Apr
02
2010
So great. Speaking of which, you can find and fan us on facebook too. Just watch out for any transformative powers at work.
So great. Speaking of which, you can find and fan us on facebook too. Just watch out for any transformative powers at work.
I’m no scientist (the last science class I took was Geology 101 my sophomore year of college) and I’m not really a betting man. But if I were a betting man and convinced that it wasn’t somehow illegal to issue a gambling challenge via the internet to strangers en masse here’s why I’d bet you all $5 that cancer is going to be cured within the next year:
Nanotechnology has taken off in recent years, and it’s coming to fruition in the fight against cancer. In fact there have been two major breakthroughs recently that have fueled my optimism over the whole issue.
The first was a study out of Washington University in St. Louis (WAUSL) using gold nanocages and lasers. Intrigued yet? The nanocages are roughly the size of a virus, constructed around silver particles that are then washed out of the cage in what I guess you could call a chemical nanobath. The cages, covered in a solution mostly used in laxatives, manage to slip by the proteins that would otherwise attach themselves to the particles and drag them out of the blood stream via the liver and/or kidneys.
The immune system thwarted, our nanocages manage to lodge themselves in gaps left in the tumor’s cell wall structure, creating a cast around the tumor. Once the cast is in place lasers at a particular, near infra-red, frequency are used to heat the cages. This disrupts the proteins keeping it alive and kill it off. Kind of like an intense, target-able fever that kills tissue.
The brilliant part is that the light doesn’t adversely affect surrounding tissue, so only the tumor ends up dying off (read the article for more on how that works, super cool). So far it’s only been tested in mice, and while the efficiency of the injections isn’t where they want it (only 6% of the injected nanocages actually attach themselves to the tumors and they want it at 40%) it certainly is promising.
What’s even more promising is the recent use of small-interfering RNA (siRNA) being delivered by nanobots to cancerous tumors in recent studies done at Cal Tech. The best part: they’ve been tested on humans and found 100% EFFECTIVE WITH NO SIDE EFFECTS.
Hold on a second… no side effects?!
Apparently so. They inject these suckers, the nanoparticles, and away they go. Attaching themselves to the tumors they release some interfering RNA which targets the inner workings of said tumors and *blegh* dead. The concept is nothing new, it’s been around (according to Technology Review) since 1998 but hasn’t been put into practice until recently. There’s a lot of tempering going on regarding the research, however, since it’s only been performed on three people. That and there hasn’t been FULL disclosure yet. But I don’t really care, it’s a hop and a skip away from a cure.
Which is why I’d bet you $5, right here and now; and though it’s possible, perhaps probable, that I would lose – we’re close. There’s another article out recently which leads me to believe that soon only sideburns and the creation of adamantium will stand between me and becoming Wolverine, but I’ll save that for later.
I also need to make an iSaber 4 post, but who cares? It’s almost April and I’m so far behind on video ideas/production that it’s almost comical in and of itself. Almost. There’s nothing funny about it, or notable, but almost. I’m hoping to work with @JoelBarbour in the next week or two on a few ideas, and my buddy Ted with one in particular in the near future.
–Want sources?–
Nanobots delivering siRNA to cancer cells: http://gizmodo.com/5501103/this-is-the-future-of-the-fight-against-cancer
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/24841/?a=f
Golden nanocages heated with lasers to kill tumors: http://www.gizmag.com/gold-nanocages-cancer-photothermal-treatment/14512/
I guess some guy walked up to Jonathan (lighter app guy iSaber2/iSaber3) off the street in Seattle and asked if he’d been in any light saber battles.
Obviously he has, and that is the coolest thing that has ever happened. I guess the guy’s a big Star Wars fan and found our videos via the YouTubes, and voila! He recognized Jonathan on the street and had the guts to ask him.
Kudos to you Star Wars fan! Thanks for being the fourth person in the world outside of our friends to watch our videos. If I could find you I’d give you a free T-Shirt.
As for the rest of you, videos in the works. Keep your shirts on.
So many ideas bouncing around in my head lately and nowhere for them to land. It’s been a while since I’ve had the time or resources to pull together another video, but I’m hoping to get on it soon.
Instead of making or posting a video I’ll just take a moment to relive part of my week: bacon maple bars. You can get bacon maple bars at your local Zip’s Drive In. A side note: one of my favorite marketing blunders was the following cup by Zip’s which proudly proclaims that it has been around since 53 feet.
Anyways, a coworker brought in the three different variates of ‘weird’ or ‘crazy’ donuts in the other day and we all tried various samples. The first was the Chipotle Chocolate, which looks very much like a chocolate sprinkled donut.
Dont’ try this one, it’ll stick with you all day (and it really did since I had it last out of the three). The second one is the Chili Maple Bar which looks like a freckled maple bar. It’s like maple bar in your mouth and chili powder in your nose. Another poor decision but far less scarring than the Chipotle Chocolate.
Finally we have the Bacon Maple Bar, which is just a maple bar with a strip of crispy bacon melted into the frosting. This could possibly be classified as an abomination by the various ruling bodies governing our food supply, but it was way better than expected. If you like bacon, and you like maple bars, you’ll love this concoction.
The word “concoction” doesn’t look so great in written form… sounds better than it spells. Weird.
Assuming you have the wall space in your arteries for new decorations this is the donut for you. I only had one bite, but it was well worth the impending cardiac failure that it set in motion.
A crappy name for a failure of an entry.
Although I still like the video a lot personally. In fact, at the time I uploaded it I figured it was one of our best to date. That was probably affected by the fact that I spent something like 8-9 hours on the effects. Probably more but I can’t remember now. I need to write these things down.
The video itself was for the Nikon Film Festival, which we didn’t make it into. I mean, we made it INTO the contest, but so did two minutes of footage at the public pool taken by some obese lady on a lawn chair. Half of the video consisted of some guy in cut off jeans’ butt as he paced back and forth watching kids swim. Weird.
Anyways, we had fun making it, mostly just Caleb and I taking turns filming, or a random table/chair doing the cinematography (which might explain why we didn’t make it into the contest). Miller, our roommate helped film some too and it was his Impreza that owned me consistently.
Now as to how I did that you can thank Video Copilot for their excellent tutorials. Basically I took footage of myself walking into an empty street, super imposed that on footage of Miller’s car whizzing by, matted out all the footage surrounding me so that I’m standing in the street, and then animated/warped myself along with his car.
The particle effects come with After Effects out of the box, and after some tweaking look like glass. The hood animation was made from a photo of a crushed car that I color corrected to look like (or close to) Miller’s car. That too is courtesy to the guys at Video Copilot. I tried finding my own photo to use but none looked quite as good.
The hazy after-worldly glow was made by duplicating a mask of Caleb a few times, blurring it directionally and messing with blending modes depending on the angle.
Unfortunately the “Bank of Americarp” sign didn’t make it into the final cut. Editing down to 140 seconds was rough, and making decisions like that are part of the deal.
I’ve owned that sign for a long time and never put it to any good use. We had to ‘modify’ it so as to keep branding out of the video. I think the “unnamed” bank should take my marketing scheme into consideration, however. I mean, what’s more patriotic than a red white and blue carp?
Either way, I spend time (like 5 minutes!) on the modifications to that sign so it HAD to make it in somewhere. Not that this blog is anywhere. And the most disappointing part of all of this? This is a side note more than anything connected to the sign, but despite all of the publicity we pushed to get this thing in the contest we have nothing to show for it because it wasn’t originally hosted on Youtube. The view count? Ridiculously low.
Oh well.
The song was Dremples by Sasha, I asked for permission and took his silence as such. I hope he’s ok with that if he ever discovers this on some random internet search binge.
Any other questions? Shoot.
Interesting fact: I didn’t really get shot twice, in case you were worried.
Slightly less interesting fact: I really did win that science champions shirt when I was in 5th grade, and it still (sort of) fits me. Of course, I think every kid that attended won that shirt, but still! I won it.
VASTLY less interesting fact: It’s REALLY cold standing in sub-freezing weather wearing nothing but jeans and a T-Shirt.
When asked to do a recruiting video for Kid’s Community at church I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. Apparently demeaning myself further, as if that were possible…
It is though, as it turns out. The kids are cute at least. We had a great location to shoot, well lit, nice acoustics, great background elements, the works. Then a band started blasting at the restaurant next door and we were forced to head back to the toddler room, where we could still hear the band… but just barely.
The lighting and acoustics weren’t so great. Well, to be honest, they stank, but the background elements were still good.
The kids were pretty good to film with, though we made sure to get all their lines out of the way first so they could go play. Of course this video only served to make the other kids jealous and now I have ‘casting requests’ in for about 20 kids. Not sure how that will work out unless I need a band of roving, disillusioned munchkins looking for revenge or something along those lines.
Some of the questions, in case you couldn’t make them out:
Mason: “What is your favorite color?”
Sam: “Have you ever lied?”
Mason: “How many times have you lied?”
Abby: “Do you have any formal training in hermeneutics?”
Jack: “Would you consider yourself as a pre dispensationalist?”
Jack: “Can you give us a synopsis of David and Goliath story?”
Sam also corrects me by saying “David didn’t have a bow and arrow!” further displaying my ignorance and ineptitude to the world. As if my previous answers didn’t achieve this well enough. I debated putting subtitles in but we figured people would get it well enough without them. And if you didn’t, know you have.
Interesting fact: That giant jug of wine only costs like $12 at Safeway. The cheap price only understates the cheap taste.
Slightly less interesting fact: The tiny chair I sat in hugged my hips so badly I had to pop it off every time I stood up.
VASTLY less interesting fact: I didn’t mean to have my earbuds in there, makes me look like some cheap iTunes ad with my black shirt and all.
I finally fixed a major error I was having with WordPress, it was keeping me from getting into my admin panel (which, if you have no idea what I’m talking about means website no workie). Glad to have it fixed, and thought I’d share some of my favorite comics with you from XKCD.
If you don’t read xkcd on a regular basis you probably should. Genius.
Ben Budge has wanted to do this skit for ages, and we kind of got around to it in the most roundabout way possible. Unintentionally of course.
We needed some way to kill Cody off because, at this point, we thought he would be in the Navy before we could film anything else off. Kind of like how we “killed” Dalbey off in Satan’s Seat with his idle hands. No one wants to be around a guy with the devil’s playthings for hands.
This is all in all the most disturbing skit we’ve ever made, the licorice alone is enough to make you gag if you aren’t careful. Olivia made her final appearance here before she moved back to Boston, which was sad enough as it is. We wanted to ‘kill’ her character off too by having her break up with me in iSaber 4, but didn’t get to it in time.
What’s funny is we had a really scary, Edgar-like person approach us with his dog while we were filming in the park. He was dirty and mildly perverted, hitting on the girls we had with us and suggesting we put our videos on YouTube. His dog went about smelling our shoes as we awkwardly tried to get him to leave.
What angered me most, however, was that he was ignorant to the fact that we were already on YouTube. Apparently nobody knows. Not even dirty vagrant perverts.
Unfortunately we couldn’t find a van for the skit, which pretty much ruins the whole thing in a sense. It turns out we don’t know anyone with vans, least of all the creepy mafia/chimo vans we had in mind. I guess we have to have some sort of flagrant error or misstep in every video, that might as well be it.
OR the fact that we ended up recording in mono again… gosh dang it all to heck in a hamper. Actually in watching this again for the first time in a long while I did a terrible job editing it. It didn’t help we were trying to film as fast as we could before we ran out of daylight, but dang. Tons – of – errors.
Interesting fact: Dirty vagrant perverts are particularly attracted to anything being shot on camera.
Slightly less interesting fact: Budge (Edgar) covered himself with mustard to look extra dirty.
VASTLY less interesting fact: if you eat enough licorice while filming the same shots over and over again you’ll get sick.
Second time’s the charm. Especially when you’ve got a coach.
This one was a lot of fun to film, we actually had lights set up and just had a good time standing around shooting for a few hours. There were, of course, a couple of errors, like recording in mono the entire time, but such is life.
Rainee Palmer made her debut in this one, the deaf hottie. Hot girls that are willing to be around us are hard to come by so we definitely try to treat them right when they do. Her sister, Rubie, one of our old roommates (from our 9-bedroom house featured in most of our early videos) can be seen on the couch in the background along with her boyfriend of the time, Harry.
This was where the pythons came from originally, I’d written this before the “Louis’ Love Corner” sketch and so it absolutely had to make it in. I definitely didn’t pull it off as well as Josh does, probably why it didn’t work…
The whole thing is delightfully ridiculous, IMHO, and we had fun fighting and yelling and pretending we knew what we were doing. The concoction of liquor Cody poured was incredibly strange and fruity, but ended up being pretty good in the end. Kind of like cough syrup minus the mediciney taste.
Another unfortunate oversight was that in the opening shot I wasn’t backed out of the frame completely, my arm is just hanging on the fence while they talk like I can’t hear them… I’m a tool. Should have noticed that in the editing process at least. Or maybe I did and just didn’t have a better take. Either way, suck.
Interesting fact: Cody plays the bartender as well as himself.
Slightly less interesting fact: I may have broken my bluetooth headset when tossing it on the ground.
VASTLY less interesting fact: The skull’s name is Frank, he was like a house mascot for a while. The crazy part was I named him about 30 minutes before seeing that episode of Lost where the skeleton falls out of the van and his name (according to the badge stitched into his jump suit) is Frank. We got a little weirded out by that for a while.
Because everybody needs a little advice when it comes to love.
Lewis (or “Louis,” as he prefers to be called) came about when Jefe and I were joking about how we needed a character that was a sleazy ladies man. It stemmed from Jefe always calling me a ladies man, and in turn I started calling him Jefe the Womanizer.
Of course that spiraled out of control and we worked on figuring out a usable name. Finally the gag of Lewis wanting to be called ‘Louis’ (like the French kings) in his pompous egotism solidified the character. Used car salesman meets pompous gay guy is pretty much what we told Josh. Of course I had him in mind while we were creating the character, he’d wanted to be in a video for a while and it wasn’t too much different than a role I’d seen him play before in a one act at Eastern.
Olivia was a total sport in acting like a complete floozy, and taking that fall something like 5 times. Of course we hope to make louisthewomanizer.com sometime soon, relationship advice as you need it. There’s a whole development of his character I have thought out and hope to get to, all in good time.
You can get a head start by asking your questions in the comments below and we’ll put it in the mix to get started.
Interesting fact: The python works best when you finish with the pointing to your toes.
Slightly less interesting fact: we did that video in one take (well, we used one take but took a few).
VASTLY less interesting fact: we hear girls like it when you tug their hair to get their attention.
