CultureSurfer.com will live to see another day

Ok, so it's a bit late to be announcing videos that went online a few days ago, but better late than never. All of the following videos can be found here for the next few days. After that, you can find them on the appropriate pages of the site.
Enjoy! Naomi

FOR THE BIKE GEEKS
Bubba in the Dark-Parts 1-2-Even if you aren't into cycling, you might be into these videos. Cyclocross alone is a pretty funky version of cycling because there is none of that riding around in circles (or in a rectangle as is usually the case) like in road racing. These guys (and gals) have to be strong enough to ride like crazy through sand and pick up their bikes to get over obstacles & run up stairs with them. I have yet to see cyclocross myself & can't wait to finally check out this more wild side of cycling. Dan Elavsky shot these cool videos. Oh yea, and these cyclists are crazy enough to do this annual event in the dark in the middle of winter!

Bubba at Creve Coeur Lake-More rough and tough cyclocross, but during the daytime.

Stage 7 Race-The final day of the 2008 Tour of Missouri. By the way, the Tour of Georgia is no more, so that upgrades the status of the Tour of Missouri. Hoping that even with the current economic climate that is definitely having a detrimental effect on the world of cycling, that the Tour of Missouri continues for many years. The 2009 Tour of Missouri is already being planned & we will be filming it.

Bike Surgery-Watch Jeff & his friend, Quinn, re-assemble Jeff's bike after the untimely demise of his bike frame. Do NOT try this at home (especially the part where Quinn saws towards his hand instead of way from it-lol).

FOR THE ART FIENDS
Danielle Corelle & Deanna Chafin-These two ladies have not only been some of the most supportive art community members when it comes to CultureSurfer.com, but they also do a tremendous amount for the art community. Check out their interviews at the gory Jack's Show (these are the final Jack's show interviews).

FOR THE FASHIONISTAS
Latin Fashion Show-Parts 1-2-El Mundo Latino is one of our local Hispanic newspapers & they decided to help out the local, free Hispanic clinic, La Clinica, with a benefit fashion show. What's amazing about this fashion show is that all of the clothes are from Goodwill. Very cool and very green.

The end of CultureSurfer.com?

As all of you know, I've been struggling with the site for 14 months now. The additional stress of Brightcove pulling their free players as of December 17th has made a stressful situation unbearable.

I began this project as a way to work for myself, to express myself, to create something to contribute to the world. But it has turned into a nightmare. Although I have received encouragement from my friends at Opera (and am very grateful for this) as well as bits & pieces of support elsewhere, I have received virtually no encouragement here in St. Louis, the city that I promote on the site. Nor have I been able to find an investor willing to sustain the site. Numerous attempts at obtaining grants have also failed.

I have spent the past month researching new videos players, thought I had found one, but now cannot use that one due to the lack of comprehensible instructions on the site & lack of timely customer service. I also tried a slightly more advanced version of the software I use to build a new and improved site but that has also turned into a fiasco because it's too advanced for me to understand. And I can't find any information online or in a book to help me understand.

Even if I could overcome all of these technological obstacles I have to ask myself, why create something like this if I receive so little in return? Why should I work this hard & not be rewarded financially? Moreover, I have a creative mind, not a business mind. Without a business partner, I don't see the site making any money for me.

Everyone knows me as a very, very persistent person. But this has come to the point where it is doing real damage to me, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I believe there I have crossed the line from persistence into stupidity. Nothing, not ambition, nor the need to create, nor the desire for recognition, is worth the cost that I have now paid.

I still have not made my final decision, but I am leaning in the direction of letting go of the site. I would rather overcome the disappointment and shame of failure than continue to work in vain like this. After all, if I am not happy, then what's the point?

Escape from your relatives with CultureSurfer.com

Painting by Eric Albers.

ART
Eric Albers-Eric's creations look like something out of Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas." This guy is seriously talented & seriously humble. I LOVE his work!

Glass Pull-This is totally cool. Watch glass artists compete in a contest to see who can pull liquid glass the longest distance without breaking it.

FASHION/BEAUTY
The Dillard's Show-Part 3-More cool fashion trends for Fall.

Navan-Learn about this vanilla liqueur at the PrettyCity.com event held at Mandarin Lounge.

MUSIC
Dare For Distance-By the adorable Never Shout Never at the 2nd annual PlaySTL Indie music festival. How can you resist this kid?

CYCLING
Richard England-The Team Bissell rider talks about his final race with Team Bissell.

Attempting to Return to Sanity

It's been an interesting past two weeks here at CultureSurfer.com HQ. Since Brightcove announced that they are no longer going to provide my video players for free, I've been searching and searching all over the internet for a good replacement. The players now cost a mininum of $6,000 per year. Yikes!

Life as a web mistress has been just a bit stressful. I've come up with two possible solutions, neither of which is ideal. Bliptv.com is the easiest solution, but that would mean visitors would no longer be able to link to the videos on my site. But the upside of Bliptv is that they will host all of my videos & I'll have stats on how many times each video has been watched.

The other possibility is to embed my very own players in the site. The best one I've found so far is from WebStunning.com. It's a pretty cool player, but I am not sure if I will get stats on it & there is no way to add descriptions or tags to the videos. This leads to the question of how searchable the videos would be by search engines, which I absolutely need.

I seem to be stuck in between a rock and a hard place.

And both of these players entail yet another (OMG!!!!!)site redesign. Yup. that's gonna be something like number 8 (I have to check) in 14 months. Here's why: I can't find a good player that I like which has channels on it. I will have to create a separate player for each channel on the site. We're talking something like 50 players.

Fun times ahead. But one very good piece of news. We should have about 10,000 visitors on the site this month. w00t!

New CultureSurfer videos for November 17, 2008

"Insight" by St. Louis artist Liz Steltzer

FASHION & BEAUTY
http://culturesurfer.com/Fashion.htm

The Guys-For all of you Dino fans out there(the model with the long hair), here's your chance to meet him.

The Dillard's Show-Part Two

R Bath & Body-Wendy & her husband have launched this business together & their products smell amazing. Seriously!

MUSIC
http://culturesurfer.com/Music.htm
Back Porch byCharlz Newman (combo of two of the band member's names)-This indie band is out of Minneapolis and is seriously good. We filmed them at the PlaySTL fest back in September.

ART
http://culturesurfer.com/Art.htm
Liz Steltzer-Liz is a very talented artist, super cool & smart lady, & she used to play pro softball. This is her interview from last month's Jack The Ripper art show.

The 17th Annual St. Louis International Film Festival

This unbelievably huge, exciting, and exhausting film festival starts tonight, with Humboldt County opening the festival at the Tivoli Theater. The directors will be there & there will be a bunch of super excited film addicts who show up every year for this event. I think there are something like 275
:yikes: films being shown in 10 days, including the shorts. There are indie films, foreign films, and documentaries. Numerous sidebars (basically mini festivals) include:

AFI PROJECT: 20/20
African/African-American Sidebar
Animation Sidebar
A sampling of classic cinematic works.
Art and Music Sidebar
Asian Sidebar
Cinema for Students
Eastern European Sidebar
Environmental Sidebar
Family Sidebar
Film Noir Sidebar
FilmTracker New Filmmakers Forum
French Sidebar
Global Lens 2008
Indie-Fest
Interfaith Sidebar

I went through the schedule & narrowed it down to 24 movies, but of course I'll only be able to make a fraction of those movies. My goal is to film 12 directors (q&a sessions or interviews), so that I can upload one director interview per month until the next film festival. We're giving Dan, our photographer, our 2nd video camera so that we can split up & hopefully cover more directors.

For someone like me who has loved movies since they became such a huge part of my life back in high school, this is like putting me in a chocolate store & giving me free reign.

New CultureSurfer videos for November 10, 2008

Yup, CultureSurfer is delving into that girlie (mostly) world of beauty. There are those who will argue that beauty, like fashion, is not culture. I beg to differ. Or I would beg to differ if it weren't my site. But since it is my site, I can do whatever I want.

BEAUTY
Pretty Sweet-the beauty bash put on by PrettyCity.com at Mandarin Lounge in St. Louis.

Mineral-based Makeup-Jackie from Jon Tomas salon talks about using mineral-based makeup at Pretty Sweet, the beauty bash put on by PrettyCity.com at Mandarin Lounge in St. Louis.


FASHION
The Dillard’s Show-Part One-At Saint Louis Fashion Week, Fall 2008

ART
Dallas Moses-curator of Jack’s Art Show at the Koken Art Factory

CYCLING
Cyclocross at Creve Coeur Lake-1-See Dan Elavsky’s beautiful photos put to music.