When I was a younger man I had trouble urinating in men's restrooms - my mind got busy preventing me from pissing. I made a video explaining that experience; maybe someone wrestling with the same issue can feel less alone.
When I was a younger man I had trouble urinating in men's restrooms - my mind got busy preventing me from pissing. I made a video explaining that experience; maybe someone wrestling with the same issue can feel less alone.This is an episode of the Justin Hall Show - you can learn more about the episode at this Links.net update: http://links.net/daze/15/12/21-pee-shy.htmlor you can learn more about the Justin Hall Show at http://justinhallshow.com/ and finally you can support future episodes like this or even better and more exciting at http://patreon.com/justin
Spoiler: now I can pee pretty easily. Aging, confidence, the experience of having peed successfully before - all combine to have me feeling less anxious and more relieved about a lineup of urinals. Maybe some day I'll feel anxious at a urinal again!
Note: this is a text-heavy moving image. "pee shy" is my attempt to mimic & learn a 2015 video style I've seen exemplified by AJ+ - Al Jazeera's online news wing. I noticed that AJ+ consistently transcribed the words spoken by the subjects of their videos appearing more and more frequently in my Facebook stream, where the videos play without sound by default. I rewatched some of my recent videos with the sound off, and I didn't see enough of the story.
So here's an experiment in telling the story in text along with my voice. It was fun to put my words on the screen and to give them some movement and life and relationship to other words. I revised this film multiple times with no volume, learning more of the communications potential of playful captioning.
Shaken and stirred by recent news of refugees, and visiting family in England for a USA holiday of public gratitude, I did some historical research and wrote up this year's Thanksgiving grace to say before a meal:
we are by birth
luck
and timing
fortunate to be here
around this table
with food and family
not hiding
generally unafraid
we give thanks.
we celebrate this holiday together
two handfuls of Americans abroad
we bring with us
a 394 year old story
of pilgrims and natives
partying in peace!
foreigners and locals
reportedly celebrated
the harvest of 1621 together
with meat, sport
and few shared words
perhaps the pilgrims were toasting
the short lines at Wampanoag passport control
pre-Massachusetts:
where fugitives could disembark,
meet a friendly Samoset and Squanto,
be fed by strangers and be left in peace.
Thanksgiving is then a story of refugees well met -
Perhaps a useful modern parable
Whilst we manage the borders around our current prosperity
As others flee brutal darkness towards our glittering light
Today we dine where the pilgrim's exodus began:
They craved religion free from state control
So they fled the Church of England
They took a 66 day boat voyage
And they landed amidst the Wampanoag:
A tribe already decimated by diseases
newly imported by
Explorers, fugitives and refugees.
War and encroachment followed
with these visitors
until the original nations dissolved.
We here are children
more of the pilgrims than the natives.
we flew back to these shores,
maybe 7 to 10 hours.
we eat of the earth, sky and sea
our people have plenty to share
in our storehouses
and plenty to protect
So what loving Truth lies for us
In the "story of Thanksgiving"?
Perhaps that
It is good and rare
to be alive
With healthy family
And a laden table
And a pause long enough to recognize
what sobering riches
we have here today in our lives.
Who controls the media we see on the streets? Maybe advertisers, and maybe street artists. The graffiti scene is dominated by men, and many advertisers are targeting our insecurities. Not everyone can abide this arrangement.
Rachel Cassandra & Lauren Gucik were eager to see their voices appear on the street. They teamed up together and made street art in San Francisco. After discovering the power in their collaboration, they searched out other communities of women making street art. They found a vibrant female street artist scene active in Latin America, and they've chronicled the artists they met in their new book Women Street Artists of Latin America: Art Without Fear / Grafiteras y Muralistas en Amรฉrica Latina: Arte Sin Miedo.
In this interview, Justin Hall, a friend of Rachel & Lauren, learns from them about street art, respect for public space, and women speaking out with brilliant color in a macho culture.
Who controls the media we see on the streets? Maybe advertisers, and maybe street artists. The graffiti scene is dominated by men, and many advertisers are targeting our insecurities. Not everyone can abide this arrangement.Rachel Cassandra & Lauren Gucik were eager to see their voices appear on the street. They teamed up together and made street art in San Francisco. After discovering the power in their collaboration, they searched out other communities of women making street art. They found a vibrant female street artist scene active in Latin America, and they've chronicled the artists they met in their new book Women Street Artists of Latin America: Art Without Fear / Grafiteras y Muralistas en Amรฉrica Latina: Arte Sin Miedo. http://artesinmiedo.net or http://artwithoutfear.netIn this interview, Justin Hall, a friend of Rachel & Lauren, learns from them about street art, respect for public space, and women speaking out with brilliant color in a macho culture. You can find out more about this project on my web site at http://links.net/daze/15/11/21-women-street-artists-of-latin-america-an-interview-with-rachel-cassandra-lauren-gucik.html
Disclosure: these two people are close friends of mine & I contributed to their 2012 Kickstarter. I met Lauren and Rachel through my wife Ilyse, they are part of Revel art collective together. I have enjoyed many great life adventures with them since, and both were an intimate part of our wedding celebration. So I know about this project and the people behind it, and I am a backer.
The Justin Hall Show shifts between personal stories, performance and interviews. This is my first interview with two people, plus I shot with two video cameras and two mobile phones for four total angles. Three people, four angles each - there's a lot to play with.
Fortunately it turns out that street artists often have video cameras or timelapse filming during creation, and the web gave me reach to follow their Central and South American art trails through Vimeo or Facebook or Instagram or Flickr. So I had good visual source material to put behind our discussion about women and street art.
Featured artists in this video include: Perversa (Bogota, Columbia), Ariz (Guatemala City), and La Kyd & Ladies Destroying Crew (Managua, Nicaragua).
I enjoy street art but graffiti tags make me sad, most especially when people tag murals. Talking to these two deepened my understanding of the visual space of cities; I hope you find something worthwhile in what my two friends have made.
How about if I post a story here with names & specifics covered up for privacy's sake. There's a 150 year timer, after which time they are revealed. Hah!
The latest episode of the Justin Hall Show is live!
I've spent many hours happily hunched over the macabre city builder Rebuild on my iPad, rebuildgame.com, contributing just a few of the millions of games of Rebuild that have been played in the last few years. So I was eager to have a chance to learn from Rebuild's developer, Sarah Northway. Sarah herein describes Rebuild 3, her experience with open game development, her taste for the end of civilization, her voracious travel lifestyle, and the design of a game about wealth inequality. Please enjoy this latest episode of the Justin Hall Show! And consider supporting future episodes here: patreon.com/justin
I've spent many hours happily hunched over the macabre city builder Rebuild on my iPad, http://rebuildgame.com, contributing just a few of the millions of games of Rebuild that have been played in the last few years. So I was eager to have a chance to learn from Rebuild's developer, Sarah Northway. Sarah herein describes Rebuild 3, her experience with open game development, her taste for the end of civilization, her voracious travel lifestyle, and the design of a game about wealth inequality. Please enjoy this latest episode of the Justin Hall Show! And consider supporting future episodes here: http://patreon.com/justin
More episodes of the Justin Hall Show are coming, and I'm over $200 per episode on Patreon. I'm grateful for the folks who support me there, and the people who continue to watch these crazy irregularly scheduled productions. I'm having fun, I'm having good conversations, and I'm pushing my skills as a storyteller.
But I'm not making enough money to keep up with my expenses, so I'm hanging out my shingle as Transformative Communications Services - helping firms tell their story to recruit the right talent to help them grow.
In a few weeks, people will gather in a darkened room to watch overshare: the links.net story. I produced this documentary home video and released it free on the web so it might find its audience. I didn't expect that people would want to show it live so soon!
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, get thyself to Omni Commons this Tuesday 3 Nov, 5:30-8:00pm at 4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland. I'll be there to help screen my film, and we'll enjoy a talk from Michelle Krasowski, experimental archivist from the Internet Archive.
Now I am wedded, to Ilyse Iris Magy. Our friends stepped forward into documentation roles that we had assigned to professionals, so our friends could just focus on their duties mingling with strangers. Fabrice Florin posted a photo gallery which links to our wedding web site - I hadn't thought about whether I would link it directly from my life here, and I still haven't, so for now it's just a hint in a Flickr photoset description.
This is the first episode of the Justin Hall Show since the mid-August release of overshare: the links.net story with working sound. In this video, and this post, I'll share some statistics and earnings from the film after six weeks live:
YouTube: 5,270 views
Facebook: 4,096 over 3 seconds; 1,220 over 30 seconds
http://Archive.org: 131 views
Vimeo: 66 views
Dailymotion: 60 views
overshare.VHX.tv: 36 units sold for $437
Thanks to Jason Scott, I was able to get a Torrent up and running for overshare.links.net as well via the Internet Archive. So if you haven't watched it, well, it's out there. And someone responded asking if I could come up with a regular podcast pitch. I love the moving pictures but maybe audio would be faster than video. Either way, I look forward to potentially working with other people in my media making!
Please enjoy this latest Justin Hall Show episode! Thank you for your support.
For over twenty-one years I've been sharing my personal stories online. First I started with simple web pages, then I tried videos and video games. Then somehow I backed my way into an 18 month project to assemble 1500+ media objects into a 40 minute documentary about myself, the secrets I shared online, and an interview with my Mom to prove that not everyone is still angry with me.
With no producer no deadline and no venue it was up to me to self-motivate to finish and publish as I saw fit. overshare: the links.net story finally went live on the web in August 2015, for free everywhere and for sale on VHX. Here's my distribution strategy:
I've published the video for free viewing wherever I could maybe find viewers. I created a basic web site at overshare.links.net. I sliced the film up into episodes between 2-10 minutes long, and uploaded the episodes and the whole thing to the Internet Archive, YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and dailymotion.
Good news: I can reach people where they might be watching videos, and overshare can pop up in more varied media search results. Bad news: I have viewers, stats, and comments distributed across many platforms which makes overshare appear less popular in any one venue.
Initially I was thinking to tease the film with episodes and trailers, and then sell the whole production only on VHX. But my mentor and instigator for this project Howard Rheingold pointed out that one paid article, or speaking opportunity or consulting gig resulting from this film would be worth hundreds of video sales. If the film is a calling card, then I want it to reach as many folks as possible. Plus overshare is about free sharing of stories on the internet, so it seemed more thematically appropriate to scatter the whole thing to the winds.
So why even offer the film for sale? I enjoy playing with media technologies, and I want to give people a chance to use their dollars to encourage me to keep making weird stuff. Plus I had a chance to interview VHX co-founder Jamie Wilkinson back in 2013 and VHX just sounded like fun. If I take the long view, that this video will be for sale for years to come, I think I can look forward to occasional surprises when someone decides to pay to support this unusual cultural production. And I can enjoy VHX's tools for selling and promoting the film, as VHX teaches me about online video distribution in 2015.
Today, the deluxe "TMI edition" of my film on VHX is the only place to find past versions, outtakes, deleted scenes and so forth. It's nice to have a place to feed media to folks who might be extra-interested. So far I've sold 34 units: 25 of the TMI edition and 7 paying over the minimum price.
Crowdfunding?
For other projects like The Justin Hall Show, I've used crowdfunding to support my efforts. But for overshare, I didn't know what the scope or shape of the project would be. I didn't want to overpromise and underdeliver: being on the hook for making an unknown film and for pleasing my supporters at the same time. My last software job helped me save up enough money that I could afford to stay working at home with my head down, not asking for money online.
But crowdfunding is not just about money - it's about revving people up who might be fans and promoters. When we buy in and support a project with our monies, we become naturally interested in helping other people see the wisdom or beauty of that project. Perhaps I missed out on an opportunity to amp up some viewers and get more attention on my project here! But I was mindful that crowdfunding, if successful, demands outreach and upkeep. As a one person team heading into a difficult project of unknown boundaries, I wanted to stay focused on my core film not on audience relations.
I started work in earnest in early 2014 and I didn't arrive on a title until a few weeks before release in mid-2015. Accordingly I did minimal advance promotions before I had a title and I knew the movie was going to actually be finished. With all this advance quietude, I had exactly 1 pre-sale on VHX. Thank you Kevin!
Without a crowdfunding audience demanding updates, I was left working largely in my own head. I was tempted a number of times to publish some "behind the scenes" videos and posts to VHX and my personal weblog. But again as a one-man band making an increasingly elaborate media object, I wanted to keep my focus on finishing and polishing one large work, and not feeding a bunch of small films and text updates. It was an unusually strict approach to media production for me - I'm normally throwing off all kinds of media bits. Never having made something this long with this many moving pieces I came to enjoy having the razor to slice off ideas that weren't part of the main attraction.
This meant beavering away in silence, largely alone, with my family and friends asking "is it done yet" and some caring folks saying "you should stop smoking pot and leave your basement and go out and meet people already." And it was probably true - this was a pretty lonely affair, editing footage of myself telling stories about myself. Long days working on footage about suicide or divorce had me glad for my cannabis prescription to provide some evening mood lightening.
Out, and now?
Now the movie is live in public. The great question mark of "what is this thing" has been finally drawn on a glowing screen. Now it's up to me to push that question mark across many glowing screens.
It's strange to have a video that is so much about myself - it makes promotions a little bit awkward. "Check me out!" cries the manchild, "You should pay attention to me and my past!" Perhaps strangers should pay attention to their own local stories, stories of greater need and suffering than this tale of one young man who lost his father and found the web.
But it turns out my coming of age happened in parallel with the growth of the popular internet, so for my overshare marketing I've largely focused on an academic audience. Already teachers have said they will use this film to help their students understand more about the early web and the advent of widespread personal media sharing. I made the titles and credits and information about the film in basic HTML and posted them freely online to serve as possible study materials. My promotional efforts mostly focus on telling academics the film is freely available. Schoolfolk are not as sexy as Hollywood but they're an audience of the future.
Uploading to so many places, and choosing Creative Commons distribution, I have set myself up for some surprises. Already other people have reposted the entire film of overshare on their own YouTube accounts. I think of the Judeo-Christian bible: media products only stay alive if they are copied. The entire film is an advertisement for or warning against me, so anyone else sharing it around should mostly serve to draw still more attention to me and my stories. I should relax into the web of sharing, or else I'm in the wrong line of work.
My goal as a personal filmmaker was not to create a profit fountain, but rather to self-promote over the long haul - finding my way to new conversations and opportunities that will tickle my brain and occupy my fingers. Now that it's live in the world overshare: the links.net story might tickle someone else as well.
Hello, my name is Justin Hall and I've been sharing my personal life in explicit detail online for over twenty years. Starting in 1994, my personal web site Justin's Links from the Underground has documented family secrets, romantic relationships, and my experiments with sex and drugs.
overshare: the links.net story is a documentary about fumbling to foster intimacy between strangers online. Through interviews, analysis and graphic animations, I share my motivations, my joys and my sorrows from pioneering personal sharing for the 21st century. In 2004 the New York Times referred to me as "perhaps the founding father of personal weblogging." I hope this documentary reveals that I was a privileged white male with access to technology who worked to invite as many people as possible to join him in co-creating an internet where we have a chance to honestly share of our humanity.
Get overshare:
overshare: the links.net story is available free for watching and downloading at overshare.links.net.
In addition, I'm selling this video using a service called VHX. VHX allows for DRM-free downloads so you can watch this film on your device, on your terms. In addition, there's a "TMI edition" on VHX that has behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes and more. On VHX you can pay above than the minimum cost of the film if you'd like to encourage me.
The overshare titles and credits are both made as basic web pages, so viewers can follow up with my source material. In addition, overshare is published under a Creative Commons Attribution license so anyone is free to remix the material to help tell their own story.
What's Next:
Today is the last day of July 2015. I began this project in early 2014, around the 20th anniversary of Justin's Links. I'm now 40 years old; overshare has been a good chance to look back at decades of evolving myself online. Later this year I will be marrying Ilyse Iris Magy in California - she's an explorer and communicator herself who aided and abetted me making this film. Now finishing overshare and marrying Ilyse I'm looking forward to more decades serving my ideals around participatory human communications.
What's next for me creatively and professionally? I'd like to make more episodes of the Justin Hall Show to explore a long list of topics deferred whilst finishing overshare. I'm fielding ethical cannabis business ideas for bud.com. Today I seek collaboration: I've spent a year or more largely alone editing myself talking about my past; I'm eager to work with other people to make a better present and future.
Ultimately, I hope overshare can help people understand more about the history of our internet and the tradeoffs we make as we work to be authentic to ourselves in public space with friends and strangers. Please enjoy overshare: the links.net story and let's share the internet together with kindness and gratitude for the chance we have to share of ourselves and listen to other people.
Today is a soft-launch for my "twenty years of Links.net" documentary, exploring the personal and social costs of my search for attention through explicit personal publishing on the early web.
I will spend July preparing the film for online distribution: finalizing the video's title, which will effect fonts and URLs in places throughout the film and web. I'll correct typos & errors, do color correction & a final audio mix. Then I'll slice this up into episodes and make trailers. Finally, I'll pull off the curtain by reaching out to media outlets, academics, web historians, artists and freaks who might find their cortexes or ribs tickled here.
So this is a pre-release release; by the end of July I'll be ready to release to the larger world. Feel free to purchase yourself a copy of this film to watch today, or whenever!
Over the next few months I look forward to reflecting and emoting a little more about the making of the film. For now, I'm excited to have the film itself testify to the absurdity of the project.
A moving picture is worth 1000 words a second. Those who share themselves with the public through the Internet using video accelerate their exposure to the minds of strangers.
JenniCam was a pioneer of webcams - opening her bedroom to anyone with a web browser. Jennifer Johnson, nรฉe Ringley explored the medium and personal transparency, reaching great heights of fame and exposure, before removing herself entirely from the web a few years later.
I'm sifting through some of these sorts of recollections myself for my 21 years of links.net documentary. Jennifer Johnson here wasn't ready to take on any role or responsibility for rampant public intimacy using technology but she does end the interview with an effecting testament to the social and personal costs for her therein.
Spoiler: she attributes some of her downshifted sharing to aging processes, in a portion of this interview that caused me to nod in recognition.
I am honored that people want to hear about my early work on the web. I guess it's exciting that I've been introducing myself to strangers online for 20+ years! But I don't like being a "greatest hits" person who is telling the same old story. So I work to tell new stories, these days via the Justin Hall Show, and I work to tell old stories in new ways.
7 May 2015 I had the opportunity to talk for 30 minutes at re:publica, a large technology culture & politics conference in Berlin, Germany. I looked back at my history, and I imagined four archetypes for personal sharing online:
There's never been so many cameras pointed at me speaking before, and there's never been such a polished final edit. Big thanks to the organizers of re:publica for hosting me and putting out this video the same day I spoke!
After my talk at XOXO last year, earnest Americans approached me with business cards or emotions and wanted to connect for a spell. After my talk at re:publica, earnest Germans kindly mentioned my remarks on Twitter; fewer face-to-face discussions.
I'm pleased to present this month's Justin Hall Show episode, an interview with Kenyatta Cheese: Professional Internet Enthusiast. Kenyatta describes how our fandom and media consumption serves as media production and skill-building for community organizing.
I met Kenyatta in Spring 2006 and we taught a class together: CTIN 499: Portable Video Production and Internet Distribution within the USC School of Cinema-Television: Interactive Media Division. Here's a high-dynamic range photograph of us 9 years prior:
Long before Vine and YouTube, Kenyatta worked bring video to the internet, at the intersection of art, activism and technology. This has lead him to study viral and meme content, as a co-founder of Know Your Meme, a pioneering popular internet studies service. Early in his career he helped people get video cameras working with computers in backpacks, to allow for live-broadcasting from protests. Now Kenyatta has a company Everybody at Once helping fans of television shows express themselves online.
Kenyatta is playful; it was fun to interview him. And it was good to be able to feature Kenyatta on the Justin Hall Show because Kenyatta directly improved my work. In October 2013 I was just starting to ramp up on making Justin Hall Show episodes, Kenyatta insisted on loaning me his overclocked Lumix GH2 camera. I've learned over time how to make good use of it and it's been a serious upgrade, one that I'm very grateful for. Kenyatta Cheese in the credits of most all Justin Hall Show episodes; and now people watching the series will know the face behind the credits!
For most of my recent flicks, the plug for Patreon comes at the very end. So someone only sees patreon.com/justin if they stay past the credits - that's a lot to ask, and I want to see if I can get more folks to sign up if the message comes up at the front. I listened to National Public Radio news here in the US recently, and there was sponsorship reminder aplenty. So up front I put together an updated, integrated promo in the first 30 seconds; we'll see if I get more than the usual 2-3 signups in the next month!
This video came out at the same time as an upgrade to the software I use to edit my videos: Final Cut Pro X 10.2. I dove into presentations from Steve Martin's and Mark Spencer to learn the new capabilities. I allowed myself a fair profusion of 3D titles here. It was fun to play off the spirit in all our online totems - I enjoyed nerding-out on the visual presentation around Kenyatta and his talk of internet folk art.
Episodes are better shorter; I'm aiming for well under 10 minutes these days. Kenyatta and I had a broader discussion lasting 50 minutes. There's some good insights and a broader sense of the arenas in which he's served. I'd like to make a podcast out of it and some of the other conversations I've had! If you would enjoy working with me to make a podcast out of the longer Justin Hall Show interviews, professional or amateur, let's see what we can work out - justin@links.net.
As ever I'm eager to continue interviewing and exploring and meditating for you through these videos. If you enjoy this one and/or want to see something different, email me justin@links.net. I am grateful for the chance to be animated in cyberspace together in the same era!
BTW - to answer the question at the beginning of the video for myself, I'm not sure I know how to get strangers on the internet to join up with you and do what you want, but you can write & record your experiences and you'll find people who are already doing what you want and together you can see what's next.
Kenyatta Cheese: Internet Enthusiast
๐ an episode of The Justin Hall Show
๐ filmed on location at Orbital, NYC - thanks to Gary Chou
๐ฑ thanks to Ilyse Magy for use of her iPhone 6 to record the interview
๐ท thanks to Kenyatta Cheese for use of his overclocked Lumix GH2 camera to record the introduction
๐ก thanks to Howard Rheingold for studio lights
๐บ thanks to Tom Wiltzius for the studio monitor screen
๐ฐ thanks to Ilyse Magy for editorial feedback
Footage:
๐ป photos of Kenyatta Cheese by Tricia Wang and Amit Gupta
๐ฌ excerpts from Lying Down Game, Numa Numa - Know Your Meme
๐ 50,000 particles random walk - Atsushi Tadakoro
๐พ animated GIF keyboard for iOS - PopKey
๐ Crasher squirrel photo by Melissa Brandts
๐ฑ Nyan Cat by Christopher Torres
๐ฉ GANGNAM STYLE (แแ กแผแแ กแทแแ ณแแ กแแ ตแฏ) - PSY
๐ Study for Glitch Synthesis - Atsushi Takadoro
๐ Experiment of Attraction 2 - Atsushi Tadokoro
๐ฎ crucial.conflict (loop) - Switzon S. Wigfall, III
๐ฎ Empty conference room flip.dream 700.45 (loop) - Switzon S. Wigfall, III
๐ Cinder particle test. - Atsushi Takadoro
๐ฝ A Day in Congress - an E.W. Hullinger Production
๐ซ American Troops March Off To War (1943) - US Army Signal Corps
Music:
๐ต Tech Talk - Jason Shaw
๐ต Laundromatted - Lawrence Grey
๐ต Fat Caps - Jason Shaw
๐ต Mastoid (2007) - The Gasman, from Archive
๐ต Dr. Who Theme - Ron Grainer & Delia Derbyshire
๐ต Rockitship Long Light Years (Version 2) - Blevin Blectum, from Talon Slalom
๐ต Vaxin (2013) - The Gasman, from Archive
๐ต Wrapped in Aw - Blevin Blectum, from Emblem Album
๐ต Vivaldi's Autumn Mvt 3 Allegro - John Harrison with the Wichita State University Chamber Players
๐ต Wataridori 2 - Cornelius
Footage and Images:
๐ Supermarket footage from Casa Lucas Market, Five Markets, Bristol Farms underground, Whole Foods Noe in San Francisco, California
๐ brand matrix from Behind the Brands, Oxfam, behindthebrands.org
๐ช Keebler Cookies Commercial, 2011, YouTube.com
๐ฑ Green Giant Swedish Commercial, YouTube.com
๐ต Betty Crocker Marble Cake Mix Commercial, 1958, starring Adelaide Hawley Cumming, YouTube.com
๐ผ "Food for America" 1941, Prelinger Archives, Archive.org
๐ป California Department of Public Health Food and Drug Branch Food Safety Training Program: episodes: Produce 2 Regulations, Juice 6 Processing and Packaging, Produce 5 Storage and Transport, Archive.org
๐ซ "Snickers Bar World's Biggest Recipe 5lbs HOW TO COOK THAT candy bar" by Ann Reardon, YouTube.com
๐พ "After Effects Preset: Bacteria" by EJ Hassenfratz, Vimeo.com
๐ covers from Food Technology magazine, IFT 50th Anniversary Issue September 1989, published by the Institute of Food Technologists, ift.org
๐บ "Miracle of the Can", 1956, by Caravel Films, Prelinger Archives, Archive.org
๐ The Baking Industry, 1956, by Holmes (Burton) Films, Prelinger Archives, Archive.org
๐ซ Chocolates photo by Justin Sewell, Flickr.com
๐ฝ Truffle photo by Dennis M, Flickr.com
๐ฟ Olive Oil footage from Al Majd TV, Archive.org
Music:
๐ต "Kleasy" from Talon Slalom by BlevinBlectum
๐ต "Suspiria" from elevenandtwelve by nisei23, Free Music Archive
๐ต "Nothing Like Captain Crunch" from Slam Funk by Broke For Free, Free Music Archive
๐ต "Our Ego [Feat. Different Visitor]" from Slam Funk by Broke For Free, Free Music Archive
Thanks:
๐ท Kenyatta Cheese for overclocked Lumix GH2 camera
๐ก Howard Rheingold for lights
๐ฌ Ilyse Magy, Rachel Cassandra, Howard Rheingold for feedback
๐ช My Patreon patrons for encouraging support
๐ฌ Rachel Zemser is http://theintrepidculinologist.com and @culinologist
๐ค Justin Hall appears courtesy of http://links.net
-* Thanks to my Patreon supporters for additionally motivating me to keep the videos coming *-
I faltered in my forward health; I caught a cold last Monday 2 March and basically it knocked me out. I was either coughing, leaking, wheezing, honking, aching or stoned for most of the last week.
I postponed an interview for The Justin Hall Show. For video work, I managed to spend much of my upright computer time simulating the way "checking email" looked in 1994 by rebuilding the Eudora Mac interface in Apple's Motion 5. That has resulted in a much improved 5 seconds of footage in my 2315 second film; .2 percent. Bit by bit, I'm gonna finish this thing! Whether or not I can find the Mishawaka Font.
Poking through my archives for ever more footage to adorn my documentary, I found tiny video files - interviews that I did in 2000 when I was employed at Gamers.com.
Probably the best media artifact here is the recording from Dragon Con in Atlanta, Georgia July 2000 - for fans of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and other elements of fan culture. I found this paragraph describing a third millennium A.D. machine box ride with both the armies of Christ and the children of Satan:
It turns out that the Salvation Army is having its 135-year anniversary in Atlanta at the same time as Dragon*Con. So there's 20,000 suited servants of the lord sharing the streets with Stormtroopers. They are both in the same Hyatt hotel too - I get on an elevator with two ladies from Denmark in their sixties, dressed in Salvation army garb with shoulder epaulets, and then two young ladies board wearing dog collars, large black feathered wings, vampire teeth and red contact lenses. It's an ideal nonviolent culture clash.
Here's the video; apologies for the profoundly low audio/video quality. GWAR!
That video is here and the other videos are in this playlist of gaming videos. More videos to come! As long as my body sustains my mind!!
I spent US Presidents Day 2015 at the International Cannabis Business Conference. I went there to see how http://bud.com might participate in legalization. I didn't intend to make a video, but afterwards enough people were curious about attending a "cannabis business conference" I decided to put together my reflections on this event in video form:
If this was a major life event, like divorce or commercial failure, I might have immediately released the finished documentation free. Instead, this is a story about having my wallet stolen, which is maybe like being mugged at gunpoint but not nearly as challenging, and video instead of text, but not nearly so intense as an attempt to start a sex church.
The first glimpse of this "stolen wallet, mystery bag" moving picture went to people who shine the light of their hearts and treasures on my creations. But if your funds are tight, fret not, this particular less-controversial, less-impactful, less-produced personal media object shall soon be was hurled free onto a public web that shall remain floating near your eyes as long as I can keep the lights on!!
internet video busking
16 January I passed $200 in funds supporting each episode of the Justin Hall Show on Patreon. Holy smokes! It's been 8 months since I published an episode so I'm feeling especially honored that people would still think their money might someday support something. Since May 2014, without promotion or publishing content, the Justin Hall show gained an average of 2 new patrons a month and went up $29 in per-video pledges. Gracias amigos!!!
Community financial support for my personal video work validates some of my early excitement around "publishing empowerment". Now people surfing the media streams tie their attention and wallets to my teeth! These mounting pledges nudge me to live up to the hope that each dollar represents: the hope that we'll share another media moment.
I wondered, is this particular video too informal for my audience? Too long? Too mundane? This "stolen wallet, mystery bag" video is more casual than the films I produced in 2014. I recorded it in one take, on short notice with my hair miskempt. As I work to address two issues in my links.net documentary and polish that giant pile of excitement, I enjoy having a chance to get loose with the video medium. Hopefully it might amuse or gently provoke some folks across the web.
To get some perspective, I dropped in on personal video-maker Jenna Marbles. Her videos feature far fewer graphics and effects than mine, maybe a few more stunts, a lot more cute animals. But at the core, she strikes one as direct, unafraid and it's somehow comforting to watch her think out loud. I admire her accessible, self-deprecating fun and authentic momentum. I watched her 200th video which offered some insight into her feelings after the last four years riding a rocketship of popularity.
Jenna Marbles is one of the most popular personal media makers on the internet, and I could see the positive and negative aspects of her prominent position from those two vids linked above. Every few months I start thinking, oh, I should get some comments and community going again on Links.net! But personal content + open comments = eventual tide of immense psychic challenge, and I'm not ready for that just now.
These are some of the themes I'm exploring in 20links.vhx.tv - my links.net documentary due free on the web later this year. It's taking me a good while to figure out how I feel about the rise of social networks after the advent of personal weblogging, let alone articulate that feeling!
I'm told the prior resident here snuck over a fence behind this Mission district house into a garden attached to an auto body shop. He planted a black acacia tree there decades ago. When the tree became an overgrowing arboreal menace, it was chopped to a stump. He the planter prayed and meditated hard that day. The stump was ignored and over the ensuing years, the tree grew back without supervision: as seven trunks, a huge canopy three stories tall, visible from San Francisco's hills and sheltering the spaces below which bustled with hawks and rats.
As more people packed around it, the tree was deemed too large: roots were lifting a neighbor's concrete; limbs or whole trunks might have broken off to commit rooficide.
I loved looking out our back window and seeing branches and leaves. Now, a year and a half after I first moved a chair to where I could sit and see that tree, three days of chainsawing by a man on ropes reduced it to a stump once more. Younger men covered the wood wound in mulch and left it.
Ilyse and I wondered if tree-bound meditation and prayer should once again be deployed, touching upon the spiritual side of the otherwise secular Arbor Day, which appears in 40+ countries. Perhaps we'd pray for forgetfulness from our neighbors, so the stump might re-re-grow. And, we'd likely raise our voices amidst the many in this part of the world praying for water.
But instead of bringing rain, our water prayers could cause sea levels to rise to our front steps. And instead of summoning leaves outside our window, this tree could continue to invade our lives. Fed by our prayers and meditation, this tree could soon drive us from this warm box. Seems easy to cut and hard to know. But out my window I do prefer branches and leaves to the rump end of a storehouse.
I've spent this last week barely leaving my house, listening to a fun frenetic musician called "Shitmat" and building a new site at http://bud.com/
After twenty years of owning this domain, it seems the time is ripening to make something useful out of it. I'm asked weekly if I will sell it, and maybe I would for an eye-popping amount of money. But I'd rather make something great with it. Making one-person videos is hugely fun, now I have room in my life for other, more collaborative work.
I've spent the last few months exploring ideas that would be good to build on bud.com. Uber for weed? Pot-friendly friend finder? CraigsList for Cannabusiness? I began to realize I might not be able to make the best use of bud.com with any single idea I have; instead I might do better to enable other folks to grow their bud.com ideas. If I can help other people be successful @bud.com then attention and money will follow, enough for everyone who can contribute work to make the domain great.
So I've spent the last few months reading about cannabis and writing down the core values that should direct and drive bud.com in the years to come. They're all posted on the site, along with a call to action and a few initial projects. Thanks to 19 year old Justin Hall who registered this domain so 40 year old Justin Hall can spend time working on it!
Hi, I'm Justin Hall and this here is a personal web site I've used to chronicle my time on earth since 1994. The content on the front page is relatively recent; if you search through the archives, you'll find old pieces of Justin. Some folks have indexed my doings on Wikipedia.
I've published books for sale, somewhere else online! Behold:
Now available for the Kindle: A Story of GameLayers. My experience being CEO of a tech company, 2007-2009:
"A tell-all story of a startup from the very beginning, with lots of info about real-world fundraising. A more intimate look than you'll find in other business reads." says Irene Polnyi in a 5-star review on Amazon.com.
