~C4Chaos

~iBlues: Tap Water

Here's a video I recorded last night via my Macbook Pro. It's my first guitar tapping composition. I wrote it one quiet evening when I was still living Boulder, CO. It's still in the works, but check it out and let me know what you think. I'm still working on dexterity and accuracy :)

I love guitar tapping because I get to play rhythm and lead at the same time. Guitar tappers are a different breed of players. They make acoustic guitar playing kick ass!

To prove my point, check out this video of Kaki King. Now that woman rocks!

~Omni-Peephole: Follow Your Bliss

"If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time."

Joseph Campbell   

   

Source: Power Of Myth : Programs 1-6 (Power of Myth) , Page: 113

I just love watching all the Joseph Campbell videos on YouTube. Here are some more video segments from the The Power of Myth. They're all about God, life, death, sex, marriage, love, nonduality, impermanence, and following our bliss: Bliss 01, Bliss 02, Bliss 03.

Here's the video for Bliss 03.

May you all find your blissful rabbit holes!

~C (for Campbell still rocks!)

~Omni-Peephole: Joseph Campbell On Love, The Holy Grail, and God

"Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked."

Joseph Campbell  

 

Source: The Power of Myth, Page: 120

Speaking of the four Ls, by some weird serendipity I happen to bump into this classic Joseph Campbell interview. It's a video segment of The Power of Myth. In this video Joseph Campbell talked about Love, the Holy Grail, and God. It's a cool hyper-overview of Campbell's massive knowledge of mythology. Campbell's beer-goggles is a perfect example of DEPTH and SPAN. This video a must-see.

I {heart} you all!

~C (for Campbell rocks!)

~Omni-Peephole: Zaadz Sexy Revolution @ HOT TV Episode 4

(via zPod:ZaadzACTion - Sexy Revolution)

Check out this cool video. Watch those familiar Zexy Zaadzsters and guess who they are.

~Omni-Peephole: How to Roast a Starship Captain

Here's a treat to all you Trekkies and closeted-Trekkies. Check out these people roasting the legendary William Shatner, arguably the best Starship Captian ever. Nah, my all-time favorite is Jean Luc Picard.

But anyway, here's one of the funniest videos. Warning: These videos are not for squirmish politically-correct people who don't have a sense of humor. Some jokes are just brutal :)

More Shatner Roast videos here. And don't forget to watch how Shatner fights back! Live long and prosper! Make it so!

~Omni-Peephole: How to Stage a 2nd-Tier Protest

Check out this YouTube video of Ken Wilber explaining how to stage a second-tier protest. For those who don't understand the color references that the bald dude is talking about, check out Spiral Dynamics.

In short, with all the hand gestures and hifalutin jargons, KDub just wanted to say that we should try to meet people where they're at :)

For more colors and stuff, check out Holons: News from the Integral World.

~Omni-Peephole: Paris in Tokyo

Eat your heart out Madonna! Paris Hilton is in the house!

Can't wait 'till we have a Ken Wilber @ YouTube channel. WOOT! XXooxxOOXXXXXOOOO....

~Omni-Peephole: Ashoka's Bill Drayton Speaks at Google

"As community grows, change accelerates."

Continuing with my Social Enterprise theme... Check out this hour-long video of Ashoka's Founder Bill Drayton speaking at Google. Learn stories of people who went out there and change the existing status quo for the better.

Video blurb: "Bill Drayton, Chairman and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public and lifelong entrepreneur, helped build the field of social entrepreneurship 25 years ago and remains committed to shaping a dynamic, global citizen sector. He was recently selected as one of America's Best Leaders by US News & World Report and Harvard's Center for Public Leadership."

Being the change is one thing, changing the world is another. Let's do them at the same time and see what gives :)

~Omni-Peephole: Ashoka's Social Entrepreneurship Series

Check out this video overview of Ashoka's Social Entrepreneurship Series as narrated by Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka -- a global nonprofit organization that identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs. This video preview is a cool "introduction to remarkable leaders who offer practical wisdom garnered from lifetimes of innovation."

~iBlues:vlog: bluesy slowly in the key of B

NOTE: This is my first YouTube video as a YouTube DIRECTOR. w00t! Recorded using iSight on a MacBook PRO.

Taking it reallllyyyyy bluesy sloooowly this time.

~iBlues: vlog: ripping it in the key of E (reloaded)

crappy webcam + chair from Office Depot + axe-c:ebony + too much coffee
= ripping it in the key of E (reloaded)

~C (for Coffee Junkie)

~iBlues: vlog: ode to the blues

webcam + masking tape + low vibrating squeaky strings + classical tune + blues riffs = ode to the blues

~C (for Classical music)

~iBlues: vlog: Nacho Imposible

whipped up this bluesy composition in my boxer shorts. inspired by the movies "Mission: Impossible 3" and "Nacho Libre."

~C (for Cool movies)

~iBlues: vlog: slow bluesy B

still can't sleep. damn Vodka Red Bull! maybe this slow down blues will get me to deep dreamless sleep...

~C (for Can't sleep)

~iBlues: vlog: crappy rhythm

can't sleep. probably because of the Vodka Red Bull. so here i am doing this crappy rhythm thing...

~C (for Crappy rhythm)

~iBlues: vlog: kick ass and be still in the key of A

man, i just love playing the blues. it's one of the simplest music genres yet you can do so much with it. to illustrate my point i recorded this simple composition. as you can see, im only playing it in one pentatonic scale position: key of A. it's all in the rhythm and spontaneous flowing improvisations. for lack of a better title, i'll simply call this composition, "Kick Ass and Be Still."

note: pardon the crappy webcam (and guitar playing, still learning) -- the built-in microphone sucks and the frame rate is too slow to catch up ;)

~C (for Calluses from playing the blues)

Red ~C Diary: Let the Chaos Begin!

Ok that’s it. I’m now hooked on online videos. Not having a TV is actually a bane since I’ve got no choice but to watch stuff online. But of course, the advantage of watching online videos is that I have 100% control on what I would like to watch. It’s interactive too. And now that online video services, like YouTube.com and Google Video, are all the rage, gone are the days that you sit in front of an idiot box forced to watch stupid brainwashing commercials; gone are the days where only people in the broadcasting business have the right and power to broadcast. Thanks to Architecture of Participation of Web 2.0 and the collective denizens of cyberspace, broadcasting is now a two-way stream.

However, like other technology, the ubiquity of online videos has some potential disadvantages (e.g. increase in shortened attention span, video addiction, rampant pornography, etc…), but still, the advantages outweigh the cons. As The Wired Guide to the Online Video Explosion has eloquently said, "Some people look at the sheer amount of material and see a mess. But we see, amid the flood of content and competing delivery services, a new medium emerging, one with fewer gatekeepers, more producers, and somewhere – something for everyone. And that’s the point: the mess is the message."

The mess is the message. Exactly! This is the wisdom of crowds at its best!

As for me, one of the obvious advantages of online videos is access to stuff that interests me, thus speeding up my learning process, in hyperspeed. Allow me to illustrate by examples using YouTube.com.

When I’m not watching crazy people lip-synching to My Humps, snorting wasabi, non-nude lap dancing in front of a giant teddy bear (lucky bastard bear), or making an ass of themselves, I watch guitar videos so I can learn different playing styles from my guitar gods and even from unknown people who just love showing off their guitar skills. Check out these videos and you’ll understand what I mean:

Joe Satriani guitar tapping the uber-cool tune Midnight
– Man! Joe Satriani really is a god!

Kaki King guitar tapping Pink Noise
– Damn! I’m her new biggest fan. Sorry Jewel, you too Bonnie Raitt. Kaki King is now the hottest female guitar player in my book! Drooool!

And of course, here’s my uber-guitar idol:

Stevie Ray Vaughan ripping it Crossfire style!
– I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!

See my point now? Those are just some of the videos that inspire me to no end. In fact, I decided to make an ass of myself too and broadcast my crap so I can keep track of my progress while showing off. Too bad I only have a webcam with a crappy microphone but this will do for now. Here’s my YouTube.com URL:

http://www.youtube.com/user/c4chaos

I’ll use it to video blog (vlog) my practice sessions and times of spontaneous luminous (and not-so luminous) inspirations. So, pardon my guitar-playing imperfections, coz whether you like it or not, I say, let the Chaos begin!

~C (for Chaos has just begun)

~iBlues: vlog: ripping it in the key of E

my first youtube showoff video! woot! sorry about the webcam. frame rate too slow to keep up ;)

~C (for Calluses from playing the blues)

YouTube: 3 Feet Away Riff

Every day people send in 20,000 new videoclips to YouTube.com, which shares them with millions of Web viewers. Fifteen million plays a day--and counting. - Forbes Magazine

YouTube.com is getting bigger by the day. Too bad I don't have any good original videos to share. I only have a webcam. Maybe someday. So here's a rehashed video I recorded long ago. I had to put some junk out there to get the feel of it. YouTube is easy to use. But for now I don't think I'm gonna use it that much. I didn't give up TV just to replace it with another idiot box. I'm camera shy too.

Stickam: My First Impressions

Stickam launches today 02.15.2006. A multi-dimensional communication tool that does it all: photos, audios, videos, go live. As the name implies, you can stick 'em on your blogs or websites. The default player looks like sticking an iPod Nano with webcam and video on your blog -- a cool way to pimp yo' rabbit hole. I like it a lot better than Multiply.com. The usability of the site could still use a lot of improvements. Not very intuitive, or Web 2.0-ish. But still it's functional enough to do its job. I was able to upload my stuff without much hassle. Stickam is very generous too when it comes to space: 500MB of fun for all your photos, videos, and audios, for FREE.

I enjoyed playing with it. There are lots of things I like about the service. First, it is Flash-based. All my videos were converted accordingly so users don't have to worry about video driver compatibility and all that crap. You just need Flash. Second, all your contents can each be "embedded" to your blog posts or other social networking profiles (e.g. Friendster). Just cut and paste the "embed" code and you're set. Finally, although I still haven't tried this functionality yet, the Go Live feature will be a hit with the young and exhibitionist crowd. Visit the Stickam blog for the latest updates.

Check out my Stickam profile, or just play around with the icons on the player embedded on this post. Pardon the contents. I had to put something.

So will Stickam jumpstart the evolution of blogs? The service looks promising. But who knows? For now I'm just gonna play with it and take it as far as she goes.

Bluesy Sunday Night

@ insomniac blues
Originally uploaded by coolmel.

It's Sunday night. I'm bored. So what else to do but to noodle around with one of my favorite swingy bluesy riffs. There. Now I can plunge into deep dreamless sleep.

note: unfortunately, the video requires a codec used by my webcam so you won't be able to see it without downloading (and paying) for the codec. rats! but you can still listen to it. just do a "cancel" on the pop up window.

Tap, Tap, Tap

So I downloaded Stu's live version (from Ken's loft) of Nothing In Between. It's my top 1 on the Stu faves. I just love the guitar tapping, the lyrics, and the melody. Listening to Stu this morning transported me back in a bar in Chicago where I first saw Stu perform live. I haven't heard any of his songs at that time. Just read about him in One Taste. Then when I heard him tap his axe, man, I swear I had goosebumps. Van Halen may have started it all but when it comes to acoustic guitar tapping, Stu's my man. And he freakin' sings while he does it. Let's see Eddie V. do that!

So here I am trying to cop out what I can with whatever little talent I have. It's my first "guitar tap" composition. For lack of a better title, I call it Tap Water. Still a work in progress. I will post the whole thing once I'm done.

Broken Dreams

broken dreams
Originally uploaded by coolmel.

My shadows the only one that walks beside me
My shallow hearts the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Till then I'll walk alone
- Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day

I've been a Green Day fan since Dookie. American Idiot shows the band's maturity. So here I am covering my favorite track. My apologies to Billy Joe Armstrong and their fans. I had a glass of beer.

Slow Riffs in the Key of C

slow riffs in C
Originally uploaded by coolmel.

I play slow riffs when I just want to relax and think about nothing.

[Note: Videos are via Comcast Video Mail. Windows Media Player only. Drats!]

3 Feet Away Riff

3ft away riff
Originally uploaded by coolmel.

It's another wet day here in the Emerald City. Too lazy to get out of my crib. So I picked up my lovely Ebony and my crappy webcam to have another vlog jam. This riff is from my very own 3 Feet Away. Now I must get some sun....

[Note: Videos are via Comcast Video Mail. Windows Media Player only. Drats!]

Tap Water, Riff A101

Set up my cheap webcam and recorded a couple of 45-second video blogs via Comcast Video Mail (with my lovely Ebony). Both are samples from my compositions. The first one I call Tap Water, using very basic guitar tapping I picked up from Stu (the Eddie Van Halen of acoustic guitar). The second is a blues rhythm which is still incomplete and untitled, so for now I'm naming it Riff A101. Pump up the volume and lend me your ears kimosabes.

Tap Water

Riff A101

[Note: Videos are via Comcast Video Mail. Windows Media Player only. Drats!]

Voodoo 9

Spent the latter part of the afternoon with my Ebony hangin' out by the lake at downtown Kirkland. I've met a couple of dudes who play kick-ass guitar. The other guy borrowed my baby and made her cry like an orgasmic banshee. Damn you dude! Those stings are brand new!

Yeah! That dude rocks! He plays excellent blues but he told me he's into metal and enjoys wielding this axe. He mentioned he used to be in a band called Voodoo 9. Catchy name, but I can't Google the damn thing.

Anyway, at least I picked up a couple licks and riffs from him. It's always good to learn new stuff.... Oh, shit. Got to go. I'm almost late for the movie.

Ebony Cam

It's laundry night again. This calls for another vlog. This time my axe of choice is Ebony with her new set of strings.

I ripped off this rhythm from one of my all time favorite songs. I hope this dude doesn't mind.

Turiya Cam

Got bored while waiting for my laundry. Got no TV, too tired to read, and I'm sick of surfing the net. So what the heck, it's time for another video blog!

I've always wanted to mount a camera on the head of my Turiya. My webcam may be crappy but it's handy enough to get the job done. So here you go, my second vlog. Pump up the audio juice, kimosabes!

Vlogging 101

I've never own a webcam. But since vlogging is catching up I might as well jump in the vlogwagon. So I went to CompUsa and bought the cheapest webcam. Well, as they say, you get what you pay for, but this will do for now. The reason I bought a webcam is, although I can take videos with my uber-super-awesome CanonS50, I have nowhere to host the megabytes of videos I record. Lucky for me Comcast has a new feature called Video Mail wherein broadband subscribers can send video emails for free. But I needed a webcam, hence, the new dirt-cheapo webcam. But don't freak out, I have no intention of recording my ugly mug and posting it all over the Net (i'm not this attractive). I intend to use the webcam to do my own version of vlogging. It will be limited and the resolution will suck, but I'll try to be creative and work within and beyond the limitation.

So here you go. My very first vlog, with Turiya unplugged (pump up the volume homeys! sorry Windows Media format only).

ADDENDUM: Damnit! Comcast Video Mails are only available for viewing for 30 days. Impermanence sucks! And there's the rub. As one pioneer vlogger had said, "Bandwidth is the enemy, but the enemy will be vanquished." I think he's right. In the meantime, I've gotta find some real hosting....

Vlogging the Global Village

Speaking of vlogging, I took some videos of birds while hangin' out at Lake Washington. I thought of posting the video, but drats, it's 14MB and I don't have enough space (and bandwidth) anywhere to post it. So until I can figure out where and how to host my own video blogs, I'll just point to some other cool videos. And what better place to point to than the Internet Archive.

It wasn't quite the World Wide Web yet, but everybody started hearing about this thing called "the Internet" in 1993. It was being called the Information Superhighway then. This program looks at the earliest stages of the Internet including Aladdin Systems SITComm, a Macintosh communications program for Internet access, and the WELL (Whole Earth Lectronic Link), an early online community.

Check out the video, and those groovy commercials ("don't copy that floppy!"). Remember, it's only a little more than 10 years ago. Gopher? Finger? Thank goodness we now have Google. But this too shall pass.

It's Not Blogging, It's Vlogging

In its most basic form, vlogging does not require very hi-tech equipment: a digital video camera, a high-speed connection and a host are all that is needed. It is still not an easy pursuit, but the gradual simplification of the technology is bringing an increasing number of people into vlogging - and politicising it.

Damn. Now I'm thinking of film school. Must, have, bandwidth, and dough.