I use Gallery to post and organize photos and media on this site. Gallery can also display flash videos, but I was never happy with the flash player that is installed by default with the Gallery software.
Instead, I wanted to use the very popular JW Player and searched far and wide on the Internet for instructions on how to replace the default player. Despite the power of Google, it took some time, but I finally found a solution through Krunk4Ever!’s blog, for which I am immensely grateful.
However, with the latest releases of the Gallery software, those instructions no longer worked for me. Again, a long search ensued, but to no avail.
Though I am not a programmer, I know enough to break stuff often, and fix stuff sometimes. After a lot of breaking, I finally fixed it!
So here now I share with you the changes I made to my Gallery flash module in order to use JW Player to display flash videos. I should point out that these changes are in addition to the changes applied by Krunk4Ever!
All of the changes outlined here were made in the FlashVideoRenderer.class file found in modules/flashvideo/classes within the Gallery folder.
In October I visited Grand Rapids for a weekend during which I met a handful of the fantastic folks from Super Happy Funtime Burlesque. I haven’t been able to catch their show in person yet, but from what I’ve seen in vidoes and heard on the street, their show is not one to miss. The weekend I was in town happened to also be the closing weekend of Art Prize, an open art contest.
GiGi Animalicious & Mr. Happy Pants
The first night in town I met up with Mr. Happy Pants, GiGi Animalicious and Velveeta the Cheetah for some tasty eats and then headed to Original Cin’s place for a shoot with her and her son Mike. She also introduced me to her pet snakes and her hilarious chinchilla. If you’ve never seen a chinchilla bathe itself in volcanic ash, then you are really missing out.
The second day was a full one as I worked with GiGi Animaliscious, Vivacious Miss Audacious (who was suffering from a sinus infection and had to put up with me for a little while – oh, and we had to kick out her boyfriend’s band so we could finish the video interview. Sorry guys!), the lovely Rita Ambrosia Schuvitinitcsz & Velvet Dan, and producers/performers Mr. Happy Pants & La La Vulvaria. The latter shoot was momentarily interrupted by a homeless knocking on the window shouting, “Don’t be makin’ it sexual!” Don’t worry, Mr. Homeless Man, it was all on the up and up.
Balloon Monster
In amongst that busy day I had the opportunity to consume some delicious Spanish tapas and peruse some of the art work around town with GiGi Animaliscious as my tour guide. As with all art there was some good and some…well…different. I especially liked the giant jellyfish made of hundreds of balloons as well as the portraits screen printed on salt.
Sunday, my last day in Grand Rapids, started with a lazy morning during which Original Cin’s fiance whipped up a yummy egg & bagel sandwich, a tasty surprise. That afternoon I had the pleasure of working with Velveeta the Cheetah in her beautiful and bright loft space. She happened to be holding a rummage sale in her space at the same time, but we managed to get our work done before the crowds swarmed in.
The return drive was a beautiful sunny day, quite the opposite of the rainy weather that accompanied me on the trip to Grand Rapids. Michigan is known for its beautiful fall foliage and I got to experience a bit of that view on the ride home.
In 2008 I had the opportunity to photograph artist Verna Sadock’s court room sketches of the Chicago 8 trial of 1969 for use in a film. The film is a documentary about the life of radical civil rights attorney William Kunstler by his daughters Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler.
WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE is coming to the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago January 22-28. Join me and the filmmakers in a showing of this film on Saturday, January 23 at 7:45pm, or check it out on a night that fits your schedule. Just don’t miss it!
In WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE, filmmakers Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler explore the life of their father, the late radical civil rights lawyer. In the 1960s and 70s, Kunstler fought for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and represented the famed “Chicago 8” activists who protested the Vietnam War. When the inmates took over Attica prison, or when the American Indian Movement stood up to the federal government at Wounded Knee, they asked Kunstler to be their lawyer.
To his daughters, it seemed that he was at the center of everything important that had ever happened. But when they were growing up, Kunstler represented some of the most reviled members of society, including rapists and assassins. This powerful film not only recounts the historic causes that Kunstler fought for; it also reveals a man that even his own daughters did not always understand, a man who risked public outrage and the safety of his family so that justice could serve all.
It’s been a while since I posted any kind of update regarding All That Glitters. I’m pleased with the progress so far, but I also realize there is much more work ahead of me.
When I began All That Glitters in June 2009 I set a goal to complete 100 portrait sessions across the United States by June 2010. To date I have completed 58 sessions throughout the Midwest, including Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Detroit and St. Louis, as well as Memphis.
I will travel to Minneapolis later this month and will visit cities throughout the East and West Coasts in the months following. I am currently funding the project on my own, but am actively seeking opportunities to make the completion of the project financially feasible.
In addition to completing the remaining portrait and interview sessions, my goal is to create a multi-media presentation of the content through a coffee table book, a documentary film, and gallery shows in cities across the country.
I have begun mapping out an intense road trip that will cover the East Coast and southern states, leaving only the West Coast to conquer. At the moment it appears likely I’ll take on the East Coast in the early Spring and head West during the Summer.
But wait, doesn’t that mean I’ll miss my June 2010 deadline? Possibly, but if I have the East Coast completed by that time, I will have gathered the majority of the content with only a handful of cities remaining on the West Coast. Either way, it’s good news to me because, without any outside funding, I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage to get to either coast. To finally see a cost-efficient plan on paper that can get me most of the way through the project makes me happy.
What’s next? Continue capturing content and edit, edit, edit. I have photos to sort through, videos to edit, transcripts to capture, and ultimately a script to assemble from all of the videos so that I can start putting together the final presentation.
Things got a little tense in the studio this weekend while Meagan & Michael were posing for some photos. Fists were flying, neck scruffs were grabbed…I cowered in the corner.
