Video – Watch A Writer Sulk For An Hour!
You see, the thing is: I hate writing. Always have. I find it tedious and exhausting and very difficult. But it seems to be something I’m good at.
So, yes, there is a Devil, and he gets you in the most cunning ways.
I would much rather show off than write. If…If only I could find a way to mix showing off – shameless exhibitionism – with writing, well then, my life would be almost worth living, wouldn’t it?
I know! I’ll broadcast a LIVE video feed of me at work! And make it available to anyone and everyone in the world! And then…then I’ll be happy.
So check on Monday, 1st June, 12 noon GMT, go to my LiveStream feed at:
At noon (GMT), for an hour each day, you’ll get to see inside the monkey house. And live chat will be operating, so you can throw me peanuts. And maybe I’ll throw back some poo.
As Peachy Carnehan said in “The Man Who Would Be King” (1975): “Keep looking at me. It helps to keep my soul from flying off.”
Solving 3D Headaches
Matt Brennesholtz Helps
Negotiate A Challenging 3D Future
By
Neal Romanek
(as printed in April 2009 TVBEurope)
“I love watching 3D, it’s just that after 10 minutes I have a pounding headache.”
At tradeshows, exhibitions, screenings, even meet-ups of 3D devotees, one hears it over and over. At the Digital Television Group’s Summit 2009 in March, an overview of Sky’s plans for 3DTV was introduced with “Here’s Chris Johns to tell us about eye strain.”
There has been a mad rush to produce 3D content even though their may not be the viewership for it. Critics vocally wonder if the producers of 3D content are living in a fool’s paradise, preparing for The Next Big Thing that may never come. The Beijing Olympics was touted as the “3D Olympics”. 3D trials were to play in limited markets, primarily in Asia. The fact that few people have heard that Beijing was the “3D Olympics” may suggest how successful the experiment was.
Creating dynamic, believable and commercially viable 3D images is a challenge that has been around longer than most people suppose. 3D is usually associated with the 1950’s and the spate of anaglyph-based 3D feature films – although the anaglyph technique had been used to create 3D images since the 1850’s. The first stereoscopic motion picture patent was taken out in the 1890’s and the first 3D camera rig was patented in 1900.
TVBEurope talked with 3D expert Matt Brennesholtz, a senior analyst at Insight Media who has worked in partnership with the 3D@Home Consortium. The 3D@Home Consortium was formed in 2008 to speed the commercialization of 3D into homes worldwide. It also attempts to facilitate the development of standards, roadmaps and education for the 3D industry. In 2007 Brennesholtz co-authored a 400-page report “3D Technology and Markets: A Study of All Aspects of Electronic 3D Systems, Applications and Markets”. This all encompassing document forecast the viability of 3D display technology in a vast array of markets into the next decade. Its scope included not just stereoscopic 3D displays, but a variety of autostereoscopic displays, and rotating image plane, vibrating membrane, and micropolarizer technologies.
Brennesholtz is an expert in display technologies, having been a lead projection system architect at Philips LCoS Microdisplay Systems. He has a masters of Engineering in Optics and Plasma Physics from Cornell University and has been granted 23 patents. Still, we asked question most on everyone’s mind – why do we get a headache when we watch 3D?
“One of the fundamental problems with 3D displays,” he explains, “is the problem of convergence and accommodation.” Convergence is the ability of the eyes to stay trained on a point in space and allows you to focus on the text on a mobile phone three inches from your nose. Accommodation is the ability of the eye itself to focus in distance like a mini-camera.
Stereoscopic images rely on the brain’s default setting of always making a single image out of the pair of images received by the eyes – as opposed to how chameleons do it. The perceived “space” between the two side-by-side images in a 3D show is compensated for by convergence with the eyes going from being parallel towards being crossed and back – just as they would in watching a live event.
The element that is challenging for the brain – and for some viewers – is the image in a 3D display is always exactly the same distance away, on the surface of the screen. The convergence of the eyes sends the message that objects are moving forward and backward in space, but the real image each eye is capturing stays put. The brain is trying to tackle two different ways of seeing at once, like a computer running two memory intensive applications at the same time. The fact that the eyes are making very few focus changes, doesn’t mean that the brain is not revving like an engine every time it thinks something is moving toward it or away from it. Perhaps, like the trick of being able to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time, the brain may get the hang of it with repeated viewing.
“There can be other human factor problems associated with bad 3D displays,” Brennesholtz notes, “with certain types of encoding, for example, but this is a fundamental problem that really is inescapable in the 3D display world.”
The most serious aggravation of the accommodation-convergence discrepancy is when the content creator puts images in the virtual space in front of the screen – the monster reaches out to camera, the enemy fires a hundred arrows at us, and the like. These are the effects that producers may push because they have greater visceral impact, but they are also the things that most bother the eyes. Brennesholtz says the solution is to place most 3D effects at the level of the screen or behind it.
Another significant issue, one to induce headaches in content creators rather than viewers, is that the content has to be created for the screen size and viewing distance of the intended audience. Analogous to needing different sound mixes for DVD, theatrical, and mobile device content, each 3D version of a programme must be mastered with its final destination in mind. Sound mixers have managed complex sets of presets for each intended format, it seems likely that 3D mastering will have to learn to do the same.
Although some roadblocks to the perfect 3D experience are exactly the same as they were in the 1950’s, Brennesholtz points out that the sophistication of today’s technology may overcome the others. “Some of the other problems that have been associated with 3D, like dimness or differences in brightness and color between the two images, can be overcome with proper display, screen and video signal design.”
Brennesholtz underlines the consumers demand for a quality experience that is the principle factor in adoption of 3D. “The end user, whether he’s watching broadcast television or cable or blue ray or is sitting in the cinema, is not going to give up anything to get 3D. He’s not going to give up resolution. He’s not going to give up frame rate. He’s not going to accept flicker. He’s not going to accept headaches. Basically, he wants his 2D experience – which right now when you look at HDTV is really good – but with 3D.”
Questions about 3D are in no short supply. Approximately 10% of the population are unable to properly see 3D, and what kind of a strategy must be developed when such a large segment of the audience must automatically be discounted? Most people are unaware that many TV’s are already “3D ready”, but where is the extra bandwidth going to come from if 3D TV is going to become a reality? And finally, if eyeball convergence and focus are such core issues in 3D viewing, what happens to the 3D experience after the third beer?
Tarzan, Mon Ami
How princely you are, my friend,
In the new suit from La Confection des Élysées.
How you honor them
By condescending to wear it.
When I was in the jungle
With you, at your mercy,
I was afraid of you.
Now here in La Ville-Lumière,
Where no man like you has walked for 10,000 years, now you are afraid.
You showed yourself to me, naked in your jungle – the only fearless man in all the world.
And now I see you, hackles up,
Moving from stillness to stillness like an unquiet animal.
When the marquise shakes your hand and says “Honored. Honored,”
You smell the blood on his
Breath, and you chill and wonder why no one else does. Are they all in league?
When the girl in service curtsies, says “Bonjour, monsieur,”
You hear her heart breaking, and you wonder why no one else does.
Return to the jungle my friend, out of this dangerous place.
Return to the tranquil jungle, under your mother’s canopy,
Where the names of things come easily to your mouth, where things are called what they are.
Every word of French I taught you – like ashes in my mouth.
I said “God made you a gentleman at heart, my friend”!
Dieu!
I feared you so.
I hoped to make you into something more like me. How could I know that I was making you More dangerous with every word? Injecting you slowly with urbane distemper,
Pasteurizing you with good intentions.
When tantor became l’éléphant,
Numa, le lion,
Hista, le serpent – per Académie! -
I turned the sweet opera of your world
into the jeers of packs of lunatics, the whoops and hoots of cannibals.
That you would save my life and mother me back to health and I in repayment, would set the dogs on you.
Forgive me, Tarzan.
There was a moment, mon ami, when you were almost saved.
Do you remember? Did you know?
I put on my helmet, ready to go,
Picked up my revolver from that wide table stump, the one I’d made my toilet table.
And – perhaps in fever still? – abruptly threw it into the brush.
I didn’t know why then.
But I know now. After that month with you, I felt so naked, vulnerable, clinging like a child to his rattle. I had to throw it away or lose all my courage forever.
But you retrieved it for me.
You dived after it.
You put it back in my hand.
“Tu, tu, tu, tu, tu!” you chirped like a jungle bird, pressing the revolver on me.
And I accepted it.
I shouldn’t have accepted it, should I?
I ought to have thrown it again, farther still, and turned my back on you.
Should have run away down to the river and never seen you again,
Emerged from the jungle a better, braver man.
I waited for you to run away,
While hoping you’d stay
To lead me home.
Hoping – again, yes – that you’d do my work for me. Poor slave.
By nightfall, you had brought me to the Solomougou Post
Where the men smelled like bloody earth
And more vermin creeped than in the deepest jungle.
I held your arm.
Together we found a man who would take us down river next day.
All night you perched in a tree – do you remember? -
Watching the coolies, after hours, stagger and sing below.
On the river the pilot asked many many questions about the strange white man out of the jungle –
Not about me, one more European out of his depth – about you.
I answered them. I answered all his questions!
What a villain!
The gall I had to answer his questions about you!
Maybe I was fevered still. Not in my right mind. Not in my right mind.
Forgive me, Tarzan, my White Skin. Forgive me.
C’est une drôle d’idée – that you should be “White Skin”.
Among my shallow, colorless people, you are deep and black as your rivers, deep and black as your night,
Deep, black as the great expanse that cradled and suckled the world before the mind of Le Dieu blasted away all that was peaceful, wiped away all that made sense and was sweet and perfect.
I have a black top hat and a black coat. And in Belgium the winters are white and and wide and cold.
The Africans, in those hell-squalors we saw along the river,
I swear I saw them shed tears at the sight of you.
I swear I heard them sing:
“Oh there goes an African. Africa has made that man. And only Africa made him. He was not deprived of his lordly heritage, no. No. He was rescued and exalted. Exalted by the land. Saved by Africa. Taught by Africa to be strong and wise and to hear all the knowledge pouring in like cataracts from within, from without. Oh, Africa, that unites spirit and mind. Oh, Africa, that unites heaven and hell. And, look, they are taking him away! And they are taking him away!”
Mon Dieu, my white ape.
I have returned you to the hands of your captors.
I have delivered you back into the clutches of the slavers.
Forgive me, Tarzan.
Forgive me, Tarzan.
"After Hell" & The Paradise of Audio Drama
Having just launched the horror site, “All The Hells”, how I could I not listen to an audio drama called “After Hell”?

Gearhouse Broadcast’s HD-1: An Expanding Truck For Australia’s Expanses
By
Neal Romanek
(as printed in Dec. 2008 TVBEurope)
Gearhouse Broadcast’s new HD OB truck, called HD-1, could very well be the biggest OB truck in Britain. There is no doubt, after it finishes its transoceanic voyage next year and arrives at its destination in Australia, it will be the biggest OB truck in Australia, and probably the Southern Hemisphere.
HD-1 will be used in Australia for Channel 7’s coverage of Australian Rules Football. Kevin Moorhouse, Technical Director of Gearhouse Broadcast, says that on the matches the vehicle will be operating at about 70% capacity. But he anticipates that with the vehicle’s 28 camera capability, it will soon become a one-truck solution for 95% of Channel 7’s onsite productions.
TVBEurope toured the vehicle as it was being systems integrated for its new Australian venture at the company’s European headquarters in Watford, UK. Gearhouse Broadcast’s trucks are coach-built by A Smith Great Bentley Ltd. HD-1’s project manager is John Fisher, who has been in the industry for over 40 years. HD-1 is the sixteenth truck John has built and he will start integrating number seventeen on behalf of Gearhouse Broadcast in the New Year.
Making their truck builds long-lasting and future-proofed is vital for the success of Gearhouse Broadcast’s integration business model. All in, to build and integrate HD-1 was a multi-million pound exercise. The chassis alone takes between 26 and 28 weeks to construct. All the cable in the truck runs down a single underfloor channel in the center, rather than in the expands, so that – stationary and supported by the chassis – there is negligible wear on the cable over time. Kevin Moorhouse says of Smith’s construction, “They build trucks like battleships. It costs around three quarters of a million pounds just to build the chassis, but we expect to get ten years out of that chassis.” In fact, the group’s first truck, Unit 1, built almost 20 years ago, has just been refurbished and is still operating.
Gearhouse Broadcast made the decision to have no video jackfields on any inputs or outputs of the router in their OB vans. Given the router’s size it would be impossible to overpatch the router if it failed on a production. Also, with HD signals, the addition of a jack field’s extra connections introduce losses into the signal path. Gearhouse trucks have back up Cross-Point cards and I/O cards in case of router failure. It is this simple stripping away of everything that is not essential, while retaining and augmenting the most vital features, that has resulted in steady improvement in each iteration of Gearhouse’s OB trucks. Solutions to the puzzle of cramming three dozen workers into a confined space loaded with sophisticated technology – technology which, literally, cannot afford to fail – are solved with a simplicity and elegance.
The HD-1 seats up to 38 people. The triple expand configuration allows for unprecedented floor area. Closed for transport the unit width is 2.5 metres and will be fully within regulations for travel on Australian roads. Deployed, the 16.5 metre long truck is an impressive 7,5 metres wide –with 40 kilometers of cable inside.
The HD-1’s Pro-Bel 576 X 576 Video Router was first employed at the Beijing Olympics. The company’s ability to swap components in and out from their own inventory allows for fine tuning of their budgets – and rates for their customers. When Gearhouse has already earned money on equipment from previous shows, they can then offer such “used” technology – in this case, three months old – at more flexible pricing, if need be.
The Production section at the center of HD-1 features a unique 3-level step area. An engineering necessity was, in this case, turned into an opportunity for design innovation. The fifth wheel of the Australian rig is higher than the British standard and so required more area beneath the floor to accommodate it. The resulting steps up, allowing space for the fifth wheel, also create a tiered production area with unrestricted line-of-sight for each one of its 16 positions.
The new Sony LMD monitors Gearhouse used at the Beijing Olympics proved themselves superior in quality and resolution. Accordingly the production area was fitted out with twenty-one 24” Sony LMD 2450’s and eight 17″ Sony LMD 1750’s.
The Production area also features a fully specified Sony MVS 8400 4ME Vision Mixer, with 80 Inputs, 48 Outputs, and built-in DME.
The Vision & Engineering area, in addition to the Pro-Bel 576 X 576 Router, features 5 Sony HD Grade 1 Monitors, 24 HD/SDI External Remote Source inputs
5 HD down Converters, 10 Cross Converters, 10 Synchronisers, 4 SDI Aspect Ratio Converters and 3 HD Hex Splits.
The VTR section of the truck sports 12 six-channel EVS HD XT2’s with 4 Digital VTRs, as well as a Pro-Bel 576 X 576 HD/SDI and 256 X 256 AES Routers.
HD-1 has space for three audio engineers at a Calrec Sigma Audio Desk with Bluefin technology. The Calrec Sigma has 320 channel-processing paths, allowing up to 52 × 5.1 surround channels on one Bluefin signal processing card. The truck’s audio has 320 Channel Processing Paths, 128 AES Inputs & 128 Analogue Inputs, and 128 AES Outputs, & 112 Analogue Outputs, a Pro-Bel 256-256 AES Audio Router, and a Riedel 144 X 144 Talkback System. Also included are four Dolby E Encoders and six Dolby E Decoders.
While Gearhouse Broadcast is setting new benchmarks for OB systems integration in Australia, the company will also be flying in a new and better set of tools to Sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa-based satellite broadcaster Supersport has commissioned a flyaway kit from Gearhouse for domestic football matches. It will rival anything available in Sub Saharan Africa and top most kits available in the rest of the continent. André Venter is Head of Operations for Sub-Saharan Africa, a new position created at Supersport. He vetted several companies looking for an immediate – literally immediate – solution for 8 camera Supersports football broadcasting in Africa. The production infrastructure might vary widely from country to country and for Supersport to provide consistent, first-rate service, it would need a robust kit that could be moved and deployed quickly and easily – and they wanted it immediately. Gearhouse Broadcast was the only company who, when tasked with Supersport’s request for “immediately”, responded with “no problem”. It was able to supply a loan flyaway within a week, and then set about building the three permanent flyaways. André Ventre explained “We wanted to show the world that Africa is capable of producing high quality productions that are on a par with any broadcasters across the globe.”
The fly away kit will feature an 8-camera system made up of Sony BVP E30’s, a Sony 2.5 M/E DVS vision mixer, Teletest rack mount monitors, Harris Inscriber G1 graphics, 2 x 6 Channel SD EVS XT2, Pro-Bel router, Harris glue, RTS/Telex comms system, Yamaha DM2000K digital audio mixer, and Sachtler tripods. A wide variety of Canon lenses will go with the kit too.
Word is out across African broadcasting, and Supersport is ready to ask Gearhouse Broadcast for more. First-rate, reliable technology appearing at the right time and place has stimulated a demand for more of the same.
With the world-wide credit crisis on everybody’s mind, it is gratifying to see demand for Gearhouse’s services continuing to expand. Will the OB systems integration slice of the industry remain recession-proof? Managing Director Eamonn Dowdall says they have yet to feel the pinch and adds “When people cut down on the luxuries, their subscriptions to the premium football channels is one of the last to go.”
Writing For Pictures Workshop – London, 7 March, 2009
Date: Saturday, March 7, 2009
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location:
Price: £30 in advance (£50 at the door if spaces are available)
Ealing Friends Meeting House
Register Now:
Phone: 0754 508 7629
Email: workshops@nealromanek.com
Description:
A 2 hour workshop designed to help writers of all skill levels practice and improve their skills for writing scripts for image-based media – film, tv, comics/graphic novels, games.
The workshop is open to anyone interested in writing for film, tv, games or comics – from veterans trying to perfect their skills to people who have never written fiction before.
The workshop will emphasize practice over theory, doing over observing. You will get out of it exactly what you put into it. It’s like an intense session at the gym – for media writing.
Price: £30 (payable via cash or check – PayPal link will be available within the next few days)
We are offering this low introductory rate for this first workshop only. Those who attend for this first night will receive a discount on later courses, starting up at the end of March. Spaces are limited. Sign up early.
The facilitator Neal Romanek is a graduate of University of Southern California’s renowned Cinema-TV Production school. Neal has written for the screen, games, and motion picture industry magazines and websites. He has had intensive training from some of the world’s best teachers in writing and creative process.
To reserve a place, or for further questions
email: workshops [at] nealromanek.com
The 20 Things
There’s a mime about. Or is that a meme? A meam?
There’s this thing floating about: Without overthinking it, tell us 20 Things About Yourself.
Here are 20 Things About Myself – and I haven’t told anyone else but you about them:
1.) I used to drink so much coffee that…well, I would sometimes get home late at night and make a pot of coffee to drink before bed.
2.) I love my iPhone as much as I’ve loved any piece of technology before with the possible exception of my first Macintosh SE
3.) When I was very small I wanted to be a garbage collector, then a paleontologist, then a rock star, then a standup comic, then I turned 7 and outgrew all that.
4.) I was crazy about a Girl In A White Hooded Coat when I was in 1st grade. I didn’t know her name or anything about her. Now I have a little girl who wears a white hooded coat who I am crazy about.
5.) I was a national champion racewalker as a teen. I could’ve gone to the Olympics, but I discovered alcohol and show business and also discovered that I had no interest in going to the Olympics
6.) One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever been paid was by a USC teacher who worked with Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater company. He said: “A lot of these guys still need a lot of work. But you have got it.” I spent many years doing my best to prove him wrong.
7.) I believe that the space aliens with gray skin and big black eyes use element 115 to power their spacecraft by amplifying and directing gravity waves to compress space-time between themselves and their destinations.
8.) I believe that the U.S.A. has become a rogue nation that funds terrorism and has abandoned the rule of law and that, so far, the new administration has not changed this.
9.) I wrote and delivered long, crazy, romantic love letters to a girl when I was in 3rd and 4th grade. In junior high, she died of a brain tumor.
10.) The girl to whom I lost my virginity died in a car wreck my/our sophomore year in college. She apparently fell asleep at the wheel. In later years I also would frequently “fall asleep at the wheel”.
11.) Though I would like to say that the greatest influences on my creative life have been Shakespeare, Stanley Kubrick, and Vincent van Gogh, the truth is that the greatest influences have been Glen Larson, Gary Gygax, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
12.) I have never actually read “Hamlet” in its entirety – ashamed to say – but I have seen a lot of the movie versions.
13.) I missed my first kiss – in a game of spin the bottle (though a pen was used in place of a bottle) – because when the time came, I chickened out and ran like hell. In later years, I went out with that girl who I didn’t kiss, and then did kiss her then, so…
14.) If I hate you, you will never know it. Also if I utterly love you, you will also never know it.
15.) I was not in a rock band in high school, but wanted to be and pretended I was.
16.) I have never seen a UFO or a ghost or a bigfoot or an angel or any other paranormal manifestation, but I still believe they may exist – which is kind of idiotic, don’t you think?
17.) I visited Shakespeare’s House in Stratford on Avon and thought: “There is no one here. This is a scam. This is just an ordinary house.” This was before I’d ever heard of the Shakespeare “authorship question”.
18.) I believe that the works of Shakespeare were written primarily by Edward De Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, but am willing to accept that a number of other writers contributed with him acting as kind of a “writer-producer”.
19.) I am going to start doing Buddhist meditation soon. I have been saying this now for about 7 years.
20.) I have done thousands of “morning pages” and taken half a dozen or more, heavy-hitter Artists Way workshops. I would be hard pressed to say that they helped my creative work to any measurable degree.
21.) I have always wanted to live in London. And now I do. And I’m not quite sure how that happened really.
22.) I was not a cat person. Then my girlfriend/now wife acquired “Cheop, The Very Interesting Cat”. Now I am a cat person.
23.) I have read just about every book by Hubert Selby Jr EXCEPT “Last Exit To Brooklyn”. Why is that? I think it’s about fear of gratification, knowing that once I do, then I will have done it, and it will be over, and then I’ll be sad.
24.) I have very very powerful deja vu’s where I am convinced that I have vividly dreamed before of what is happening now. I feel confident that this means my brain needs a trip to to Jiffy Lube and that I do not have precognitive abilities. Although I do vividly remember locations from my dreams sometimes months after I’ve had the dream. I may not remember the dream itself, but the location sticks with me, as if I’ve been there.
25.) I wanted to go to art school when I graduated high school, but took the road less traveled with film school and that has made…I don’t know what difference that made. I mean, it made all the difference. It has made all the difference.
"All The Hells" Flickr Group
A heartfelt thanks to the large number of people who have so positively responded to “All The Hells” in its first weeks on Earth.
I wanted to direct your attention though to the new “All The Hells” image group at Flickr. The “All The Hells” site is “all my own work”, but the images in the Flickr group are a collection from a wide variety of photographers and artists, from several different continents, who have provided “All The Hells” some of its inspiration, vision, fuel for its fires.
Some of the images are terrifying, some sublime, some obscene, some inexplicable. They are all, as are the artists who created them, worth repeated study. I hope to provide in-depth pieces and posts on each of these artists as “All The Hells” unspools.
Until then, study them yourselves. I would avoid doing so just before bed, however, or if you’re alone, because you may begin to feel like…you’re not alone.
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Rev. V. Gene Robinson Inaugural Prayer
A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009
Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.
And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.
Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.
Mogulus & the Post-YouTube Era
Internet video company Mogulus, headquartered in New York, has taken the next logical step past the on-demand model and brought no-cost 24/7 live streaming to producers. Live worldwide broadcast has at last become available to anyone with a web connection.
Ironically, live images were one of the very first “broadcast” features carried by the internet in the late 1990’s. The main handicap was that the frame rate might be four frames per minute – and require you to refresh your browser every time you wanted to see the next frame.
Mogulus and its competitors – principally Ustream.tv and Justin.tv – represent the next iteration of internet video, and Mogulus is keen on providing a service in which on-demand, linear and live streaming video are all in the same producer toolbox.
Max Haot, Mogulus co-founder and CEO, moved to London from his native Belgium in 1995. He is best known for founding the ICF Media Platform while at sports media giant, IMG Media. The ICF Media Platform was purchased by Verizon Business in 2005. In 2007 Haot founded Mogulus with Phil Worthington, a graduate of the Royal College of Art and Mogulus’s Chief Product Officer, IMG Media colleague Dayananda Nanjundappa, and Mark Kornfilt, the company’s Chief Architect. Dayananda Nanjundappa is Mogulus’s CTO and oversees the company’s second office in Bangalore.
Max Haot explains, “Most internet video platforms center around on-demand, based on the assumption that people want to watch what they want when they want. But with Mogulus our vision is to give our producers everything that a TV station can do.” “Everything” is the ability to create a live 24/7 channel that runs all the time. Currently, most of Mogulus channels are loop-based with a playlist cycle of programming repeating itself, but Mogulus content can also be schedule-based.
The Mogulus online studio features a text ticker and overlay of simple graphics or logos. A Mogulus channel can go live at any time, allowing multiple live cameras or a mix of prerecorded and live video content. Within the same player, producers have the option of offering an on-demand library of their clips as well.
“We provide the full turn-key service,” says Haot, “So a producer does not need to understand what a content delivery network is. All he needs to do is use our browser-based Studio. And then he can take our player widget and embed it on any webpage or social network.”











