MAD Fold-In Text

My latest "cartoon", shown in the previous blog entry, was inspired by MAD Magazine's fold-in inner back page. In case you are not familiar with MAD Magazine, the mag's inner back page is a foldable puzzle. When unfolded, the page would pose some question on a topic. On the page you would also find instruction on how to fold the page in - and voila you have the answer to the question, usually something completely off-topic or not quite what you expect.

The topic in my foldable cartoon was self-improvement in the new year to become a better I.T./office worker. We'll take our certification exams, we'll do our time sheet on time, work hard to exceed management's expectation, no more being a slob or a pain in the arse, etc. Or is that what people think? At least for us in the I.T. field where our company has opened up an office in Mumbai and slowly but steadily move jobs there, self-improvement is the least of our worries. It seems no matter how good you are, your salary is still five or more times that of your counterpart in Mumbai so you don't stand a chance of holding on your job much longer. So the question for the new year is, "Will I Still Have A Job?"

A long time ago, I used to do video editing on the lowly Amiga 3000 with a NewTek VideoToaster. It was before non-linear editing came into the picture and the work was very tedious. Everything was tape-based and one mistake would mean resetting many of the parameters, rewinding the tapes, etc. For the I.T. Insecurity video, I used my new Kodak Z612 digicam's video capability. As a first video, I didn't do any post-editing work with it, yet it still took a few attempts to get it right. I did my own voiceover and it wasn't easy. I mispronounced words here and there, even in this final video it sounded like I said "slope" instead of "slob", but enough was enough, I didn't feel like re-recording it.

I needed a place to host my video and naturally YouTube was the first name to come to mind. It is really easy to YouTube. Sure you have to be computer literate enough to know where your movie file is located. Create a free account, confirm your email, upload a video, then you'll just have to wait a bit, maybe 20 minutes, while YouTube's scripts prepare your handy work fit for the web. That's all there is to it. I made the mistake of not knowing that YouTube needs some time to prepare the file for the web, so when I clicked on the video I was told that the file was no longer available. So, be a little patient and the reward will be yours.