Us Now By Ivo Gormley

I have had the pleasure of watching a documentary called “Us Now” by Ivo Gormley. Whilst I don’t think it presents a balanced and equal perspective of the topic as I think a documentary should, the content of this film is definitely well thought out and is a good conversation starter.  If you have an hour or so, I can only urge you to watch the film, or download the torrent (completely legal) to watch later.

From their site:

Can we all govern? Us Now looks at how ‘user’ participation could transform the way that countries are governed. It tells the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organising structures threaten to change the fabric of government forever. Us Now follows the fate of Ebbsfleet United, a football club owned and run by its fans; Zopa, a bank in which everyone is the manager; and Couch Surfing, a vast online network whose members share their homes with strangers.

I don’t think it is an entirely malicious act on the part of those downloading. Many viewers are falling behind because episodes are too slow to air, or stations continually change broadcast times making it hard for people to actually watch the episode when it airs.

Television series are designed to be addictive. If you are “involved” in a series such as ABC’s “Lost”, episodes taking a long time to air could be enough of a reason to go online and download a high quality copy online. Spoilers appear online almost as soon as the episode has aired, and if you follow the series on the web – you are almost bound to hear about the episode unintentionally.

If you use uTorrent, Vuze (formally Azureus), Deluge or Transmission then the services provided by Feed my Torrents make it exceptionally easy for those who want to follow their series uninhibited. Simply add the RSS Feeds provided to your Torrent client, and as soon as a new episode is available the downloading will begin, automatically if you wish.

It has the added “feature” of an electronic program guide (EPG). It is being pitched as amazing new technology that is offering you so much.

Pricing is yet to be announced, but this is one of those worthless products that is just going to confuse the marketplace with “new technology” that is just useless rehashing of something that has been around for years.

Freeview…. waste of money… fail.

All I really want to do is be able to map inputs to busses and then map those busses to outputs. Thus – ending up with a virtual sound desk.

It didn’t seem like it was too difficult a task, but – as it turns out – it is. I even purchased Logic Pro 8 to use it as the mixer – because it gave the impression it did that sort of thing – but no… nothing. It has a “live performance” mode… but that mode doesn’t work with control surfaces… strange.

I would love to hear from anybody with ideas about how to get around this. Ideally it would be midi controlled so I could use it as part of our existing MIDI Show Control (MSC) system (including the CueServer, MegaSeg and QLab).

I am also a little annoyed by the number of app’s that are called “Audio Mixers” that are just playback applications. Yes, it can play back more then one audio tracks and “mix” them I guess – but that isn’t what I would call a mixer.

There is a fine line between justice and revenge…it just depends whose side you’re on.

After many years of hard work, Peter Glover – a good friend – has released his latest hit… Punishment.

Shot in Australia and featuring Nicholas Bishop and Roxane Wilson it’s an action thriller that is a fantastic watch.

For more information about the movie – check the Glover Productions official Punishment

Punishment the Movie

site.

Jonah Walton, a skilled hit man, is being pursued from a crime scene at high speed by police when he collides with a utility on a country road. The utility is being driven by Benjamin Rogen who has his young daughter Claire beside him. Jonah frees himself from his shattered car and a gun battle between Jonah and the police ensues. This results in the deaths of the two officers and the unintended deaths of Benjamin and Claire.

Jonah, bloodied and injured, struggles from the scene and manages to call for help. Jonah finds his way to a road and attempts to commandeer the van of David Carpenter the local fencing contractor. But David manages to over-power the weakened Jonah and delivers him to the grieving wife and mother of Benjamin and Claire, Marie Rogen. Marie is swayed by David to imprison Jonah in her art workshop. Marie now has the power over Jonah to exact the ultimate revenge. She is a woman devastated by loss, ridden with her own guilt and barely hanging on to her own sanity.