Is Master's Voice

I've had a few entries on the back burner for some time, at least three in the past week that have been relegated to "drafts" for various reasons, mostly refinement and fact-checking. I realize it's a bit lazy, even unprofessional from certain perspectives, to then post an entry practically made up on the spot. However, even with that spontaneity which leaves other and more refined projects in the wings, somehow I can't help but feel like I've lapped 90% of the world's population at least twice in a sack race where my sack is the only one made of chainmail instead of burlap. In other words, I still feel superior when I look around and see remarks like this:

In the interest of full disclosure, I was one of those lucky little boys who had teachers for parents. In fact, one of them is an English teacher, so I'm used to hearing terms like "Grammar Nazi" hurled in my direction. As such, I have to respect that not everyone had the kind of background I did where re-reading and double-checking what I'd written became an almost unconscious habit. I also have to respect that lingering on someone's lack of articulation is a bit of a straw man situation which might ultimately undermine any credibility I'd otherwise have in the discussion. That said, when someone is talking about being mis(understood/interpreted/quoted) or chastising others for how they speak or write when they themselves can't rise to the level they claim to champion, how they handle themselves at a keyboard should be fair game.
In this case, it's especially fair game considering the overall length of the phrase. I can forgive a typo in a novel or even a somewhat lengthy weblog entry, but this is just incompetent.

To his credit, he starts off well enough from a technical point of view, his only real misstep being that he doesn't back up his assessment of the video's "dumb and stupid" narration with specific points of observation, but then we get to the third sentence. Verbosity can't be spelled without "bore," it's true, but sometimes the pursuit of conciseness is equally overbearing and tedious. Moreover, in addition to the uncapitalized abbreviation for "by the way," he forgets part of his own hyperbolic metaphor; what is he speculating being put down the reviewer's throat? He's not even leaving it open to interpretation with an all-purpose placeholder like "something." It's not just bad grammar, it's bad writing full stop.

The final straw is the last sentence, where he remembers to capitalize the first word of the sentence, but forgets how to spell the first word itself, carrying over the same spelling error as the sentence containing a missing word. It's not just incompetence, it's committed incompetence.

Watch Batteries While You Wait

I'm trying to break away from YouTube and move video operations to Revver. One reason for this is that Blip.tv makes me want to learn latin because that would be easier than working with Blip. Another reason is the possibility of supplemental income through ad revenue. Granted, I won't become stinking rich, and it probably won't pay any of my bills (I just got a 300USD heating bill, so there goes this week's unemployment check), but it'll be something. Similarly, when I applied for a partnership on YouTube, I was preemptively told I would be wasting my time.

Anyway, I'm writing this as a kind of filler until the videos I uploaded to Revver go live, which leads me to a small problem I'm having with Revver right off the bat. Revver, partly because of their ad-revenue model, is very concerned about people uploading copyrighted material to their site, as opposed to YouTube, which is so unbearably lax that it would rather bring huge lawsuits from Viacom down upon themselves than risk losing half of their user-base, people who just want to see clips of TV shows and segmented movies put up by a gaggle of couch potatoes with capture cards instead of actual content produced by a genuine community. Like I was saying, because of not wanting to be like YouTube, Revver has a very stringent uploading policy wherein once a video is uploaded and transcoded, it has to be reviewed by a member of staff to make sure it complies with standards before going live. According to the FAQ, this process is supposed to take 24 hours, but generally less.

It has been at least three times that and counting since I uploaded my videos. I'm wondering if I should say something, but I figure that by the time I get a response, they'll have gone live and I'll end up looking the fool. Sure, there'll still be the issue of the overall turnaround time, but eventually going live at any stage would make the matter mostly academic. If they're rejected or turned away, then I'm definitely going to speak up; I go very far out of my way to abide by copyright statutes, especially the limitations of fair use.

I thought about uploading a quick webcam video where I'm screaming and ranting about the iPad, but my roommate's trying to sleep so I have to be semi-quiet. My big problem with it is that it's not running Mac OS X (or Leopard or whatever big cat they're up to by now), but instead running the iPhone's OS. So, not only does it fail as a tablet PC, but it fails as a netbook, too. Most netbooks have abandoned using Linux distributions in favor of Windows (albeit it drives the cost up a considerable bit). Furthermore, the great thing about tablet PCs (and why I secretly really, really, really want one) is that, when using the stylus, you've effectively got a digital sketchbook. If I'm forced to use my fingers on the iPad, then it means finger-painting. Who knows, maybe with the zoom function, one could effectively make different-sized "brushes" out of their digits, but it's just not as precise as holding a stylus.

Last thing I'll say about Apple: Apple is a very good name for the company because they are nothing if they're not great polishers.

Back to Revver; I could rant against Apple all day (I don't hate them, mind you, I just find them painfully overrated and equally guilty of being as greedy a monopoly as Microsoft). As for why Revver doesn't have a big market share of video-hosting sites (in fact, no one does unless you're YouTube, it's a really hideous pie-chart), I think a big part of it goes to this review process. I mean, once you upload a video to YouTube or Yahoo!Video or even Gamespot, there's a turnaround time of transcoding lasting maybe five minutes at the worst. With Revver, your video will not go live for nearly a full day, so even the most laid-back v-loggers might find the delay a little difficult to work with. Then again, maybe it gets quicker as time moves on and what I'm going through really is just an aberration. Maybe this overly-long wait time is reserved for first-timers; maybe the review process is faster for regular and established posters.

Well, now we play the waiting game....