Bencredible

Happy almost new year everyone! I know we have an amazing and engaged community out there eagerly awaiting the live shows. I want to take a moment and explain the delay as well as let you know what my plans are for 2012.

First let me start by saying that the live shows will resume in very early 2012, hopefully the 2nd week of January. Unlike before the shows will no longer be on Thursdays at 0200 UTC. The new time, which is not set in stone, will likely be Sundays at 22:00 UTC which is Sundays at 2:00pm PST / 3:00pm MST / 4:00pm CST / 5:00pm EST. I can't stress enough that this is just a test time and I'm not sure it will stick. I can say that Thursdays at 0200 will not work anymore.

There have been a few issues in resuming the live shows. Some of them are pretty nasty bad while others are mostly in my head. The nasty comes from technology. We have been unable to find studio space that doesn't break the bank. While Spacevidcast epic subscribers as well as ad revenue does help offset the cost of Spacevidcast, we do still operate at a loss. So really awesome and expensive studio space is out. We have started planning on how to do the live shows from our apartment in Anaheim, CA. Unfortunatly the Time Warner Cable broadband connection we have doesn't have very good upload speeds. That means HD it out and stable SD is barely workable. But it does work. In March of 2012 we are slated to get DOCSIS 3 and hopefully that will allow us to bring back HD.

Another technology issue has to do with the camera and video equipment. A lot of support stands and infrastructure is still in MN. I'll be working on getting that out here, but no matter what we do we'll want a new camera for the live shows. For now I have been investing in our on-demand gear with GoPro cameras, new lenses/filters for our 7D and whatnot to get the SpacePods and LA Space Salon online. But now I need to invest in live get a bit. I'm combing eBay to see if I can't find a really nice prosumer camera like a Panasonic HPX-170 for a reasonable price. However, just to get us started we may move back to Webcams for a bit.

There is also this whole thing that is just 'in my head' which has also been pushing off the live shows. I don't like to stay put. I like to always be changing and improving. If you go back and watch Spacevidcast archives, you can clearly see that. We are always, always, always pushing what we're capable of. I have been working behind the scenes on a lot of awesome new stuff for Spacevidcast 500. Not just the live shows, but all of Spacevidcast in 2012. A lot of this new stuff needs to be done in a certain order, and when one thing gets delayed the whole mess gets pushed back. As you can probably imagine, that has happened and it has all been delayed. So much so that it simply won't be ready by January or likely even February.

So here is my plan for Spacevidcast in 2012 (subject to change of course):

• Resume live shows as early as possible. These will still be branded as 400 series shows and will maintain the same look/feel of the shows we did in 2011. 
• When the 5 year anniversary of Spacevidcast comes up on March 6th, 2012 switch to the new format and change to the 500 series numbering system on the next live show, March 11th.
• Work on no fewer than 3 SpacePods per week as well as 1 live show per week
• Play with live show timing to see what works best for everyone

My hope is that when Spacevidcast 500 rolls around we'll have a really great new show that everyone is excited about. My fear is that since the live shows have been offline for so long that it will take nearly a year to get the community back together. By switching the show time, that will likely make it harder to do as well. 

I welcome any feedback on the proposed changes and anything you think Spacevidcast should be doing in 2012 to help make space commonplace!

For fun I grabbed my GoPro Hero2 and decided to grab a clip of the construction happening on the all new Buena Vista Street going in at Disney's California Adventure park!

What you're looking at is a slow motion video looking away from the turnstiles from Monorail Red as it passes over the renovated bridge. Originally shot at 120fps the clip was slowed down to 24fps for a nice smooth slow motion.

You'll notice my reflection in the window and how low it is. That's because Disney put up pretty large barricades so you can't see all of the construction. To get the shot I had to hold the GoPro at the very, very top of the monorail window and put it in to wide angle view. Even then you can still see some of the barricade in the shot!

We'll work on getting the reverse shot pointed towards the turnstiles in the next couple of days. This was captured on December 25th, 2011 at around 11:30am PST.

For reference, this is the image of what it is expected to look like when it is finished from about the same vantage point as what I captured in the video. You can see the monorail in the shot at the very bottom and the theater at the top.

I want to go on the record for saying that Spacevidcast does not in any way, shape or form support the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA.

SOPA is a new well intentioned bill that is far too aggressive and over steps its bounds in a huge way. We at Spacevidcast don't support piracy and go to great lengths to make sure our episodes are fully licensed or content is uniquely our own, so SOPA isn't a huge concern for us on that front. But the wider implications of this bill are very, very scary even for Spacevidcast.

The fundamental issue is that SOPA will give the US Attorney General the ability to cut off web sites from search engines as well as cut off the sites from ad networks and payment processors. This would basically kill a web site such as Spacevidcast should the Attorney General decide that they don't like our views on space and the cosmos. In essence this is pulling the power cord on any web site that the US wants. That's censorship. That's not OK.

Piracy isn't OK either, but by implementing something like SOPA we would be giving the US Government censorship abilities on the Internet. This is not power that the Government should wield. There are other Governments in the world that do this today, and if I wanted that level of dictatorship I wouldn't live here in the US.

This is a huge deal. You have probably seen SOPA online and heard a bit about it by now. But beyond just writing this blog post I feel it is important to put my money where my mouth is. To that end I am moving all of my domain names away from GoDaddy who has been my registrar of choice for years.

GoDaddy had been a pretty big supporter of SOPA. Recently they came out and their PR team said that they no longer support SOPA. However, while their PR mouth says one thing, the legal reality is completely different. At the time of this writing even though GoDaddy says they don't support SOPA, they actually are still officially do. Because of this I am moving all of my active domains away from GoDaddy and to a Registrar who has openly spoken out and acted against SOPA.

This transition may cause Spacevidcast, Bencredible and other domains I control to go offline for a small amount of time. Since I use external DNS servers not linked to the registrar it is unlikely that this will happen, but I did want to warn everyone.

I think it is vitally important to keep the Internet open and not allow our Government this level of censorship over anyone. For any company that supports bills that take away our freedom and works to give our Government more control rather than less control, I will not spend our money with you. I encourage everyone to do the same.