Mito-Kids on ABC ch9

Hi All

NH Chronicle will be airing a half hour special on our family documentary "Mito-Kids" Thursday night at 7:30 please tune in if you can. I hope they will also place it onliine and if they do I will be sure to send a link

There is a teaser here
http://www.wmur.com/chronicle/index.html

And more of the story here
http://www.wmur.com/chronicle/18739955/detail.html

I will be adding more video to www.mito-kids.com over the week as we do more interviews and take some vacation time

Thanks

Marc

Mito-Kids Documentary

For years I have wanted to do a documentary based on the extrordinary lives of my 4 daughters and their battle with mitochondrial disease which affects each one differently. This is the initial teaser. I plan to do a 5 minute piece on each child over the next month as I develop the longer feature version

Virtual Film making

I was recently interviewed for an article about using the web to produce your project. right after I was interviewed I started another project that used Google Docs more extensively as we have also started to use it at the office for Project management.

http://newenglandfilm.com/magazine/archives/2008/12/virtual

Autodesk buys Softimage - Long Live MayaMaxSoft

In the beginning of the summer the Autodesk/Maya/Max rep visited our studios just to say hi.  Our office is 40 minutes from the NH Offices of Autodesk and he was in the area.  Around the same time I received an email from our new Softimage rep who is head quartered in London.  I understand Reps move around a lot but this seemed very odd because our office is 50 minutes from AVID (parent company to Softimage) and we are a short 6 hour road trip to Montreal where Softimage is headquartered.  

So it now all makes sense 3D will soon be one happy family, or 3 brothers that fight all the time while their father AutoCAD tells them that when he was their age there were only lines and not solids and they only had 2 dimensions

I think Newtek may be a bit upset because the article mentions that Softimage was the last major independent package out there.  All the products have always had their followers, strengths, weaknesses, and vertical markets.

Rumor has it that Autodesk is also looking at Houdini and Blender.  But Blender is shareware and they are not sure how to buy it.  Blender may become that cousin on the Brady Bunch that is brought in to show how cute the show is after the rest of the kids grow up.  And so few people use Houdini and its so expensive that Autodesk plans to repackage their regular MayaMaxSoft with an install code that makes the program randomly disappear from your computer.

Long Live MayaMaxSoft

Softimage Press Release

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=12022457&siteID=123112

MontrealGazette

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/business/story.html?id=3bad0262-e86a-4ac3-98b3-6345b62a96d0

"The Birk plan" dont bail out AIG

I cannot take credit for this, it is an email forwarded from my friend Tracey B, who is a film producer in LA.  I just think that this out of the box thinking is what people are always looking for in marketing, but when will it come to politics?

------

I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It Dividend.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.  Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+  into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.  My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free.  So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%.  Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.  That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.  A husband and wife has $595,000.00.   What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?

• Pay off your mortgage – housing crisis solved.
• Repay college loans – what a great boost to new grads
• Put away money for college – it’ll be there
• Save in a bank – create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
• Buy a new car – create jobs
• Invest in the market – capital drives growth
• Pay for your parent’s medical insurance – health care improves
• Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean – or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+  including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it...instead of trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( “vote buy” ) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!

As for AIG – liquidate it.

• Sell off its parts.
• Let American General go back to being American General.
• Sell off the real estate.
• Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t.

Sure it’s a crazy idea that can “never work.”

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!
 
How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion We Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC .

And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh...I feel so much better getting that off my chest. Kindest personal regards,
Birk
T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic
                             
PS:  Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it’s either good for a laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Sarah Palin the First Lady of VPILF

I always wonder who comes up with the new "In Saying" or anachronim.

Who was it that first coined the term "MILF"
A MILF (Mother I'd Like to Fu#k) is a mother usually over 30 and under 50 that is very sexually attractive.
Well a VPILF is a "Vice President I'd Like to Fu#k"

So with the announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate a new site was born, or was it planned months ago??? At this time I would like to thank the site owners for not including Joe Biden, the Democratic Candidate for Vice President, I guess he is technically eligible for this new anachronim lets focus on the Hot Mom.





http://www.vpilf.com The site has Sarah Palin's 1984 Miss Alaska beauty pageant photo (She won "Miss Congeniality"), a link to an 1988 video from when the then Sarah Heath was a sportscaster in Alaska.

Wikipedia has already forwarded the term VPILF to the Sarah Palin's regular page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPILF



A clip from the Craig Ferguson Late Night Talk Show, where he described her as having a Naughty Librarian vibe.




And what has to be my favorite example of "What is that guy thinking" where John McCain introduces his new VP Candidate and the camera catches him looking over at her, and then starts to give us a voice over of what is happening in his head. The VO also captures the cameraman following the "Bro Code" and zooming in on Palin as it becomes very apparent McCain is staring at Palin.




With such a new term, I wanted to dig a tinny bit to see who gets credit for the term V.P.I.L.F. There were 2 user generated videos that mention this term. Both came out between August 29th and 30th which makes sense because Palin was announced as the VP Candidate on the 29th. What I thought was odd was that the website URL VPILF.com was registered on August 4th, and in McCain's home state of Arizona. Of course there were rumors of 7 or 8 potentials for the VP job over the last few months but to have a new term coined 25 days before the actual introduction or event shows it was an inside job. There is a link saying the people at moviespoilers are responsible for the site. but one quick look at that site shows that VPILF, was done much better so is it the moviespoilers people behind it or was it someone in the McCain camp. I think the further icing on the cake showing it was a Republican job was the site was only registered for a year. Dont they know if McCain wins Palin would be a VPILF for at least 4 years? And besides that I am sure other VPILFs will appear in the future.

The term MILF is specific to Mothers usually but VPILF could become a term for male or female Vice Presidential Candidates.
Now there's Playboy cover for you, Yeah I want to see that right after their special issue "Disrobing The Women of Congress".


Like many words an anachronim can have multiple meanings
a CD to a teenage is something old people listen to music on. To a banker its a "Certificate of Deposit"
DNC is not just the "Democratic National Committee" its also a painful female medical procedure. If I ran the Democratic DNC I would spend a lot of money re-naming and re-branding that.
But this other anachronim for MILF is all sorts of wrong.
Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor, an attraction at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom
Hopefully this comes up if you have NetNanny turned on and your teenager hasnt disabled it to do a search on MILF.

About me:
I usually dont discuss religion and politics in public or private. I have way too little free time. But I did want to state that I am an Independent Voter who has never actually voted for the Guy that one. But this was such an entertaining political move and one of the first times I think there was a Republican connection with connecting with the younger voters (Especially the 18-34 y/o males) I just had to comment.

Marc

Wii Britney

After searching 7 months to get a Wii my family has had a lot of fun playing the games and especially the use of the motion controllers that are really the way we all used to play the old Nintendeo games. Turning the wired controller to the right, as we lean our bodies to that side. Sometimes hopping a bit in our seats as Mario needed to jump a Koopa.

My Daughter Britney is 18 years old, 4'10" and has had developmental delays because of seizures she has been suffering since she was 6 months old. Her cognitive skills, and physical reaction time are that of a 4 -6 year old. Not one of those 4-6 year olds that play Guitar Hero on Hard and blindfolded on YouTube better than I play it on Medium but an average kid.

Before the Wii we would involve Britney in video games by giving her an extra controller while the rest of us played with active controllers. She even had her own Pink Barbie Guitar that she would play while I played Guitar Hero.
Now with the Wii Britney is able to keep up in Mario Kart to a decent extent but better yet she now has "Disney Princess Enchanted Journey" she is playing the game all on her own. For some reason she switches the controllers from hand to hand a lot depending on the challenge at hand, but the gaming allows for multiple ways to move and wave the wand so it works out well for her. She is getting better spacial recognition within the game. She still needs about 20 feet of play area in front of the TV because she walks around the livingroom as much as her princess character walks around the screen.



Now if we can just get the cat to master the Nintendo DS we will be all set