How to Open a Bottle of Lamune

There’s something about camera lenses that make little boys go completely apeshit. Between their seizures of goofiness, Tony (“Booger”) and Andy (“Goofball”) demonstrate how to open, drink and disassemble a ラムネ bottle.

This took an unbelievably long time to edit. I either need to stop being such a perfectionist, or learn how to be a faster one.

House Tour Video

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Here it is, finally! I edited the house tour video, getting it down to a decent length and size. Of course, I could pick it apart for mistakes, but that’s just me. Overall, I really like it, despite being able to hear snot whistling in my nose, jump cuts galore, and there being a raindrop on the lens. Actually, I like the jump cuts. For some reason they seem to add comic timing.

You’ll need to install Quicktime 7 to view it in its full widescreen H.264 glory. Unfortunately, these days you can’t upgrade QT without also upgrading iTunes to the craptacular version 5.

VIDEO

More videos to come, but life is still getting in the way. I spent all last night Crap Cleaning and defragging my landlord’s computers instead of editing media as planned. Also hooked him up with free anti-virus and anti-spyware utilities. He was very pleased. Next I’ll try to convert him to Firefox.

HFJ Video Chumbucket: A Walk Through a Supermarket

Last weekend we were at Ito Yokado, one of two department store/supermarkets in Koga, so Tony could get his video game fix. Right before we left, I took the video camera out of my backpack, turned it on and walked through the supermarket holding the camera as inconsicously as possible. Since I couldn’t see what I was filming, the video is crooked and jumpy. I’m tempted to figure out how to attach the camera to the front of a shopping cart in a way that won’t draw too much attention. And also to buy a wide-angle lens for it.

Here’s the RSS feed for the The Herro Flom Japan Video Clip Chumbucket:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/hfj_videochum

You can also watch the video at OurMedia.org and YouTube.com.

I’ll try to do a better one sometime in the future. This one’s like looking at the world through the eyes of a midget with one leg a lot shorter than the other.

Conveyor Belt Sushi

I wasn’t going to put this one out because the battery died before I could finish it, but what the heck. It’s not like this is Neilson ratings week or anything.

Tony provides the Japanese Phrase of the Day:

早くしてくれない?
はやくしてくれない?
Hayaku-shite kure nai?
“Would you please hurry the #$%! up?”

The “#$%!” part isn’t actually expressed in a specific word. It’s in the tone. He certainly didn’t learn that attitude from me.

Were you hoping for a podcast instead of a video? Actually, I’ve been practicing, but I haven’t recorded anything I feel like releasing. But if you really want to hear something and you don’t care if it’s not that great, you can download the file “EXMIC057.MP3” from this directory:

https://herroflomjapan.com/podcasts/

I haven’t listened to it. If you don’t like it, trash it and listen to something else. On the plus side, it has lots of subway noises because I didn’t hit the stop button while I was on the subway.

And about the contest: I’m not about to ask anyone to vote for me every day for two weeks. That’s plain absurd. I’m just happy I was nomiated.

VIDEO

Back Behind The Wheel

This will either be interesting or it will be the podcasting equivalent of sitting through a slide show of vacation photos. We’ll see. I’m still figuring this stuff out.

Someone mentioned that my podcast reminded them of the weekly public radio program This American Life, so I decided to check it out. For the past two weeks I’ve been listening to it eight hours a day at work. So for this episode I decided to try to take a lesson from them. No way is it anywhere near as good as This American Life, but then again they have a team of 10 professional producers working full-time on every episode. And there’s no background music in mine. Too much trouble.

Update: I fixed the broken link to the MP3 file.
Update: The last minute or so of the file didn’t get uploaded. That’s been fixed too.

Show notes:

  • There are accompanying photos in the gallery.
  • Calpis (Not “cow piss”)