Everything is Everything

Fading

How many emotions and experiences I’ve had, where I’ve said “I will never forget this!” In a moment of rapture it seems inconceivable that such a towering majesty of experience could one day be a shadow and seem to have left no imprint on my being. Since my

Niko Na Safaricom

I really like Safaricom as a company. Just watch this beautiful ad. What pride in this exquisite country! The making-of video is here, and is a must watch. UPDATE: Wow, I realize now how much more powerful this video is. All the places this was filmed HAVE SAFARICOM RECEPTION. Brilliant.

Dubstep in Dadaab (don't.)

This evening, I was unceremoniously kicked out of the DJ booth in our local bar Pumzika for playing electronic music. In Dadaab, some crimes are unforgivable. Pumzika is the bar at UNHCR (the UN High Commisioner on Refugees. They run the compound, so their bar is pretty sweet.) The first

Unspeakable

I tried. One month later, I’ll try again. On November 9, I first entered the residential blocks of Ifo, one of the three camps in Dadaab. On that day, in no small part, I lost my innocence. I learned nothing new and saw nothing I hadn’t seen on

A world distracted - no awareness of Korea compared with Wikileaks

I was speaking with my friend Maha about her general dissatisfaction with the state of the news. We are headed toward war on the Korean peninsula, and the world is instead focused on the water cooler talk of some diplomats. Julian Assange is a terrorist of information, dropping bombs of

Your clothes were made by a child.

When you look down at the clothes you are wearing, can you see the tiny young hands struggling to sew them and meet quota…some of whom are owned by a sweatshop and not being paid? And does it make you angry? If you don’t see it, look closer.

Woyee - amazing

I was so happy to find this in my email this morning. Woyee Film and Theater Industry, an organization in Southern Sudan, a group of Sudanese people working in film and drama to educate and promote awareness, credits FilmAid in part with its founding: Individuals within the group joined other

The terrorists have won

Seriously, the USA needs to step back and breathe. From Hudson Hub Times via Boing Boing: A man in Hudson, Ohio called the police to report a suspicious package on his doorstep. When the officer arrived, he noticed the “AMAZON.COM” printing on the box and asked if the man

FilmAid Blog: Beginning of shooting

Check out what we’ve been up to in my recent post on the FilmAid blog, with photos! FilmAid Dadaab has begun production on a new public service film, “Not Me But The Law,” and the first week of production has been a blast! Not Me But The Law, written

On Poverty Porn

Dadaab is featured in the New York Times this morning! And I thought the world wasn’t listening… Sadly, this overly sterile, vaguely concerned, intellectual blurb doesn’t do the camp much justice. What I wonder is whether the reporter has any idea how things are or was toured around

Unspeakable, but I tried

I visited the heart of the Ifo camp in Dadaab yesterday and witnessed the conditions of the camp firsthand for the first time. I have lost my innocence. I wrote an essay about it but it will not be published on this blog. The world has to know, but not

It can't be that bad if there are birds, right? Dadaab 1

I am not yet qualified to write this post. In five days I have seen and experienced so much and yet understand almost none of it. A state of shock (due to heat, culture, exhaustion, going off caffeine, and malaria pills) means that I don’t really know how I

Snake orgasms for halloween

This post was from 10-30-2010…agh slow internet! Don’t go out in Nairobi for Halloween. Just don’t. The weekend began with the news that my Monday morning trip to Dadaab had been rescheduled to Wednesday. The UN and various organizations run these flights for their own missions, so

filmaid

Of hawks and chicken and refugees

We filled up at the gas station with no gas, which happened to have gas that day. We were all shocked. It was lucky too because Victor was about to run out. On Thursday we went to a UNHCR (UN high commissioner for refugees)-sponsored event. The intent of the

Milton Glaser's "Ten Things I Have Learned"

I found this through Adam, from Michael Leddy’s blog, linked through Boing Boing. It’s a great set of hints for living gracefully and truthfully, in line with what matters to you, from a 72-year-old graphic designer. There was a long discussion in comments about the third piece of

First day in Nairobi

Entry written yesterday morning, October 28. We had no internet all day so I am only just posting it now. Choked highways with impoverished people, being the only white man I can see, and a standard of living much different than the one I am used to, have not hit

Africa bound!

Hello from Africa! I have just arrived a few days ago in Nairobi, Kenya, for 2-3 months’ work with FilmAid International (blog). I have been working Caroline Baron, the organization’s CEO, for three months now, and will continue to do so on my return. We are a nonprofit that

In your face

and of course, the apocalypse Via Andrew Sullivan I saw Adam Ozimek’s post about brain-mounted computers. His game theory language aside, I’ve been talking for some time about how screens in contact lenses are inevitable and will cause a major paradigm shift. Why would they be useful? They

Music video shot length

Yuri Tsivian’s Cinemetrics is a fascinating site which tracks shot length in films, calculating an average and a median shot length. It’s fascinating to compare films by this metric and see their edit structure visually. I timed out the “Wonderful” music video and you can see the results

Music Video Release Party October 15

Hello Friends, You’re invited to the release party for my first music video “Wonderful” by Mark Williams Band! Three months ago ten of us ventured into the Pocanos wilderness to shoot the video on a RED camera, and thanks to their tireless dedication we have a product that I

A Douglas Adams moment

This afternoon I was alone in the office working when a page flew out of the printer and onto the ground. I walked over to inspect. It said: testing Ha! Somewhere in the bowels of one of the computers, a request from long ago had been hatched, crawled to the

Prognosis not so good

I want to have children, because I want to be a father. I think life can be beautiful and awesome, and the pain I experience does not compare to its beauty. But I am young, and have been fortunate to live a sheltered life. To me it seems likely that

"You people have ruined me. Thank you."

Wow, awesome! @burningman tweeted this post and now burners are coming online. And what’s the first thing they do? Say hi using the chat box that none of my regular visitors have ever used. Keeping the burn alive.. I didn’t write this, it was sent out to the

An Education on copy protection

Thanks to Paul Miller for the angry post about the idiocies of copy protection on Engadget. In copy protection schemes, there are two factors to take into account. The first is the possibility that a film will get out in bit-perfect digital quality, available for download in perfect resolution on

Comics

Ah Nutella...