Saturday, January 03, 2009

Out and About




Here is my second home movie made with the Kodak Zi6 and apple imovie '08. Youtube now supports 720p HD, but there are some special tricks to get it to upload correctly that took me awhile to figure out. This is from a pocket camcorder. Yes, pocket camcorder are now in HD. I got mine for $160 and there are comparable ones I saw today for only $120. they work amazingly well in good outdoor light, run on 2 AA batteries and require only a cheap SD memory chip. imovie '08 came with my imac but I didn't expect to ever use it until I realized I could get a cheap camcorder. The downside of the pocket camcorders are pretty serious if you are looking for quality video making. The high def doesn't work well indoors unless you use a ton of lighting. There is no image stabalizer built in so you can't really even walk while filming unless you want it to bounce all over the place. But for what it is, this is amazing. 

You can't watch it in HD from this website (there is a way to embed it but I don't know how yet). Double click the image and go to youtube. Click "watch in HD" in the bottom right of the movie. 

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aaron,

Perhaps more practice at locations such as here would help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4biT4KxLiM&NR=1

Yours,

Steve

Aaron said...

I can't wait to take the duplicitous primates eye to a spiritual event. Benny Hinn comes to the Tacoma dome once in awhile. I could make a movie just pretending that i'm standing in line.

Anonymous said...

Aaron,

How much does it cost to attend a Toufik Benedictus Hinn faith healing? If it's not much, why don't you simply go? However, they probably frisk everyone to prevent them from filming. It's worth investigating, however. Remember that the attendees are people desperate for a miracle and cure for their array of ailments.

In any case, yes, you should definitely pursue exposing Toufik Hinn. If you're more adventurous, perhaps you should pursue Scientology, itself. At the very least, you should certainly investigate and expose Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith's lustful pursuit of females.

Personally, I cannot wait.

This is for your enjoyment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ksdAfbDbcQ&feature=related

Yours.

Steve

PS Note that there is a significant difference between using a period and a comma after my closing. A period has a certain and definitive finality, whereas a comma is more inviting of a response. :) I just want to be sure that you're noticing.

Aaron said...

Frisking? Yet another benefit of the pocket camcorder. It is the size of my ipod touch and 2/3rds as heavy. Toufik had better watch out. I'm getting a backstage pass. I can only hope the placebo troupe invites me to lunch. I can expect to see the finest caviar doled out in Salad tossing spoon portions.

Anonymous said...

Aaron,

There is a film entitled "The Profit" about Lafayette Ronald Hubbard that was banned by a court injunction from distribution in the United States. That ban has since been lifted (as of 2007). However, due to a dispute between the partners who produced the film, distribution is still being denied.

The Church of Scientology is doing everything in its power to prevent people from seeing it. However, it is available as a torrent download, which I'm now in the process of (very slowly) acquiring. With any luck, by this time tomorrow, I'll have it.

Apparently, from an acting and production perspective, it's a disastrous movie, but the content is entirely true.

Now, then. Do you suppose that Toufik Hinn is a closeted Scientologist, or at the very least a practitioner of Black Magic and Satanism?

I Am, For Ever and Ever,

Yours.

Steve

Aaron said...

In 8 minutes I will have completed my first torrent upload of a cd.

Anonymous said...

Which CD is that, AJ?

I've never uploaded a torrent. There's the torrent, and the actual file to be shared. I've always wondered where that original file had to be hosted, etc.

Yours.

Steve

Anonymous said...

The Super-Huge-Big-God-Damn-High-Tech news from me:

Tomorrow, I will order DSL, newly available in my town, and dump my freakin' fixed wireless piece of freakin' trash. Finally. F-I-N-A-L-L-Y, I, in this technologically backwards country, will have the same Internet connection as freakin' third world countries.

I swear, I was about to move out of this town if only to get a decent internet connection. I still have no cell-phone service, but that can wait.

Halle-effing-lujiah.

Aaron said...

Wow, and I thought the house I grew up in was out in the sticks. We were the last to get cable.

Well, I'm lucky I'm in one piece right now. I got caught in an unpredicted blizzard while over at my parents house. After being there for about an hour and a half I decided I'd better drive home before it piles up too high. Lost control on a steep hill and veered right into the curb to avoid the car in front of me. I literally thought I was going to be injured. I sat there for about 15 seconds amazed that I was not hurt. I thought of calling 911 because I assumed my car was wrecked. Instead I called my parents and told them I was okay and to come meet me. Then I tried to start the car and amazingly it worked. I backed out and drove into a parking lot. My front right bumper is cracked but it is barely noticeable. It seems to drive normally so far. I made it home.

Sorry to disappoint you all, but no I did not have an NDE. Frankly, I knew at least 10 seconds before it happened that I could do nothing about it because I was tapping my brakes and realizing that I could not slow down without sliding, yet picking up speed. I dropped it into lower gear right at the end, not sure it helped as I felt no slowing. My only thoughts right before I could have died were simply "oh, maybe I can put it in low gear", and then "well I guess I get to find out how a seat belt works in a crash."

Again, sorry to disappoint. No lights, no angels, no past life regressions.

it is 34 degrees and the snow is accumulating still.

Anonymous said...

Praise Xenu, Pat. I'm happy for you.

Isn't it extraordinary, AJ, that Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University was visited by the ever pestilential Church of Scientology, offering students assistance in the aftermath of the 32 annihilations prosecuted by "Cho Seung-Hui?"

What is the legacy of these annihilations? As far as I'm able to tell, there is only one. There arose a need to learn how to pronounce an unpronounceable name, and hence this page came into existence:

http://inogolo.com/pronunciation/d1061/Cho_Seung-Hui

How, then, is Cho Seung-Hui to be pronounced? This way:

Sung Hee Joe

You see, the Asian Communists address letters by identifying the global destination first, and then proceeding to the specific location. Instead of:

Chicago, IL, USA

They would write:

USA, IL, Chicago

Similarly, Cho ("Joe") is the murderer's last name, whereas "Seung-Hui" ("Sung Hee") is his first name. Therefore, if we transliterate his name into proper American English (if that isn't a contradiction in terms), we have:

Sung Hee Joe.

Now, had someone had the foresight to analyze all of this before the killing spree, there might not have been one. Perhaps the murderer could have been stopped by a simple command, issued by an operating thetan:

HALT! Sung Hee Joe. THANK YOU!

Alas, the Scientologists were too late. One does wonder what effect their preemptive interventions might have had.

The autopsy of Sung Hee did not reveal a brain tumor, such as the one found in Charles Whitman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman). I wonder what precipitated such rage, and if, in the future, we'll be able to identify potential murderers through blood or other physiological tests.

Consider the history of school-related annihilations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_related_attacks

It's frightening to think that a real modern-day risk of attending a university is being murdered by another student who has gone mad.

Incidentally, Charles Whitman's father was also named Charles. The father's middle name was Adolf.

One wonders if the Scientologists aren't lying. Perhaps the founder of that criminal organization's real name was Adolf Ronald Hubbard, that is to say, ARon.

Really, Aaron, I don't know what to make of our times. I wonder if the Virginia Tech victims had a collective NDE.

Yours.

Steve

Anonymous said...

PS What do you suppose happened during Sung Hee Joe's life review?

Anonymous said...

AJ,

Is there something that seems highly contrived in this "interview" to you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTKAWP4CtF4&feature=related

It is as if the interviewer is trying to amplify the emotional elements of the narrative to the utmost degree, to lead the (obviously very hot, which is very good for capturing a viewing audience) student into behavior and affect that would make the greatest possible emotional impact on the viewer. It also seemed to me that the interviewer felt nothing, himself, but was actually acting, his gestures being affected rather than natural.

Finally, there is something comical about how this whole interview was framed and how it progressed. When the boy was prompted by the interviewer through subtle gestures to evince emotion, he did. The entire interview seemed like play acting.

To those who believe that the presumed moon landing was staged, I must admit that this is not an altogether implausible scenario.

I'm Yours.

Anonymous said...

AJ,

Given your belief that we're annihilated at death, what is your perspective on deaths and funerals? That is to say, when someone you know dies, do you go through a mourning process? To you make any attempt to exhibit grief (in the way that you dress and so on), so as to keep with social norms?

Do you actually feel anything beyond an awareness that, "Organism X has been permanently deactivated?"

Is any pain present in you when someone you know dies? How do you treat the deaths of strangers, for instance those assassinated in the D.C. Shooter annihilations?

These are rather remarkable for the nature of what the victims were doing, such as:

Mowing Grass
Pumping Gas
Reading a Book While Sitting on a Bench
Vacuuming a Car Interior
Walking in a Parking Lot
Emerging Out of a Home Depot Store

What--if anything--do you feel? If you feel something, how does that feeling change over the course of time?

Because of the architecture of our brains, we are susceptible to emotional contagion, which occurs unconsciously and long before the neocortex is able to process the information. Professor Ramachandran is right that we don't necessarily have "free will," but we do appear to have "free won't." The cortex can, at least sometimes, put a stop to behavior instigated by the emotional areas of the brain.

AJ, is everything simply a matter of electrical spikes? Is moral behavior merely the result of a set of inclinations, probabilities, reinforced by the constraints of living in a community?

And what are we to do with sociopaths, that is to say, those who have no conscience and are a menace to others? Are we to execute them even if they haven't murdered someone else? What should be permissible and what should not?

Nihilism has consequences, my dear friend. Nihilism denies that there are any objective values. If so, then I'd like to know what your current values are.

In your perspective, is there any reason why anyone should have wasted (or continue to waste) any time mourning and grieving over those killed on September 11th, or by Sung Hee Joe or Charles Whitman?

For that matter, how are we to define murder? If someone doesn't have a conscience, how can murder be said to be an intentional act based on knowing the difference between "right" and "wrong?" If there are no moral absolutes, then it seems to me that our society could, and would, quickly disintegrate into barbarism and a supreme battle "red in tooth and claw."

While I do believe that everything is probabilistic, and hence, technically, that there are no moral absolutes, I believe that some rules have such a high probability associated with them that the might as well be absolute. Indeed, they should be so for the good of society.

What do you think of all of this, AJ?

Yours.

Anonymous said...

AJ,

I just read of your near-fatal car accident. Why on earth were you driving in such conditions? In the future, you must be far more careful. I've stupidly done the same, but learned my lesson. I now check the weather forecast before I drive anywhere, and, as a rule, I go to great lengths to avoid driving at night, particularly when it's raining or snowing, and it's impossible to see which lane one is in (if any of them).

Be careful, AJ. Talking with you via Sylvie Browne as the switchboard operator could get quite expensive.

I'm Yours, Immortally Yours.

Steve

Anonymous said...

ARon,

I just finished watching "The Profit." The truth is indeed stranger than fiction. How did LRon found a "religion?" Why were people gullible enough to believe in its nonsensical propositions and ineffective procedures?

Do you suppose that when his body died, that was the end of him, for ever and ever, or do you suppose that he continued on, as a spirit (thetan), had a life review, and so on and so forth?

One wonders what might have happened had you had an NDE during your car accident, and met a Being of Light, and experienced a life review, and visited a crystal city with a great library, and been given predictions of future events, and then come back. Ah, what then?

Moreover, what do you suppose that a sociopath experiences during his life review? (I don't mean to sound sexist. There are, of course, female sociopaths, although I'm hard-pressed to think of an analog to, say, Joe Stalin.)

AJ, I'm relieved that you're all right. I really am. Don't put yourself at risk like that ever again.

I'm Yours.

Anonymous said...

AJ,

Why is it that everyone who is anyone in Hollywood is gay?

John Travolta
Tom Cruise
Quentin Hubbard
Et Alia

While we know that Lafayette hated homosexuals, and was obviously embarrassed that his son Quentin was an egregious one, we also know that homosexuals, ever since Harry Stack Sullivan, have taken over psychiatry. No one is allowed in without homosexual approval. It's the only medical specialty that homosexuals are in firm control of.

Putting all of this together, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard:

1. Hates homosexuals;
2. (Psychiatrists are homosexual);
3. Hates psychiatrists.

There's a certain logic to this.

One must marvel at the enormous lengths that the Church of Scientology goes to to arrange marriages for its leading men and then procure children, whether through adoption or biological synthesis through artificial insemination. Why cannot the Church simply allow gay actors to be gay, and not pretend otherwise?

There is irrefutable evidence of John Travolta's homosexuality. His pretend-wife is nothing more than a nanny-type figure. Jeff Kathrein is obviously John's real mate:

http://gawker.com/5122788/travoltas-rumored-gay-lover-discovered-dead-son

By mate, I specifically mean husband, although the law does not (with the exception of Connecticut and Massachusetts, as you know) recognize homosexual marriages.

Oh dear. Without all of the scandals, school shootings, the Church Universal and Triumphant (now known once again as the Summit Lighthouse), the Church of Scientology, the Mormon Church, cult leaders and ex-members, and, as if weaving a fine tapestry throughout all of them, most especially homosexuality, what would people do for fun?

Do you think that it would have been morally acceptable for someone to have assassinated Lafayette Ronald Hubbard or James Warren Jones before they harmed so many other people?

Yours.

Anonymous said...

AJ,

I sincerely hope that you find a peace in 2009 that's long been eluding you. I hope that you'll transform from a chrysanthemum into a butterfly. I ask you, Aaron, to make a change:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zpTQCQEFhg

Believe!

Yours,

Steve

Anonymous said...

PS Not chrysalis, but chrysanthemum. (The transformation must be nothing less drastic; indeed, a transmutation!) Once you emerge into the light of consciousness and forswear your false beliefs about the NDE, you'll be able to fly, to soar.

Anonymous said...

AJ,

I know that you will enjoy this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/europe/07london.html?hp

Yours.

Anonymous said...

AJ,

After decades of effort, gay scientists appear to be progressing towards eradicating the gene that causes Christianity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCzbNkyXO50

Yours,

Steve

Aaron said...

Steve, first off, thanks for the inspiring video. (Lol)

The similarities between you and my brother are amazing. I often tell my brother that he should be a "life coach"- One of those people who gets paid to inform others how to set up their lives for maximum productivity and happiness. That's like hiring a tortoise to coach a hare. But he believes he is a hare that just has a chronically bum leg due to other people sabotaging him from birth.

I take it you fully understand that your encouragement is in the same spirit as my brothers.

Anonymous said...

Aaron,

You know fully well that your brother suffers from antisocial personality disorder, whereas I just suffer from generalized anxiety disorder. What I find disappointing is that you--who professes to believe that we are our bodies--somehow believe that my behavior is a type of moral failing, when in fact it's a problem with brain receptors, neurotransmitter binding, and so on, with a heritable component (which makes it genetic).

In any event, it's not your brother's fault that he is the way that he is. It's bad luck caused by the Russian roulette of the current system of procreation, combined (to a minor extent) with environmental enabling factors that skew the developmental trajectory from the normal and healthy direction.

My problem is relatively benign compared to your brother's. You, however, are very fortunate not to suffer from any obvious mental illness. You don't know just how fortunate you are. If you had to trade bodies with me for one day, I'm highly skeptical that you could do nearly as well as I'm doing. You would also have the benefit of experiencing, first hand, what an anxiety disorder actually is. It's not fun. It's not constant (thank the universe). It can cause enormous misery and suffering, and take years away from one's life span. It can lead to isolation and alienation, not to mention tremendous loneliness. It's not a disorder that you would want, but there are treatments.

I don't know how you "should" live your life, nor do I have any idea how others should live their lives. Here are some suggestions, though:

1. Accept yourself;
2. Accept that you are where you are;
3. Find what you love and do it;
4. Set meaningful goals and pursue them;
5. Be gentle with yourself;
6. Be nice to others but don't let them exploit or harm you;
7. Help others where you can and do no harm whenever it can be avoided;
8. At least once in your life, swing for the fence;
9. Don't fear failure;
10. Find someone to love, who loves you; and
11. Keep trying; never give up hope.

Steve

Anonymous said...

Aaron,

Today, the weather was quite dangerous, but I decided to drive to drive quite a distance anyway to attend three events. Although I left at noon, I lost control of my car in the snow and ice and it veered left and right and left and right until I finally almost wound up in a ditch. After letting many cars behind me pass, I was able to uneventfully pull out and continue--very slowly--on my journey. I also nearly hit a car when I was unable to stop, but did manage to avert it just barely. Apart from these potential misfortunes, the day went well, and I'm now back home.

Our lives are at risk all the time. Sometimes we can mitigate that risk, or avert it altogether. And at other times, a meteor will destroy our house, and there are no two trajectories about it. As a child, could you ever have imagined that the adult world--the "real" world--could be so complicated and frightfully ill-tempered?

I finished the third Stephenie Meyer book last night, and began the final one. There's something addictive about them. One wants to know what will happen. Novels reveal us to ourselves. Isn't it interesting how there are characters that seem so real that we're shocked when we remind ourselves that they have never existed? Yet, somehow, they must exist. Perhaps, somewhere, they do.

Life is so very short, Aaron. Bowie wrote in his song, "Young Americans," "We live for just these twenty years, still we have to die for the fifty more." I remember being twenty and listening to that lyric. And now, I am nearly twice that age. That's frightening.

We all fight so very hard to earn just a small piece of the resource pie: land, manufactured objects, food. But what does any of it really mean? At the level of molecules, nothing. At the level of conscious, symbolic experience in humans, life's meaning is a story in which we're both an actor and an author. But what is meaning? It's a likeness, a comparison, a simile. "x means y" is a correspondence relation. But what is x? It is a mystery.

Do you care enough about living that you want to continue living, or are you indifferent to a painless, unexpected annihilation?

Could Pat be right?

If reincarnation were true, but you didn't have to reincarnate, are there any circumstances under which you'd agree to return to human life?

Yours,

Steve

Anonymous said...

AJ,

http://revver.com/video/458145/what-if-the-atheists-are-right/

Yours.