“Spot Me Up” – The Rolling Stones & Boston Dynamics Parody #SHORT
When I saw the Rolling Stones and Boston Dynamics “Start Me Up” music video, I had to do a Windows parody shorts video. Microsoft paid the Rolling Stones $3M US to license the song and perform at the Windows 95 product launch. Enjoy!
Age of Empire IV came out last week. The original Age of Empires in 1997 was THE GAME to play when I worked at Accolade (later bought out by Infogrames and renamed Atari). I sucked at multiplayer when playing with the other testers. I was always the first one to get wiped out. You have 15 minutes to set up your production and generate combat units before the fighting began. I’ve never mastered that part of the multiplayer game. I liked playing long single player games on large maps. I’m planning to get AOE4 but not at $60 US. Valve Steam might have it on sale for Black Friday.
Sara Dietschy, rhymes with peachy, interviewed Mark Zuckerberg about the Meta memes and the Metaverse. This interview was a bit surprising. Mark still comes off as a robot.
YouTube sent me a late night email on Wednesday, August 4, 2021, informing me that a video on my channel was no longer compliant with the Community Guidelines and age restricted (a viewer must be 18 years or older and logged in to view the video).
That was odd.
I maintain a family- and advertiser-friendly, and, under the Federal Trade Commission’s COPPA, not “made for kids” channel. All my videos are suitable for a general audience (13 years or older).
Which video got age restricted?
My montage video that alternated clips from George Floyd’s death and the first SpaceX crewed flight while Gil Scott-Heron narrated his 1970 poem, “Whitey On The Moon,” about poverty on the earth and white men on the moon.
Read the rest of the essay on Medium.If you’re interested in supporting my writing on Medium, become a paid member and I’ll get a referral bonus.
On June 29, 2021, I took the CompTIA PenTest+ certification beta exam (PT0-002) for $50 US. That exam went official this week and I found out my results. I failed the beta exam.
That I failed the beta exam didn’t surprise me.
I only had six weeks to study for a certification that I never heard about.
The Rolling Stones and Boston Dynamics reenacted the “Start Me Up” music video with the Spot robots. Some people may recall that “Start Me Up” was the them song that launched Windows 95 on August 24, 1995. Microsoft paid the Rolling Stones $3M US to license the song and perform at the launch event. This parody video recreates an ending that too many Windows users are well familiar with.
On June 29, 2021, I took the CompTIA PenTest+ certification beta exam (PT0-002) for $50 US. On October 26, 2021, I found out that I failed the beta exam. That didn’t surprise me since I had only six weeks to study for an exam that I didn’t know about. With the PT0-002 exam going official on October 28, 2021, and new study guides are forthcoming, I’ll probably re-take the exam early next year. Check out my playlist for my past and future videos on this certification.
I had to dress up for work. Out of 50 people for the staff meeting, only a dozen people dressed up in Halloween costumes. I went with the Batman mask and $1 US makeup that I got at Target. The choice of T-shirt was unfortunate. I should have gotten a Batman logo t-shirt. The coworker who won the $25 US gift certificate had a Mandalorian cosplayer costume. Everyone else had DIY costumes.
I also watched John Carmack’s keynote at Facebook Connect 2021. He mentioned that he’s mostly known for his game engines. But game engines were never his focus. The video game (THE PRODUCT) was his focus and creating reusable code that others could use was a byproduct. Instead of focusing on all high-level technologies that Mark Zuckerberg talked about, Carmack’s focus is on the workplace virtual environment and solving problems like 100ms latency in audio. Lots of good technical information.
Mark Zuckerberg will announce at Facebook Connect that Facebook will become a “metaverse” company. That could be Facebook:
Changing its name to Metaverse
Creating a corporate holding company called Metaverse.
Creating a virtual world to replace the Internet called Metaverse.
Metaverse, however, wasn’t a new idea. Neal Stephenson coined the word for his science fiction novel, “Snow Crash,” in 1992. I started my tech career as an QA intern at Fujitsu’s WorldsAway in 1997. One of many “metaverse” worlds during the dial-up days of the early modern Internet.
I’ll explain what the 1990s Metaverse was and what the Facebook Metaverse could be.
Amazon Prime Video’s “Being the Ricardos” trailer came out today. I’m a big “I Love Lucy” fan since I grew up on the re-runs. Most people don’t know that Lucille Ball was a savvy businesswoman in the 1950s and 1960s. A time when most women were expected to be stay-at-home mothers. Her studio turned Gene Rodenberry’s “Star Trek: TOS” into a cultural icon. The movie will debut on December 10, 2021.
Another trailer that came out was Netflix’s “Cowboy Bebop,” a live-action version of a classic anime, coming out on November 19, 2021. I’m really looking forward to this series. Live action versions of anime series can be hit or miss (*cough* “Ghost in The Shell” *cough*). Looks like Netflix nailed this one with stylistic perfection.
On Wednesday, October 13, 2021, William Shatner became the oldest to travel into space. Here’s a new playlist of the Shatner videos on my channel. Enjoy!
I just learned something new about the Amazon Hub. If you’re registered user and have multiple packages (each package has an email notification), scanning the barcode of one notification will open the doors—one at a time—for all the packages. That can be inconvenient if you have a lot of packages.
If someone else (say, a spouse) in your apartment got multiple packages (each package has an email notification), scanning the barcode of one notification will only open the door for that specific package. The other barcodes must be scanned to get the other packages.
As the registered user, you can forward these notification emails to the other person and have them fetch their own packages from the Hub.
If you haven’t seen my Amazon Hub videos, check out the playlist.
The topic for my Sunday’s video is Facebook Metaverse. That’s funny. The 1990s called and wants it metaverse back. My technical career got started in 1997 with the emerging—and suddenly obsolete—metaverse of virtual worlds. I had a six-month QA internship with Fujitsu’s WorldsAway, a 2.5D chatroom with colorful avatars. I pulled out my copy of “Avatars! Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet” by Bruce Damar. I got this book 24 years ago this week.
The highlight of my Fujitsu’s WorldsAway internship was the Avatars 97 convention in San Francisco. My role there was to set up the demo PCs, provide technical support, and record video of the demonstrations. Recording video meant lugging around a heavy Panasonic VHS camera on my shoulder.
On my YouTube channel, there are two types of videos that get copyright claims I can do nothing about.
Copyrighted music at public events
Videos I make on purpose with copyrighted music
A copyright claim allows a collection agency — a third-party working on behalf of a copyright owner — to collect ad revenues from videos with copyrighted music.
A third type of video that sometimes get copyright claims are the videos that I make with Creative Commons music. I always appeal to release the copyright claim on these videos.
Creative Commons is an irrevocable license. If a musician signs a label deal, their new licensing doesn’t affect my usage of the music under the Creative Commons license.
The relevant part of the license is this: “The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.”
When I cite that line in a appeal, the collection agency releases the copyright claim within hours or a few days.
A recent copyright claim on the behalf of Storyblocks took a bit more effort to resolve because they tried to assert their licensing over the Creative Commons licensing. That was unacceptable.
Read the rest of the essay on Medium.If you’re interested in supporting my writing on Medium, become a paid member and I’ll get a referral bonus.
I tweeted last month that I replaced the Cougar Minos X5 mouse with the Cougar Minos X2 mouse. The scroll wheel on the X5 became “twitchy” when cycling through inventory in FortNite. The last thing I want to pull out during a firefight is an unloaded weapon. The X2 was half the cost of the X5, similar in size, and didn’t have RGB. That created a controversy for some viewers of my YouTube channel. Why do I buy a $20 US mouse when I have a $300 keyboard on my desk?
William Shatner (Captain James T. Kirk of “Star Trek: TOS”), became the oldest person at 90 years old to go into space aboard the second human Blue Origin flight on Wednesday, 10/13/2021. This montage video features scenes from the flight and inside the capsule, and the song, “Rocket Man” by Elton John, that Shatner performed at the Science Fiction Film Awards on January 20, 1978.
