England Swings!

As mentioned my previous post, I attended a gathering of YouTube users on Saturday. Here's my report...

How to make a mug-mat

Fold fold fold!

I have speed up double disease

I made these videos several months ago, both featuring music by Gamma Goblin.
Facts, and things I love. (Featuring Spin)
1/8 (Featuring Infatuation)

As an experiment in video compression, I tried speeding them up. The result was rather interesting, exposing hidden music.
Fast Facts 1/64

On the video, my ole buddy Roland said;

I'm looking forward to 1/128

That sounded like a challenge.
1/128 to 1/8192

On that last one, I accidentally typed the wrong song title in the closing credits out of habit. Sorry.

Facts Redux 4 - Sausages / Open fire

Yum yum!

Facts Redux 3 - I am English

I feel I spend too much time doing YouTube videos, so I got my friends to do one for me.

Death of a camera (ish)

My camera's final moments...



In the end, it turned out that the battery had just became unclipped in the fall, but I only noticed after I had already made and published this video. The camera's fine, but a little scratched.

Facts Redux 2 - I prefer to be behind the camera

Not all video makers are extroverts, you know.

Facts Redux 1 - I like ducks

My regular bloggees may recall a short video I make back in December, 'Facts and things I love'.

But what if the few seconds dedicated to each fact isn't enough? Never fear, dear reader, here's the first of a series. Enjoy.


(Google Video) (YouTube)

Coming up... I prefer to be behind the camera.

Descent Into Insanity (Toast!)

Bill the Warlock makes toast! Meanwhile, Bill the real person experiments with stop-motion animation.



Here's where I heard the music from.

PS. I've been listening to the music of Mr Strangelove. Have a listen to Dreaming Louise if nothing else.

Spatchcock!

What's Spatchcock? No idea, but the word is funny. Here's Brian's recipe...


And my response...

Enjoy.

Cooking Chilli Con Carne (Video)

The non-celebrity-non-chef returns...



I had to cut this down from 40 minutes to 10. I may do a "directors cut" edition, but pretty much everything is in there.

"It's like some kind of bill baily cookery program!"

-- Anonymous

More less significant cinema

A few more videos made for the YouTube community. Enjoy.

A trailer for Clones - Turkey Embargo
So I have a small part in the Clones christmas special, but many of my subscriber's wouldn't see it. What to do?

Bill joins the bed-in.
In support of John Reagan's protest of YouTube's failing comment and mail system. My clip was later used in a round-up of responses. (I shamelessly reuse another piece of video here. Can you spot where?)

2/Dec/2006
Ever wondered what do I get up to on a saturday? No? No need to watch this then. Watch samsarajade's original video (in which my video was in response to) instead. Many thanks to Gamma Goblin for letting me use his wonderful music again. (See the video description for full links to his pages.)

How to run multiple firefox profiles (Video)

It all started a friend had created two YouTube accounts and was getting them mixed up. I knew of a technique that firefox offers, but its hidden away and only works properly if you put it in a special mode. So I put this video together, to talk through how to use this technique.

Basically, firefox allows multiple profiles. If you create a new profile, it will have a separate configuration, including bookmarks, cookies, saved passwords, etc.

You may find it useful if you have multiple accounts on a website, such as a webmail provider, and you are fed up of logging in and out to switch between then.

The techniques described in this video have been tested on Windows XP (SP2) with Firefox 1.5.0.9. Your milage may vary. By watching this video, you agree to absolve and indemnify me from all blame.



I may submit this as abug to the firefox people. Such a simple facility like this shouldn't need video of over five minutes to illustrate. I would suggest that somehow, the MOZ_NO_REMOTE option could be made into a command line option. That way, my video would only need to talk through using the profile manager and how to create a new XP shortcut, without having to make batch files.

For now though, here are the commands, all ready for copying and pasting...

The two commands typed in the CMD window are:
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
"c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -ProfileManager

The batch file contents (3 lines):
@echo off
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -p "Second"
(Remember to replace "Second" with the applicable profile name.)

Clones - Turkey Embargo (Video)

Latest episode of Clones, Turkey Embargo. Go watch right now, it's excellent!


And then they DIE!!!!

Facts, and things I love (Video)

Who is Bill? Here's a quick glance into my very brain! Mwa hahahaha!


(Google Video) (YouTube)

The music is the provisionally titled, Spin, from Gamma Goblin, who also did the music for ⅛. Many thanks, you're a star!

Ever since YouTube horribly mangled this earlier video of mine, I'll probably put a copy on both YouTube and Google Video in future. You can store a much higher quality of video with Google Video. Such a difference from what is now two divisions of the same company.

Less significant cinema

Its been several days since I published a video. Some of the videos I do were primarily as "video responses" for the YouTube community rather than works in their own right. I hope to be publishing a big video soon, so it seems a good time to talk about these ones. Enjoy.

The evil eye
A response to a video proclaiming that "BROWN-EYED GIRLS RULE!!!". Alas, I have blue eyes. And I'm not a girl.

I do, however, rule.

One-ish World
This was my ill-conceived contribution to the One World project. It marks the first time I showed my full face on video. I reused most of the material from this project to create ⅛, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

LemKuiper's one question
An exasperated man rants about the spate of Five Questions videos that were going around. "This is one step away from What's your favourite colour?". There was only one response I could make.

⅛ - One Eighth (By Proxy)
By this point, I had completed ⅛ and put it up on YouTube and then taken it back down again. I should have realised from the way YouTube had over-compressed One-ish World, that it would never take ⅛ properly. In the end, I put it on Google Video, but I still wanted it to be on YouTube, as I have subscribers there who I don't think read this blog. So I had an idea.

Chuckie Egg - A fast flashback
A video of me playing Chuckie Egg, speeded up several times. I began to wonder if speeding up video is habit forming. (Play it here.)

Precipice does the Chicken Dance
YouTube celebrity Zipster asks the world to do the Chicken Dance. (Better known to Englanders as The Birdy Song.)

So there we have it. I have a couple of musical videos in the works, which I hope to publish in the coming weeks. I'm also thinking about doing some more cookery videos. If you have a favourite food you want me try out, please leave a comment.

⅛ - One Eighth (Video)

Travel with me along the roads of the English midlands.


(Watch on Google Video)

I had originally sent this video to YouTube, but I was very disappointed with the quality, so I'm using Google Video instead. (I guess its all the same company now.)

The music is Infatuation by regular commenter, Gamma Goblin. (Cheers!)

The acknowledgements at the end are mostly YouTube user names. (messabout1, smithysrat, samsarajade and SeeVeeBee.) The Thai Garden is a restaurant.

Hope you enjoyed watching!

Cooking a beef casserole (Video)

I'm on fire today!



No really, I'm on fire. Someone grab a fire extinguisher!

Feeding Time! (Video)

Hurrah! I've finally worked out how to edit Quicktime video files. Enjoy.



Here's the link to the original request for a name. If you want to suggest a new name, leave a comment either here or on this video's YouTube page.

Review - Olympus micro-mini digital camera

For my recent plunge into the world of amateur video production, I had to buy a new camera. My old digital camera was very good for stills, but the video function only recorded silent videos, as it has no microphone.

This was recorded using my new Olympus μ-mini digital camera. (5 megapixels.) I planned to transfer the recorded file directly into YouTube, but this clip, at a little over five minutes, went over YouTube's 100MB limit. As such, I had to get a friend to compress the video down a bit.

Here's my review. More notes below. Even if you don't care about the camera, you can look at the nice scenery from a nice walk along the Grand Union canal.



I forgot to mention in my commentary (totally unscripted) that it has a strange battery - there no way I could use standard battaries like AAs. It did come with a charger, but if the battery ran out, I'd have to go home and recharge, unless I had a spare. The trade off is that this camera is tiny, but I think I'd rather have the regular batteries.

As promised, I've taken some still pics and a video sample. These files all came directly off the camera and put onto the web server, without any editing or touching up.

A short video clip. (1.5 MB)
A still picture, taken at the same time I did "7 miles from Ludlow".
Some sheep.
Some ducks at twilight. (The flash did go off.)

Enjoy.

I Feel Pretty (Video)

Situation: Someone asks you to film yourself putting some makeup on.
Problem: You want to help, but you have no make-up.
Solution: Think like an engineer.


This is either engineer-thinking or stupid-thinking. What do you think?

Two short vids.

I have an artistic soul...

Indulging my inner cat
The Stroll

Enjoy.

7 miles from Ludlow (Video)

I've finally done it. I've got myself a camera that can do video. Here's a windy day near the Welsh border. Enjoy.

7 miles from Ludlow by Bill P. Godfrey

Update: In the few hours since I posted this video, I've been honoured three times!

Yay!