Nathan and his Open Ideals » Whatever

Co-working in Gowanus

nathan — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:17:40 +0000

Creative studio co-working space seeking part-time makers, hackers, artists, writers and anyone else with a need to join us. Whether you are interested in a fun, bright, open space to work on your laptop during the day, or somewhere you can have to yourself now and then for photography, painting or other creative ventures, we’d like to hear from you. We’re flexible to meet the needs of the right people.

The studio is located in the heart of Gowanus, Brooklyn, on 9th Street between Smith and 2nd Ave in an artist and music centric four story converted warehouse. This is just two blocks from the R (4th Ave/9th), G and F trains (Smith/9th). We are dog and bike friendly with 24 hour access possibilities. The space is also right next to Lowe’s Hardware with access to a large freight elevator.

Some other aspects of note: 32′x5′ worktable area with wifi, whiteboards, projector and natural lighting. A variety of tools, two sewing machines, and a fairly open floor plan to accommodate a variety of wacky needs.

Leave a comment here, send an email to nathanfreitas at gmail, or contact me via @nathanfreitas on twitter, if you are interested, want a tour, or more information!

President-Elect Obama on 60 Minutes

nathan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:27:26 +0000

This first interview of substance since the election… “Steve Kroft speaks with President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, about his historic election victory, his personal transition, and his family.”

Watch CBS Videos Online

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4608198n

Posting HD video on Vimeo

nathan — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:26:14 +0000

I’ve had a Sony HC1 HDV camera for about two years now, and I love it, but unfortunately I haven’t quite had the horsepower to edit in high-definition until recently. The other half of the equation is that it hasn’t been until recently that there was a decent way to present HD video online in a friendly manner, other than posting a huge Quicktime video file.

Fortunately, Vimeo, Blip.tv and other video hosting sites the higher quality capabilities of the recent Flash video codec. YouTube also supports a higher-quality progressive stream these days, but still limits the resolution to less than 1280×720 aka 720p. We even began supporting HD on Cruxy, but that was only for downloadable content, not streamed.

Watch my HD video of whales off Cape Cod on Vimeo.com

On a related subject, one of the limitations we faced with streaming HD at Cruxy was that the throughput of Amazon’s S3 service, on which Cruxy.com is built, was not enough to provide a good experience for viewers. We’d need to add something like Akamai or Limelight on the front-end to ensure minimal buffering. The recent news that Amazon is launching a CDN service makes me quite excited about the possibilities of serving HD video progressively streamed directly from S3.

For now if you want to post HD video online, check out Vimeo’s HD Video FAQ, as I think its the best solution for now.

Also, make sure to check out the HD Video on channel on Vimeo for some truly beautiful and amazing online motion pictures.