David Beach's Blog

iphone video...

So as I think you know, I cracked my iphone and installed iphonevideorecorder. It works great! I even recorded 12 seconds of the final scene of Iron Man... just to be stupid...

iron man ending on 12seconds.tv

Childhood Dreams

What were your childhood dreams? What did you want to be when you grew up?

I think these questions or their answers stay with you all your life in some form or fashion. I've been thinking about mine recently. What were my childhood dreams?

My first memory of what I wanted to be was an Italian. I think because I liked spaghetti. Then for some reason I wanted to be a dentist. This is still a mystery. Maybe because I went to one. Those were preschool thoughts.

When I started to seriously think about it, as seriously as a child does, there was a space theme. Pretty common for someone born in the sixties ('69). I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go to the moon or walk in space or anything as long as it was out of our atmosphere. Then I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. One of those guys that sat in mission control smoking Kool Cigarettes or pipes pushing buttons and speaking into headsets. I thought that might be a back way to get to space. Then I had dreams of becoming an astronomer. If I couldn't go to space, then perhaps I could stare at it every night. I'm realizing now that I had a tendency to get more and more practical for some reason.

Star Wars, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. changed my life. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to work for Industrial Light and Magic. I needed to be a part of that. I needed to make my own magic. Those films were so wonderful. ILM was an obsession. I drew sketches of ships. I made models and masks, I studied storyboards. I loved "making of" documentaries and books. Motion control photography, go-motion animation, steadycams, blue screens, sound effects. I told myself that I wanted to act and I'd become an actor by working behind the scenes, but really I wanted to be on a crew. I wanted to pull the lens or troubleshoot an action sequence.

I finally decided that I should be a cinematographer. I'd go to film school and study Nestor Almendros or Gordon Willis or Haskell Wexler or Michael Ballhaus or even Barry Sonnefeld. But the Internet got in the way and here I am.

Here is a list of some of my childhood dreams:
1. Go into space
2. be a baseball player/hit a homerun/do something with baseball
3. Work for ILM or George Lucas/Make a special effects movie
4. Be in a band
5. Live in Europe
6. Invent something
7. Be an artist
8. Be an actor
9. Join a motorcycle gang
10. Be an astronomer

I had others. Some were more fleeting. But many are still with me. Sometimes I wonder why I can't or am not doing any of them. Are we told to forget our childhood dreams? Are we told to grow up? Is that what's expected?

I live across the street from a country firehouse. It's a training station as well. Right now I'm looking over and seeing the new recruits gathered and learning about whatever it is they learn. I wonder how many of them wanted to be a "fireman". I wonder how many of them are fulfilling their childhood dreams. I hope all of them. That would be cool.

5 Bullets: Hey how ya doin'... sorry you can't get through...

why don't you leave your name and your number and I'll get back to you.

• My cell phone does not work at my house. I have AT&T. It's a pain in the ass. I don't change because i like my iphone.
• I have a new MacBook. The white one. 2GB RAM, 2.4 GHz, 160GB HD. It's a great machine. I just need to get used to the screen. Glossy and small.
• About gas prices... If it's too expensive, and it is... especially knowing that oil companies are showing record profits, people should refuse to buy it. They should do everything possible to carpool. If you have two people in your car then gas is $2 a gallon, if you have four people, then it's $1. If you want to stick it to oil companies... stop buying gas. Find ways to double up in cars. Refuse to use!
• My allergist says I'm not allergic to anything, my nose says otherwise
• I'm looking forward going public with what has been going on in my life recently. My life has been interesting to say the least.

Google Me - Movie

Reblogging from Laughing Squid

"laughingsquid   “Google Me” is a documentary by Jim Killeen who Googled himself & then traveled the world meeting other Jim Killeens http://twurl.nl/y6ef2b            ...     8 minutes ago from web"

I had this same idea a while ago... Since working for the people search engine Wink, I've found a surprising number of other David Beach's. Of course I google myself like most people, in fact one of the main reasons I have this blog is so that when someone "googles" me, I come up first. Anyway, there are a bunch of interesting people named David Beach. Way more interesting than me. There's David Beach the hypnotist/actor. David Beach the Stanford professor. David Beach the SETI researcher in New Zealand. David Beach the English professor. David Beach the environmentalist. David Beach the New Zealand poet (what's up with New Zealand?). David Beach the sociologist. David Beach the horticulturalist. And David Beach the other actor who starred in UrineTown.

I wanted to make a movie called "David Beach - The Movie" starring David Beach, David Beach, David Beach, David Beach, David Beach, etc. Directed by David Beach. But then I thought it would be way too narcissistic. Since this guy Jim Killeen has done it, I guess the idea is shot. Oh well. It's probably for the best.

iPhone Video

Thanks to Joe Laz, I jailbroke my iphone and installed an iPhone video recorder. It's simple, but works great! It does what I need. It records high quality video and integrates with email so I can send it to my favorite video update site. Jailbreaking and installing was a bit involved, but it was easy enough. The video recorder site spells it out pretty well. I used iJailbreak because it works for the 1.1.4 iphone update. Everything else on my phone works fine so far. I've not had any trouble doing any of my normal activity.

Hanging with sol on 12seconds.tv

Mobile/E-Mail Video on 12seconds.tv

The Replacements & The Minutemen

I picked up two of my favorite albums of all time today... Frist is the reissue CD of Let It Be by the Replacements. It sounds awesome. Better than ever really. Plus it's full of extra tracks. I first got it in 1985 for my 16th birthday from my good friend Pat Goddard. I remember that gift more than any other that year. It had a profound effect on me. It definitely changed my outlook on music. Maybe because it had Sixteen Blue, but I think more so because of Unsatisfied and Black Diamond. Ah hell it's all great.

I also picked up Double Nickels on the Dime by the Minutemen on vinyl. It probably tops my list of best albums. It's epic. Even though it's new vinyl, it sounds much better than any CD version that's been released. The CD mastering has always sucked, so it's nice to have it back on a "wax pancake" (hey Andy).

Listen: The Replacements - Seen Your Video
Listen: Minutemen - Shit From An Old Notebook

iPhone Video Recording Update

I've been doing more digging regarding the iPhone video recording issue. Again, i'm going blind here as I can barely find any official information. It's rather mysterious. There is a public team working on an iPhone video application. If you've done any searching on the subject, you know this. Monster and Friends seem to be building uShow. uShow will record video and audio with an iPhone and post it to a number of popular services. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, etc. It is not clear if they are building this as an official iPhone app. I have to assume they are trying. I hope to contact them soon. They are "re-opening" beta registration on Sunday, April 20. 4/20.

The iPhone SDK mentions nothing about video recording. There is plenty of information about audio recording, photography, and video playback, but they are absolutely silent on the subject of video recording. Not even anything like "at this time the iPhone does not yet support video recording".

This leaves me to think of two scenarios. First, the rumors are true and they have some sort of agreement with the movie studios to not provide video recording with the iPhone to help curb movie piracy. Second, Apple is building their own video recording application to be released next month with the new iPhone and possible iMovie update. Perhaps even a .mac tie in. Maybe both scenarios are true.

If I were to build an iPhone video recording app for the iPhone it would record video and audio, store and view on the device, add meta data, send to online video services and email to anyone/anywhere. I would allow for easy integration with iMovie, Apple TV, iPod, etc. (I don't see any reason for .mac to exist right now so I'll leave that one alone). The app would allow people to determine the length of the video recording as well. (12) seconds, 30 seconds, a minute, 90 seconds, unlimited. Then I would open  it up and let developers  create their own video apps. I might even try allow for simple editing to take place on the phone. Piecing clips together to create a single clip, etc.

I truly hope this happens. If anyone reading this has more info, please comment. Thanks.

Apple iPhone Video Recording?

Is there any truth to the rumor that Apple has made an agreement with the movie studios to block video recording capability with the iPhone? This somehow supposed to curb the piracy of movies through movie theater recordings. Apparently this concession was made so that iTunes could sell and rent movies.

Is there anything in the SDK that mentions this? If so please comment. I'm very curious about this.

MP3 Jackpot

My friends at MP3 Jackpot and Muzic.com are doing some cool things. They scour the web for good free and legal music for your listening pleasure. Muzic gives bands a good band page and free hosting through archive.org. All copacetic.

Radio Silence

I think I'm going to go into radio silence for a bit. Nothing against you. You are awesome. It's me. I'm getting tired of the scene. Twitter is totally getting me down. It's losing its luster. I'm nearly at 1,000 tweets and that might be enough for a while. I don't know who I'm doing it for... i'm not getting much out of it that's for sure. It all seems so self indulgent. LOOK AT ME! (Please don't think that I think that people shouldn't use twitter, twitter is awesome, it's just the way i feel at the moment.)

I like my friends on Twitter... I try to keep it to people I know and care about. I like to see what they are doing. But those people don't use it that much.

Blogging is the same. I have lots to say about stuff. I've been working in the Internet industry since 1993, so I know what I'm doing, but I don't always feel like taking the time to write about it. I'd rather watch my boy play baseball or hike with my daughter. I can blog about that, but then I'd have to be clever. That gets tiring.

I hope you forgive my silence. I may pop up every now and then. I may still tweet every so often. But I'm cooling off on all of this noise so I can focus on some important stuff.

Thanks for understanding.

Love,
beach