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Introducing StrangeLine and More RetroStrange-ness

This weekend I did some work on RetroStrange infrastructure and scheduling.

RetroStrange TV (our 24/7 streaming TV channel) which is now fully autonomous and publishes notifications to Twitter when each show or movie begins with the #RSTV hashtag. You can find my TV station code on GitHub. The current setup of two Linode 4GB servers this should provide us with enough space and power to run it basically forever at $40/month. Support via Patreon appreciated.

The next RetroStrange Movie Night is November 23rd and we’re showing film noir classic D.O.A. (1949) see the Facebook Event.

The other big RetroStrange feature is the StrangeLine. I’ve set up a phone number you can call for various RetroStrange stuff. Right now you can call to get info on the next Movie Night, or listen to the Skulking Permit by Robert Sheckley as heard on LOFI SCIFI. We’ll add and change up the content regularly, so go ahead and give ‭(814) 787-2643‬ (that’s 814-STRANGE) a call.

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Introducing The OpenCV AI Kit

For the last several months I’ve been helping OpenCV ready their biggest launch ever, and today it’s here. [The OpenCV AI Kit is now available on Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/opencv/opencv-ai-kit).

A Spatial AI platform so small, it’s going to be huge.

The best press mention so far has been Devin Coldewey’s piece for TechCrunch: [OpenCV AI Kit aims to do for computer vision what Raspberry Pi did for hobbyist hardware](https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/14/opencv-ai-kit-aims-to-do-for-computer-vision-what-raspberry-pi-did-for-hobbyist-hardware/)

The campaign has been up for a little over 4 hours, and we’ve passed 500 backers, smashed our goal, and are about to cross the $100,000 mark.

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Layout Land: CSS Grid

Jen Simmons is doing a great job of introducing the core concepts of CSS Grid with this (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSquHt1VCf1x_-1ytlVMT0AMwADlWtc1). These videos have been a huge help to me getting up to speed on the state of the tech. Highly recommended.

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New Video I Worked On: 3D Scanning Best Practices

My colleagues at Occipital and I put together [this tutorial video] for customers of our Canvas home scanning application. I wrote the script and did the voiceover. My co-worker Karla Estrada shot, edited, and starred.

: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqJbFn5rJfE&rel=0 “Canvas: 3D Scanning Best Practices”

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Work: Beyond Cars + Into Handheld 3D Scanning

[I did the voiceover for this video from our friends at Paracosm][link]. It’s about Velodyne’s VLP-16 sensor and how it’s used in Paracosm’s PX-80 handheld scanner.

[link]: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171213005380/en/Velodyne-LiDAR-Paracosm-Team-Capture-Environments-Virtually “Velodyne LiDAR and Paracosm Team Up to Capture Environments on a Virtually Unlimited Scale”

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Squeezing the soul out of digital video

The image above is from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon title sequence. Pretty iconic, right? It is the result of a new video technique I came up with. For more examples and a thorough explanation, read on:

I was taken by a Strange Mood and created a small combination of shell and python scripts that:

1) Creates a still image from every frame of a given input video, then
2) Compares each of these images against each other, round-robin style, in order to
3) Find the two images (and therefore, the two “shots”) which are the LEAST like each other in the source video.

Essentially it take a video input, and finds the two frames that are least like each other. My theory is that all of this will Tell Us Something. I don’t really know what. This is something like digital mysticism, trying to find the soul of a string of bits and surface it.

The current method is sub-optimal in several ways, for one it takes a long time to run on a laptop. Remember: We’re comparing every second of video to every other second of video, and that adds up. Running the script against a full 22-minute episode of a TV should would require 970921 comparisons, so I’ll set that up to run tonight and maybe it’ll be done by morning? This sounds like a job for EC2.

Some more examples:

A-Ha – Take On Me

Citizen Kane – Original Trailer

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Blubox – A Metafilter TV Channel

I’m happy to present to you the newest entry in the long-lost 6 hour projects (this one took more like 2) section here at Extra Future: blubox.

blubox is a script and page that takes the most recently posted videos on Metafilter.com and puts them into a YouTube playlist. The source code is available on Github.

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New Video: Mixed Reality in Bridge Engine With No 3D Sensor Required

Occipital [recently acquired][1] Replica Labs. Also, now we can relocalize inside of Bridge Engine without a 3D sensor! Weird how those things go together. Anyway, I wrote, shot and edited this video to commemorate the event.

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/02/occipital-buys-replica-labs-to-help-turn-your-living-room-into-a-video-game-sooner/ “Occipital Buys Replica Labs To Help Turn Your Living Room Into A Video Game Sooner”

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A Video I Edited About Occipital’s Bridge Engine

Thanks a ton to our private beta partners. They made all this stuff in a week! For more info, see the Structure Sensor developer page.

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Cabel Sasser’s talk at XOXO

[A tremendous and upbeat talk about endings, having a cliche meltdown, and the best time of your life.][link] Really can’t recommend this one enough.

[link]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZXWdR7RzV8 “▶ Cabel Sasser, Panic – XOXO Festival (2013) – YouTube”

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Storyboard

[“Read the TV and Movies you don’t want to watch,”][link] they say. Storyboard is a package that takes subtitled input videos and creates a PDF of every line and every scene change.

I could see using this for a lot of weird/interesting data analysis.

[link]: http://syntaxi.net/2013/01/20/storyboard/ “Storyboard : Read the TV and Movies you don't want to watch”

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FitVids

Being “[A lightweight, easy-to-use jQuery plugin for fluid width video embeds.][link]” (via [@zeldman][zeld])

[link]: http://fitvidsjs.com/ “FitVids.JS – A lightweight, easy-to-use jQuery plugin for fluid width video embeds.”
[zeld]: http://twitter.com/zeldman “Jeffrey Zeldman”

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JavaScript WebRTC in Opera Mobile 12

[Featuring live video from the built-in camera on your mobile, totally within the browser and without plugins.][link] This is great and exciting. [WebRTC][webrtc] is making big strides today.

[link]: http://weblog.bocoup.com/javascript-webrtc-opera-mobile-12/ “JavaScript WebRTC in Opera Mobile 12 – Bocoup”
[webrtc]: http://www.w3.org/TR/webrtc/ “WebRTC specification”

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Ze Frank Is Brining Back The Show

[The Show with Ze Frank is a defining internet experience, and I support this effort entirely.][link] Pledge some money on Kickstarter to make the world more smiley.

[link]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zefrank/a-show-with-ze-frank “A Show with Ze Frank by Ze Frank — Kickstarter”

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A Statement From Louis C.K.

[His direct-download, no-DRM, concert video has sold over 100,000 copies. Louis:][link]

>I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I’ll do it here and I’ll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction.

This is news that I am very happy about.

[link]: https://buy.louisck.net/statement “Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater”

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JG Thirlwell Conducts Venture Bros Music Live

[From a June 18th, 2010 concert. This is pure joy.][link]

[link]: http://www.vimeo.com/22132926?pg=embed&sec=22132926 “Steroid Maximus_Venture Bros Medley on Vimeo”

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L5

A “[Hard Science Fiction Miniseries for the Web][link]” which [raised $10k on Kickstarter][kick]. I wish them luck.

via [Warren Ellis][warren].

[link]: http://www.l5-series.com/ “L5 – Hard Science Fiction Miniseries for the Web”
[kick]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hemogoblin/l5-a-hard-science-fiction-miniseries “L5 on Kickstarter”
[warren]: http://warrenellis.com “Warren Ellis”

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LBJ Buys Pants

[Unless you skipped the entire internet today, you’ve already seen this, but I’m saving it for posterity][link]. All Presidential phone calls used to be recorded. What a world. It’s almost like the president could be held accountable for something.

[link]: http://vimeo.com/18864216 “Put This On: LBJ Buys Pants on Vimeo”

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An Encoder Is Not A State Machine

Fellow Michigander [Chris Adamson does a good job of elaborating on the problems Google’s decision to drop H.264 from Chrome in favor of WebM][link] from the perspective of an implementor or creator. The short: It ain’t pretty.

via [@soypunk][via]

[link]: http://www.subfurther.com/blog/2011/01/13/an-encoder-is-not/ “An Encoder Is Not A State Machine”
[via]: http://twitter.com/soypunk “Soypunk on Twitter”

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Chrontendo

[One man’s quest to play and talk about every video game released for the Famicom & NES in chronological order][link]. I’ve finally begun watching the video volumes, which run bout 45 minutes long and cover 15 games each. The [Episode Guide][guide] is indispensable.

[link]: http://chrontendo.blogspot.com/ “Chrontendo”
[guide]: http://www.sylpher.com/chrontendo/ “Chrontendo Episode Guide”