iphone.loadingreadyrun.com
August 11th, 2008

Posted by Paul

As you may know, a bunch of the crew have acquired iPhones since they have become available in Canada. The web browser on the iPhone is the best in any handheld device by far, but it does have some limitations. Most notably, it lacks flash capability and is quite finicky about what kind of videos it plays online. This means that it cannot play videos straight off the main loadingreadyrun site. The trick is that the videos that revver hosts for us are actually iPhone compatible, but they just have to be served in a special way.

I have made a special, iPhone optimized version of the site at http://iphone.loadingreadyrun.com. There you can browse and search the entire LRR video archive (the ones that are Revverized, anyway) or listen to any of our LRRcasts. For both videos and LRRcasts, tapping on the thumbnail or name will play the video and tapping on the little arrow with take you to that item’s info page with credits, views, description, etc.

As always, let me know if there are any glitches.



LRR.Community Update: Aug 8, 2008
August 8th, 2008

Posted by Jeremy

So how were the last four days for you? Good? My X-Box broke and then came partially back from the dead, and I’m still coming to grips with being a quarter-century old on Sunday . . . so it’s likely your week was better than mine. Let’s see what the community has been up to.

Misty Waters

Proudfoot has posted the third installment of his popular LRR Community Profile series. This episode, he and Misty prove that she is an interesting person, and have a very insightful discussion.

Listen to it here.

Backwards LRRies

For some reason, Lord Crusher has decided that we (and our videos) need to be awarded, and has thus started scheming the first ever LRR Fan Awards (which presumably he plans to hold in association with the still-hypothetical LRRCon). He’s emailing deets to those who would like to be involved and while I – as a member of the crew – might be a bit biased (weighting the procedure towards my opus, Vietnam) you, the casual LRR fan, might want to be involved.
LRR Fan Awards

Uncle Graham Wants You!

Or at least he wants to know what you think about the site. The recent controversy over the content and style of Skeletor’s Dick has prompted Graham to post a survey asking what you (the LRR fan) would like to see more of. If you want your voice heard, know that we are listening, and that this could be a good venue to post your thoughts.

Why LRR? (feedback survey)

What’s In Store . . .

2Stepz has started a thread soliciting items folks would like to see added to the store. She points out that polo shirts should be easy, while others have pointed to hoodies and girl shirts as obvious additions.

Unfortunately, while such things may seem simple to produce, they have a tendency to cost a lot of money. A run of a couple hundred T-shirts costs a couple thousand dollars, and that just isn’t feasible when you’re not already selling a lot of merch. The more we sell of our current stuff, the more new stuff we will be able to produce, so if you want to see more products added, the best thing you can do is buy what’s available.

That said, it’s good to dream big, so let’s hear what other ideas you folks have for merch.

Store Suggestions

Creepy CrawLRRs

In probably the creepiest thread I’ve seen in a while, masamune wants to hear about dreams involving the LRR cast. I have personally had a number of dreams about the cast, including one last weekend where Mega64 beat us to the punch on a video concept we’ve been planning. I also had one where Paul shot me in the back in a dirigible hangar and I had to go to a party with blood spewing out of my chest without staining anything . . . and then there was the one where we were all in Vegas: Paul shot someone in the stairwell of our hotel, and be had to bury the body in a watermelon stand down the road.

My dreams are weird.

If yours are too, you can post them here: Dreams Including the LRR Cast

15 Seconds of Fame

As I mentioned on this week’s podcast, we are starting a new segment called 15 Seconds of Fame. Each week on the blog, I will be asking for your opinions on something we discussed. This could be as trivial as Matt’s “problems” with Gears of War, or as important as the askLRR questions you folks often throw to us.

If you have and opinion, you can save it as a 15-second sound file and email it to James (subject: 15 SECONDS OF FAME). We will choose the one we like the most, play it on the podcast for all to hear, and respond to it, giving YOU 15 seconds of fame (or more if you count our responses). Entries of more than 15 seconds will be disqualified.

This week’s topic: what do you think of the new site design?

Email responses here.

And that’s all for this week more next week, and another 15 seconds of fame!

Cheers, folks!

–Jer

Video / LRRcast Archive Search
August 8th, 2008

Posted by Paul

So, one of the unintended concequences of the pagination in the archives of the LRR 5.5 layout is that you can no longer just use the built-in Ctrl-F page search to find a specific video. Going back to the old all-on-one-page archives is not really an option (with ~400 videos, each with their own thumbnail, the archive page was over a meg). To get around this limitation, I have added an archive search field to all of the video and lrrcast archive pages. All the usual boolean search stuff should work (+must include, “complete phrase”, – must not include, etc). At the moment, only the Title and Description fields are indexed, but hopefully we will be adding some sort of tagging system in the future.

As always, let me know in the comments or by email is anything is acting wierd.

Preview – Aug 11th, 2008
August 5th, 2008

Posted by Graham

What manner of video could this possibly be in aid of? I could tell you, but you all have such fun guessing!

Judging by how far off you were last week though, I bet you won’t…

Preview pic: Aug 11, 2008

Preview pic: Aug 11, 2008

Emergency Situation
August 5th, 2008

Posted by Graham

I believe Paul wrote in the script “we can shoot this like ‘High Noon’, so locations are refereced without regard for practicality” or something similar. That means green screen time!

Admittedly, we have a much, much better green screen now than we did then. In the photos below, I’ve included a shot from the “Uwe Boll: Decision 2008” shoot so you can see.

On the upside it was a fairly straightforward shoot. Once I figured out how people would be oriented in the room, we just had to line up the shots. The most difficult one was the over-the-shoulder shot of Matt and Morgan, who are both in the same shot, but split-screen so the desk can be arted in between them.

Green screening can be a tough thing to act on because it require a good concept of spatial relations. You’re always moving around to make sure that the screen is filling the shot behind the action, which results in the actors having no real sense of where they are.

After I got the footage home, I built the room in 3D, and set up a series of virtual cameras at roughly the same locations as the real ones were, and went from there. There’s some screencaps from my 3D program below as well.

Anything you would want to know is covered in episode 01 of Loading Time, so check it out! Tim also took most of the photos below.