another weblog

So Google Video is shutting down, and I’m helping some people archive it. The archiving effort has come a long way, and we’re now able to extract some fun numbers from it. As of this writing, I’ve got around 180 GB of videos archived. If anyone reading this would like to help out, here’s how.

Some statistics that some people may be interested in:

• real-time feed of downloaded videos by ID
• continuously updated throughput charts
• my own contribution: a leaderboard (refresh every 20 seconds or so)

An excerpt from the health information privacy policy used by the hospital I go to:

Protective Services for the President, National Security and Intelligence Activities
We may disclose health information about you to authorized federal officials so they can provide protection to the president, to other authorized persons such as foreign heads of state, to conduct special investigations or for intelligence, counter-intelligence and other national security activities authorized by law.

I cannot read this as anything but

Protective Services for the President, National Security and Intelligence Activities
Should you be deemed a threat to the security of the United States of America or visiting allies, we will disclose health information to CIA assassins so that they can determine the most efficient way to eliminate you, using health deficiencies, food or drug allergies, current treatments, etc.

I mean, what else could that clause mean?

I haven’t yet been able to dig up old copies of the privacy policy; will probably have to write to the hospital for those, if they have them.

As part of a full-speed-ahead adoption of traçeur physical and mental conditioning, Ashley Riot, Johnny Fowle and I are going to be hitting up the following events, and would love others to tag along. Those people who are (a) local and (b) are interested in videography (you know who you are!) are especially wanted: we’d like documentation, and you’d be getting some awesome content to play with.

• Journey To The End Of The Night. May 7, 2011. Starts in Welles Park (at the Western stop on the Brown Line), Chicago, IL.
• American Rendezvous 2. May 27-29, 2011, Columbus, OH. The main attraction for this road trip is that it offers an opportunity to train with the Yamakasi, and to get a really good grasp of parkour fundamentals, it’s hard to beat instruction by the founders of l’art du deplacement.

There’s also weekly Saturday jams at Grant Park, and there will be a beginner’s jam at UIC on April 9.

Oh, yeah, life update. Well, parkour has very much been my life since I last updated this thing (like that’s hard to tell), and it’s been enormously enlightening in so many ways. I credit (blame?) Mirror’s Edge for being the final push into it.