Archive for the 'FuddyTV' Category

Where Does Fuddy Fit?

I just watched an episode of one of the most watched duos on YouTube: Smosh

My opinion, they blow. Hard.

While I’ll never get that time back, it atleast got me thinking. Where does Fuddy fit in this whole world we’re in. Are we simply web people who will float around the internet for the rest of our lives or will we truly be what we want to be…a full production company.

I look at Smosh and get their appeal, but perhaps it’s not fair to compare each other. In fact I know it’s not fair. As I got from watching they seemed rather one dimensional, going for the gag, looking for the funny…all the time, every time. We tend to be a little obscure, kind of like an early William Shatner album. We don’t make our videos looking for laughs, we seek to entertain and that comes in many forms. The cry, the cringe, the jump, the laugh, the fright and more…I think its far more rewarding for our followers to see something different instead of the same old gag to gag routine.

I guess we’ve shown already that we can break the mold and create entertainment that can be thought provoking, controversial and, yes, funny. In a year we’ve gone all over, too many places to recall, and we’ve only just begun. Call it our Stalinesque 5 year plan, just without the death and starvation.

Watching Smosh tonight I realized we’ve actually hit a crossroad. We’re not Smosh, we’re not Castlerock Entertainment. Somewhere muddled in between we sit. It’s not a bad place to be, by any means, but it’s a fascinating place that’s for sure.

Where does Fuddy fit?

Cheers,
Ryan for FuddyTV

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on October 15, 2008

in FuddyTV, Random, Who Are We? and YouTube

0 Comments

Microsoft Should Change its Name

I feel bad for Microsoft.

The Seinfeld commercial experiment was a bomb (though I thought it was clever), Vista is bashed and the Zune is laughed at. It seems the only thing Microsoft hasn’t been lambasted for is the XBOX, and even then the red circle of death is a black mark on that.

With all these perceived failings, nothing Microsoft does nowadays seems to be praised or met with positive feedback. The Apple fanboys and girls poke fun, shrug off and mock the big company. Though when a gaunt looking Steve Jobs hops on stage to introduce the new iPod it is as if God himself has come down from the heavens to bestow upon the world the greatest gadget ever produced. When really, it’s just a repackaged iPod with some fancy new colors and case.

So what can Microsoft do? Change its name.

Spin off a new company, call it something hip and cool, hire the same people, use the same technology, but launch it like you’ve never launched it before. The new kid on the block is really just the old pop on the street, but with a fancy new name and no connection on the surface to Microsoft.

As was evident when Microsoft did its Mojave Experiment, people aren’t dissatisfied with Microsoft products, they watched too many Apple ads and read too many blogs from MS haters.

You see, I’ve never had a problem with Vista…not one. I tried the Zune and its pretty cool. The Seinfeld ads were exactly what they were supposed to be…think about it…a commercial about nothing with Jerry Seinfeld. Come on people! Have we lost our Seinfeld mojo already!?

And just as a shot over the bow to my Apple fanboy friends…people gave Microsoft a hard time for its proprietary software, yet Apple is worse, if not THE worst at this. Oh, and if I buy a damn song I want to play it anywhere, not just iTunes and the iPod.

Cheers,
Ryan for FuddyTV

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on September 18, 2008

in Apple, FuddyTV, Microsoft, Random and Techy Stuff

There is 1  Comment

Would you like a cold one? Or maybe a warm one?

Okay! Here we go! My first blog. How exciting!

Well, FuddyTV members I would like to share some cool news with you. I was cast as a Wingman in a Coors Light Beer commercial not too long ago and it has just recently started to appear on TV. I play a man who has strapped himself to a set of home made feathered wings and is trying to take flight in order to break into the Coors light mystery mansion. Maybe you have already seen it? It was a lot of hard work shooting this commercial because of all the running that was involved. Not to mention each wing was nine feet long and weighed like 50lbs. “Flap harder!” the director would yell from behind the camera.

At the end of the day I felt like my entire body was mashed potatoes, and I’m not talking about the flaky mashed potatoes that you mix together from out of a box, I am talking about the real mashed potatoes with the melted pool of butter in the center.  But after all was said and done, I went out and enjoyed a couple of frosty Coors Light beers as a reward…and a plate of mashed potatoes.

I tip my hat to you,
David.

Published
by
David Haysom
on September 17, 2008

in FuddyTV, Outside FuddyTV and Shoots

There are 4 Comments

First Kick at the Blog Can

 

huh...

huh...

Since Mr. Northcott is a veteran of this blogging business, you will have to excuse my amateurish blogging skills. This is, after all, my first kick at the blog can. When Ryan asked me to bring my incredible insight and unmatched wisdom to the blog, I encouragingly replied “huh?” Then I said “Okay.” 

Okay

Okay

Then I said “What do I write about?”

What do I write about?

What do I write about?

I think my first blog will be about how I am a terrible blogger. I will make every attempt to write about something but in reality, I know it will end up like an episode of Seinfeld and be about nothing. Ryan, however, is a pro. He writes about updates on the site, current events and even has been known to give 24 hour tornado warnings. Now that is something the national weather service cannot claim to do… the tornado warning thing… not the pro blogging. Anyway, if any of you have anything you would like me to write about, let me know. 

Word to Big Bird,

Erik Eldman (I’m like a big cuddly Teddy Bear, except I’m alive)

Published
by
Erik Eldman
on September 12, 2008

in Announcements, Behind the Photo, Calgary, Cats, FuddyTV, Life, Pictures, Random, Ryan and Uncategorized

There are 10 Comments

A New Channel on FuddyTV

If you haven’t noticed already, we added a new channel on FuddyTV called “Outside FuddyTV”. Here we’ll start putting videos, movies, TV shows, commercials that David, Erik and I have done outside the confines of FuddyTV. Soon you’ll see a computer generated robot Dave walking along side Will Smith in I Robot and myself having some problems in a snow plow with Rachel Wilson in Mystery, Alaska.

We’ll also be adding some films/shorts that Erik has produced and directed.

More exciting is the fact we’re going to put up “Candyman”, a video Dave and I made when we the tender age of 16. If we REALLY want to see the beginnings of FuddyTV, that video was it.

Keep checking back! Videos will be live soon!

Cheers,
Ryan for FuddyTV

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on September 10, 2008

in FuddyTV and Site News

There are 5 Comments

YouTube Facing a Trainwreck

YouTube could be potentially facing a very big trainwreck. The ramifications of which could cost YouTube visitors, content uploaders and most importantly advertisers. The trainwreck is this:

If your user can’t watch the video, why would they go?

I recently ran into a problem where I logged into our FuddyTV.com account on YouTube only to find that the “Car Dance Party Belgium” video looked like this:

The message read, “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.” Obviously this would cause someone a great deal of dismay to a user like us who depend on decent traffic from YouTube. I freaked out, but thought I would look at a completely random video to see if we weren’t the only ones. Indeed, we weren’t. Their video read “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available”. So then I thought perhaps I’ll watch the “Free Hugs” video and lo and behold it too read “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.”

To find a solution I scoured the internet, searching hundreds of different sites. Was there something wrong with my computer? Was my Flash out of date? Was my firewall causing the problem? Was it my browser? Is it YouTube?

However along this long road of obscure websites I discovered that I wasn’t the only one, and it wasn’t coming from people who didn’t know what they were talking about. Thousands of people were having this problem. Thousands is a lot of people, Thousands adds up to a lot of pageviews, Thousands adds up to a lot of money lost for YouTube. In fact one of Fuddy’s own, Erik, mentioned he wasn’t able to view a video and received the same message. I am a web junkie and it took me almost a week and several failed tries to get it to work. (Which by the way, I found my solution by changing the way Firefox handles proxy. Instead of automatic, I changed to No Proxy. I don’t know why this worked, but it did.)

There are many, many fixes out there, but it seems there is no real concrete solution. Many of those solutions are complicated and time intensive. For your average PC/Mac user this may be too difficult. A man wrote YouTube’s support center, wondering how to fix the problem and they could not come to a solution, simply stating there was something wrong with his PC. However, there wasn’t. He had disabled his firewall, had the most recent Flash version, Enabled Javascript, Uninstalled and reinstalled Flash/Shockwave, pressed F5 a hundred times, waited for the video to load, emptied cache, deleted histories, updated java, cleared that cache, wasn’t banned…EVERYTHING. Still, no YouTube videos. Yet the support person would not acknowledge a problem on YouTube’s side.

There are conspiracy theorists out there who think YouTube may be doing this on purpose, specifically to re-gain some of their traffic lost to embedded videos. For every person that watches an embedded video on a blog or other site, YouTube loses an impression of an ad. Are they doing this to drive some of that traffic back to the YouTube site?

There are also people who think YouTube got too big, too fast. That they have reached critical mass, where there are too many videos, too many visitors, not enough server capacity and not enough money to justify paying for it. YouTube isn’t a cash-cow, yet it is one of the most popular sites on the web.

What does this mean for YouTube? Are we beginning to see a crack in that silver lining? If a person cannot utilize a site the way it is intended and the fix is too complicated for your average user, this is a bowl full of disaster.

Cheers,
Ryan for FuddyTV

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on September 3, 2008

in FuddyTV, Techy Stuff and YouTube

0 Comments

The Untitled Buttermilk Pancake Project

We are secretly working on a project I have decided to name “The Untitled Buttermilk Pancake Project”. It is much the same as “The Alan Parsons Project” just without Alan Parsons. The project included Buttermilk Pancakes, music, dancing and more. First let me give you some insight as to why we are doing the Buttermilk Pancake Project. It came to me fluidly, as if I was in a dream state. Details are hazy, but it began making dinner at home, looking in the cupboard for a spice and seeing the inspiration for a new FuddyTV moving picture. Yes like a beacon of light, emanating out of the cupboard like the halo of Jesus himself (or herself since I just saw The Da Vinci Code). A small nondescript, possibly generic brand of Buttermilk Pancakes staring back at me saying…sing to me, sing of me.

Buttermilk Pancakes, FuddyTV, Project

And it will be so…

Cheers,
Ryan for Fuddy

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on August 12, 2008

in Announcements, FuddyTV and Music

There are 3 Comments

My iTunes is Bland Help Me Update It.

I am finding more and more that when I’m clicking around iTunes or flipping through the iPod I am skipping 80% of my songs. It’s gotten so bad that I dug up an old CD from ‘94 just to hear something different. What are you listening to?

Old Time Music

Cheers,
Ryan

Published
by
Ryan Northcott
on July 27, 2008

in FuddyTV, Music and Random

There are 12 Comments