mansion, psat, gpa.

So, I finished a screenplay for the halloween film, which might not happen because my schedule is packed (Pretty much unless I can convince the people managing Haunted Mansion to let me film in there, the halloween film might not happen).

This leads me to the haunted mansion. Haunted Mansion is an event put on by my school's performing arts department in which we create a haunted house thing in our cafeteria. It's a ton of fun, because it allows us to be creative, and to construct things just because they would be cool or scary to have. I absolutely love it.

Moving on.

I take the PSAT tomorrow. Which is cool, because getting money for college is great, and it's practice for the SAT, which I take in the spring.

Oh, sidenote: I found out today that if I get a 4.0 gpa for the next 2 years, my end (cumulative) gpa for my entire high school year will be about 3.55.

yeah, time to work my ass off for college.