The Pooping Log

Ronan has been telling us about the festive yuletide log with the smily face in his classroom.
If you beat it with a stick, it poops candy.

Tonight he predicted that Christmas Eve it might poop out sardines.

Normally, I'd chalk this up to the imagination of a 4 year old. But wikipedia says it's an old Catalan custom.

MDA: An Open Letter to the New York Film Critics Film Circle

Mike D'Angelo posts his picks for the year's best, and quixotically asks the New York Critics Film Circle voters to go beyond the usual award fodder hyped by the studios. And, as usual, a great reference tool for heading to the video store.

That is, if you have time to watch videos anymore.

And if you even have a video store anymore.

Berkeley J-School: Multimedia Boot Camp --> Local News Sites

First week of graduate school in Journalism at Cal: a crash course in audio and video editing, and Flash animation. Why? Because the school (and the Ford Foundation, which is funding this project) recognizes the role of multimedia, multi-platform storytelling in the future of journalism.

Next, the students targeted local communities, asked what locals would want in local news, and then set about building web sites. They went live at the end of October.

There's one San Francisco site:

• Mission Loc@l

And six East Bay sites:

• Oakland North


• El Cerrito Focus


• inEmeryville


• East Bay West Online


• The (510) Report


• Albany Today

You access them all at: localreport.org

Award winning photojournalist and now J-School faculty member Richard Koci-Hernandez even created a video piece on the project (Vimeo link), but it's not as interesting as clicking around the student's local news sites.