Patrick Beeson

Latest blog entries

• How I 'Rickrolled' Rootclip

  Disclosure: I work with the Rootclip creators at Scripps. But these views are my own as a Rootclip user.

  The winner of Rootclip's second chapter did not involve Rick Astley. But it did have an intoxicated Santa Claus that trounced both '80s dancing and an animated magic lamp.

  Rootclip, the collaborative video contest launched in April by E.W. Scripps' Entrepreneurial Fund, was my first experience creating and submitting user-contributed video (with help from fellow Scripps project manager Casey Peters). I published my thoughts on the site while in beta in a previous entry titled "RootClip seeds video arena with creativity".

  The process to create and submit a video to Rootclip is easy and fun, but the popularity contest that is voting could turn off some users from participating. Still, $500 for a chapter win and the chance to win an all-expense-paid trip to the Traverse City Film Festival to meet Michael Moore will entice many users to soldier on, myself included.

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  • Patrick Beeson
  • May 15, 2008
  • 9:12 a.m.
  • No comments

• Using Amazon S3 with Django

  UPDATE: A commenter from this entry's submission on Reddit suggested setting up the CNAME to the S3 servers based on the bucket for your unique domain. By doing this, it will appear that the static files are hosted on your own servers instead of Amazon.

  A lot has been changing for this site lately. Not only did I switch hosting to the Python wonderland of WebFaction, but I also started serving static media -- CSS, JavaScript, images and other files -- through Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3).

  Changing Web hosts from Dreamhost for this and my other Django apps was a must, but using Amazon's Web Service was more of an experiment really. Fortunately it's a cheap one: I owe Amazon eight cents for June.

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  • Patrick Beeson
  • May 13, 2008
  • 8:34 p.m.
  • Two comments

• Scripps launches video player update

  Disclaimer: I am the project manager for the Scripps video player.

  The E. W. Scripps Company has rolled out an update to their video player, which we've dubbed "Flaven," that improves browse-ability and adds several new features. I wrote about this player in a previous entry titled "How Scripps makes video findable."

  We aren't finished rolling out the updated player to every newspaper site yet, but you can see it on the Memphis Commercial Appeal currently.

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  • Patrick Beeson
  • May 10, 2008
  • 10:49 a.m.
  • Two comments

• Newspapers' reverse-publishing idea flawed

  Newspaper production teams scored a big win when technology allowed for stories entered into a print publishing system to be sent automatically to their online CMS. No longer did they need multiple employees to copy and paste text from one medium to the other. And everyone gets the same content, be it online or print.

  So the concept of reverse publishing, or publishing stories first online that will later be sent to the print product, will only improve things, right? Not quite.

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  • Patrick Beeson
  • May 4, 2008
  • 10:32 a.m.
  • Six comments

• Knoxville drivers: How to pass a cyclist

  Cycling season is well underway now that spring has sprung in Knoxville. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's safe to venture out on the area's roads willy-nilly.

  Many Knoxville drivers are ignorant of how to share the road with cyclists. This is a brief lesson on how to pass a cyclist safely.

  And with gas prices rising on what seems to be a daily basis, this information will be increasingly relevant for everyone.

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  • Patrick Beeson
  • April 27, 2008
  • 11:44 a.m.
  • 10 comments

About me

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