YouTubeFilter is a simple tool that scrapes the MetaFilter RSS feed and embeds the YouTube videos inline. I wrote it to make it easier to find cool videos to watch on my Wii.

Unfortunately, the Wii runs out memory when loading YouTubeFilter! And of course, Firefox bugs on the mac prevent some of the embedded videos from showing up unless you resize the window just right. Stupid firefox.

The code is checked into SourceForge. I use Beautiful Soup for parsing the RSS. Someone please help me make it work on the wii!

Filed under: code code, video | 2 Comments
Tagged: BeautifulSoup , opensource , python , youtube , YouTubeFilter

On Sunday, the government of Pakistan ordered ISPs to block access to YouTube in the country, for containing content that was offensive to Islam. (This occurred soon after videos exposing vote-rigging in the recent Pakistani election appeared on YouTube.)

In response to this order, Pakistan Telecom began advertising a hijacked route for YouTube, which caused all internet traffic to YouTube from around the world to be blocked for several hours. Here is a full writeup of how this happened.

I found this great Slashdot comment that explains how to use BGPlay to see an animation of Pakistan Telecom re-routed YouTube for the world.

Here is how the net looked during the hijack. The red dot on the left is YouTube, and the red dot on the right is Pakistan Telecom:

After YouTube announced new routes, traffic returned to normal for those outside Pakistan:

The animation is pretty neat! Also, Wikipedia has a good summary of the Border Gateway Protocol, which is the protocol that routers use to talk to each other.

Filed under: sucky companies, tronix | 0 Comments
Tagged: BGP , hijack , Pakistan , voterigging , youtube

The other day, may and peliom came over and we couldn’t find anything good on YouTube! I know that sounds impossible, but it really did happen. That will not happen again. I will keep adding to this post as I find more great videos. Feel free to add to this post, or post links in the comments.

• Tons of Boards of Canada videos
• The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein - 6m 46s
• Pirates and Emperors - 3m 46s
• Daft Hands - 3m 44s - more Daft Punk
• ASCII Rave in Haskell and the Cinco MIDI Organizer
• Roxanne Shanté hip-hop battles and a Ph.D. in Psychology. 1m 22s Read this awesome post.
• Android 207 - stopmotion by Paul Whittington. 9m 44s (via)
• The Battle at Kruger - Lions vs. Buffalo vs. Crocs. 8m 23s
• Mummenschanz - Muppet Show 2m 20s - parts 2 3 4 5
• Animal Crackers - Marx Bros. 1hr 36m (via)
• Horse Feathers - Marx Bros. 1hr 2m (via)
• Monkey Business - Marx Bros. Split into 11 parts (via)
• Duck Soup - Marx Bros. Split into 9 parts. (via)
• Black Hula - Marv Newland 3m 11s
• Bambi meets Godzilla - Marv Newland. 1m 32s
• Towers Open Fire - William S. Burroughs. 9m 34s For the true headz
• Psyché Rock - Pierre Henry. 2m 47s futurama theme origin
• Older TikiRobot video posts
  

Filed under: video | 1 Comment
Tagged: MarxBros , stopmotion , youtube