August 26, 2006

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   MAJOR UPDATES AT ALLTHINGSMIKE:  I’m in the middle of a major renovation and update on my main website, so I haven’t been commenting much in the past few days. I’ve been keeping up with my commenters, but I haven’t visited a lot of sites on my sublist and on the Internet Island because of time constraints. I usually don’t “announce” that I don’t “have time” to visit, but when I get on a roll, like I am now, Xanga takes a back seat to the main site. In fact, I sometimes create more detailed articles here on WhenWordsCollide than I do on the main pages on AllThingsMike. So this weekend, which is a “three day” weekend for me, owing to a vacation day I took off yesterday, is being spent with updating and uploading some renovations and some new features.

  
  

  First of all, I redesigned the main page again. PLEASE VISIT and sign the guestbook, which is linked farther down the page in the “Short History of AllThingsMike” story. I’ve deleted one of the two “competing” cloudscape backgrounds, and now the featured sites list on the left of the page has a solid gray background instead of being overlaid on another cloudscape. I resized the site images at the beginning of each section. I announce my latest Webshots Galleries, “Knott’s Berry Farm” and “Betty Boop Museum 2″.

  
  

   Midway down the page, in the section entitled “MikeVideo Streaming Videos from YouTube”, I’ve added a new video, and image. With over 190 hits and counting, after only a few minutes online, my very first “MikeVideo Internet Movie”, called “Selling Sex at the CES: Video Postcard” is my latest video uploaded to YouTube. It also is featured on the newly updated main page of the MikeVideo site. The short 1 minute and 34 second “video postcard” was created as a “preview” for the more ambitious 90 minute long “Selling Sex at the CES” which is on VHS. It is one of my “masterpieces”, like “Renaissance Day” recorded over a three year period, and then edited together in 2003. I am currently planning on recreating this video as a digital file, since I found most of the elements, including the “preview” now on my YouTube channel, narration and music tracks, and complete credit sequence, on a CDR. I couldn’t copy the files from the CDR, which was recorded on an old version of Adaptec’s CD software, so I had to fire up my old computer, open the folders on the CDR, transfer them to my new computer, and now I’m ready to begin downloading the three digital tapes I shot and begin editing the video. I’ll have to queue up the VHS tape to see how I “edited” it in the first place. Since the video is basically a series of footage of porn starlets, and has the word “sex” in the title, I’m sure it will be quite popular as a YouTube entry. I’m pretty excited. The “title card” with me and porn star Julianna Sterling, was shot by a bystander with my original digital video camera at the trade show. We had “virtual sex” and a security gaurd broke us apart. It is all shown on the long form video, which I’m sure my readers will find entertaining. There is some “nudity” but it’s all in good taste. I know I featured my “Arbitrimage Dreams” video in the previous post, but I’m going to embed the “Selling Sex” postcard, since it’s only 1:34 right here right now. The background music is “Don’t” sung by Elvis Presley.

  
  

  Here’s what I wrote about “Selling Sex” on the “History of MikeVideo” page:

  
  

  “Selling Sex at the CES” 2001 (unfinished) VHS and “Selling Sex at the CES Preview” 2001 digital media (MPEG)

  
  

  “Every year from 1999 up until 2004, I, as a home theater enthusiast, spent three days in Las Vegas every January for the Consumer Electronics Show. I began to edit three years of footage shot in Vegas at the same time while attending the Software Dealers Trade Show, which showcased the XXX videos of the pornography industry. As a single male with no family or ties, I have been an unabashed fan of porn for years, and have quite a collection. I meet some of my favorite “stars” at these trade shows, and the public is encouraged to take pictures. In 2003, I was told by security personnel not to take video, only stills, unless I had press certification, so the footage I got at the earlier shows cannot be repeated. I have about a half hour on the master, which I never completed. The flow goes very well with what I have constructed, and this is the first MikeVideo I “announced” on the internet while I was making it, and I assembled a PG-13 rated “preview” which was on the internet for a long time (and which got lots of hits) for a long time until the video hosting service went out of business. The “preview” was the first “internet movie” assembled digitally from a video production computer program. I created the “Internet Movies” page on AllThingsMike to display both this and another video I cobbled together rather quickly from footage shot at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery in Pasadena.”

  
  

   

  
  

  This goes without saying, but before watching any videos on this site, please disable the music playing in the background. The controls are in the sidebar to the left

  
  

  I’m also in the process of making the first of three “Nantucket Holiday” videos. “Nantucket Holiday” was one of the very first MikeVideos I announced when I created my website in 1999. It is also a 90 minute long VHS video and will have to be completely re-edited for digital medium so I can show it on YouTube. I do have all my editing info so all I have to do is upload the original three hour long tapes into the computer, and then use the editing info to find the exact edits so I can duplicate the video as an mpeg. I never did finish the VHS version, which doesn’t have a title or credit sequence or background music. Exciting things are happening on the AllThingsMike horizon, and as a reader of this blog, you have a front row seat to all the creative endeavors in which I’m involved.

  
  

  I haven’t posted regular PhotoPosts or ElectricPoetry Posts in quite a while. I haven’t been writing that much poetry, but I intend on writing an all original ElectricPoetry Post sometime this week with all new poetry. In a couple of weeks, Liz and I are going to San Diego with cameras and dgital videocam, for a three day stay with visits to both the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park. Lots of new photos and videos will be forthcoming.

  
  

  I once put the tagline “The only website you’ll ever need” on the top of the main page to AllThingsMike. It isn’t the only website you’ll need. But it comes close to replicating my artistic and creative side, and as I say, when I get on a roll, as I am now, lots of new things appear on the horizon of cyberspace. 

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