If your video camera operator (thanks to Linda) has turned their apparatus sideways, the resulting portrait styled video works better uploaded to facebook and embedded than it does on youTube.

As discovered over on http://andyroberts.me/havering-folk-club/the-rowan-tree-song-at-haverfolk-for-cloudstreet-guest-night

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Embedding Videos from Facebook

The functionality to delete or deactivate plugins was a much requested feature that was added to the many useful operations that ManageWP can perform for you just a couple of weeks ago, and it really does make this web service indispensable for anybody with more than just a couple of WordPress installations. I was recommending before, but even more so now.

The plugin I wanted to deprecate in my installations was called Viper’s Video QuickTags, very handy in it’s day for embedding youtube videos withing blog posts, but that functionality was added into the core WordPress code several versions ago, which renders the plugin redundant for me.

Plugins and Themes

With ManageWP I could select “plugins and themes” from the sidebar, then chose All Websites, tick plugins, active, and search by keyword: “viper”. That gave me a list of five blogs that still had the old plugin active. I could have deactivated the lot in one fell swoop just like that, but I wanted to make sure all my old posts with videos embedded would still work so, without even leaving the ManageWP dashboard, I went to each affected individual WordPress dashboard in turn, and searched through the posts for the string “[youtube”, that being the way the old plugin recognised source posts needing to have the embed code added. I then removed the shortcodes from each end of the video identifier leaving just the youtube url on one line by itself, which WordPress now interprets as a request to embed video inline. Once the legacy code was removed, I could then deactivate and delete the plugin, leaving me with a nice feeling of having tidied up a longstanding loose end.

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Delete WordPress Plugins with ManageWP

Here they are performing “Hunting Tigers Out In Indiah”:

“I really did see them in black and white!”

Somebody called ‘Dormouse’ in the alt.fan.bonzo-dog newsgroup put me onto these videos, but with YouTube it takes no time at all to browse around and find more rare gems. The live concert in Belgium, extracts from films, interviews, alternative performances and outakes – they are all there.

Incidentally, alt.fan.bonzo-dog was the first online group I ever founded, in February/March 1998 the the process of which I learned a lot. Here is the original charter:

Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 20:46:11 -0000
Organization: ESBI
Lines: 54
Sender: richard.bryant@ukonline.co.uk
Approved: richard.bryant@ukonline.co.uk
Message-ID:
NNTP-Posting-Host: p81-as2.dubexs.tinet.ie
Summary: Newgroup message
X-Newsreader: Anawave Gravity v2.00
Xref: news.isc.org control.newgroup:17319

For your newsgroups file:
alt.fan.bonzo-dog The Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band: Neil Innes, Viv
Stanshall etc

DISCUSSED IN alt.config:
proposal for alt.fan.bonzo-dog posted by andyrobts@aol.com on
19th March 1998. reply from Sysop 20th Mar. Justification posted,
various contributions demonstrated strong international interest
and traffic in newsgroups. Name finalised without -band.Richard
Bryant suggested posting a Charter, charter posted No further
 objections.

JUSTIFICATION:

A dejanews search on bonzo+dog indicated 2100 matches. There is a
mailing list with 65 subscribers which is intended strictly for low
 volume informative posts. It is envisaged that this would continue
 and the ng will attract wider ranging discussion, probably medium
 volume traffic.

References to the Bonzo's regularly crop up in alt.fan.capt-beefheart,
alt.fan.frank-zappa, alt.comedy.british, alt.fan.monty-python
newsgroups. Also in rec.music.beatles, rec.music.dementia,
rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1960s.

CHARTER:

A forum for fans of the ‘The Bonzo Dog Band’ previously known as

‘The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Topics might include the recorded output of the Bonzo’s, TV shows and
videos and the careers of former band members. No commercial
advertising allowed unless for goods or services related to the
subject of the group. Private individuals may advertise their Website
or business in their signature files . Binary postings are forbidden.
All Binary files should be posted onto the relevant group with a pointer
to them in this group Format: Text files only, HTML , graphics and
sound files should be placed on the Web with a pointer to them in
this group

Moderation:

The newsgroup will not be moderated. We are an anarcho-syndicalist
collective with a rotating chair.

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The Bonzo Dog Band on Do Not Adjust Your Set

Many more Kew Gardens photos are amongst my photosets on Flickr such as :

Kew Gardens October 2011

Kew Gardens

Collection of Kew Gardens Photosets

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Kew Gardens

With videography by Evan Roberts, this youTube is pretty self explanatory.

The actual location is a campsite at Camping Moreiras, O Grove, Pontevedra, Galicia. The fish, a whole monkfish, came from the fish market on the harbour at O Grove itself, as did the vegetables and the cider is an Asturian Sidra Natural obtaine en route from one of many Eroski supermarkets.

Just a bit of fun really, but it captures one of many happy mealtimes from a memorable holiday touring Asturias and Galicia in September 2011. There are loads of photos online  at both my collection and Linda’s Flickr  photostreams.

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Cooking Monkfish with Cider in Galicia

via posterous

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Video: World’s Luckiest Man

via posterous

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High Tide dare

I cannot believe that the theft of the hands of Big Ben in London can go unnoticed like this.

Whoever the “Time Association” are, they must be stopped from interfering with any more of our famous landmark icons here in London. So the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street and St Paul’s will all be under special surveillance tonight.

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How To Steal Back Time

It’s not often that a new type of art is invented. These are playful and creative, and certainly make an impact on people in the city.

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Inflatable Street Art

Previous video tutorials have covered:

1. Layers
2. The Clone Tool
3. Colour Select
4. How to Photograph a Ghost

The topic for this latest video (5)  is “tinting”, a technique for adding or changing colour tones for discrete areas within an image. The screencast video itself was a little too long to upload to youTube in one piece, so I’ve spit it into two parts, part 1 and part 2.

The picture used to illustrate the selective tinting technique is available for practice and has a creative commons license which means that it can be reproduced should you wish to do so, with proper linked attribution.

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Seashore Image Editing Tutorial 5 – Tinting

Andy Roberts Music on Tuesday Nights

I’ve been trying out ustream.tv for making live broadcast videos and I think it’s something I’d like to experiment with further. So I decided to pick a day and time to see if I can persuade a few people to tune in for some simultaneous music and chat.

I decided on Tuesday Evenings at 7.00pm UK time for now, but that could always change if turns out not to be a good choice. I have broadband issues right now, so this may not start with immediate effect but I’m intending to broadcast most Tuesdays throughout August and then resume mid September. It should be easy enough to notify anybody of schedule changes once we get going.

Ustream.tv is essentially a narrowcast media, allowing anybody to start up a channel and ‘broadcast’ live from a computer. All you need is a webcam, and built-in microphone to start with, and a decent broadband connection, which I intend to have very soon.

So what’s going to happen on Tuesday Evenings on the Andy Roberts Music channel?

Well that depends who turns up, but the intention is to busk a load of songs, as the whim takes me, and keep an eye on the chat room at the same time. Maybe there’ll be somebody else, who knows. The technology allows for the show to be transferred across to other hosts, so in theory we could end up with a series of ‘floor spots’ as it were, all the while keeping the same crowd connected.

One of the big advantages with the ustream system is the way the live shows can also be recorded and saved, and instantly uploaded to youTube as well. Bands can do this quite successfully by building up support for a ‘live internet gig’ weeks in advance, then performing in a room with a webcam placed in the corner to pick up the whole band. The online audience an get a real sense of being present at a live event. But me , I’ll just be sitting at my iMac  with a guitar and keyboard, generating lots of song files and interacting with whoever turns up. I hope by making it a regular event that some kind of build up might happen over the weeks, to amass a small group of regulars from amongst the billions of internet users out there who might be interested in acoustic music with me.

As an example, here’s a video that originated in ustream as part of the prototyping session and is now embedded here from youTube. It’s a song that I always thought was a Wizz Jones song because he likes to play it a lot and recorded it but it turns out to be by Mose Allison

You can count on me to play my part

So there you go – just one last reminder then:-

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Ustream.tv Tuesday Nights Andy Roberts Music 7.00pm

Filezilla is a free and open source FTP client software program used for connnecting to a webserver to update websites. Here’s a short tutorial video which deals with downloading, setting up and connecting Filezilla FTP to a website. I describe the twin pane approach, and show you how to download a website file, edit it , test and then re-upload so the new version is live on your website.

This Filezilla video can be watched from right here below as an embedded YouTube video, do try the HD (High Definition) and full screen options:

Or you can download the full original 84Mb video file onto your computer using the free file hosting service at divshare: Download Filezilla FTP Video Tutorial

Filezilla FTP client software is available in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux versions.

Good alternative FTP clients apart from Filezilla are Cute FTP for Windows and Mac (small charge) , and on a Mac there are also Fetch and Cyberduck.

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Free FTP Client Software – Using Filezilla to update Websites

Easter is all about eggs, (Easter, Ester, Eastre, Eostre, Estrus, Oestrus) fertility and celebrating springtime in the traditional manner so this seems quite appropriate today.

The location for this video is the Alexandra Lake, Wanstead Flats but we call it the duck pond.

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What Easter Is All About

“This is a man who know his onions”

What’s it all about? Well you see, I once worked in a canteen cooking dinners…

(First time I uploaded from a .mov it the synchronisation was messed up so I had to unpublish, redo it from mp4 and publish again. Sorry for any confusion that may have been caused by that.)

Song by Andy Roberts
Camera and DVD powervisual.com

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Cajun Music, Cajun Food

Daily Feedshow: BBC News on PhotoPeach

Click on the rolling slideshow at any point and it takes you to the relevant news item on the BBC news site.

Could you get used to this synthetic speech slideshow?

Bon appetit.

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BBC News as delivered by PhotoPeach Feedshow

Havering Folk Club – Mozambique

Well, here’s a funny thing. Peter Walters from Havering Folk Club has started putting up some live performance videos on youTube and here’s one of me singing “Mozambique”, often a popular song from Dylan’s Desire album of 1976.

This would have been recorded on September 3rd 2008 according to this entry on my music blog

I think the visuals survive the youtube compression OK and the sound quality is simply what you’d expect from the built in mic of a video camera. Thanks Peter for taking the trouble to do the editing and format conversion etc.

By the way, if anybody is in the East London/Essex area for April 1st 2009 that’s when I’ll be doing a whole set of my own songs and others as a featured member of Havering Folk Club for the evening and any support would be appreciated. It would be great to see you there in our quaint little pub, The Golden Lion, Romford where the club meets Wednesdays at Eight.

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Mozambique at Havering Folk Club

Flashmobs and unexpected performances in the mainstream

Simulated Flashmobs and unexpected performances are springing up all over the place. You can hardly venture out on a journey through any of London’s main transport hubs without being hijacked by a troupe of dancers, pillowfighters or Musical Theatre performers. The aim of most of these stunts is to generate buzz, particularly through youTube, which if done subtly and with a bit of luck can reach millions of consumers for a fraction the price of mainstream advertising. At least that was the theory, but T-mobile are currently running an expensive campaign on TV which shows full length video from the Liverpool Street Station event last Thursday. With clips of bystanders reactions mixed in with professional dancers emerging from the crowd, it’s very difficult to judge just much of it was precisely staged and how much is genuine spontaneity. I’m not going to embed the actual advertisement itself here, you can find it easily on youtube but here are some genuine punters interviewed after the event:

So now I’ve just been alerted by Hermione on Twitter to a smaller musical video made in Stansted Airport:

This one is for Lastminute.com and asks “When did you last go to the Theatre?” which is a question close to my heart as you may know already. I’m off to see Phantom of The Opera next week.

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Flashmobs Going Mainstream

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Who is Nick Harper?

The sculpture is made of vertical shiny metal rods arranged in a spiral rising from a rotating plinth which gives the impression from a distance of a waterfall or fountain. The video accentuates this by being recorded next to an actual fountain, providing the soundtrack.

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Elche Palm Gardens with Surprising Water Feature Sculpture

Pavement Closed

And it’s not just builders, scaffolders, road maintenance and utilities crews. Where I live, a bit further out, parked cars are often left straddling the pavement blocking the right of way for pedestrians. Other obstacles are provided by roadside businesses who decide to expand outwards from their shop front onto the pavement. Hand car wash services for example seem to use the pavement, kerb and bus lane as part of their workshop area. Then there are the tressel tables of vegetables in bowls, all at £1 each which are spreading like potato blight in front of all kinds of non-food related shops, to the extent that proper greengrocers are going out of business unless they join in the bowls system as well. So now you can’t buy two lemons you have to have five, and a bowl of tomatoes is expensive at £1 whereas three aubergines might seem like a bargain until you notice that the two underneath are going brown.

Tags: pavementclosed, no pavement, walkway obstacles, vegetable bowls, hand car wash, rant

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Walkway Closed – No Pavement for Pedestrians