Latest Blog Entries at VideoSift.com

StumbleUpon is good to VideoSift

dag (http://dag.videosift.com) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:31:05 -0700

(2 comments - 60 views)
VideoSift received Over 100K visits from Stumblers over the past month. Many of them to this post.

And from our stats it appears that Stumblers are the types to hang around and become members as well.

I have used StumbleUpon sparingly. I have the toolbar installed but to be honest I have to be pretty bored to want to hit a completely random site on a press of the button. But when I do use it I find that the pages it brings me to do pique my interest.

We used to have a row of those little "submit to" icons for Delicious, Digg etc - but they just took up room and StumbleUpon is now the only social site icon we use. ;-)

- dag

Interventionism and Democracy

Farhad2000 (http://farhad.videosift.com) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:25:31 -0700

(5 comments - 58 views)

I vividly remember the First Persian Gulf war, mostly because it was the first war which was widely followed and televised by a then still relatively new cable news company called CNN, they focused on the sheer military spectacle of showing Tomahawk missile launches, stealth bombers, tanks and grainy TV missile strikes in Iraq. At the time I thought it was good thing to do, to attack nation and punish it for it's despotic actions against its own people. Youthful, idealistic and very naive I believed strongly in interventionism.

I also believed very strongly in the ideals behind the formation of the UN.

Over the years my understanding of geopolitics and military policy grew, through understanding of Soviet advances into Afghanistan, the 2nd world war and numerous other conflicts. I saw that most military actions are not carried out for ideals of freedom or overthrowing despotic rulers.

But I still believed in interventionism as a way to 'free' a nation from a tyrannically ruler, reinforced by seeing such a person take power within my own nation in Central Asia and countries around Central Africa where I lived at the time.

Seeing wars sprout out while the international world set on it's hands and watched made me angry, I wondered why military intervention doesn't take place in places like Somalia and Rwanda. Somalia was eventually addressed haphazardly as a humanitarian AID mission first, a military operation a far distant second, with limited ROE and slim political support from the Clinton Whitehouse and International world. It underestimated the Somalian people and paid for it in American lives, with some of it's own troops dragged through the streets. Post Somalia there was no space for intervention in Rwanda, the US kept away, European powers sent limited forces. All in all the Rwanda people entered a ethnic civil war of barbaric proportions. The UN set on its hands because no one wanted to get involved in what they regarded as a insignificant nation with internal problems. It was disheartening.

Then 9/11 occurred, I knew the US government would most definitely cease its containment of terrorism policy in Afghanistan and take a far keener interest in Central Asia as a whole.

I supported the war in Afghanistan, I felt that the SF approach of letting the Northern Alliance lead the way with US over watch and NATO support was indicative of how military intervention should be carried out. I knew it wouldn't work totally because a nation that has been at war with itself for close to 30 years takes decades to recover, political intervention by other Central Asian nations and proxy Cold war conflicts saw to that. But I still have hope.

The Iraq war was a far difficult proposition, unilateral intervention, lack of concrete allies, superceding UN policy; all this after leaving after 1991, with no support for the rebel movement that Bush Senior himself urged to "Rise up against Saddam". While I supported righting the wrong, I also thought it was pure suicide at the same time akin to dumping a girlfriend to her abusive father and then coming back years later to resuce her again.

I knew the reasons behind going to Iraq were wrong, but if the case was built properly with international support it would be far easier to support what basically is an invasion of a soverign nation. We all know how it was played and what the consequences have become.

We have seen over the last year and a half abuses and uprisings in Burma, Tibet, Darfur and Georgia. The whole wordl is again sititing on its hands, the UN is quickly becoming as insignificant as the League of Nations before it. The Security Council is a hotly played Poker face game between super powers with totally different agendas and viewpoints.

With the actions in Iraq and now Georgia the policy of interventionism is completely shelved for a long time. I don't think this is completely good idea. The US was wrong in going at it alone under compeltely dubious and false reasons, but it gave Russia the impetus to essentially do the same in Southern Assetia. The US cannot even criticize the Russian actions because it would bring up the reasons for going into Iraq, a dialog the government as a whole wants to avoid taking place in main stream media.

I still believe that balanced, planned, multilateral peace keeping force can be a force for democractic change in nations where there is conflict. I hope that multilateral peace kepping force gone emerge under a more focused and concrete UN structure.

- Farhad2000

H2 - 3.05

NicoleBee (http://nicolebee.videosift.com) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:51:31 -0700

(5 comments - 70 views)

Gee I guess this is more than head practice now! A video and a rough test pose, and then probably no more progress on this one until/unless I kludge out some more progress to its finalish point.. The old blog entry becomes a general practice sketchpad...

- NicoleBee

I Hope My Obituary Goes a Little Better Than This

lucky760 (http://lucky760.videosift.com) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:39:58 -0700

(5 comments - 216 views)
This is from the Vallejo Times Herald:

Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on August 7, 2008. ....

Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.

Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again.

There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM.

Wow.

- lucky760

GraphJam rocks

winkler1 (http://engineering.videosift.com/member/winkler1) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:32:30 -0700

(1 comment - 108 views)

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- winkler1

Goodbye, cruel sift.

MarineGunrock (http://gunrock.videosift.com) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:14:13 -0700

(9 comments - 278 views)
I've already completed three quarters of my cross country trip. It ends tomorrow, where I probably won't have internet access immediately.

Don't have too much fun without me.

- MarineGunrock

Windows Themes

karkarlee (http://engineering.videosift.com/member/karkarlee) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:10:27 -0700

(8 comments - 196 views)

I ~~downloaded~~.. uh.. 'got' Windows Blinds the other day so I could try out one windows theme I saw a while back. I'm using it now and it's pretty damn nice, and I swear the computer is running faster. Preview here: http://www.skinbase.org/zoom.php?id=32193

It looks awesome ( it's not green, it's black/transparent ), runs well, and is pretty thorough in changes. One of the coolest themes I've seen. It got me thinkin - do any of you guys ( and gals ) use any theme(s)? Share please.

Also, while I'm on the topic of computers, what programs could you not go without? For me: FF3, gtalk, skype, spybotS&D, AVG, winamp, some version of notepad, veohTV beta, taskbar shuffler, and winRAR.

- karkarlee

Sift Up Anyone?

lucky760 (http://lucky760.videosift.com) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:02:29 -0700

(12 comments - 147 views)
Now everyone, shhhhh, because Charms doesn't know where I'm taking her, but we'll be in Vancouver, British Columbia for our anniversary in September.

So I'm wondering if any of you Cannucks would be interested in meeting up with us for a little VideoSift meet-and-greet. We'll probably be free after 7:30pm-8:00pm on a Tuesday night and the location doesn't matter.

If anyone's interested, reply here or send me a profile message if you want some discretion. So who's with me?!

Anyone? Anyone?

- lucky760

How do you like your Sake?

swampgirl (http://swampgirl.videosift.com) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 19:11:41 -0700

(12 comments - 154 views)

How do you drink your Sake? Warm or chilled? I just bought two bottles... one filtered and one unfiltered.

mmmm

- swampgirl

Can Browser History Guess Your Gender?

karkarlee (http://engineering.videosift.com/member/karkarlee) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:09:49 -0700

(15 comments - 201 views)

http://www.mikeonads.com/2008/07/13/using-your-browser-url-history-estimate-gender/

Hilarious. It doesn't store anything, so you're good on that. My results weren't correct though ( I'm not exactly the typical chick, so it's understandable ):

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 2%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 98%

Site	Male-Female Ratio
google.com	0.98
youtube.com	1
imdb.com	1.06
dailymotion.com	1.3
mininova.org	1.63
thepiratebay.org	2.13
spike.com	1.27
watch-movies.net	0.75
worldofwarcraft.com	1.08
videojug.com	1.06
gmail.com	0.9
vuze.com	1.56
bugmenot.com	2.03
liveleak.com	1.63
howtogeek.com	2.23
yousendit.com	0.9
bustedtees.com	1.06

- karkarlee