Stuff and a question

Still feeling a bit hidey. I also seem to be going through a non-fiction phase. While my shows pile up in a backlog, I've been spending a lot of time watching documentaries on space through OnDemand and marvelling at how cool and immense the universe is. We really are just sort of hurtling through space on this rock, and we are tiny. The whole of human existence, from primordial ooze to our eventual extinction is just a blink, a blip in a vast universe that is almost certainly teeming with other life that is a blink and a blip elsewhere. I find that oddly comforting. All these things that are so important to us, the ways we fuck it all up, the hope that we'll figure it out...it's all, well it's significant in the sense that it affects us, but in the end, whatever we do, the universe is just going to keep on trucking along, with or without us, just fine. I like that. Right now, as I type this, there are things happening out there that are huge, stars collapsing or forming, galaxies smashing into each other, black holes devouring swaths of space, all sorts of things that totally eclipse us and our human squabbles in terms of how they affect existence as a whole. We really can't fuck it up in the big picture. We can pretty much only fuck it up for ourselves.

A very cool thing, sockkpuppett has been interviewed about vids and vidding for NY magazine, and they are hosting 300 and Women's Work...which is pretty damn awesome. She represents us well, all smart and articulate, and the article itself is extremely positive towards what we do, and why we do it. I can't think of a better person to show our public face, so rock on. Links to the article here: http://sockkpuppett.livejournal.com/464487.html

Aaand, that leads me into my question. Streaming sites. As far as I know there are three that vidders most often use. Imeem, YouTube, and the up and comer Stage6. I ended up settling on Stage6 because my attempt at Imeem left me frustrated with the way the quality of the vid I tried uploading got crunched so hard, and Stage6 essentially lets you upload a full quality divx (and has a download option for viewers). However, the downside is that they still have some tech problems with uploading, and site crashes, which I hope will get worked out as the site matures.

When it comes to streaming video, what are your primary considerations in choosing a site to upload to? What advantages and disadvantages have you found with the different sites? Do you upload to multiple streaming sites, and if so, why? As a viewer, which of the three do you prefer? And semi-related, to embed or not to embed. Do you like having an embedded copy of a vid in a post, or do you prefer having an external link to follow?

Done rambling now. Carry on.

Random

At the moment I have only one thing to say about Learners (other than please to be inserting the obligatory Tennant squeeing of squeeful squeeness here). ROCKER SMURF. It's like they know me.

sleep? what sleep?

Oh goody, I can feel the insomnia settling in for the night. I've gone through all the space documentaries available and I continue to be not in the mood for catching up on my fictional tv. It's going to be a long, bored night. I've been messing around in photoshop in my quest to gain some understanding of it, resulting in this rocker smurf icon (because I'm *still* cracking up over that) which proves that I should not be let anywhere near either photoshop or smurfs.

Save a smurf and entertain me please. Good mindless games? I'm burned out on sudoku and most of the yahoo games. Fic recs? Babble with me about, um, stuff?

Oh! Scrabble! Anyone want to play scrabble with me (or the yahoo equivalent anyway)? If you've got a yahoo ID, it's easy to start up a game.