Esplanade

Here's a video of a bike ride along the waterfront. It was a warm afternoon. Biked the entire way using just my left hand to steer and brake, which got easier as I went along.

If you like the music, that makes two of us. It's from a 3-song set by Bliss.

Insta-Button

Here's a little video of me buying a pin-on button from a vending machine. These "Insta-Button" coin-op art-button dispensers are at both Tiny's Coffee locations, and probably at other places around Portland. The people at Button Arcade are the creators of these delightful dainty dots.

Free Geek Street Fair

I had a busy little Saturday last week. Here's a video of just part of it, Free Geek's Fifth Annual Street Fair. For those unfamiliar with the organization, Free Geek is a Portland non-profit that provides all number of ecological and community-minded services for the geek community. Not carnival geeks, computer geeks. Individuals and organizations may donate their old hardware and software to the organization for reuse or recycling. People with little extra money to throw at computers or classes can volunteer at Free Geek to earn such things. Free Geek educates. Free Geek recycles. Free Geek fosters community. And their facility is less that a mile from my house. I am truly fortunate.

The fair itself was fun. I saw some of my favorite people and even participated in the "Geek Arena" where I challenged the alpha-geek in a glorified trivia contest. Due to some judges that were generous in my favor, I came close (not really) to unseating the champion. The only round I truly won, hands down, was the "name actors who've played Doctor Who" round.

Hopefully this video captures some of the spirit of the event. There was far more going on than I could hope to capture in a short video. Go visit the Geek Fair page for an overview of the excitement. If you're in Portland and haven't visited Free Geek... I urge you to make an appointment immediately.

What else did I do saturday? Well, I got myself a new video/still camera (Casio 505), on which some of the Geek Fair was recorded. Also, I attended a meetup of podcasters over near PSU. The occasion? Eric Rice's Podcast Roadshow was in town. It was interesting to meet all these people with a fetish for gadgets... but I confess I am not familiar with any of their podcasts yet. I think I was the only "vodcaster" (videoblogger) there. I've since joined the PortlandPodcasting.org blog and will likely be seeing that crowd at upcoming gatherings.

Trained Eye

Here's a video called "Trained Eye" which is made from some footage I shot of graffiti near Oakland, California in May. The clandestine murals covering that wall were amazing.

The video is only a minute long... originally I had it set for an epic 5.5 minutes, but I kept getting sidetracked. Ultimately, I just had to trim it and call it done.

Innerstate Zero

This is an abstract video (click to view) I made using footage I shot on July 4th while Corinne and I were at the coast for Independence Day. The music was created on Electroplankton, a musical toy on the Nintendo DS.

On a side note, I just experienced a wonderful afternoon online videoconferencing with people all over the world about vlogs, podcasting, media, Yoda, underpants and meat. Long live Vloggercue (Vlog-R-Q).

Meme-O-Matic

There's this haunted-house-lookin' box sitting over by the Laurelhurst Theater at SE 28th & Burnside in Portland. It's called Meme-O-Matic and I guess the idea is that you put your own home-brew media in the box to share with others. Today, when I took a video-cd collection of my video-blogs to put in the box, I found a paperback book and some fliers.

Here's the video itself and here's the Vimeo page that hosts the video. I'll say it again, I like Vimeo. The primary coolness of Vimeo is that you can browse video clips by tags, adding tags where you deem appropriate. There are videos from all over the world. Mundanity is ubiquitous!

Oh, and when I searched the web for Meme-O-Matic references, the best thing I found is a set of photos on IndyMedia.