Updates

Well it has been a long time since the website has been updated. I have been very busy with school and other things so now I can finally get things done.

Here are the numbers for the past few weeks.

Video views: 47,399

Channel views: 1,821

Subscribers: 27

Finally work can resume on our latest project. Expect it early next year.

Something Will Seriously Eventually Get Done Sometime Maybe

Ok. We do plan on doing something. And are working on a lot of micronation stuff. The Nationalist Union of the Federal Republics of the State of Wayne (NUOFROSOW). And this Thanksgiving there will be new content. Absolutely promise. Maybe. So anyway, how bout thems elections? No one really knows what happens from here. Still, Obama will probably only get one term, and even if McCain or anyone else had won this election, they would have only gotten one term. Here's why. The United States has so many problems facing it in the future besides the economic turndown, that everyone is expecting so much that can't be delivered. People are going to be in for a letdown when Obama can't get the money together to pay for his social programs, or anything else with a ten trillion dollar debt. And raising taxes on anyone can only help short term. The negative effects of taxes on small businesses (or any other size; why do you think Halliburton moved to Dubai?) is too big to support the economy. The only way to quickly fix the situation is to slash taxes, privatize social security, pull all troops out of the Middle East immediately, and begin shutting down the Fed. But a lot of that is a story for another time. Anyway, we'll eventually have new stuff.

Numbers

Here we go folks.

Video views are up to 43,390. Channel hits are up to 1,742. Subscribers are up to 25. Exciting, I know.

Hopefully by the end of this month we will have another movie out. We have been quite busy lately and I believe I can get back to work on some stuff in the coming weeks.

APPLY! APPLY! NAUGHW!

NUOFROSOW@GMAIL.COM

La pasportoj estas kompleta! Petu nun!

The passports are complete! Apply now! The application is below. Copy it, answer the questions, attach a picture in an email to NUOFROSOW@gmail.com. Then email it.

NATIONALIST UNION OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLICS OF THE STATE OF WAYNE PASSPORT APPLICATION

FULL NAME:

NATIONALITY:

SEX:

DATE OF BIRTH:

PLACE OF BIRTH:

ADDRESS:

PICTURE OF APPLICANT:

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY?

WTF?

What is this? Because it isnt a presidential election. Its the same people saying the same thing about the same issues over and over and over again and expecting it to make us believe they will change the world. This sucks. It sucks. Who the hell got us into this situation? EVERYONE! Because every effing person has gotten so freaking complacent about everything that nothing will ever change. Past 150 years. Same parties. Same effing political parties. What a whole crap load a good they've done us. Why the hell aren't people getting mad and rioting and doing something that may actually change something? Because they're EFFING BLOGGING INSTEAD! Who the hell thought up blogging? Because its freaking ruined this country. Absofreakinglutely ruined this country. We're so complacent. Absolutely complacent. We want to encourage everyone to vote, but, LOOK AT THE CANDIDATES; THEY SUCK! Absosuckfreakinglutely. We should be boycotting voting is what we should be doing. Boycotting the vote. Because voting for the past hundred years sure has gotten us a whole BUNDLE of good stuff (i.e. the federal reserve, entrance in WWI, the great depression (thank the gov't: Smoot Hawley Tariff Act ), the Korean War, the Vietnam War, nixing of the gold standard, Iran Contra, Lebanon affair, Kosovo affair, Gulf War, Iraq War, list goes on forever). SO WHAT THE HELL? WHAT THE HELL HAVE WE GOTTEN FROM VOTING? SUCKINESS! Because no one is willing to stand up and protest. People are so complacent. Just juggling the government from one sucky party to another. It sucks. So help! Don't vote! Throw some rocks at someone! DO SOMETHING!

Numbers

Time for the bi-weekly view update.

Video views are up from 40,622 to 41,519, just 103 off of 1,000 views. Not too bad but we can do better. We are hoping Black Spider will help our daily views increase.

Channel views are up from 1,693 to 1,708 and increase of 15 over the past two weeks.

We are really happy that we got another movie up and may have another one, the one we planned, up by the end of the month. I just need to get working on it.

The Black Spider

Today we have released our latest movie, The Black Spider. Toby Wittle, a mannequin, lives out his normal day and wakes up the next day with a crazy idea. The idea proved to be fatal.

We made the entire movie today and we like the way it turned out. Check it out here.

This was not the video we had planned, that one is coming, but is very tedious.

So, About That...

Yeah, we really havent actually finished a new movie yet.  But we're getting really really really close.  It will definitely maybe possibly but might not be out by the end of this month.

Oh yeah, and more later on plans to start a micronation.

The return of Numbers

I know. It has been probably a month or two since I gave an update on our views. I decided a few weeks ago that I would wait for a special occasion to finally start up again. An occasion that I feel is special, has occurred. Let's look at the views.
Video views are up to 40,622. Channel views are up to 1,693. Subscribers are up to 23.
The occasion was that we broke the 40,000 total view mark. Exciting huh? The new subscribers is pretty cool too. Anyway, I hope everyone has a nice Labor Day.

I Aboslutely Swear

I Absolutely absolutely swear that new stuff is coming. Like actual movies in things. Yeah, our first in a long time. But it's coming. Absolutely absolutely absolutely we are going to have new stuff hopefully by the end of the month.

Some End of the Summer Reading

Probably everyone needs to read these.  It gives you a great idea of the cause of our current economic woes:

here

and here

Banned- Watch this video

http://reason.tv/video/show/61.html

It's a scary thought to think what's banned next.

Fun with Economics

In the past few months, there has been a lot of concern about the health of the economy, U.S. and world. And while it's not as bad as most news would make it seem (at least not right now), it's headed down for a really rough ride. Most people try to place the blame on obvious targets; GWB, his administration, Congress, oil speculators, oil execs, etc. The truth is, if one entity deserves the blame (as a note, there's always multiple causes), it's what I call the fourth and unregulated branch of government: the Federal Reserve. Before I get into detail about the problems of today, let's go back and analyze the causes of the Great Depression. There were several factors that led to the Depression; it was partly natural, as recession cycles are quite normal in correcting inequalities in supply and demand. The real issues are based in what exacerbated the problem. One of these issues is debt, due to cheap credit (sound familiar?). Another is great reduction in international trade due to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed in 1930, which increased tariffs on over 20,000 imports. Even though this came after the initial crash, the unemployment rate of 7.8% in 1930 increased to 25.1% in 1933, and in retaliation to the act, countries around the world raised tariffs on goods, effectively crippling international trade (Yay for gov't regulation!). Even worse than the Tariff Act, though, was the policies of the Federal Reserve. After WWI, Great Britain attempted to briskly return to the gold standard. This lead to deflationary pressure, and the unemployment and price inflexibility lead to Britain asking the US to help. The Fed did so by allowing US currency to inflate. With US currency inflating, British currency could also inflate, as it could not do so on its own. And here we have the Great Depression. Yay gov't regulation. FDR then came along with the New Deal, which was extremely well intentioned, but in the end, not near as effective as hoped; the unemployment rate by 1938 was 19%, when in 1933 when the New Deal was started it was 25.1% (There was some good out of it, though. The FDIC, for example. Social security could be much more efficient if privatized, but that's a different blog post). What really got us out of the Depression was WWII. Now, my basic point behind the Great Depression flashback is that the Federal Reserve (and gov't regulation in general) really kinda sucks. Today, we're letting our economy go to waste because the Fed decided to have a short term fix by drastically cutting interest rates. That's not to say that gov't regulation isn't necessary in all situations (in a perfect world, it wouldn't; in a perfect world, I'd be anarcho-capitalist); it would currently be necessary to help regulate the really sucky mortgages and subrime loans, (though an educated public could take care of that problem). Anyway, back to my point, the Fed has mostly proven itself ineffective in fixing problems, though it seems to have a knack for exacerbating them. Now, don't put all blame on the Fed (though, again, they do deserve the most). The presidency has a played a part, also. Under Bush, we saw the largest expansion of the federal government since FDR (my sister calls Bush a totalitarian Democrat, his (and the neocons) policies and perversion of the Republican Party is why I no longer associate myself with that party). Also, his "stimulus package" was just a huge waste of taxpayer money (it only increased consumer spending for one month by one percent [it was only geared to people with income under $75k, truth is, the people most likely to spend it and therefore inject money back into the economy are those with higher incomes; not politically wise, but nonetheless truth]). Congress you can blame for supporting such legislation. You can also blame Congress for blocking drilling in ANWR and offshore. It doesn't matter that it'll take years to get the gas (we'll have alternatives by then), the impact on the psychology of the speculators is immediate. Today, when Bush lifted the ban on offshore drilling, oil closed down $6.45, the hugest drop in seventeen years, down to $138.74. Congress doesn't even have any legislation in the works to allow offshore drilling. For anyone who said that oil prices wouldn't drop immediately if we drilled elsewhere because it takes years to get it out of the ground, today officially destroyed their logic. So uh yeah, I feel like that hole thing was a huge digression. Summing up, the Fed is bad. If I remember anything else to post, I'll post it.

A Quick Thought on Children

So, I was thinking one day. We always associate children with innocence. But for what reason? What makes them innocent? Well, when I was at the McWane Center in Birmingham. There was this game there where you put this headband on and there was a little ball on the table under a slab of glass. The less you thought, the further it moved. There were screens that showed brain activity. Anyway, one of my friends was challenged by a girl who was approximately three to play. She won hands down, and the screen showed very minimal brain activity. My point is, do we associate children with innocence because they don't have the ability to think deeply, or have and deep thoughts at all? Does the inability to think make you innocent? Does a dark side naturally come with comprehension? Just a thought.

Numbers

After two more weeks we have come up with around 1,000 more views.

Our video views are up from 35,381 to 36,513, an increase of 1,132.

Our channel views are up from 1,534 to 1,566 an increase of 32.

The last two weeks were pretty good and we hope to see more great weeks in the future.

SproutCore

Two words have been in the lips of every major tech news site for the past week. Those words are Sprout and Core. Put them together and you get SproutCore, a javascript framework for easily creating rich internet applications. So what does all that mean? Well you could google it and find many blogs that have done an excellent job of explaining it but this is what it boils down to for me: Through command line and the use of special and clear classes one can build a web application in very few steps and use SproutCore's build tools to validate and build the code for deployment on your server. Now that probably didn't make much sense either. If you want to create a web application using the open language of Javascript (as opposed to flash or silverlight which requires a plug-in) then SproutCore makes this task easy. Apple has latched on to SproutCore and helped make it really great. The new Mobile Me service that will be offered next month was made using SproutCore and it sure looks great in the previews.

So how easy is this? Well I had to check it out, being constantly on the lookout for new ways to enrich the Mystic Teacup Project site, and see how it worked. So I started with the classic "Hello World" application tutorial. Of course I didn't follow the tutorial exactly. I replaced "World" with "There" wherever it appeared.

On OS X it requires the Terminal which scared me at first. After a few bumps in the Terminal road I had everything going well. The tags used were fairly self explanatory and as long as you know javascript that part should go smoothly as well. In the end you end up with a very sleek page with the "Hello World!" in big letters with a check box that says "Show Clock" above it. When checked the text will change from "Hello World!" to a clock showing the time in hh:mm:ss. It was easy and fast.

But I couldn't stop yet. I had to try somethings for myself to see if I could change things up a bit. I went through the tutorial again, but making some steps of my own. Instead of replacing things for example, I would add things and try to make it work. To my discouragement parts of it did and parts of it didn't. In the end I had failed at my task but there is major potential for those far better with javascript than I am.

See for yourself at SproutCore.com

Numbers

We had a great two weeks so less see how the numbers stack up.
Video views are up from 34,002 to 35,381 an increase of 1,379. I hope this trend of more and more views each week continues. I have no doubt that we will reach 50,000 total views by the two year anniversary of the site.
Channel views are up from 1,505 to 1,534 an increase of 29, another good week for our channel.
Genghis Khan continues to "lead the charge" taking almost 60% of the views we get, followed by A Separate Peace: Part 1 with 20%. The other videos come in at almost negligible percentages.

iPhone Ready

In preparation for the upcoming release of the iPhone's 2.0 firmware I have just completed and uploaded the iPhone compatible version of http://www.mysticteacupproject.com . By visiting the site on an iPhone or iPod Touch you will be redirected to a leaner and faster version of the site. It has almost all of the features of the standard version of the website including: Movies (which will open the youtube application on the phone or iPod), About Us, Contact information, Movie info ( most viewed videos and newest videos), a Thanks page, and of course a link to our blog. It looks good and works well so I hope you enjoy it. If, however you encounter any problems or bugs please contact us here. Enjoy!

Numbers!

So over the past two weeks we have done pretty well.
Video views are up from 32,853 to 34,002 an increase of 1149, a very good two weeks.
Channel views are up from 1,478 to 1,505 an increase of 27.
A Separate Peace Part 1 has moved into the top 5 for video views and will soon be a number 4 sometime in the next week. Thanks for all of your views.
The website has undergone many invisible changes that will increase the ease of use. A few changes have been made to the look of the site to make thins more centered and easier to read. Also on the long pages a "back to top" link has been made that takes you, well, back to the top of the page.
And so there you have it.