There were times as a teenager that I thought it would be cool to "be a hacker"; live dangerously outside the law, in a dark room surrounded by computer equipment that is somehow ALWAYS running lines of code, and have access to all the information in the world.
TV and movies have done a great job at romanticizing the life of a hacker, even though I've never understood where the heck do hackers get the tens of thousands of dollars you need to be a hacker? You have to eat right? You have to buy all that ridiculous equipment, right? Although I guess if I was a awesome hacker, I would do that thing Edward Furlong and the kid from Salute Your Shorts do in T2 with the ATM, or I would be MacGyver style and just jerry-rig mainframes with paperclips and old TI-55 caculators.
I also know that I'll never be a hacker because I love to draw and paint and write and enjoy the sun and you get the idea.
So after reading the blog of the 17-year-old kid that unlocked the Apple iPhone from having to use AT&T, after which he traded it for a consulting job, a Nissan 350Z, and three new iPhones, I've realized that I'll never be a hacker. Which is fine, because having to download NOR files and reset firmware and reorder your bootsys* just isn't for me.
I'll be the guy in his dirty apartment making toys out of cardboard and watching Rambo First Blood Part II.
*Great t-shirt: These bootsys are made for walking (fucking ha!)
Monday, August 27, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
INNER DUDES!
Hey everyone!
I just finished a new short film and would love for everyone to check it out!
You can view it on my profile(I'll embed it at the bottom too.)
You can view it on YouTube
or
You can view a high res version at my website.
Feel free to comment, vote, rate, thrash, adore, and link all your friends to it. It was a blast to make and I'm excited to show it to people.
Many special thanks to everyone that helped out- Eric Price and Chris Garnaas, Alex Hanawalt, Frank Meyer and Bruce Duff, Chris Hagerthy, Ryan Meyer and Sean Meyer, Matt Gourley, DJ Paul, and Andy Goldblatt.
It doesn't stop there though, I've got a bunch of behind the scenes and making-of footage that I'll post up here in a few weeks, so drop a bookmark on this blog or subscribe to your heart's content for some hearty content!
Hope everyone is doing well and having a great summer!
Inner Dudes
Add to My Profile | More Videos
I just finished a new short film and would love for everyone to check it out!
You can view it on my profile(I'll embed it at the bottom too.)
You can view it on YouTube
or
You can view a high res version at my website.
Feel free to comment, vote, rate, thrash, adore, and link all your friends to it. It was a blast to make and I'm excited to show it to people.
Many special thanks to everyone that helped out- Eric Price and Chris Garnaas, Alex Hanawalt, Frank Meyer and Bruce Duff, Chris Hagerthy, Ryan Meyer and Sean Meyer, Matt Gourley, DJ Paul, and Andy Goldblatt.
It doesn't stop there though, I've got a bunch of behind the scenes and making-of footage that I'll post up here in a few weeks, so drop a bookmark on this blog or subscribe to your heart's content for some hearty content!
Hope everyone is doing well and having a great summer!
Inner Dudes
Add to My Profile | More Videos
Thursday, August 23, 2007
You didn’t play the Go Game, so you lose automatically
This past Sunday, I joined Hanawalt, Hanawalt 2, and Hanawalt GF, in playing The Go Game's community melee "The Menace in Venice."
You weren't there, so you lose. BIG TIME. (OK, John Russell, you were there, but you really did lose, so it doesn't matter.)
What's the Go Game? Run by Myles Nye, the QuizMaster and Challenge-BoyGenius(not to be confused with ChallengeBoy-Genius), the Go Game is described as an urban scavenger hunt, but it's really much much more than that. It wasn't started by Myles, but Myles runs the Los Angeles division (they're all over the map), and this is the second Los Angeles based community game they've had this year.
Basically, you get a computer cell phone and a digital camera, and when the starter gun fires, you start getting missions sent to your phone. Navigating the game zone, in this case, the Venice boardwalk, you complete these missions by answering questions and completing tasks. Sounds easy right? Not so fast, meanwhile, there is a watergun-toting assassin gunning for you, you're competing with twelve other teams, and you only have two hours to rack up as many points as you can.
When you reach the end destination, which is some sort of café, more points are awarded based on your "judgeable missions-" pictures and videos you take that all game participants vote on with their phone-puters.
It's a blast. Our team placed fifth out of twelve, with a total of about a hundred people in all playing the game.
Go to the Go Game website and sign up for their e-mail list about community games so when the next one comes around, you can form a team and compete with us!
You weren't there, so you lose. BIG TIME. (OK, John Russell, you were there, but you really did lose, so it doesn't matter.)
What's the Go Game? Run by Myles Nye, the QuizMaster and Challenge-BoyGenius(not to be confused with ChallengeBoy-Genius), the Go Game is described as an urban scavenger hunt, but it's really much much more than that. It wasn't started by Myles, but Myles runs the Los Angeles division (they're all over the map), and this is the second Los Angeles based community game they've had this year.
Basically, you get a computer cell phone and a digital camera, and when the starter gun fires, you start getting missions sent to your phone. Navigating the game zone, in this case, the Venice boardwalk, you complete these missions by answering questions and completing tasks. Sounds easy right? Not so fast, meanwhile, there is a watergun-toting assassin gunning for you, you're competing with twelve other teams, and you only have two hours to rack up as many points as you can.
When you reach the end destination, which is some sort of café, more points are awarded based on your "judgeable missions-" pictures and videos you take that all game participants vote on with their phone-puters.
It's a blast. Our team placed fifth out of twelve, with a total of about a hundred people in all playing the game.
Go to the Go Game website and sign up for their e-mail list about community games so when the next one comes around, you can form a team and compete with us!
Friday, August 17, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Thank You Note
Dear Lindsay Lohan,
I'm a big fan of yours! My name is Amanda and I'm also an actress. I used to be on basic cable, but recently crossed into mainstream feature films. I got to be in Hairspray; I love musicals!
Anyhoo, I just wanted to write a note thanking you for being such a colossal drunken, anorexic fuck-up, because as you become more and more uninsurable, which might as well be a death sentence in this industry, my agent gets more and more calls. You're such a selfless guardian angel, giving all of yourself so that me(screechy, wacky humanity) can live on. It's quite beautiful Lindsay.
I hope you're doing well in Utah. This next pratfall and adorable facial expression is for you!
Yours,
Amanda Bynes
PS- Go see my new movie, Sydney White! I have no idea what it's about, but I'm hilarious in it!
I'm a big fan of yours! My name is Amanda and I'm also an actress. I used to be on basic cable, but recently crossed into mainstream feature films. I got to be in Hairspray; I love musicals!
Anyhoo, I just wanted to write a note thanking you for being such a colossal drunken, anorexic fuck-up, because as you become more and more uninsurable, which might as well be a death sentence in this industry, my agent gets more and more calls. You're such a selfless guardian angel, giving all of yourself so that me(screechy, wacky humanity) can live on. It's quite beautiful Lindsay.
I hope you're doing well in Utah. This next pratfall and adorable facial expression is for you!
Yours,
Amanda Bynes
PS- Go see my new movie, Sydney White! I have no idea what it's about, but I'm hilarious in it!
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Nerding Out: Chapter 6,784,532
I've joined Twitter. Any one else on it? Or am I the only painfully nerdy, techy, widgety jackass around here. You can see my Twitter stream on my profile page and I guess it will update whenever I update it. I'd love to be able to update it from my mobile cell phone, but I think that costs me text messaging fees. Boooo...I should probably set up unlimited texting.
I don't even have an iPod. I'm such a poseur. A n00b-maxxor. Greenhorn, rookie, did I forget any?
Also joined Flickr linked my iPhoto into Flickr so I don't have to browse and upload everything, can just select in iPhoto and click on Export to Flickr and whoomp there it is! and supposedly I can post photostreams into my MySpace page...hmmm...will look into that tomorrow.
You don't care.
PS- this is a regular Saturday night for me. I do my heavy drinking on Mondays.
I don't even have an iPod. I'm such a poseur. A n00b-maxxor. Greenhorn, rookie, did I forget any?
Also joined Flickr linked my iPhoto into Flickr so I don't have to browse and upload everything, can just select in iPhoto and click on Export to Flickr and whoomp there it is! and supposedly I can post photostreams into my MySpace page...hmmm...will look into that tomorrow.
You don't care.
PS- this is a regular Saturday night for me. I do my heavy drinking on Mondays.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Accidentally on TV
A couple years ago I worked on Rob Schrab's brilliant Ch101 show Twigger's Holiday, mostly doing visual effects and playing around in a chicken mask (and an old AYSO jersey). I guess they featured his Twigger DVD on G4's Attack of the Show and one of the clips they pulled is of my geeked out face asking for my easter egg back. Pretty ridiculous, that show was amazing. It's on Channel 101 still for the uninitiated.
You can see the clips of stuff I did with Rob on the Death Cab video "Crooked Teeth" on my site Crockeronline, and you can see all 19 min of Rob's first short, Robot Bastard at RobotBastard.com.
In related news, I finished my short, "Inner Dudes." I'm really happy with the way it came out. I'll get around to posting it in a week or two. I'm busy exploring the fascinating world of film festival submissions. Wish me luck!
Saturday, August 4, 2007
IndieSoft™
I open approximately three hundred thousand blank documents in Word every day. Either for general notetaking, brainstorming, rough drafting, new short stories, or whatever else I need to write about. There has to be a better way, right? I'm surprised a small software start-up in Palo Alto hasn't developed a super note taking program allowing you to align thoughts, reposition chunklets, and modify content all while continuing in a stream-of-consciousness format. But you should also be able to import, cut and paste photos, quicktime videos and MP3 files with ease.
Actually, I'm sure it exists, I just haven't found it yet.
I love indie software, as it is something that reinforces my love for the internet, and the interconnection of people that have similar interests.I remember before the internet became the fat pimpley freshman in high school it is, when shareware games would come on PC Gamer demo disks and me and my friends would load them on all our computers, taking up valuable kilobytes for jetpacking, lode running, or my personal favorite Armor Alley-ing.
[lie]But now I'm an adult and I don't play video games [/lie]
Here are my favorite and indispensable independent programs:
SLIFE – as a partially self-employed 1099ing bitch to the IRS, I require important time management to make sure that I'm only paying out my nose come April 15th. Slife is a simple program kept running in the background on my desktop and it keeps track of my program usage for the ENTIRE YEAR, as well as what I was doing with that program. I can tell you that one month ago I was working on my shot breakdown, trying to find all the Yard Gnomes in Bully, and looking up pictures of human livers on Google.
MAC THE RIPPER and MPEG STREAMCLIP – Whenever I need to rip DVDs and convert them to quicktime for…whatever…I turn to Mac the Ripper and his boy-wonder, MPEG Streamclip. Whether it's pulling clips off DVDs for my demo reel or creating a clip show, these programs are quick and efficient and incredibly easy to use. OK, MPEG Streamclip requires a little know-how, but if you know what you want, you can get it to work.
BOOXTER – I've talked about this program before, and it's sooooo awesomely nerdy. It wouldn't fall under indispensable if I wasn't such a crippling book nerd, but I love being able to keep an ALMOST useless list of my library on my computer.
iBANK – I should use this program more, but I don't. It's a great money-management program that let's you create all sorts of tags and labels for transactions helping you keep track of what types of things you're spending money on and show you how much money you have left to blow on gourmet coffee and Warren Miller DVDs.
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2004 – Ha ha. Just kidding.
TRANSMIT – The best double paned, FTP program I've found, though most of them are identical. Transmit is super easy to use with drag and drop uploading. I don't know what else to say.
NETNEWSWIRE (LITE) – For a while, when I got my new computer, I was reading feeds on Safari, as they give you a "News" pulldown menu. But I didn't know that I WASN'T reading feeds. Only until I looked into it did I realize that I was living a horrible horrible lie! Ever since I downloaded NetNewsWire Lite, my world has been BLOWN by RSS and XML feedreading. The future has arrived people. It's like e-mail news that you can completely customize. Don't like the editorials on New York Times, wish you were reading that hilarious blog about Park Slope? RSS readers let you create a constantly updating news juggernaut that delivers only the stuff you want. For instance: I used to read CNN.com for my news, now, every morning I open up NetNewsWire, and poppity poppity pop, delivers all the headlines I want from the sources I ask for- I get CNN.com headlines(I can click on the links if I want to read more(rarely)), Digg/Science, Digg/Entertainment, New Scientist headlines, a few comedy blogs I subscribe to, the latest programs from VersionTracker,Rob Schrab's vodcast, and Apple updates. Look at the top of this page and you'll see a little RSS button to click and you can instantly subscribe to this blog. Discovering RSS is like having a custom newspaper materialize in front of you. I love it.
Most of these programs are free, you don't NEED to register them(and pay a fee), but generally the "demo" versions have restrictions. I've dropped the 15-25 bucks on most of these because the full version experience is worth the nominal price.
If you want to find any of these programs, hop on VersionTracker.com, choose your operating system and then type in what you're looking for; in fact, you can just type in something that you want to exist and a bushel of programs have probably been developed for you. VersionTracker has everything you can imagine and has lots of user comments and ratings that help you choose the best program for your needs.
If anyone has any other indie programs that I should know about- by all means, I would love to download them.
Actually, I'm sure it exists, I just haven't found it yet.
I love indie software, as it is something that reinforces my love for the internet, and the interconnection of people that have similar interests.I remember before the internet became the fat pimpley freshman in high school it is, when shareware games would come on PC Gamer demo disks and me and my friends would load them on all our computers, taking up valuable kilobytes for jetpacking, lode running, or my personal favorite Armor Alley-ing.
[lie]But now I'm an adult and I don't play video games [/lie]
Here are my favorite and indispensable independent programs:
SLIFE – as a partially self-employed 1099ing bitch to the IRS, I require important time management to make sure that I'm only paying out my nose come April 15th. Slife is a simple program kept running in the background on my desktop and it keeps track of my program usage for the ENTIRE YEAR, as well as what I was doing with that program. I can tell you that one month ago I was working on my shot breakdown, trying to find all the Yard Gnomes in Bully, and looking up pictures of human livers on Google.
MAC THE RIPPER and MPEG STREAMCLIP – Whenever I need to rip DVDs and convert them to quicktime for…whatever…I turn to Mac the Ripper and his boy-wonder, MPEG Streamclip. Whether it's pulling clips off DVDs for my demo reel or creating a clip show, these programs are quick and efficient and incredibly easy to use. OK, MPEG Streamclip requires a little know-how, but if you know what you want, you can get it to work.
BOOXTER – I've talked about this program before, and it's sooooo awesomely nerdy. It wouldn't fall under indispensable if I wasn't such a crippling book nerd, but I love being able to keep an ALMOST useless list of my library on my computer.
iBANK – I should use this program more, but I don't. It's a great money-management program that let's you create all sorts of tags and labels for transactions helping you keep track of what types of things you're spending money on and show you how much money you have left to blow on gourmet coffee and Warren Miller DVDs.
MICROSOFT OFFICE 2004 – Ha ha. Just kidding.
TRANSMIT – The best double paned, FTP program I've found, though most of them are identical. Transmit is super easy to use with drag and drop uploading. I don't know what else to say.
NETNEWSWIRE (LITE) – For a while, when I got my new computer, I was reading feeds on Safari, as they give you a "News" pulldown menu. But I didn't know that I WASN'T reading feeds. Only until I looked into it did I realize that I was living a horrible horrible lie! Ever since I downloaded NetNewsWire Lite, my world has been BLOWN by RSS and XML feedreading. The future has arrived people. It's like e-mail news that you can completely customize. Don't like the editorials on New York Times, wish you were reading that hilarious blog about Park Slope? RSS readers let you create a constantly updating news juggernaut that delivers only the stuff you want. For instance: I used to read CNN.com for my news, now, every morning I open up NetNewsWire, and poppity poppity pop, delivers all the headlines I want from the sources I ask for- I get CNN.com headlines(I can click on the links if I want to read more(rarely)), Digg/Science, Digg/Entertainment, New Scientist headlines, a few comedy blogs I subscribe to, the latest programs from VersionTracker,Rob Schrab's vodcast, and Apple updates. Look at the top of this page and you'll see a little RSS button to click and you can instantly subscribe to this blog. Discovering RSS is like having a custom newspaper materialize in front of you. I love it.
Most of these programs are free, you don't NEED to register them(and pay a fee), but generally the "demo" versions have restrictions. I've dropped the 15-25 bucks on most of these because the full version experience is worth the nominal price.
If you want to find any of these programs, hop on VersionTracker.com, choose your operating system and then type in what you're looking for; in fact, you can just type in something that you want to exist and a bushel of programs have probably been developed for you. VersionTracker has everything you can imagine and has lots of user comments and ratings that help you choose the best program for your needs.
If anyone has any other indie programs that I should know about- by all means, I would love to download them.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
My Battle With Google
Slowly, but surely, I am winning my battle against Google. The latest installment has brought my website to the first page of results on google, instead of, well, not even making the list.
I must say that this latest boost wouldn't have been accomplished were it not for the help of Jesse Dean, web nerd extraordinairre and purveyor of fine Iowanian crack-cocaine.
The other helper outter I recieved was getting a word published on Urban Dictionary, because of their wide internetwork appeal, lands my name (if you put it in quotes) in the majority of results on that first page.
But here's the problem, the Berlin I have to reach: JeffCrocker.com is not mine. It is, in fact, held by some country-folk singer in texas who hasn't updated his page in more than a year, clinching the fact that he doesn't need his website to book gigs in coffeeshops and hotel bars.
However I just learned about an amazing service called a "Drop catcher." There are a few websites that you can pay a nominal fee, who will snatch up a domain name the very instant it becomes available. You pay them $60, and between mindight and 2AM on January 1st, 2008, they will take that domain so fucking fast, IT WILL DESTROY ALL OTHER JEFF CROCKERS FOREVER AND I WILL BE THE ONE TRUE CROCKER. That domain will be mine! MINE I SAY!
In case you didn't know, it's on the front of my MySpace page, my website can be found at CrockerOnline.com. I finally threw some more comprehensive demo clips up that you can get to from the Reel page. As soon as I get my copy of the pot documentary, it'll all combine into a super-robot of a Show reel.
As for the News section, it updates with the site, but until I switch this blog over to my website, there's really nothing on there that you can't get here.
Also, the logo was designed, I think I mentioned this before, by the amazingly talented Damon Gentry. It's awesome.
That's it. I still don't have internet at my house, but I found out that if I park a house length away I can log onto something called Mount Olympus. Hmmm...
I must say that this latest boost wouldn't have been accomplished were it not for the help of Jesse Dean, web nerd extraordinairre and purveyor of fine Iowanian crack-cocaine.
The other helper outter I recieved was getting a word published on Urban Dictionary, because of their wide internetwork appeal, lands my name (if you put it in quotes) in the majority of results on that first page.
But here's the problem, the Berlin I have to reach: JeffCrocker.com is not mine. It is, in fact, held by some country-folk singer in texas who hasn't updated his page in more than a year, clinching the fact that he doesn't need his website to book gigs in coffeeshops and hotel bars.
However I just learned about an amazing service called a "Drop catcher." There are a few websites that you can pay a nominal fee, who will snatch up a domain name the very instant it becomes available. You pay them $60, and between mindight and 2AM on January 1st, 2008, they will take that domain so fucking fast, IT WILL DESTROY ALL OTHER JEFF CROCKERS FOREVER AND I WILL BE THE ONE TRUE CROCKER. That domain will be mine! MINE I SAY!
In case you didn't know, it's on the front of my MySpace page, my website can be found at CrockerOnline.com. I finally threw some more comprehensive demo clips up that you can get to from the Reel page. As soon as I get my copy of the pot documentary, it'll all combine into a super-robot of a Show reel.
As for the News section, it updates with the site, but until I switch this blog over to my website, there's really nothing on there that you can't get here.
Also, the logo was designed, I think I mentioned this before, by the amazingly talented Damon Gentry. It's awesome.
That's it. I still don't have internet at my house, but I found out that if I park a house length away I can log onto something called Mount Olympus. Hmmm...
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