Robert Hampton

Way back on January 1st I said I wanted to make video blogs. This proved more of a challenge than I thought, as it turned out that talking to a camera is hard.

Anyway, I had time on my hands tonight, so here is the first of what promises to be a series of at least one videos.

Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where the school has an “Independent Thought Alarm”? That came to mind when reading the story of Jack Christie, a Canadian student who was suspended by his high school after they discovered the videos he’d been uploading to YouTube.

Each animation is replete with exactly what you might expect from an 18-year-old male, suburban Canadian or otherwise: explosions, profanity, guns, and copious references to sex and drugs. What is atypical about the videos is their sense of humor and breakneck absurdity.

While we may find the animations entertaining, Durham District School Board spokeswoman Andrea Pidwerbecki was not amused. “If something is considered detrimental to the positive moral tone of the school, it doesn’t necessarily have to happen inside the school [for us to get involved].”

This does strike me as grossly unfair – what happens outside of school should not be any of his teachers’ business. Thankfully Christie is not taking this lying down and has responded to the school, the only way he knows how.

I’ve decided to make public my new year’s resolutions and hope that this gives me more motivation to keep to them. There are only three, and none of them are too exciting, but here they are anyway:-

1. Lose the weight – I don’t need to drop much but this has been on my list every year for as long as I can remember. This year, however, I’m confident that I will actually succeed. Ignore the fact that I’m drinking a can of (non-diet) Coke while writing this blog.
2. Travel – I made a good start last year with visits to Scotland, Brighton and London. This year I’d like to go abroad somewhere – maybe Paris, Berlin or – if I’m feeling particularly adventurous – somewhere in the USA.
3. Make a video blog – written blogs are all well and good, but wouldn’t my ramblings be much better if you could actually see and hear me rather than just reading my writings? Er, probably. Anyway, I have a YouTube account which is itching to get some proper content on it. Be afraid, internet, be very afraid.

The secret to new year’s resolutions is to make them achievable and realistic. So this year I have left off “cure world hunger”.

What a year 2010 was! It had twelve months, each consisting of at least 28 days. On some of those days I made blog entries. Here are the highlights.

I began the year in January fretting about an alleged Crystal Maze remake starring Amanda Holden. This story fortunately turned out to be utter bollocks. Ginger people again proved that (yours truly excepted) they have no sense of humour or perspective. Britain experienced a deluge of snow, and Merseyrail impressed everyone by soldiering on throughout, a feat which they would surely repeat next time we experienced awful weather… right?

I finally joined the Wii owners’ club, just as the console stopped being cool. My rekindled love for video games did not result in me getting rickets. I also celebrated my first Twitterversary and cautiously welcomed the iPad.

I also took time to blog at length about a US comedian no-one has heard of over here, illustrating my post with YouTube clips which have now been removed for copyright infringement.

In more serious matters, the Haiti earthquake occupied people’s thoughts as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in the devastated country.

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One of YouTube’s lawyers has just put up an excellent blog post about the current legal battle with Viacom. For someone like me who is frustrated that he can’t watch Daily Show clips online, it’s an interesting read, especially this little nugget of information which I was not aware of:-

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users.

The smart course of action would have been to let the clips stay on the site and earn money from the ad revenue, as BBC Worldwide, The X Factor and others have done. Viacom instead spent what must have been a considerable amount building their own sites for clips from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. They’re very good sites (I assume, since they’ve blocked UK users from accessing the video), but by not being on YouTube they are missing out on potential eyeballs. How many extra views and ad dollars would Viacom get if a Daily Show clip popped up as a “related video” to someone’s Keyboard Cat mashup?

In general, I would love a sane attitude to copyright infringement by the Big Media companies. People uploading short clips of their favourite TV shows is not depriving anyone of any income. A 14-year-old girl who posts a two-minute video of herself lip-synching to the Sugababes should not be punished (except, maybe, for crimes against music). Lumping YouTube uploaders in with those who are torrenting gigabytes of stuff on a daily basis is a tactic that’s sure to backfire.

That’ll be me on the right, then. I was all done Christmas shopping until yesterday, when I spied an irrestible new gadget: a rather nice Sony Camcorder, selling at about 60 quid off the RRP. Of course, in my haste to purchase this item I neglected to note the various other items I would need, which include but are not limited to: tapes, a spare battery, a FireWire cable to link the camera to the computer, and a FireWire card for the computer itself. All of which will probably add an extra 100 quid to the price by the time I’ve bought them all. Still, I’ve had a bit of a play with it, and it’s a nice bit of kit for the price.

Still, once those other bits arrive and I have a way to actually get video into the computer, I will have the option of videoblogging! Imagine what this blog will be like with sounds and moving pictures to accompany it! Surely this is exactly the sort of thing YouTube has been waiting for! That’s quite a lot of exclamation marks!