putting the j in jjosh » copyfight

putting the j in jjosh

putting the j in jjosh

yes I do! I love Shamu!

August 12th, 2008

Sure to become a crazy hyped blog-phenom, I want to hate these teenagers but can’t. there’s something about the song that won’t leave my head. There’s something about the video that embraces hi and low tech. There’s something about the way they both skewer and embrace hipster-ism. Who are these kids?!

Some people are going to hate this stuff big time. But really, give it a minute and let the good times roll over you. Also they kept it to 1:30! They know you can’t take too much of this stuff!

Also fun: watch closely when the whale shows up…there’s a Getty images watermark on the shot! Copyfight!

natalie portman’s shaved head – sophisticated side ponytail from thatgo on Vimeo.

from Freewillamsburg, natch

mixsion statement

May 2nd, 2008

(pic of mixwit.com, the new mixtape site with a great cassette-style interface) 

Since I started the blog in February 08 I’ve been thinking a lot about this stuff. I wasn’t really sure what joshgranger.com was going to be when I bought the domain. Then while getting ready to start the blog proper, wordpress (whose software powers this site) had a little exercise before you start blogging where you write down what you plan to do, who the audience is, how often you’ll blog, etc., in an effort to make sure you know what you’re getting into.

My little written bit basically amounted to sharing anything I found online that I thought was cool — music, video, linkage — much like my favorite blogs. I’ve come to think of it as an extension of the mixtape, which is an artform I’ve loved since I was taping off the radio in 1982. In college my mixtaping reached a alltime high level: I was using the media lab to tape things off of VHS videocassettes; I had inherited my dad’s old cassette player that could control the level in (yes! no more loud to soft transitions); I was part of a group of fellow mixtapologists who took it very seriously (report cards were made for each mix, a fanzine was published (I show up on page 13)); I was able to scour the college radio station for b-sides and weird rarities, or record myself doing "long-distance dedications"; ETC.

Post college, I was lucky enough to have a father who loved cutting-edge tech, so I could offer people CD mixes when it was still a novelty. When I decided to try DJ’ing, I did a lot of research before deciding to go with CD decks (more flexibility, don’t have to buy records all the damn time). I could run the decks into my computer and record the mixes, then split them into tracks with other software.

Part of the joy of the mix (both making and receiving) was getting/hearing something that made you say "where did THAT come from?!" And of course, the mixtape merely offered you the track name. There wasn’t really any context, so a really obscure track (I remember putting a Crooked Fingers track on a tape for Dan R before Eric B had even become Crooked Fingers…coup!!) could have an air of mystery about it that really added to the fun, and prompted attempts at one-upmanship.

The same is true of forwarding links to your friends — you just send the youtube link, not usually where you got it from. And this keeps that sense of mystery, that great feeling of "where did they find THAT?!"

my gosh, so interesting! tell me more!

pirate cartels have dark bidding

February 8th, 2008

One of my favorite blogs, and the first "portal" (a la boingboing, metafilter, etc) I ever came across is waxy.org. It’s a bit tech-y perhaps, but I kind of love that…over the years he’s been pretty consistent with updating his links to interesting stuff, but not so consistent at posting blog entries. Fair enough, the links are great fun, and the blog posts would be fun when they showed up.

But now he’s trying to post daily(?!) and he’s turning out some good stuff. For instance, he’s got a great post crunching some data concerning Academy award screener DVD’s and pirated copies of movies that show up online. The graphs are fun, but the gist of the post is that more of the Oscar-nominated films than ever are available as DVD-quality pirate downloads, but that they don’t tend to be Academy screeners.

Interesting. Mark, Laura and Lila were visiting last weekend, and when, in the name of research, we downloaded No Country For Old Men, the quality was pretty amazing, and the film seemed to be all over the net. Lila loved it.

Waxy mentions that a lot of the pirate copies are due to overseas Region 5 DVD’s, or R5’s…as Waxy says: 

These DVDs transferred directly from the film source were intended to help them compete with pirates by providing high-quality retail copies of films at the time of the film’s release. Instead, it’s created a huge new method of acquiring films before screeners are even released.

check the definition of R5’s here, at Afterdawn. This sure seems like a weird way to try and defeat the pirates, doesn’t it? Seems like it would help them more than hinder them. I wonder if some massive pirate cartel has a man on the inside at the MPAA, doing their secret, dark bidding.

In the future where anything that can be copied will be stripped of value, anything that cannot be copied will become more valuable. I can see how this will work with music, where the performance will become something to pay for, something that can’t be replicated. But what’s going to happen to films? I suppose the cinema experience can’t really be replicated…although giant tv’s and surround sound are doing a pretty good job.

Also microwave popcorn.