My design for the Miro 1-click competition placed third, thanks to everyone who voted for me!

There was an article in the Juneau Empire about a teenager who paid cash for an airline ticket and took off without her parent’s permission or showing any form of identification.

Why can teenagers fly without ID? I thought we had to show ID because we were scared of terrorists and criminals but it doesn’t seem like a 29 year old presents any more danger than a 17 year old. This isn’t a new rule. How many people have been flying without ID? Have they done any damage or caused any problems?

It seems like parental permission is a good idea for kids under 18 but I’m still not convinced that ID is necessary. If people who appear to be between the ages of 13 and 17 are jetting around without ID, why make the rest of us go through the hassle?

They’ll probably close this up soon but it’s the perfect loophole for a modern day Frank Abignale Jr. to exploit.

UPDATE – Apparently there is no rule requiring people to show ID on airplanes and you can travel without one if you submit to a secondary screening. For more information about the government demanding to see our papers, check out John Gilmore’s identity project.

Here’s the Juneau Empire article:

• Teenager buys one-way ticket to a nightmare
  Loophole allows youth to fly without parents’ permission

I created a couple of little buttons for the Miro 1-Click Design Contest so bounce on over to their site and vote for the best me!

• Design Contest: Judgement Day(s)

Labor Day is rolling in fast and I’m starting to get that nervous, excited feeling about our little Bumbershoot adventure. I created a couple new shirt designs and hopefully they’ll do well in Seattle.

The turtle design was inspired by a visit I took to the Monterey Bay Aquarium a few years back. I’m pretty sure that sea turtles can fly and just choose to do so underwater.

The fire hydrant design is a natural extension of my shuttered fire hydrant obsession. I think they look like little armored men standing around on street corners, sentries posted to observe and report on the human condition. They’re everywhere and when you really start to look for them it feels a bit like you’re being followed.

I feel like the process of vectorizing my sketches in Illustrator sort of has a dehumanizing effect. It smooths out some of my signature imperfections and I can’t quite feel the same magic that’s in my blobbly little sketches. It’s like running something from a typewriter through an optical character recognition program, the letters are all the same but the feel of the printed page is more sterile. I probably just need to get better at using the program so I can preserve what I like and draw out even more.

I’m a big fan of Pat Smith’s short animated film “Handshake” and was pleased to see that he posted a high quality version of it on his site today. He also uploaded “Drink” which I hadn’t seen before but really enjoyed watching.

His goopy style of animation looks like a thick, melting marshmallow as his characters sluff around the screen. Check out his work at Blend Films.

If you’re interested in publishing video to the internet I strongly recommend visiting makeinternettv.org, the site is packed full of useful information for first time and more advanced users. It was a resource I referred to several times in my work on the Alaska Robotics site and still visit when thinking about how best to present our work.

The site walks you through equipment selection, shooting, editing, obtaining licenses, publishing, and promoting your work. There’s even a distilled version for people feeling a little overwhelmed.

The journey is even-handed, comprehensive, and sprinkled with objective commentary. The site is produced by the Participatory Culture Foundation, the same group behind Miro, and while they make a strong case for their own player and feed based video in general, it’s clear that they’ve gone out of their way to provide all the information you need to make an educated decision of your own.

I also recommend reading Nicholas Reville’s essay on the future of video.

The Alaska Robotics Film Library was featured on Miro today and our feed subscriptions have already jumped a bit. I really have no concept of how many people are using the Miro player but I really like the idea of feed based channels and I hope Mefeedia, Fireant, Miro and others are successful in moving the herd that direction.

What will help is if someone develops an easy system to create and upload videos for a feed. Right now it’s a complicated process that involves quite a bit of technical expertise and time, probably one of the reasons so many people use YouTube instead of self publishing.

Technorati has been fascinating me lately. The site tracks bloggers and other producers of independent content so that it can provide a live overview of the internet. I’ve been using the site to get feedback and learn what people are saying about our films and comics.

By typing akrobotics.com into their search I can see who has links to our content and often dig up some interesting posts about our films and comics.

Technorati Profile