This is the personal webhub of Michael F.Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool, since 1999 . This is page collects all the updates I've posted on the main page of AllThingsMike since 2003, the last major redesign of the website. I stopped updating from the main page in 2009.
The entries below are "archival" announcements which have appeared on the main page of AllThingsMike over the years, starting in 2003, when I switched from designing the pages on Microsoft Word and switched to Macromedia Dreamweaver. Some of these entries are duplicated on the main page, but as I make further updates along the way toward the TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the site, in May of 2009, the duplicate entries which are already on this page will fall off the front page.
My
photographic skills are increasing. I haven't created a Webshots folder
yet, but I've been dabbling in monochrome photography and have posted
a selection
of fifteen photos on my blog. The response was terrific. Besides setting
the camera to monochrome instead of converting from color in "post
production", I've tried to alter the contrast and brightness so that
the photos really stand out. These are singular works of art, not to be
confused with "snapshots". The study of San Vicente Light to
the left was taken on November 1st, on a particularly nice SoCal day,
and Santa Catalina island can plainly be seen in the background.
I plan to create a whole set of these works in the near future, and will upload what I've photographed so far in "glorous monochrome" to a webshots folder shortly.
The
"Operations" series on my blog, WhenWordsCollide,
has a current edition with my new essay series, "A Leg to Stand On",
started in June 2008 when my doctor referred me to an orthopedic specialist
who is going to eventually give my broken sixteen year old left hip replacement
a replacement. Since this operation is not all that common, since older
folks usually have hip replacements in the first place,and I had mine
back in the early 90s, I am documenting the sometimes time consuming process
of seeing doctors, taking drugs, and hobbling about on crutches for almost
six months.
After the operation is performed, hopefully sooner than later, I will keep readers up to date with my progress. I've gone through the hip replacement process before, but this is brand new, since each replacement replacement is an entirely different procedure, depending upon the patient.
MY OPERATIONS SERIES ON WHENWORDSCOLLIDE: JAWBREAKING IN HIGH SCHOOL 03/08
There
are now three complete selections in the "My Operations" series
I've been posting on my blog WhenWordsCollide since August of 2005's
"My Left Hip" about my hip replacement surgery back in 1993.
The second selection was
"My Colonoscopy" from March 2007and detailed the experience
of having the "small invasive procedure." In February 2008 I began
serializing "Jawbreaking
In High School" about my broken jaw and the many operations it
took to correct it.
Part Two was added a few days later. Other selections in the series
will show up on the blog and can be found on the :"tags"
page for my blog under
"operations".In the summer of 2008 I received news that I
will need yet another hip replacement, to replace my 16 year old prosthesis,
which has broken loose of it's rotator cup. A recent addition to the ongoing
Operations series is a new essay series,
"A Leg to Stand On".
When
Words Collide is my daily blog, updated at least three times a week.
The service which has hosted my "blog" since Memorial Day
2004 is Xanga, and it has been around
for about as long as this website, but I didn't know of it's existence
till mid 2004, when a correspondent who maintains a personal blog there
showed me her site, and I immediately fell in love with the concept
of the "Xanga Community". I have created 10 blogs on the Blogger
service, but I had no idea how to develop a readership. The Blogger
website is sort of like Homestead,
which hosted AllThingsMike in 1999-2001. There are a lot of blogs, but
no navigation system. The Xanga community is just that: a community.
Although Blogger now has a "comments" feature on each post,
communities like Xanga invented the concept, and the comments allow
bloggers to search each other out and get to know one another. The "internet
community" I had always dreamed about it here, today, on Xanga..
The
blog contains some of the best pages in the AllThingsMike Universe.
One of the
articles I created for the "Internet
Island" blogring, a collection of over 115 blogs for which
I create "themes" for the bloggers to post entires, was constructed
for a topic post about "fantasy vacations". My "vacation"
entailed staying at a mythical resort in Las Vegas modeled after Vegas
in the 1960s. The resort would be called the Viva Las Vegas Las Vegas
Hotel and Casino. Read about this totally imaginary resort
here on the blog.
Mike
becomes the "Bionic Man" when he complains about pain, and then
is diagnosed with uncurable bone placement, and is granted a hip replacement
in the essay ; MY
LEFT HIP One of the "blog entries on
"WhenWordsCollide", always interesting, always imbued with
the spirit of "the personal to the universal." The blog, "WhenWordsCollide" has regular features, which include "PhotoPosts", "ElectricPoetry" posts, Philosophical articles for the "Socrates Cafe", reminiscences, observations, and opinions. I once wrote that AllThingsMike could possibly be the only website you will ever need. Some of my Xanga blog readers get a lot of their "news" from my daily articles, so perhaps this is slowly becoming true for some people.
Iwrote
that someday "We would all have our own television stations on the
internet." and the time arrived in late 2005. I still have some of
my "television shows" on Beta from the 80s although I don't
have a player on which to watch them. .I always had my idea for a television
show and thanks to the state of streaming video and up to date video editing
software, I am able to create "Mike's Video Blog" a sporadic
feature on WhenWordsCollide.
The first Video Blogs streamed from
YouTube, but most of the later Video Blogs are stored on my blog
server. A
lot of folks VideoBlog now. Most of them are the garden variety "turn
the camera on yourself and talk" gabfests, but I'm creating MikeVideo
"internet movies" with the same quality as all other MikeVideo
product. Each edition will have a theme, and take the viewer somewhere
else in the crazy universe of MikeVideo...................................
YouTube
decided to delete the soundtracks from nine of the
over fifty original videos I have on their servers because of "copyright
infringement." They began early in the year, and each month I find
another email in my inbasket telling me another one of my little masterpieces
has been butchered. In late 2008, I had redesigned and updated my
MikeVideo site, including adding links to the videos on both
Xanga, where my blog, WhenWordsCollide
is located, and on YouTube, where I've been a "director" since
late 2005, when they established the streaming service. I have just been
able to "fix" some of the links to the YouTube vids, either
alerting readers that the links go to soundless videos, or inserting new
links to the videos I'm uploading to my Vimeo
account, which I haven't used in two years. Vimeo has HD streaming,
same as YouTube, so I might utilize their services more in future.
My videos do not infringe on any copyrights. For the most part, I create mashups utilizing a number of musical elements, and I always list these songs and tunes at the end of the video in the credits. I don't sell these internet movies. They are offered for free on the web. Since I acknowledge the copyright holders, I should not be penalized. It took a while to update these pages, but for the most part I think I've covered all the bases, and added a new video to the main page of the site as well. My original MikeVideo webpage, from 1999, where I announced that "we'd all someday have our own television stations on the internet" has had to be taken down, sadly, because I couldn't pay for the old site address any longer. It was just archived pages which I redesigned over here at AllthingsMike in 2001 anyway.
As seems to be usual during the end of every year since I began AllThingsMike as an outlet for my creativity, as the year begins to end, I begin to update furiously. I last updated right before creating this video, and now I'm updating three months later, with multiple projects. This videoblog began as a showcase for some of the songs I wrote in the 70s and 80s, but when I just couldn't seem to sing all that well, I decided to shift focus and make it a poetry reading instead. The raw footage for this video includes about six or eight more poems and a couple of more songs, so I've got material for a few more of these.
The response when I posted the video and Director's Commentary on my blog was pretty good. I have planned to do poetry readings of my work online for years, first when I ran the Yahoo ElectricPoetry group, which disbanded in 2004, and later for the blog. I might utilize Xanga's "XTV" feature, which streams video with a chatroom attached, if there is further interest in poetry readings. In the meantime, this video includes the very first public readings of my poetry, featured of course on the ElectricPoetry website.
This is the year of many changes. In February, I not only physically moved, after living in the same rented house for 14 years, but I bought my own place. "My Little House" is located in a senior mobile home park in the South Bay, and the video blog detailing my move that I promised when I posted my latest Betty Boop Museum photos was finished and uploaded to YouTube in two separate installments at the end of May. The first episode can be watched to the left, and the second is HERE.
Finally, I have my own place, but sadly for the website and for my blog, WhenWordsCollide, I have been socializing more in "real life" and taking time to fix up my place, so I haven't really been updating my online AllThingsMike Universe. On my birthday this year, AllThingsMike turned 10 years old, and I stopped paying Homestead the fee to keep the archived earlier site pages online, so I will be deleting broken links which point to those older pages in the near future. If you click a link for one of those pages, you will get a Homestead 401 error message. Other changes which have taken place this year so far entailed my "hip revision operation" which can be experienced by reading my blog articles in the "A Leg to Stand On" series which was announced in June and is now complete. I am now walking under my own power, and intend on getting out and around Los Angeles with my ever present cameras for some new projects quite soon. Along with the dismantling of my earlier archived web pages, I have also noticed that a lot of the videos on my YouTube channel have had the soundtracks deleted for "copyright infringement." Most of the videos are duplicated on my Xanga video section as well, so apologies for the lack of soundtracks on the YouTube pages. I will be removing these links from the MikeVideo section and uploading the high def versions of a lot of the vids to this site in the coming months.
The
end of the year is always a time for increased activitiy here at AllThingsMike.
Since it's the dawn of the tenth anniversary year, there is even more
activity going on. A couple of weeks ago, I completely updated the ElectricPoetry
site, and for the past two weeks, I've turned my attention to MikeVideo.
Besides changing some of the page styles and making the snappy new graphic,
shown to the left, I've added year pages like on
ElectricPoetry, and created a couple of new "Feature Pages".
One of the files streaming from the
Selling Sex Page was incomplete (for about three years!) and I've
uploaded the complete file (which took me some time to find)
While the site is updated at least a couple of times a year, when I'm making more videos, I tend to update in "blocks", so the site remained unchanged for a while, with "Big Wednesday Dreams", created in Dec. 2007, as the "latest" video. Now I've updated and redesigned the front page of the site, so that my latest couple of videos are shown there, and then all other videos for the year are collected on their own year pages. 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 are online. I've listed in each section all the instances where the videos are online, either on YouTube or Xanga and also supply a link to the "Director's Commntary " pages from my blog for most of the videos.
New videos showcased on the main page include "L.A. Dreams", from November, and "Faire Music", the very fist "test video" for the more ambitious 2005 project, "Renaissance Day", soon to have it's own "Feature Page". The latest "Feature Page" contains the three "ElvisMovies" music mashup videos. It was a lot of work, and I still have to update the style of the History and Video Capture sections to match the style of the rest of the site, but all in all, this past couple of weeks has seen a major overhaul of MikeVideo and were very productive. .
Even
though I've been on crutches since late summer, waiting for an operation
to be scheduled to replace my broken hip replacement, I started to get
a little bit of cabin fever by staying home, and embarked on another photo
expedition series to downtown L.A. in November.The cemterpiece of my L.A.
Dreams project is the new MikeVideo internet movie slideshow called L.A.
Dreams, available on YouTube
and Xanga
Video. It is a mix of my photos of downtown L.A. dating back to 2004,
with special emphasis on the high quality photos I took in beautiful weather
in early November mixed with video footage shot over a wide period of
time on expeditions to L.A.Music is a mashup of Los Angeles themed groups
and songs.
I also have 172 photos in the Sears, USC Medical Center, Bridges folder and 290 photos in the Downtown L.A.in November folder on Webshots. Photo Walks are on the blog for both the Sears, USC Medical Center trip and the trip downtown.
May
brought three major projects, and I felt the year at it's half way point
was one of the more productiive in memory. Then "real life"
reared it's ugly head and Mike's online world took a backseat to the aforementioned
real one. In July, longtime friend and roommate Joel
Birney passed away. I also found out that my 16 year old hip
replacement needed to be replaced.
Not known to leave my videoblogging skills dormant when there is any chance of being creative, even though I stopped the Hollywood Project detailed below, I put together the three part video series "Mike's Extreme Makeover", showing the PART ONE , PART TWO, and PART THREE together comprise a 30 minute program which takes a "reality show" approach to how I cleaned up my house after Joel's death, and prepared for the arrival of a new roommate. There is also a PhotoPost on my blog with high quality photos taken of the makeover.
A blog announcing the arrival in August of new roommate Mike Hatt can be found HERE.
There
are 252 photos in the
Hollywood: The Sign, Beachwood Estates,and Cemetary folder on Webshots.
This is an "unfinished project" which was began scant days before
my roommate passed away after a long battle with colon cancer. I never
finished the project, and didn't shoot any video, but the material shot
provided two Photoposts on the blog and the Webshots folder. I still plan
on returning to the Hollywood Forever Cemetary to take the tour, so I
can get more photos of the "graves of the famous", including
Rudolph Valentino and Cecil B. DeMille. The photo composite to the left
is the logo header for the blog series, and includes an enlarged version
of the sign photo, plus additions of car photos from other projects. The
Chrysler on the left is one of my models.
Back in the summer of 2004, when I was using the still feature in the videocamera, I shot two Webshots Galleries full of photos along Hollywood Blvd. (ONE and TWO) These galleries are among my most visited on Webshots. I plan to get up to Hollywood Blvd again with the new camera, but plans were stifled after the death of my roommate, followed by the news that I need to use crutches because of my broken hip replacement.
The
purple Haze of jacaranda flowers covers Southern California in the Spring.
An abundance of blooms showed up on the weekend of May 10th and I began
my photo excursions the next weekend. On May 16th in Long Beach and May
18th in Pasadena, I photographed dozens of the beautifully flowering jacaranda
trees and am displaying the photos in the Webshots Folders Purple
Pulchritude One (Long Beach) and
Purple Pulchritude Two (Pasadena) There is also a selection of the better
photos in the
May 21st PhotoPost on WhenWordsCollide
Pirates,
buccanneers, wenches, lords, and ladies populate the yearly Southern California
Renaissance Faire which occurs in the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area in
Irwindale in the Spring. I went this year on the last day of the Faire,
May 18th, and the weather was oppressively hot.
Although I didn't get a lot of varied footage or photos this year, since I left early, I did get almost the complete performances of the Poxy Boggards bawdy men's choral group, and magician, comic
One
of the Thursday Calendar entertainment choices in the Los Angeles Times
was the 2008 edition of the George Barris "Cruisin' Back the Fifties"
car show in Culver City. Only a few miles north of L.A., I hauled both cameras up to the show and spent three or four hours
taking both photos and video of the various classic custom cars, both from
the George Barris studio, and in competition. It was slightly overcast,
but the shining paint jobs are still clearly displayed on these beauteous
automobiles. The photography was taken on May 10th. The Webshots Folder,
"Culver City Kustoms" with 234 photos, was added later
that night. The MikeVideo Internet Movie, "Culver City Kustoms"
was added to
Xanga Video and YouTube
on the 12th, making this project one of the fastest to get to the internet
in both photo and video versions so soon after planning and shooting. Read
the Director's Commentary on WhenWordsCollide.
On
May 1st came the Mikester's fifty fifth birthday, and to celebrate, quite
a few creative endeavors were started. Planned and shot in mid March,
the Silver Lake Steps Project resulted in a couple of Webshots folders.
Silver Lake Steps One with 102 images and Silver
Lake Steps Two with 160 images added on May 11th. Intrigued
with a Los Angeles Times article about the over 50 public staircases in
the Los Angeles suburb of Silver Lake, Mike printed out a list from the
internet and took both still and video camera up into the hills of Silver
Lake looking for staircases. Covered are the famous Music Box Steps, the Cove, Landa, and
the Micheltorena steps. There is also internet movie footage incorporated
into the eighth edition of Mike's Video Blog, available on both Xanga
Video and YouTube.
The video blog is 13:03 and takes the viewer along on the hike with Mike,
from planning, driving to, and execution of the hike up three famous staircases.
Read the Director's Commentary on the blog.
I have only made eight "Mike's Video Blogs" since February of 2006, but each one is lavish, with travel, music, and narration covering a variety of places and events. The most ambitious is Mike's Video Blog #6,"Almost Homeless", which encompasses three separate
The
sporadic California rainy season always provides the opportunity to get
out and get some cloudscapes. One Friday evening after work, and right before a rainstorm,I
was able to capture quite a selection of cloudscapes with the latest 7.2
megapixel camera, and they are online in my Webshots Gallery entitled
"Cloudscaping"
Along with the Webshots Gallery, which contains over 100 photos taken that afternoon, right before sundown, I also completed an internet movie called "Cloudscaping"which is essentially a photo slideshow comprised of not only the photos in the latest Cloudscaping folder, but dozens of other cloudscaping photos taken over a four year period, and edited to the strains of traditional guitar music by fellow Xanga blogger Randy Van Otterloo (flatpick46 on Xanga) The video is 6 min. and 21 seconds long. Read the Director's Commentary on WhenWordsCollide.
On
Wednesday, the 5th of December, 2007, the biggest swells in over two years
were predicted along the shoreline of California. I took a day off work to travel up the coast of California,
taking photos and video of the monstrous waves and the collections of
surfing aficianados who similarly took the day off work to ride the waves.
Although the conditions were less magnificent than predicted, I was able to cobble together a 12 minute video showing the swells at a number of beaches, and showcasing some interesting surfing footage.The video is located in my Xanga Video Section HERE. You can also read theDirector's Commentary on my blog.
Faced
with monetary problems which prohibit me from taking "photo expeditions"
too far from home, I spent a couple of weekends on Ocean Boulevard in
Long Beach this past summer, walking along photographing and videotaping my progress along the boulevard. The resulting "art
projects" are the internet movie
"Greetings From Ocean Blvd." and the Webshots Gallery
photo folders of the same name. (Linked in the "Webshots Gallery
Additions" entry below.) I've always attempted to see how steady
I can hold the camera by hand without uisng a tripod, and then moving
with balletic grace in order to achieve almost "steadicam"
like shots in my "travelblogues" and internet movies. I think
I achieved some excellent results with "Greetings From Ocean Boulevard".
Plans are in the works for more "street specific" travelblogues
centered on major Southern California thoroufares like Hollywood Boulevard.
Read the Director's Commentary on my blog.
In
November 2007. the "20th anniversary year"
of MikeVideo is over. I have completed and posted
20 new "internet movies" on either
my
YouTube Channel, the MikeVideo
section of this website, or the "Videoblog"
section of my blog, since November of 2006,
when the anniversary year began. The latest
MikeVideo Internet Movie is "The Tall Ships",
posted in late September 2007. A tribute to
the sailing vessels of old and the three masted
schooners of today. MikeVideo combines footage
shot aboard four full size sailing ships at
the Dana Pt. Tall Ships Festival on Sept. 8th,
2007, with photos and paintings acquired through
websearches, and scored to a music file that
contains lots of traditional sea shanties.
Read the "Director's Commentary"on my blog.
In November of 2006, the twentieth anniversary of my MikeVideo brand quietly and quickly passed. It wasn't until mid December that I realized this benchmark anniversary had almost gotten away from me, and I hadn't even mentioned it during the whole of 2006, which, owing to the existence of YouTube, where I constructed my YouTube Channel in December of 2005, has seen the uploading of far more videos than I ever streamed here from the AllThingsMike server. As mentioned in the History Section of the MikeVideo website, a lot of my early videos were on VHS, and some are unwatchable since they were recorded on Beta. Most of the "internet movies" which have been my media of choice since 2003, were streamed here first. Now everything, including archival material, and the first episode of the multi part "The MikeVideo Story" which utilizes some VHS footage, are on the YouTube site.On the MikeVideo Website. the vids are also showcased, and include essays about their history and construction. Some of the more detailed videos, like the recent "Nantucket Holiday" series, which has three episodes online, have their own webpages.
"SELLING SEX AT THE CES", WHAT THEY COULDN'T SHOW ON YOUTUBE. STREAMING FROM MIKEVIDEO: 11/06
Sex
Sells. And at the "Pornothon" in Las
Vegas every year, they sell sex. AllThingsMike
has had a histoy of presenting my complete creative
output as it happens, so I am not the least bit
hesitant about trumpeting the completion of one
of my "five year projects", the MikeVideo
internet movie, "Selling
Sex at the CES", shot in 2000 and finally
finished in 2006. Not for everyone, perhaps, but
bound to please the palate of the porn fan, "Selling
Sex" is a "documentary" look at
the Adult Software Dealers Exposition. The video
is downloadable in three parts, each about 10
minutes long. When I posted Part 1 and Part 2
on my
YouTube Channel this past summer, I received
almost 20,000 viewings combined, and the videos
were only online for three weeks. YouTube considered
them full of "inappropriate content."
I will admit, this is a show about pornography.
It features nudity. It's RATED R. Nobody under
18 should even be watching it. Right now all three
parts are online, and available for download for
a limited time. Each file is rather large, and
the download time is considerable. It always feels
good to complete a project, and this one is finally
"in the can."
March of 2006 was when I began the MikeVideo and photographic project "Pacific Coast Highway." I've been shooting video and the project takes center stage in my first Video Blog. I have two Webshots Galleries online. Gallery One and Gallery Two contain over 270 new photos between them.There is also a MikeVideo Internet Movie online, a photo slideshow set to the music of Andreas Braunlich. I took photos in my own backyard of Lomita, CA, and around Torrance, Harbor City, Wilmington, Long Beach, Hermosa and Redondo Beaches. Plans are still afoot for an eventual drive up the coast with the top down with both still and video camera and plenty of memory sticks
MIKEVIDEO
INTERNET
MOVIES:
DOO
DAH
NOVEMBER
2005
Doo Dah is a MikeVideo shot in November 2005 at the "DooDah" parade in Pasadena. The video lasts a little more than nine minutes and shows a lot of highlights I shot as the parade passed me. Imaginatively edited, and with an original music track by Andreas Baunlich, the video is the next best thing to being there.
Thanks to a website community called "YouTube", I now can present all of my MikeVideo "Internet Movies" online in a streaming format that uses Flash. All the viewer needs is a flash plugin on his computer, and he can see all the Internet Movies I have made over the years. The MikeVideo pages, recreated in early 2005, contains descriptions and links to more MikeVideo Internet Movies. Truly, I'm developing my own Television Station on the web. MikeVideo Productions turned 20 years old in November of 2006, so what better time for a renaissance in home grown video projects.
MIKEVIDEO
INTERNET
MOVIES:
ARBITRIMAGE
DREAMS
OCTOBER
2005
"Arbitrimage Dreams is one of a long line of MikeVideo Internet Movies, created with "arbitrary images" on two different videocameras over a five year period, and edited in the computer. The 9-1/2 minute video is available online as of October of 2005.. Combining disparate imagery, and haunting music, this is a one of a kind video experience, and is yours to watch for free by clicking here.
I always said that someday "We would all have our own television stations on the internet." I thought I'd have to wait longer than now, however. Thanks to a website community called "YouTube", I now can present all of my MikeVideo "Internet Movies" online in a streaming format that uses Flash. All the viewer needs is a flash plugin on his computer, and he can see all the Internet Movies I have made over the years.have also begun filming and presenting "video blog entries", produced like professional television shows, and because of this development, my productivity is rising . Check out the first "Video Blog: Pacific Coast Highway", announcing my latest Webshots gallery offering. The link is to the YouTube page, and right now I'm featuring a player on this page above for "instant viewing". I also have a later "movie" than "Arbitrimage Dreams" on YouTube, the presentation of the "DooDah" parade in Pasadena in November 2005. The MikeVideo pages, recreated in early 2005, contains descriptions and links to more MikeVideo Internet Movies.
Hollywood
Blvd.
and
Sunset
Blvd.
are
the
subjects
of
two
Webshots
Gallery
Folders
uploaded
in
early
October
2009.
I
began
the
Hollywood
Project
in
the
summer
of
2008,.
before
my
then
roommate
Joel
died
of
cancer,
and
through
2009,
with
my
physical
move
and
then
the
hip
operation,
I
didn't
really
concentrate
on
the
unfinished
business
of
going
out
and
taking
pictures.
Great
that
the
web
sticks
around,
and
so
I
have
finally
begun
to
close
the
door
on
this
project,
which
hopefully
will
include
a
MikeVideo
internet
movie
as
well.
There are 122 high quality photos of Hollywood Blvd. and 154 photos of Sunset Blvd. These join the photos I took of the Beachwood Estates and the Hollywood sign in July 2008. I have a folder on my computer with even more photos which I haven't yet uploaded to YouTube.
Thanksgiving
dawned
bright
and
beautiful
after
a rainstorm
drenched
the
southland,
and
I took
my camera
on a
short
jaunt
to San
Pedro,
resulting
in over
100
photos
filled
with
wonderful
cloudscapes
in the
Webshots
Folder
"Thanksgiving
Cloudscapes
in San
Pedro."
The
latter
part
of the
year
is filling
my muse
with
new
projects
all
the
time,
which
is fitting
since
I will
probably
be a
bit
housebound
after
the
hip
replacement
replacement
operation.
In the meantime, join me on numerous photo expeditions during the holiday season 2008, including this impromptou joyride.
While driving down Gaffey Street in search of images like this one, I was pulled over by police because I was taking photos in a no parking area by a government compound. I was let go with a warning, but this proves to how great lengths the Mikester will go to get an interesting photograph.
Shot
immediately
before
a
rainstorm
on
March
16,
2008,
the
Webshots
Folder
titled
"San
Gabriel
Mountains"
contains
279
high
quality
images
taken
with
the
Sony
DSC-W55.
The
folder
was
added
online
on
March
22.
Backed
by
magnificent
cloudscapes,
this
trip
up
into
the
San
Gabriels
via
Azusa
Avenue
and
down
Glendora
Mountain
Road
showcases
many
thrilling
views
of
the
vegetation,
landscape,
and
majesty
of
the
mountain
range
immediately
above
the
Los
Angeles
basin.
It is getting difficult to find locations for photo expeditions that are close by. The rising price of gasoline has stymied plans for Northern California and Las Vegas expeditions. With the addition of each new Webshots Gallery folder, at least one or possibly two PhotoPosts are added to the WhenWordsCollide blog. Each PhotoPost also includes written "commentary" on the photos presented, so they serve as mini travelogues taking the viewer along on the expedition with Mike. Video footage is also shot concurrently with the photos, and there was video footage shot in the San Gabriels as well. No plans to use it as yet, but the soothing sights and sounds of one of the mountain streams might make a nice stress relieving video on it's own. View The San Gabriel Mountains PhotoPost ONE and TWO on the blog.
The
latest
folders
to
be
added
to
my
Webshots
Gallery
are
"Santa
Monica
Part
One
and
Part
Two
,
joining
recent
additions
"The
Tall
Ships"
and
"Long
Beach's
Ocean
Blvd"
Part
One
and
Part
Two
.
The
photographic
expedition
to
Santa
Monica
was
taken
on
Dec.
1,
2007,
and
made
because
Southern
California
had
a
rare
rainstorm
on
Nov.
30th.
The
next
morning
brought
beautiful
blue
skies,
lots
of
fluffy
cumulus
clouds,
and
seemed
to
be
a
great
day
for
a
photo
expedition.
The
galleries
containing
photos
for
The
Tall
Ships
and
the
trip
along
Ocean
Blvd.
in
Long
Beach,
are
companion
selections
of
photos
to
the
internet
movies,
which
are
featured
below.
These
galleries
contain
the
complete
output
of
photography
taken
during
the
expeditions.
Santa Monica includes photos of the pedestrian walkway above Ocean Blvd and the famous Santa Monica Pier. The Tall Ships gallery contains onboard photos of the vessels. Ocean Blvd. details the architecture and ambience of Long Beach's Ocean Blvd. There are hundreds of high quality photos included in the three folders.
My
Webshots
Gallery,
featuring
nearly
4000
photos,
has
recently
had
it's
rating
upgraded
to
#7
of
over
13,350
member
albums
in
the
Travel:
California
section.
That's
not
bad
considering
I
only
have
a
1.2
Megapixel
camera.
I've
been
wanting
to
get
a
better
camera,
but
while
money
is
tight,
I'll
only
be
dreaming
about
it.
I
need
an
SLR
with
removable
lenses.
One
great
thing
about
the
videocamera
I'm
using
is
the
ability
to
attach
a
wide
angle
lens,
and
most
of
my
"signature
shots'
are
composed
with
the
wide
angle.
I
take
mostly
photos
of
landscapes,
and
architecture,
and
my
PhotoPosts
on
my
Xanga
blog,
WhenWordsCollide,
like
the
post
from
Griffith
Park,
include
"commentary"
as
if
my
readers
are
right
with
me
as
I
travel
around
and
take
pictures.
It
thrills
me
to
be
featured
as
the
#7
California
photos
user.
I've
seen
this
position
rise
from
#11
to
#9,
before
I
added
new
folders,
and
now
that
I'm
at
least
adding
new
folders
every
other
month
of
so,
possbily
expect
the
rating
to
go
higher.
Perhaps
I'll
even
be
"featured"
on
the
Webshots
Gallery's
front
pages.
Clicking
on
the
images
to
the
left
take
you
to
the
new
galleries.
There
are
now
56
themed
folders
of
photographs
in
my
Webshots
Gallery,
which
was
begun
in
March
of
2004,
after
I
bought
the
Sony
DCR-PC110
video/still
camera
I
still
use
as
my
primary
camera.
When
I'm
on
a
photo
shoot,
I
take
a
lot
of
different
angles
and
slightly
different
compositions
of
each
photo.
The
more
"artistic"
shots
end
up
on
my
videoblog
entries,
which
can
be
accessed
by
the
PhotoPost
tag
on
my
blog.
The
latest
section
to
be
updated
in
the
AllThingsMike
Universe
is
my
Webshots
Gallery
with
the
addition
in
July
2007
of
the
"Griffith
Park"
and
the
"Palos
Verdes
Peninsula"
folders.
I've
mentioned
this
on
PhotoPost
entries
before.
For
most
of
the
past
six
months,
the
Webshots
Gallery,
featuring
over
3000
photos,
has
consistenly
rated
#9
of
over
13,350
member
albums
in
the
Travel:
California
section.
That's
not
bad
considering
I
only
have
a
1.2
Megapixel
camera.
I've
been
wanting
to
get
a
better
camera,
but
while
money
is
tight,
I'll
only
be
dreaming
about
it.
I
need
an
SLR
with
removable
lenses.
One
great
thing
about
the
videocamera
I'm
using
is
the
ability
to
attach
a
wide
angle
lens,
and
most
of
my
"signature
shots'
are
composed
with
the
wide
angle.
I
take
mostly
photos
of
landscapes,
and
architecture,
and
my
PhotoPosts
on
my
Xanga
blog,
WhenWordsCollide,
like
the
recent
post
from
Griffith
Park,
include
"commentary"
as
if
my
readers
are
right
with
me
as
I
travel
around
and
take
pictures.
It
thrills
me
to
be
featured
as
the
#9
California
photos
user.
I've
seen
this
position
rise
from
#11
to
#9,
before
I
added
new
folders,
and
now
that
I'm
at
least
adding
new
folders
every
other
month
of
so,
possbily
expect
the
rating
to
go
higher.
Perhaps
I'll
even
be
"featured"
on
the
Webshots
Gallery's
front
pages.
Clicking
on
the
images
to
the
left
take
you
to
the
two
new
galleries.
I
might
even
add
some
more
photos.
WEBSHOTS
GALLERY
FOLDERS:
SAN
DIEGO
SERIES:
There are three new folders of photos in the San Diego 1: Coronado Island, San Diego 2: The San Diego Zoo and San Diego 3: Balboa Park sections of my Webshots Gallery. From Coronado Island to Balboa park in three days, I shot 200 photos and took the video which now comprises the MikeVideo Internet movie: "Sand Diego Dreams." The vacation, in September 2006, was the first time in many years that I have specifically travelled with the intent of photographing for the eventual MikeVideo. I shot more photos than I shot video for the first time. Most of the photos were planned shots, and there aren't many random experiments among the three folder.
WEBSHOTS
GALLERY:
FLORA
AT THE
HUNTINGTON
LIBRARY
MAY
2007
The photographs I display on my Webshots Gallery have stayed pretty stable for most of the early part of this year, owing to my insistence that I get a new camera with 5 Megapixels of resolution prior to posting any more photography. In May I did take advantage of the summery weather we had in Southern California and I travelled to the Huntington Library , Art Gallery, and Botanical Gardens and shot over 250 photos of just flowers and plants. The "Flora At the Huntington" folder is the first new Webshots folder since February, when I added the Queen Mary folder. For most of the past six months, the Webshots Gallery, featuring over 3000 photos, has consistenly rated #9 of over 13,350 member albums in the Travel: California section. That's not bad considering I only have a 1.2 Megapixel camera.
WEBSHOTS
GALLERY: CATALINA ISLAND
JULY 2005
May
of 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of this website. Section by section,
I intend to completely updatre the complete website by that time. After
a long absence updating anything except the blog,
owing to the problems I had with ftp after moving my complete site to
another server in August, I am in the midst of a whirl of activity right
now.
Each Decades page and most of the Year pages on the ElectricPoetry website have been updated. New transcriptioins have been added to 1981 and 1983. There are only a dozen or so poems to transcribe and then all of the Eighties poetry will be fully posted on the internet. Some new transcriptions have also been added to the Nineties section completing all poetry for that decade.
I've also added links to all the Poetry of 2008 written so far this year and added a new link to the blog's ElectricPoetry Themed Posts.
ELECTRICPOETRY WEBSITE: BEST OF THE 70s-90s AND NEW 2008 POETRY 3/08
As
of late March I've written eight poems so far this year. .As the years
pass, I sometimes write a lot, as in 2004,
or a scant few, like the only 14. pieces I wrote in
2007. So far, in 2008, even though the output is not great quantity
wise, at least it's been consistent. When I post an "ElectricPoetry"
post on my blog, WhenWordsCollide, I have attempted to include at least
one new piece, and it's been working so far.
Beginning in mid 2007 I posted "10 Best Of" collections of poems on my blog from the decades of the Seventies, the Eighties, and the Nineties. I still have to collect the 10 Best of the Aughts, and before we know it, the Teens will be upon us. It's interesting for me to note that now my last decade's worth of poetry are all "internet poems" written in a computer Notepad program, and posted for the most part online instead of actually existing on a piece of paper, as most of the poems till 1999 were presented at first.
The ElectricPoetry site is constantly being upgraded, and even though I'm a little late getting the 2007 section completed and a 2008 section online, by year's end I do hope to have even better navigation, and some redesign of the older pages and sections to make navigating the site even easier.
At
the most, I wanted AllThingsMike, my personal website, to be my legacy.
At the least, it is a "place" where I can enjoy looking at my
"artistic accomplishments" without the trappings of my career
or "real life".
It was on May 1st, 1999 that I first ftp'd a page, my poem "bornagain" to the internet. The "original" AllThingsMike was part of the Homestead Community back when hosting a website was pretty much free for all comers I kept most of the old webpages online until July of this year, and will be disabling the links as soon as I can. . In 2001 I moved Allthingsmike to it's own server, and a "history" of my pages can be found by using the Internet Archive database.
The site is ten years old, and now encompasses about a thousand pages of "electronic art and literature". Divided into themed websites and sections, clickable through the clouds at your right or the taskbar at the top of the page, I am pretty much "re-inveinting" myself online, showcasing my latent talents. Although a physical move during the fist few months of 2009 has prohibited me from updating a complete overhaul as planned for the "celebration", I will begin to concentrate again now that the anniversary date is finally here. Upcoming projects include Mike's Video Blog #10: Movin' On Up, a video diary of my recent move, and the addition of the 2009 page to the ElectricPoetry website. I'm actually writing quite a few poems in 2009. which can presently be seen on my blog, WhenWordsCollide. in the last half dozen or so ElectricPoetry posts, including three themed posts for National Poetry Month in April. So far, I've written a total of 14 poems in 2009.
The
year 2008 dawned with a major overhaul of the
"Yes, But Is It Art? Gallery site on AllThingsMike. On December
29th and 30th,2007, I completed about a half a dozen new composites, including
"Santa
Monica Pier", a detail of which is onthe lef.
Originally created as a "joke site" for the Komedy, Komedy, Komedy
page, the Yes, But Is It Art? Gallery went legitimate in 2003, but wasn't
really begun in earnest until the next year. The Art Gallery serves as an
introduction to my Philosophy of Art, and also contains sections which highlight
the "fine arts" in which I have dabbled, including drawing,
photography,
and computer
composites. . Eleven new and recently found composites have been added
to the Computer
Art section. I have also added forward and back buttons on most
of the recent works, for ease of maneuvering through the gallery. There
are now 37 individual pages in the Computer Art section, dating back to
2000, when I got the Picture Publisher program and began making "composites",
computer collages which first used images and clip art from the web and
programs, and now mostly uses my own photography. Besides the refurbishing
of the Art Gallery, there are also new USC
logos composites featurd HERE
on my blogsite, WhenWordsCollide.
I finally received a better camera, a Sony Cybershot with 7.2 megapixels,
and my first full photo expedition was to my old alma mater. The trip also
gave birth to a collection of photos in my Webshots Gallery entitled
"USC and Expostion Park". October 2007 brought the addition of the Morpheus software to my digital bag of tricks, and the first project, which can be seen to the left and in full size HERE, is the "MikeMorph", a series of photographs of me from the age of 5 to the present, at age 54. I have planned to have some sort of morph like this on "AllThingsMike"since I created this website, but haven't found the software I needed till now. The program outputs Flash files, animated gifs, and avi movie files that I can use in my video editing software for more varied effects. The second moviemorph is "Skyline", which clocks in at 3 minutes and 40 seconds, and presents a series of city skylines morphing from one to the other in front of a background of time lapse cloud photography culled from the internet. . Plans for more upcoming "MovieMorphs" include "DinoMorph", morphing a series of dinosaurs. I have also begun an internet movie incorporating the "MikeMorph" footage.
As I find new programs and can incorporate their use into my "electronic experiment in art", the only thing holding back my creativitiy is the time it takes to learn the programs and to execute the creations themselves. 2007 has seen a burst of moviemaking creativity, and the morphing program will ultimately be used to enhance my internet movies as well as come up with some interesting art projects on it's own.
My
ongoing autobiographical story
has been updated through the eighth
grade. The
"Half Century" tab
at the top of this page links
to my "Personal History"which
was begun when I turned my first
half century on Earth. There are
lots of assessments in life when
one reaches the age of 50, and
my prime assessment in 1999, at
only 46, when I created this website,
was to chronicle not only my various
ongoing pursuits and projects,
but to place my life in a historical
and cultural chronology, and to
chart the course of my life with
my words. As I add chapters to
this story, the "Half Centruy"
tab will eventually link to my
full autobiography. Other sections
of the website deal with my "spiritual
lifestory" and my "sexual
lifestory". and there is
some overlapping in themes and
events, but "The
Personal History" is
the ultimate story of my long
and eventful life. The first page
has been updated and redesigned
, and the second page, containing
the years spent in junior high,
has just been added
A
REMINISCENCE: DEAR MISANTHROPE:
MY LIFE WITH PAT
Since I started blogging in 2004, I have written more in three years than in the previous twenty.. I am currently serializing about four autobiographical "novels" on WhenWordsCollide One of them is. "My Life With Pat". It is the stormy tale of a relationship between two people with nothing in common. Spiraling out of control for a period of almost four years, our relationship finally fell completely apart when my gal started cheating on me. Those four years were my only time with a woman, and they were like a prison sentence in Hell. Read about my "instant dysfuncitonal family" in "My Life With Pat.".
CLOWNS: A "WEBSITE IN A WEEKEND" JUNE 2006
Well, actually, more like two weekends.. I had an idea of putting "clown themed" pages online back near the beginning of AllThingsMike. The very first 'Clown' page was created on the Homestead version of AllThingsMike in 2003 and is of course still online, and can be viewed by clicking this link. I've always had a fascination with Clowns, and their dichotomy of fun and fright. That interest has fueled the completion of Clowns.
On the first weekend of June 2006 I began the Clowns website, which will be part of the new improved Komedy KomedyKomedy website section of AllThingsMike. (Still in the planning stages in 2008) There are three sections, a History of clowns, some examples of Art of the Clown, and of course a generous selection of my composite art, utilizing hundreds of clown images, both painting, toy, and real, taken from the web and revitalized and reimagined in my imagination. Check out my latest webendeavor, and the newest addition to the AllThingsMike Universe of sites. Clowns. You love them . You hate them. They're funny, ferocious clowns. To the right is the latest addition to the Clowns website, a multimedia slideshow featuring over 200 images of clowns: photos, artwork, and my composites.. This was a labor of love, and took almost a month to create. Enjoy the clowns. (Site Updated in February 2008.)
MY
SEXUAL HISTORY: an essay.
Serialized as it is being written on my blog WhenWordsCollide, the complete strory is available online on one page, with anchored chapters. CLICK HERE to read My Sexual History, currently twelve chapters long. Originally going to be a series of short essays on the blog, from the first "chapter" I knew this one was going to take some time. When I finish, this will be a novel sized "memoir" of my life and times, from a sexual viewpoint. Begun late in 2005, Chapter Twelve brings us up to 1995. I am attempting to be frank and honest in my recounting of "one man's story" of the sexual revolution during the seventies that is honest, realistic, and somewhat erotic without being titillating or perverse. I set my wayback machine to 1965 and proceed from there, with a narrative rich in observation and description.The "reviews" so far have been very positive.
CHILDHOOD
IN LOS ANGELES ON THE "HALF CENTURY TAB"
I have dealt with many facets of this "autobiographical/spiritual approach" until in 2003 I finally "let the cat out of the bag" and created "The Universal Blog" which contains what the "Philosophy" section of the original AllThingsMike website was gong to contain: a philosophical, global, spiritual, UNIVERSAL theory of existence. My own "Bible" if you will.
I began the story of my childhood when I redesigned the Website in 2003. That's when the "tabs" at the top of the page were created. The essays include, besides, my autobiography, my infamous History essay, "The Next 30 Years", musings on my immedaite personal future, and "Eternity", the gateway to the Universal Mind.
YES,
BUT IS IT ART? GALLERY WEBSITE : FEBRUARY 2005
The "Yes, But Is It Art? Gallery" has a newly designed "Computer Generated Art" page, with new composites added on a regular basis. In 2004 I began a revitalization of the long standing site, which hasn't had major work since 2002.
"History" has been finished. In 2002, I began the "essay" of that title to which the "History" link on the top of this page points to, but only finished this piece, finally, in 2005. Some things take time to become fully realized. It took a while, but I finally changed the layout of the History, Half Century, Thirty Years, and Eternity pages so that the design of the site is more cohesive.
The
Cultural Blender
has undergone a complete makeover.
I've given it a complete facelift,
and added some long delayed content to the site, which was created back
in 2001. During the early months of 2007, I added new backgrounds, streamlined
the page structure, and totally redesigned the
"Iconography" section, which will hopefully eventually consist
of individual webpages for each cultural trend and personality pictured
in the blender image, which has also been redesigned. 
The index and icons page, including pages dedicated to Shirley Temple, John Wayne , and other icons have been completed and are online. The Advertising Page is undergoing some redesign, and soon, I will be adding some new composites and perhaps a slideshow movie to, Cartoons .
I took advantage of the many editable features include with my new Sony "Vegas" editing software and created an internet movie themed to the Cultural Blender. It is animated, and includes images from the blender "jumping" out of their space and onto the screen. Each icon receives a few seconds tribute, with still images, video, and audio adding to the total experience. A small video feed of "The Cultural Blender Movie Part 1" is presented to the right, and a larger stream and downloads of a higher quality mpg file are on the Cultural Blender Movie page.
The video also streams from the new Video Secton on my Xanga blog, WhenWordsCollide.
ROBOTS:
A "WEBSITE IN A WEEKEND" SPRING 2005
Robots is a"weekly website" created in Spring of 2005 for the Cultural Blender website. Robots have fascinated me since I was a child. Immersed first in science fiction books and movies, and then exposed to the wonderful world of machinery and computers, I have had a question I share with a lot of people. Just when do the ROBOTS arrive? The answer mght surprise you. The story of the robot rebellion, began in the first published play about them in 1921, and further embellished by films like The Terminator series, is the stuff of science fiction and speculation, but the Honda Corporation has been secretly developing the science of "two legged" propulsion, and has created "Asimo", a childsize addition to any family. The ROBOTS website details the history of the Robot in art, literature, and in the real world. Take a visit to the not too distant future with the ROBOTS website section of "The Cultural Blender".
WEBSHOTS GALLERY: MOVIELAND WAX MUSEUM OCTOBER 2005
The
AllThingsMike Webshots
Gallery is my collection of photographs on the internet. Most of the
3000 or so photos in the gallery, divided by themed folders, have only
been taken since March of 2004, when I finally bought my second digital
video/still camera. I have always been intrigued by photography. I have
graduated from a 35mm to a digital and I have not stopped taking pictures
since.
Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, down the street from Knott's Berry Farm, and a fixture in Orange County for 43 years, closed it's doors on Hallowe'en 2005. On the weekend before the closing, I took some photos of the exhibits, some of which were familiar from taking about a half a dozen trips there over the years, some new and unseen till now. I have filled two folders on my Webshots Gallery. Movieland Wax Museum, and More Movieland. There is video footage which hopefull will someday be incorporated into a new MikeVideo Internet Movie, which will soon be able to be accessed from the MikeVideo YouTube page.
As
the year 2008 wound to a close, the roommate I had prepared for in
Mike's Extreme Makeover decided he couldn't afford to live with me anymore,
and I was forced to find a new place to live, after 14 years in the same
house. I could have opted to look for another roommate, but didn't want
to be facing "roommate roulette" over the next few years, especially
since I am having a major operation upcoming.
I cancelled the operation, and prepared for, and moved during the months of January and February. There will be an upcoming Mike's Video Blog showing the highlights of the move. Because the Betty Boop Museum had to be completely dismantled, I took new photos of the museum when after I set up the figurines in new displays and posted 199 of these high quality photos in a new Webshots Gallery folder entitled "The Betty Boop Museum 2009".
There is also video footage for an upcoming video about the Betty Boop Museum and my various collectibles.
The
last major site overhaul I completed before I had to physically move and
stopped updating was The Betty
Boop Pages. I overhauled the Composite
Section, and the Web
Images section, relegating the images which had been stagnating on
the front page of the site for over a year to their own gallery, and replacing
them with all new images, mixing new high quality photographic backgrounds
with all new posed images of the Danbury Mint Betty Boop figurines.
In all, ten new composites are now featured on The Betty Boop Pages. Although I did draw from new angled poses of some of the figurines previously used in composites, like the "upskirt Betty" pose used in the composite to the left with a newly colorized skirt, most of the new work utilizes Betty Boops from my plate collection, which haven't been used previously.
Betty
has had a makeover. Fresh new content has been added to "The
Betty Boop Pages", Besides new composites and images on the Home
Page, the "Composites"
and the
"Cartoons" pages, there is also a new "MikeVideo Internet
Movie" on the Home
Page, , the second MikeVideo of mine featuring the risque cartoon
character, called, simply "Betty Boop".
"Betty
Boop"
(10:00 min.) is an 36.1 megabyte windows media file with a resolution
of 320 by 240pixels. It is a MikeVideo Internet Movie created Sunday,
June 10, 2007. It is a compliation video showcasing selections from the
original Betty Boop cartoons from the decade of the thirties. Consisting
of differing scenes from roughly twenty Betty Boop catoons made from 1932
to 1934, I have included scenes which showcase the virtuosity of the Fleischer
Brothers Studio product of the time, with stunning surrealistic animation,
and "special effects" including the rotoscoping of dancing figures,
Betty's risque sense of humor, the tendency for her to get herself in
trouble, and lose her clothes, and her evocative singing voice, supplied
by Mae Questel.
This marks the first major addition to
"The Betty Boop Pages" website in two years, since the last
internet movie, "Betty
Boop Dreams", was added in 2006.
WEBSHOTS
GALLERY FOLDER: MORE BETTY BOOP MUSEUM PHOTOS
AUGUST 2006
The latest Webshots Gallery folder is the first I've created in many months. It is a continuation of the Betty Boop Museum Folder, which is the most popular folder in my online gallery of over 3000 photos. There are 29 new photos online, with a new shelf I created and some new angles of some of the other "exhibits" in the Boop Museum, which features my displays of Danbury Mint Betty Boop collectibles.
®
©
©
©
