One of the things I’d like to do before I shuffle off the old mortal coil is go to the South By South West music-film-tech overload Festival in Austin, Texas. In the meantime, though, I’ve been listeing to NPR’s pre-fest stream mix of 100 tracks from artists who will be at SXSW. Some are better known than others (Camera Obscura, The Hold Steady, Andrew Bird, The Decemberists, Lonely Dear, for example) but there are some other brilliant finds that I’ve never heard of – Heartless Bastards, Headlights, John Wesley harding and many more but most notably K’Naan, a Somalian rapper out of Toronto. I’m not a big rap fan but Dreamer is a knockout. You can listen to the whole stream here.
Brilliant footy skit from last week’s Comic Relief in the UK.
Just unboxed my latest toy, the Flip Mino HD. This is a great little video camcorder you can just throw in your pocket for those spontaneous family moments – like at the beach with our dog, above – or just for shooting quick video snaps when you’re unlikely to have a full-featured camcorder on hand (ie. most of the time). You can shoot up to an hour of video and upload it to your computer via the built-in USB plug or play it direct on TV. As you can see from the clip above, while the quality is not good enough to shoot your Hollywood bid on a budget, it’s perfectly fine for most people’s everyday needs. If youre like me, most of my video these days gets posted on YouTube, Facebook or screened via Apple TV and the included FlipShare software makes sharing your Flip video clips on YouTube, by e-mail or in a video greeting card virtually a one-button task. There are also options to create your own movie from clips with titles, etc. Very impressive piece of kit and great value at around $200.
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