July, 2009
It takes no rocket scientist to see my videos have copyrighted content. However I make sure I tell people who the artist etc is and had started to include a website link later on. I think that was sufficient to YouTube standards a year ago when I had a partnership believe it or not (I was genuinely shocked); a channel with 100% copyrighted material became a partner? The only other channel I know of that has done that is FailBlog and it is a miracle that they can post so many illegal videos and post ads!
Anyway, slowly Youtube has been enforcing their anti-copyright measures. My Chad Reed: First Race with Suzuki video actually got rejected but I reuploaded it with a voice clip of Chad which bypassed their system (this method doesn’t work now). From there on I knew I wouldn’t be lasting too long since the big music corporations target Youtube (ignoring most other large video sharing sites which host the same content) to take money from, advertise and control.
Most of my videos, well at least half by now are only allowed to be shown in certain countries. This was probably the worst thing that could have happened. My viewership dropped by half. Literally in 2 weeks it was half of what it was and I couldn’t really do anything about that. Everytime I upload a new video it doesn’t get the attention it used to get either.
Just in the last week, for the first time ever one of my videos got deleted. It was the Travis Pastrana at X Games Best Trick (2005) which had over 200k views. The claim was made by ESPN which owns the X Games but I don’t understand why they delete videos with high amounts of views but leave the 40-100 other versions there. I also have about 5-10 other X Games videos which have less views but no doubt will be deleted.
According to YouTube “repeat offenders will have their accounts terminated.” It’s a pretty harsh policy but I guess they want to keep out of trouble seeing as Google apparently makes no money from it (makes you wonder why they bother). So from what I can gather from that is, my channel, KICKERMAN360 won’t be around for much longer. I probably won’t make many more videos or re-upload any that get deleted or aren’t shown in some countries. It just isn’t worth my time or bandwidth seeing as I am on a limited bandwidth broadband plan to do so.
Also, editing videos isn’t as fun as it used to be. I used to always learn something new in each video. You can probably tell after watching some in order of release. Now days it is just plain boring to me. I’m not saying I am an expert; because I’m not, but the hours of time to make a video is something I’d rather spend doing something else.
Maybe if I had more incentive to make videos I’d get back into it but as of now even though people are still subscribing which is awesome, I reached over 3000 the other week, I’m either too busy or not interested in making any more videos. Perhaps later I’ll get back into it.
On a more positive note, hopefully I can upload all my videos to this website. I have been meaning to do that for ages, just never really been focused. So for all you fans, maybe you guys can take over!
Note: I didn’t take any pictures or video anything because I thought I would fail.
Well just last week my mum’s (yes, I am Australian so we spell it “mum” not “mom”) monitor started acting funny. Her entire computer is a mixed bag of brands and the monitor just happened to be an Acer, as the computer prior to that was an Acer but as expected it died after 2 years. I was ammused when I found out the actual LCD was made by LG/Phillips and the power supply board was made by TDK so I thought maybe I could fix it.
The symptoms were the monitor turns off after roughly one second. After about 5 minutes of Googling and forum stalking I was sure it was the power supply and a capactior was the issue. I took it apart and in my case, the power supply board and the board for the display adapter (excuse my lack of terminology) were two separate boards which made it a little easier. I ripped apart the monitor.
I had to wait 7 days however until I had enough time to run down to Jaycar and get some capactiors. I thought I’d take the board with me and show the person and to make sure I wouldn’t forget the rating of the capacitors I needed. The guy was rather helpful and set me up with 4 capacitors, a soldering iron and some solder. He suggested I replace all 4 of them, although he said 1 of them looked alright.
Now this was my first time using a soldering iron and it was quite the experience. I had an old motherboard (the one from that Acer computer I mentioned earlier) and decided to do some practise on that before I try it for real. After about 20 seconds I went straight into the deep end. I started trying to melt the old solder; a process that took longer than expected but I eventually got there.
I am pretty sure the existing solder had a layer of some metal hence why it took a while nevertheless I eventually got the first capactior out. I initially took care with the capactiors (the old ones that is) but I was doing this ghetto style and I didn’t have a vice on my desk so I just ripped them out after weakening the solder.
I almost gave it away though, I accidentally let my soldering iron touch the power cable of the same device… lets just say I was lucky and I was very cautious from there on. I replaced the capacitors, taking note of the correct polarity and soldered them in. I must say my soldering work was quite good for being self taught, and doing it for the first time. Moving forward I thought i would test it after replacing on capacitor. There was an improvement: The monitor stays on for more than one second but flickers so another capacitor is the issue.
I tested it after 2 more replacements and it was alright however there was a slight noise, a high pitched ringing noise. I thought why not replace the last one, surely the new ones would have no issues. To my surprise the last capactior was fine, one of the new ones wasn’t yet the monitor worked. I was really happy at this point.
I basically replaced 4 blown capactiors and it worked! It only cost $25 for the equipment I used. I bought a Soldering Iron ($15) and 4 capactiors (25V, 470 micro farad) and solder which totaled another ten dollars. I also used some pliers to pull the capactiors out and the screw driver inbuilt into it (it was one of those multi-swiss-army-knife-wannabe tools).
However if you are doing this I would suggest to you this: Get a vice, get a work place with heaps of space and wear safety glasses. I sort of walked into the dark and got kind of lost with this one but it is very satisfying to fix something as complicated as an LCD screen. It only took 3 hours or so as well but I had something to eat during that time.
P.S. Also make sure your capacitors discharge, I waited for the LED to go out.
Transformers 2 Poster
I’m sure everybody has seen it, and right off the bat I’m gonna say it was average. These following words will sum up the whole movie: Big explosions, Panning shots of large areas and slow motion. The plot was nothing short of a failure in my opinion. Even after watching the first movie days prior I had no idea what was happening when the movie began. The prior movie didn’t even give a lead on to a sequel yet explain further plot elements.
Through out the whole movie I was trying to figure not what would happen next (that is pretty obvious) but who was fighting who. When the machines tackle each other it becomes nothing short of a mess. I also never knew Autobots could fuse together and Decepticon could turn good; I’m sure they could have come up with another, more interesting way to figure out what the symbols meant.
The movie takes a stab at some humour but I hardly laughed because of the jokes, instead laughing at the stupidity of the film. Michael Bay’s films are nothing more than what was described before; explosions, slow mo and huge panning shots. Transformers has been transformed into something else than what I and every one else thought it was.
Here a few things I couldn’t understand:
- Why is there so much damage to cities yet people seem to fall for a cover up
- With today’s technology if a robot walked down the street it would be all over the web in 10 minutes
- How come the old Decepticon/Autobot could travel to Egypt instantly yet everyone else just drives or flies
- Since when could Decepticons be humans and how come there is only one?
Those are just a few of my questions. It may just be that I haven’t read enough comics – I will admit I’m not a total Transformers fan but I will see the film nevertheless. In my opinion I give it a 6/10. Hardly worth any praise. The story was probably picked from a school writing contest.
The best parts to the film were of Reggie Simmons, some of the things he said as well as the actions had me laughing despite the illogical nonsense going on. He was the former CIA agent of Sector 7.