25 Gangnam Style Videos In One - Video

It's been a while since my last experimental/mashup video so here is my latest effort: 25 Gangnam Style Videos In One.  See if you can name as many of the 25 as you can before the end credits give you the answer.

So do you need some Gangnam Style parodies, shot for shot recreations, flipbook or minecraft animations? How about Klingon, Zombi or Kim Jong Style? Or try China, Mongol, London or Singapor Style? Well here they are in one go so you'll never have to watch another Gangnam Style video again!

Enjoy!

Live Streaming Everywhere!

Since my last post I have been very busy with a lot of stuff including having a new baby (Griffin Robert Rufus Rae), officially adopting my other son (Invisible Son -> Real Son), buying an electric car (Reva/G-Wiz), etc.  On the work side of things I have invested in a lot of equipment to improve the live streaming side of my business.

I'm now able to mix live video from multiple cameras plus skype calls to make a professional live stream like I did  at the Manchester Lean Startup Group where Eric Ries called in:

I have also been live streaming TEDx Salford, Hack Manchester and teaching students at Manchester Met how to use the equipment.

I'm also trying out some Google Adwording to send a bit of traffic to the Live streaming page of my website.  I'll let you know how it goes...

Danny Boyle, The Olympics and How I Screwed A Twitter Campaign

This is a post about how I gained over 100,000 twitter followers in 24 hours, for some one else!  And to make it worse, the account I helped was a fake!

Last night I was getting caught up in the excitement of the Olympic Opening Ceremony.  I was watching the BBC with the kids, following along on twitter and sketching my impressions of Danny Boyles awesome work on the iPad.  Here are a couple of pictures I doodled:

The Forging of the Rings

The Forging of the Rings

London Bombings Dance

London Bombings Dance

Over on twitter I saw someone saying Danny Boyle should get an OBE or Knighthood but I thought the twitter army could thank him immediately by upping the @dannyboylefilm follower count.  I had seen a couple of people tweeting thankyous to the account and quickly checked it was the correct Danny Boyle.  I thought a million followers would be a nice round number so sent out a tweet.

Thank  for tonight by getting him 1,000,000 followers by the end of this . Follow him and RT!

It was retweeted a few times but i thought I'd try and recruit a couple of big hitters so I mentioned @Glinner who passed it on to his 200,000 peeps.  My iPad lit up with all the retweet notifications which crashed all three different twitter clients.  Within an hour over 40,000 people had followed @DannyBoyleFilm!

But then people started to ask questions about the @dannyboylefilm twitter account.  Was it genuine?  Would Sir Danny Boyle tweet such illiterate crap?  Graham Linham, some of his more savy followers and I tried to command the tide to recede but it was no use.  By the end of the show it was up to 70,000 and by this afternoon it was over 100,000.  The imposter had also gone back through his time line and deleted over half his tweets and changed his by line to "For fans of Danny Boyle."  Not the most honest of moves.  

But then people started to ask questions about the @dannyboylefilm twitter account.  Was it genuine?  Would Sir Danny Boyle tweet such illiterate crap?  Graham Linham, some of his more savy followers and I tried to command the tide to recede but it was no use.  By the end of the show it was up to 70,000 and by this afternoon it was over 100,000.  The imposter had also gone back through his time line and deleted over half his tweets and changed his by line to "For fans of Danny Boyle."  Not the most honest of moves.  

NHS Celebration Dance

NHS Celebration Dance

Friday the 13th and My Invisible Son

It was five years ago today when Shona and I received a phone call from the Social Services saying that they had a little 3 year old boy who needed a home for a while. This came as a surprise as we had only been added to the foster carer list a couple of days before, we were down to foster five to nine year olds, we hadn't had our Health and Safety check and most importantly, we had not yet met our own Family Support Social Worker. So we said no but after discussing it for a while we called them back and said we could have him as it was only going to for a few months.

Little Jordan arrived a couple of hours later with his Social Worker. He was malnourished, dirty, scared and confused. The Social Worker left us with minimal information about Jordan and very few clothes and possessions. Once he was settled I grabbed a tape measure from the tool box, quickly measured how tall he was and headed off to Asda to buy a basket full of clothes.

When I got back I found him sitting under my computer desk playing with Charis, both in nappies, both very cute.

So now we have arrived at our next Friday July 13th! We celebrated today with a small chocolate cake with five candles on the top. I think we are all super lucky to have a Jordan with us although the journey to get here has been very difficult. We are still waiting for Jordan's adoption to be signed off by the Judge and until then we can't show photos of him online. So for now lucky Jordan is still our Invisible Son.

10km Run Live Stream with Virtual Donations Bucket!

Tomorrow/today I'm running the Leeds 10km race!

Although you can sponsor me on my Justgiving.com Page, I'm not doing it primarily to raise money but more for personal goals eg. to get fit and for the technical challenge. That said, please do consider donating as the money will go to a good cause and I've set my self the target of raising £10k for 10k.

As an experiment I'm also going to be live streaming my entire run from a camera which will be mounted to my chest, giving updates, taking questions and requests as I go. Take a moment to log into the chat window below and send me messages of support as I run!

I'll be live from 8.30am, the race starts at 9am and I'll be finishing at about 10.20am.

I'll also have a Glympse tracking my gps so be able to follow me exactly. http://glympse.com/7DV-E4Y

Please share this experiment with your friends, check in on this post as I go, send me messages of support in the chat box and please donate.

Let Me Eat Cake: The Movie

Before I went to France I recorded the Is This A Good Idea episode where I tried to eat an entire Costco chocolate cake in one sitting.  Here is the video:

I hope you don't feel as ill watching this as I did at the end of filming it.  Now I've ticked this off my bucket list I can go on to the bigger items such as Canoeing to the North Pole.

 

Northology Podcast Episode 0.1 Alpha Test

Over the last few months I have been planning the launch of a new podcast and blog covering the technology and startup sceen in Manchester.  I originally started working with Shaf Choudry (@hashponitfive) but he ironically had to drop out as he was spending too much time on his own technology startup.

Since then I have teamed up with Josh (@technicalfault) from Melbourn who will be hosting the podcast with me as well as contributing to the blog ocassionally.  Last week we recorded a Alpha Test episode of Northology which we are putting up on the blogs for feed back.  Please take some time to listen and give us some feedback...

Play Northology Alpha Test Episode

Download mp3 File.

I already have a few thoughts about how to improve the quality of the recording, the editing, the content and the pace/energy. I wont go into them here as we would love to hear your feedback. We also need your ideas and suggestions about future guests, events to cover, intro and outro music, etc.

Please leave your comments on the Northology blog or email them to nathan@nathanrae.co.uk or tweet us on www.twitter.com/northology

Thanks a lot

The Best Of Tedx Manchester (as voted by me)

Last month I live streamed the TedX Manchester conference from Cornerhouse. Now all the videos are edited and up on YouTube I thought I'd post a couple here.
The best talk of the day in my opinion was the last of the day by. He shows how his process of constant experimentation in art and design is a great way to find beauty and success.

Another great talk was the first of the day from Mary Ann Hobbs. Very inspirational and one of the talks which made me want to get my next project off the ground as soon as possible.

The last talk I'll post here is by Ian Forester who I know from around Manchester and from the Tech Grumps podcast. He gives a very moving account of a life changing event which he lived through a couple of years back. I was almost in tears by the end as well.

Is This A Good Idea Ep 002: Thumb Smartphone App

This week Nathan talks about how the Waze ap could make Douglas Adam's scifi technology a reality. But is it a good idea?
www.nathanrae.co.uk/goodideapodcast
nathan@nathanrae.co.uk
twitter.com/nathanrae

Subscribe on iTines: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/nathan-rae-asks-is-this-good/id505129228
Subscribe using RSS Feed:http://audioboo.fm/users/133891/boos.rss

 

Is This A Good Idea Ep 002: Thumb Smartphone App (mp3)

Is This A Good Idea Ep 001: Podcasting

 

 

Nathan asks if podcasting is a good idea in the first episode of Is This A Good Idea?

Let Nathan know what you think of the ideas or the podcast on twitter.com/nathanrae or email: nathan@nathanrae.co.uk

Remember to leave a review on iTunes. Thanks.

 

 

Tech Grumps Podcast and Semi Viral Video

Two bits of news today:

Firstly on Monday I was a guest on the Tech Grumps podcast for the 3rd time in the last few months.  This time we talked Apple taking over education, love on the nets and more.  Listen to the episode here.

The podcast is basically an excuse for a bunch of tech enthusiasts (read geeks) to grump and moan about the darker (or just anoying) side of tech world.  The regular hosts include BBC Senior Producer Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) and David Eastman plus loads of guests more interesting than me.

Find and listen to the latest episode of the Tech Grumps Podcast over here: http://techgrumps.wordpress.com

 

The second bit of news is that one of the videos I produced at the Munich EJC last year seems to have been picked up in a number of places over the last month and is now getting about 4,000 views a day on youtube. As I publish this it's up to 127,000 hits.

Even after trawling through Youtube Analitics I have idea of reasons for this one video suddenly taking off (apart from it being one of the best acts at the whole festival) and it just goes to prove yet again that video virality is more luck than science.

Any thoughts?

Live Streaming from TEDxSalford

(Edit: Here is one of talks from Tedx taken from Ustream, the full edited videos will be along soon.)

Today (Saturday 28th Jan) I'm live streaming the TEDx Salford conference with a number of students from the MMU Film Making course.

You can watch the live stream over on www.tedxsalford.com/live and see some amazing speakers!

Enjoy!

A Sad Day In The House Of Rae

Yesterday was a very sad day for us.  In the morning we got a call from a vets saying that Brooklyn, our 10 year old cat, had been dropped off but was DOA.  She went missing over a month a go and we did everything we could to find her but it looks like she had wondered a long way from home.

I wasn't going to post an actual photo of the dead cat but Shona caught this great shot of one of our new kittens checking out the funny smelling thing on the table.

 

So after school we went out to the garden and dug a grave.

The girls reactions were very different.  Charis needed to be cuddled a couple of times during the process.

Whereas Seren was excited about digging a hole but sad at the same time but wanted to smile for the camera but was too sad to smile properly.

 

After burying the kitty and saying good bye we marked the spot buy planting and oak tree, placing a candle on the old stump and sticking a spinny windmill in the ground.  

It's funny that the ritual and significance of meant different things to our 3 children.  Our Invisible Son wanted to put the windmill in the centre of the grave but this upset Seren so much we had to move it to the side.  She saw the stick of the windmill as sticking into Brooklyn and hurting her somehow and was unconsolable until it was moved.  Invisible Son realised that death is death and there was no way to hurt Brooklyn anymore.

Anyway, we have two new kittens to replace the unreplaceable Brooklyn which are about as cute as any thing can be.  But goodbye Brooklyn, we will miss you...

Brand Improv Inspires

I'm not a massive Russell Brand fan but I found this clip when I was looking around You Tube for some info on public speaking and improvisation.

I found this very funny but also inspiring. He's obviously puts a lot of time and effort into developing his craft and expanding his improv skills to the point where impressing Alfred Molina comes naturally. And even if you don't like Russell, any thing that impresses Alfred Molina is worth taking a closer look at.

Last Wednesday Podcast, Pool Session, Hospital.

Last Wednesday evening was busy for me as at 6pm I recorded an interview as a guest on Scott Hewitt's Creative Pact Podcast.  

You can listen to the episode here (about 8 mins) where I talk about some of the 7 Unforgiveable Sins or video production mistakes that I never let my students get away with unless they have a very good excuse.  These are also relevent for anyone shooting videos for their business websites or for video podcasts, etc.

 

Then at 7pm I went to the first MMU Canoe Club pool session of this accademic year.  

Unfortunatly only an hour in Ben smacked his head off the back of his kayak while doing cartwheels.  The photo above actually caught the moment just before this happened.  The photos below tell the rest of the story.

"What's that on my head?"

"Oh it's blood!"

Pool staff patch him up.

As I was the only person there with a car I drove him down to A&E to get stiched up then went home.  Not how I hoped the evening would go but I enjoyed it anyway.  I may even go back again this week...