This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
There is a very popular group on the photography-oriented social networking website Flickr: Osanpo Camera. It is so popular that they have a daily limit on the number of photos that can be posted. Now, osanpo is a Japanese word that means, essentially, "free walking," If the o at the beginning of the word means "honorable," as it does in many other Japanese words, than osanpo means "honorable free walking." In my opinion osanpo deserves to be honored; it is a fascinating yet very democratic art form. I wanted to read more about it, but I can't read Japanese and most Internet references to osanpo are in that language. However. I would like to believe that a new project of mine, a video project, is in the best osanpo tradition.
My video project began with a need that had nothing to to with osanpo. I was spending too much time indoors with my laptop and not enjoying the beautiful fall weather. I dreamed up a wild scheme to build walking into a computer project: walk when the weather's nice, and shoot whatever came up with my iPhone. Of course, I had reinvented osanpo photography with that idea, but I didn't think of it at that time. What I did think about was scrawling text on the pavement with chalk and photographing the text, essentially creating titles for the photos.
Then I had an epiphany. I could find my camcorder, literally dust it off (I hadn't used it since 2004), and shoot in front of me as I walked. That would give me an opportunity to play with the new version of iMovie that Apple had just shipped: a version that infuriated experienced iMovie editors, because it purported to simplify the movie-making process while eliminating many of the cool features of the previous edition. Apple claimed that the new iMovie made it possible to create a finished "home movie" in one-half hour with the new iMovie.
The video shown above was indeed created with iMovie, but it took more than one-half hour. In fact, it took four hours. I know that for a fact because I got a parking ticket for going overtime in a 90-minute parking zone. But I was able to edit all my stuff, upload it to YouTube, and even compose the opening music theme in Garageband, all in four hours. After putting the video on YouTube, I also uploaded it to Seesmic, a website just created in the past few weeks by Loïc Lemeur. Seesmic is very cool, and I will write more about it another time. In the meantime, I hope that Coffeeblog readers will enjoy my osanpo video, entitled "Chalk Walk One," which they can watch courtesy of Seesmic.
Every page now has Seesmic/Disqus video commenting. Scroll to the bottom to see or post video comments. There are also Haloscan comments at the end of each separate blogpost article. To read a text-only version of Jonathan's Coffeeblog on your iPhone or other mobile phone, click here. Or to see the graphics with less text, click here.
