Belly Dancing at the Coffee Zone
Reply
Tag Archives: Coffee Zone
Taisir Yanis, Fez #16
انه في حين كان رأينا منذ اكثر من الدخان الابيض معبد فاس. حتى رفع رباعية لقطة Espresso ونرحب فاس # 16 ، taisir yanis. Taisir هو المالك / المالك وسوء الحمار barista من البن في المنطقة ، على مادة الكافيين في نقطة الصفر جيفرسون سيتي ، ميسوري. منزل fezzes # 14 ، 6 # # 1 و. Taisir كتابي من اللغة الانجليزيه هي… متشكك ، ولذا فاننا video’d التماسه للاستحقاق. جميلة نحن على يقين من انه يتحدث العربية ولكنه سوف يكون خلال ايام قليلة علينا قبل ان تحصل على النسخ. ولكن نظرا للطريقة التي تسير الامور ، نحن حظيت باهتمام انه قد يكون من المفيد ان يكون ليتحدث العربية الأعضاء في النظام. انا انفاق المزيد من الوقت مع نوعية taisir من طرف زوجتي حتى بوسعي ان اشهد على الجداره. انضم لي ان ارحب taisir الى النظام الملكي وتعالى من فاس. يمكنك استخدام التعليق على الوصله ادناه او البريد الالكتروني في taisir yaniscoffeezone@gmail.com. [Video]
Fez of July Webcast Special
Brother George (Fez #14) and I will fire up the webcam for an hour this Friday morning, webcasting from the Coffee Zone in downtown Jefferson City. Should be lots of traffic in the Zone along with colorful carny folk and swarms of strangely dressed Americans celebrating Independence Day.
We’ll get started around 9 a.m. Central. Join us if you can.
Radio with pictures
I gotta face it. I’m a radio guy. I have neither the face nor the concentration for TV. That’s my take-away from this morning’s live webcast from the Coffee Zone. Just too many things to keep track of. Watch the chat stream, monitor the audio (which is several seconds behind what is being said), look at the camera… whew!
As I replayed our half-hour chat I found myself thinking, this would have been much easier (and less painful for all concerned) if we’d just streamed the audio. Pictures added nothing to our little experiment.
We had 9 or 10 people watching, giving us encouragement in the chat room like parents at a grade-school production of 12 Angry Men, whispering our lines from the wings (“Turn up the mic!”).
I think I’m going to look for some sort of live event for the next webcast. Perhaps the 4th of July parade or something. Stay tuned.
iMage Webcam, CamTwist and Ustream
I’ve been trying to assemble the best combination (for me) of hardware and software for streaming live video. The ease-of-use and price (free, for now) of Ustream.tv has made it possible for any nimrod to play in Wayne’s World.
MacBooks, with the built-in iSight camera, make live video just that much easier but sometimes you want to point the camera the other direction, so an external webcam enters the picture (so to speak).
This weekend I’ve been playing with the iMage webcam from eCamm. It doesn’t look like much but –for $60– it delivers a very nice image and you can put it in your pocket. I’ve mounted mine on a small tripod.
The final –and most exciting– piece of the puzzle has been a freeware app called CamTwist. CamTwist works very well with Ustream.tv and comes with an amazing set of features and a UI that’s intuitive and easy to use. If you’re interested, I recommend this short video, but let me mention some of the cool things CamTwist does:
- Stream your desktop. Rather than making your webcam the video source, CamTwist lets you stream all or part of your computer’s desktop. Let’s say I wanted to show some co-workers in Des Moines how to use a new piece of software. I could simply stream the demo over Ustream. Much better than me trying to remotely "take over" their desktop.
- Slide Show. The slide show source allows you to stream still pictures. You can drag pictures to the list from your desktop and even iPhoto.
- Movie. With the movie source, you can play movies over your broadcast. You can drag in several movies to the play list or select a single movie with the movie selection button. Next Saturday George and I are gonna take another run at streaming live from the Coffee Zone. Instead of just watching us yacking for half an hour, we can play video clips as part of the live feed.
- Flickr Set. Similar to Slide Show, the flickr set source will fetch pictures from a flickr feed and stream them on your broadcast. Why would you want to do this? I don’t know, but it’s cool.
- Picture-in-Picture. Once you have your video going, it’s possible to overlay another video source on your video.
- Chroma Key. Sometimes called a Green Screen. This is typically used to create the appearance that something is behind you, such as a picture or a movie. George and I figured out the other features but I haven’t tried this one yet.
There you have it. An inexpensive webcam; a feature-rich piece of freeware; and –for now– a free streaming solution at Ustream.tv. Do we have any program that’s especially compelling or useful? No. But that will be the easy part. And when it comes up, we’ll be ready to share it with the world.
ASUS Eee PC
You see all kinds of laptops at the Coffee Zone. PC’s and Mac’s of every description. This morning I saw something I had not spotted before. Small, white… almost like a baby MacBook.
I barged in on the nice man (a lobbyist) trying to enjoy his scone and working on his ASUS Eee PC. Runs Linux, has a flash drive, built-in webcam and three USB ports.
And costs about $400. Not for the power user but a very slick “web appliance.”
Live from the Zone: May 3, 9:30 a.m.
If you’re up and online this Saturday at 9:30 a.m. Central, try to catch a few minutes of our live webcast from Yanis Coffee Zone here in Jefferson City. It’s one of those "we’re doing it just because we can" events. Taisir (Owner and Proprieter) is gonna set up a table in a corner and George Kopp and I will plug in the video camera and shoot the breeze.
If you want to chat, you need to a) create an account at UStream.tv or b) IM me at smaysdotcom. We’ll probably go for 30 min or so, unless we start having a lot of fun. If you don’t see any live video it means we screwed the pooch and will have to post some lame-ass excuse. We’ll have the video player front and center here at smays.com.
On a typical day, we get about 300 visitors here. I’d like to see how many folks we can have watching at any one time.
Coffee Zone tattoo
I’ve been helping my friend Taisir feed and care for a blog for his coffee shop. It’s a labor of love and I’m there every morning anyway. With help from Phil we got his domain in place.
In time, we hope to build an online community to compliment the one he has built with his customers.
It was in this spirit that I stopped by Our Ink Don’t Stink and got my first body art.
UPDATE: The website where the image above was created no longer exists. But I did find what appears to be the source image.
Art Text
The tagline on the Art Text website is: “Where text becomes art,” and that’s pretty much right on. I’ve been looking for an app that would compensate for my lack of graphic design skills and this comes close. If you have the Photoshop chops you can probably do everything that Art Text does but even then it’s going to take you longer. This graphic for the Coffee Zone took about 5 minutes to create.
Coffee Zone Fan Boy
I am not a fun guy (by conventional standards). I usually don’t enjoy a lot of things (beach, skiing, ocean cruise, etc etc) others find enjoyable. But I do have a few things that give me great pleasure. Reading, for example. I can spend an 8 or 10 hours on a weekend reading a good book.
And I love my quiet time at the Coffee Zone, a local coffee shop owned and operated by Taisir Yanis. I’ve posted from and about the Zone many times.
This morning I decided the Coffee Zone needed a blog so I whipped one up while slurping Rocket Fuel, the high octane java that makes all other coffee taste like lukewarm Yoo-Hoo.
I’ve got to post his menu and add some pix but this will do for a start. Taisir registered a good domain –YanisCoffeeZone.com– and we’ll get that in place in a day or so.
Taisir knows and likes his customers and they like him. It will be fun to see how we might use his blog to build and serve the community he has created.