The Sandpit

June 9th, 2010  |  Published in Design  |  Comment

In the spirit of my Small Worlds post, here’s a short by Sam O’Hare entitled, The Sandpit.

“A day in the life of New York City, in miniature. ”

Do note that for the best effect, you should see this piece in HD and full screen.

PS. If you are interested for a description of the shoot, camera, lenses and workflow, go here.

Fix Full Screen Issues by Video Embedder WordPress Plugin

June 9th, 2010  |  Published in Development  |  Comment

If you are having problems trying to display an embedded video(s) in your posts like me, then this might help you out. I usually embed videos from Hulu, Vimeo and YouTube mostly. But it’s been a problem trying to have the latter 2 display in fullscreen mode.

For Vimeo, the fullscreen icon/grpahic displays on the overlay of the video. But pressing on it, just pauses the video and nothing else. For YouTube, there was no fullscreen icon/graphic in the first place. I think that might have been caused by some code changes on YouTube’s end.

Meanwhile, it seems that the author of Video Embedder, Kristoffer Forsgren, hasn’t been able to update the plugin since 2009. So for those like me who still finds good use for the plugin, it was a let down not finding any new comments/updates since August of 2009.

Anyways, I proceeded to just snoop around and edit part of the code in the file video-embedder.php (in the plugin’s directory under wp-content/plugins/). Be sure to backup as usual before editing/updating code. To fix the Vimeo issue (and probably others too), find the function buildEmbed() block and apply the following updates (around line 600):

function buildEmbed($code)
{
    $options = get_option(videoembedder_options);
    $width = $options["video_width"];
    $height = $options["video_height"];
    $object = '';
    if(is_feed()) {
        $object  = '<object width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'">';
        $object .= '<param name="movie" value="'.$code.'"></param>';
        $object .= '<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />';
        $object .= '<param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param>';
        $object .= '<embed src="'.$code.'" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'"></embed>';
        $object .= '</object>';
    } else {
        $object  = '<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="'.$width.'" height="'.$height.'" data="'.$code.'">';
        $object .= '<param name="movie" value="'.$code.'" />';
        $object .= '<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />';
        $object .= '<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />';
        $object .= '<param name="quality" value="high" />';
        $object .= '</object>';
    }
    return $object;
}

To fix the YouTube issue, find the section commented “// Youtube” in the function videoembedder_embed() block. Then, just add the following highlighted snippet (around line 300):

$new = buildEmbed("http://www.youtube.com/v/".$video."&amp;rel=0&amp;fs=1")

I hope that helps. Hopefully, there’s an official update; or if you have found another plugin that is new and well-received by the WordPress community that does what Video Embedder do or better, please do let us know by posting a comment.

Update
I might as well add the following update to this post. If you would like to have the ability for your YouTube embedded videos to play at a higher quality and/or HD, just add the following snippet:

$new = buildEmbed("http://www.youtube.com/v/".$video."&amp;rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%2526fmt%3D18")

Eyjafjallajökull Time Lapse

June 9th, 2010  |  Published in Design  |  Comment

Awesome time-lapse of Eyjafjallajökull eruption this past May by Sean Stiegemeier.

Toyota iQ “Nimble As A Mouse” Campaign

June 7th, 2010  |  Published in Technology  |  Comment

Cool campaign by Toyota iQ.

“To demonstrate the agility of the compact Toyota iQ, the car was turned into a mouse. This meant it was able move a cursor on a giant screen and operate a desktop computer.

Before a live audience the Toyota iQ did all the things a normal mouse does, just on a much larger scale.”

Here is the video.

Check out the behind-the-scenes.

Source via @Zack Onisko

Inspiration – Bryan Gaynor

June 5th, 2010  |  Published in TV  |  Comment

Aka. Chibi / Chibotics

Don’t know if you watch So You Think You Can Dance (SYTCD) or not, but it doesn’t matter. Here’s an inspiration for you to ingrain:

Chibi’s SYTCD 2010 Audition (Season 7, Episode 3)

PS. Here’s his first audition in SYTCD 2007 (Season 3).

Update
It seems that Dick Clark Productions have been purging YouTube of the scenes. There should be some on the net still if the updated one above no longer works. Click here to do a search for “chibi sytycd season 7” as a start. Hope that helps.

12345…Last »