HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ sethbannon

The key line for me was at the end, when he says "trying to make the best movie possible is making me live the best life possible". If this is nothing but a trick to make one more introspective and aware of one's own life, I applaud it.

⬐ startupfounder

"a trick to make one more introspective and aware of one's own life"

Meditating is one of the most introspective activities, but might not make the best film. If people make a 1 second film for themselves then I think this could have a really positive impact.

If instead people make films for others then this might not be very positive because you are living out entertainment for someone else.

⬐ stephengillie

Instead of focusing on the tool we're using, the specific path we're following, look at the job for which you chose the tool, the destination toward which you're moving.

Introspection is a very useful way of analyzing the patterns our thoughts and actions take. Some people like to think while driving, others find ocean waves to clear their mind. For some it's their children, or a jazz song. Don't begrudge others for how they get there, just be happy you've both arrived.

⬐ zeedog

I've always been inspired by the story of Jamie Livingston, who took a Polaroid everyday from 1979-1997. The photos follow his life as a circus performer and photographer/videographer in NYC. He was killed by a brain tumor, and his photos follow him up until his last day in the hospital (his friends took the photos for him). Incredibly moving to see his life unfold in thousands of "in-between" moments.

http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/1979.htm#1979/1

More on Jamie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Livingston

⬐ unicornporn

I doubt it was only the act of filming 1 second per day that changed his life. It was the discovery of the method and the process of refining it that lead to a life changing experience.

I don't think you will experience that by downloading an app. Come up with an own idea on how to reflect upon your life.

⬐ netcan

The article doesn't say a lot about the app. But, for people with a "creativity through technology" mind, the current tech climate is great for these sorts of ideas. Documenting is something we can do more of. It's valuable. It can be fun. Maybe all we need is better tools.

How about better ways of documenting your children growing up. Documenting yourself getting old. If we want to get really into it, maybe there are ways of finding lessons in our life that can be passed on.

I've heard interesting anecdotes about taking a picture of all food before you eat it leading to much healthier eating.

There have always been great diarists. Sometimes their benefit could only be seen years later. Maybe we can do it beter now with apps and web and video cameras in every pocket.

⬐ ozgung

My intention was to make a similar app as a side project but he's way ahead of me. It was still very inspiring though. This whole idea of using smartphones as a documentary and creative tool and improving people's lives through unlocking their creative side seems very attractive to me.

⬐ netcan

Don't give up. I reckon that for someone with a mind that works that way, this is a great space to work at. Its also something "we" need to experiment at to get right.

⬐ adyersmith

This reminds me of an Android app I wrote a while back. It's called PhotoChron (free! - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.photochron...) and lets you take a photo a day to join into a video.

I've used it mostly for recording my kids growing up (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Nr7pw-I0g ). It's amazing having a chronicle of them imperceptibly turning from newborns into kids and I recommend it for any new parent. Apps like Everyday ( http://everyday-app.com ) do a similar thing on iOS.

⬐ shocks

I'm surprised no one has linked to this: http://noahkalina.com/36/44#1

He's been taking pictures every day since 2000.

⬐ martin-adams

>> I'm surprised no one has linked to this

Someone just did.

⬐ shocks

I guess you are right. :)

⬐ ljf

Or this chap, who took a polaroid a day until the day he died: http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/1979.htm#1979/1

⬐ anubhavjha

That looks pretty cool.

⬐ CWIZO

I've started doing something similar this year. But instead of video I take one picture that represents the highlight of that day. I also take a picture of myself. Then I'll write a small program that will combine the image, self shot, title and a map into one image and finally generate a video from those images.

Combining this with my OhLife daily diary I hope I'll have a pretty good overview of my life and a treasure of memories (I'm very bad at remembering things from my past).

edit: I've now realized that this man was the inspiration for my project (I've seen this before new year) :)

⬐ mikle

OhLife is interesting, but I feel weird sending my personal info to OhLife. Thanks for this suggestion though, I guess I could always just forward the answer to my own address instead of them.

⬐ gimlids

Reminds me of another cool "picture every day" project -- this guy took a photo of himself once a day for 6 years with the lens cap on -- http://www.mrwillvincent.co.uk/Two-Thousand-One-Hundred-and-...

⬐ aes256

> Everyone will probably have a different experience with their videos, he says, but he says self-reflection is never a bad thing.

People's infinite capacity to forget things is both a blessing and a curse.

Be prepared, when reminiscing about the good times, to be reminded of some equally bad times.

⬐ Cthulhu_

> Be prepared, when reminiscing about the good times, to be reminded of some equally bad times.

And the enormous quantity of time spent doing nothing memorable, good or bad.

⬐ cabbeer

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining it its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” -From the opening paragraph of ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, H. P. Lovecraft

⬐ laurent123456

Love how Lovecraft's writing is weirdly relevant to today's interconnected world. If he was born today he would probably be working on pattern recognition and machine learning to "piece together the dissociated knowledge to open up terrifying vistas of reality".

⬐ TruthElixirX

Or writing angry posts on StormFront.

⬐ laurent123456

Could write books about all that was wrong with him... Yet he would probably get bored with StormFront faster than with actual science.

⬐ cduser

This girl takes a photo daily: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgxxxKwlra8

⬐ huskyr

ROOM for thought is a similar app that asks you to make a photograph every day at a random moment. The app (iOS-only for now) is free:

https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/id585556618?mt=8

⬐ ehamberg

Really cool idea. The descriptions in iTunes are all in Dutch, though…

edit: actually, even the app itself is mostly in Dutch. :)

⬐ huskyr

Oh well, you might learn a new language as well ;)

⬐ ehamberg

Heh, actually as a speaker of Norwegian, English and German, (written) Dutch is surprisingly easy to understand. I kept the app, at least for now. :-)

⬐ mbrock

I thought a video of 1-sec clips would just be glitch and confusion, but it's actually pretty cool. I bet if it were my own life it'd be really fun to watch at the end of the year. This year I'm doing a phone photo a day at least.

⬐ tga

This brings to mind Lifelapse (http://www.lifelapse.com/) -- you hang your smartphone around your neck and let it take snapshots of your day. I always thought it was a fun idea but never got to try it. Probably a great thing while traveling.

I used to do this with my desktop using TimeSnapper (http://www.timesnapper.com/), it does provide an interesting view on where your time goes throughout the day.

⬐ iansinke

A one-second video is seldom going to show more than a single photograph. Sure, there's a little motion, but the quality is worse and if you want to stop and take a look you have to pause the video. I'd stick with taking one photo a day.

I know there are counterexamples. But for those things, you'd probably want to take a longer video anyway. What kind of events is a 1-second video the best way to capture, anyway?

⬐ arram

I'm considering trying this. It seems like the bias of choosing the second to record would be mean that it wouldn't actually represent your day well. I'd be interesting if someone made two videos from two seconds from each day: one they chose and one taken after they were prompted by a random timer. The videos would probably be completely different.

⬐ netrus

Mostly, id would show the inside of my pocket (or the floor in front of me, if you activate it with usage :)

⬐ denysonique

One screenshot every day.

⬐ thomseddon

I have inadvertently being doing this for the last three months due to the proximity of the print screen and backspace buttons on my keyboard.

It also acts as a fallback version control :)

⬐ jisaacstone

I am reminded of Betteridge's law of headlines:

>"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

⬐ wiradikusuma

This is an interesting idea, but how did he decide which one from 86,400 sec in a day that's worth to keep?

⬐ tonylemesmer

Indeed. He mentions he is living a better life, but it takes more than a second to record something to remember a day by. He must be taking quite a lot of clips. And then sitting down and chosing and combining. Could get a little onerous.

⬐ None

None

⬐ baby

That would be an awesome app! BUT, I think 1 second is WAY too short. It's actually annoying to watch such a video, and you don't really get something out of it. I think 5 seconds is already a better number.

⬐ laurent123456

Anybody knows if the app is available yet? A search for ""1 Second Everyday" on the Apple App Store doesn't return anything.

⬐ waitwhat

According to the project homepage[1], the Android and iOS apps are "coming soon", and his twitter says he submitted them on 2nd Jan[2].

There is also "Life In Seconds"[3] which has a few good reviews, and a "1 Second Daily Cam" app by Simon Meyborg but that has five one-star reviews on the iPhone UK app store.

A similar idea is One Second Epic[4], which also looks promising.

  [1] http://1secondeveryday.com/
  [2] http://twitter.com/1SecondEveryday/status/286685321972830208
  [3] http://www.lifeinseconds.com/
  [4] http://www.onesecondepic.com/

⬐ steilpass

Post from yesterday: !!!!LAUNCHING IN 48 HOURS!!!! PLEASE READ THIS!!!!!!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cesarkuriyama/1-second-e...

⬐ unwind

It seems to be a Kickstarter project (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cesarkuriyama/1-second-e...) to get the app out.

⬐ Nilzor

...so this whole thing is just a thinly veiled marketing scheme then?

⬐ laurent123456

I wish all my thinly veiled marketing schemes could make news on the BBC.

⬐ jakozaur

Well I'm a backer and the app will be free for first 24 hours starting from Friday midnight.

⬐ waitwhat

"Pledge $1 or more (7525 backers) For just $1 the iOS App is yours!"

The iTunes store doesn't actually have a mechanism to achieve this, does it? Other than making it free for everyone for quite a while (months?) and using promo codes to fix up any backers who didn't download it in time. Promo codes are limited to 50 per release, I believe.

⬐ bhaak

There is another way to achieve this (but apparently the developer didn't do this).

Make a second version of the app that requires a login. Give the login information to your supporters. IIRC you can even put an app into the store and set it not to appear in searches(?), then you need also to hand out the iTunes url.

⬐ kranner

They could always have an in-app purchase item that can be bypassed with a code.

⬐ laurent123456

Was just about to say that. Make an in-app purchase and enable it for free for all the backers.

⬐ waitwhat

I assume that isn't allowed by Apple. EDIT: It appears that it might be (or something functionally equivalent) -- see the post by bhaak.

⬐ klausa

http://www.sixtostart.com/onetoread/2012/distributing-3000-c...

⬐ denzil_correa

I jus downloaded his app - I will try doing what he says for 1 month for starters and check the result.

⬐ samstave

Tout is the twitter of video apps in that its supposed to be 15second vids.

I think 1 second is a little too short...

⬐ alexkus

Quite a bit in common with Memoto...

⬐ MrBra

no it really can't

⬐ tesmar2

Any way in which you can record bits and pieces of your life now will most likely come in very valuable later on when you have children and grandchildren. You don't have to record everything, of course, but having a nice overview of each year with a few pics here and there with stories to tell is very cool.

⬐ xefer

I recall a Nova or something on PBS several years ago where an MIT student had built a contraption that did essentially that. The thing that struck him when analyzing the data was how much every day was more or less exactly like the other.

He wasn't particularly philosophical about this fact, but I remember thinking this could be very depressing to some people - and jostle others into doing more with their lives. Still, as the narrator of the linked video says, "trying to make the best documentary of my life" seems to take an odd third-person perspective of one's own existence.

In another vein entirely, I've always felt there was something bordering on the "sacred" about memories. They're as personal a thing as you can have. Being able to rewind and see everything that ever happened to me would take something away from that for me. As with many technologies, you'd gain something, but lose something precious too.

⬐ benrhughes

> I've always felt there was something bordering on the "sacred" about memories. They're as personal a thing as you can have. Being able to rewind and see everything that ever happened to me would take something away from that for me. As with many technologies, you'd gain something, but lose something precious too.

Ed: Do you own a video camera?

Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them.

Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way.

Ed: What do you mean by that?

Fred Madison: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.

⬐ jwco

Not clear what you lose. Your brain probably still has whatever memory of these moments it would have without the video, and you can choose not to watch the video. All I think you lose is the time you spend taking the video. But if the moments you spend taking the video are just moments you would spend simply observing, the difference is very little.

⬐ TeMPOraL

> Your brain probably still has whatever memory of these moments it would have without the video

I don't have a citation now, but there were studies done that suggest you actually don't have reliable memories of past events; the brain actually recomputes parts of them based on what you know now, thus sometimes making false memories.

⬐ mmahemoff

Many studies referenced here for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_memory

⬐ a-priori

You're referring to the "generate-recognize" theory of memory recall. It's actually an interesting theory, which states that you can't actually recall memories directly -- at least ones from more than a few weeks ago -- because your brain does not store that much detail about them.

Instead, the theory states, memory recall is a rapid-fire, iterative process of "generating" details of a memory, then checking whether it matches the original. If it does, then the detail is 'recalled' and the process moves onto other details, in this way hopefully producing a reasonable reproduction of the original memory. There is some experimental evidence of this theory, but as far as I understand it, the theory is not entirely accepted. In my opinion, it's probably part of the story but not all, perhaps as an 'error correction' mechanism that fills in gaps but not for producing the entire memory.

What you're referring to about false memories is somewhat different and much better accepted. There's a lot of evidence that shows that memory recall is a destructive process: after recall, a memory becomes labile and must be reconsolidated into long-term storage. Essentially, recalling a memory destroys it and it must be re-encoded as a new memory. In that time while it is labile, details can be added or removed and changes can creep into it from your own thoughts or the suggestions of others. The changed version is usually indistinguishable from the original.

⬐ jwco

I'm interested in these comments. Do you have references and/or search terms for further learning?

⬐ mmahemoff

Your brain doesn't have a cinematic memory of every moment. It's very malleable and memories will probably degrade more as you rely on this kind of thing more. Net effect may well be worthwhile, but it's definitely a downside to consider.

⬐ atsaloli

I agree with mmahemoff, your mind will be weaker to the extend you don't use it. Just like math -- if you start using a calculator, then when you don't have one, it'll take longer and harder to do it in your head.

Every moment of your life is recorded in your mind with full perceptions and a time tag and is /potentially/ accessible.

Dianetics posits it's pain and unconsciousness that obscures memories, and if you contact and discharge them, memories return (http://www.dianetics.org).

Personally, I found this to be true. It's very interesting (and pleasurable) to recover a "forgotten" experience in a Dianetics session, which you can do by twinning up with another person that's read Dianetics, or by getting a free intro session at a local Scientology organization.

http://www.amazon.com/Dianetics-Modern-Science-Mental-Englis...

⬐ lwat

Ah you're a scientologist - that explains your aversion to psychologists. Scientology is the worst, most evil organization I've ever had contact with. Just disgusting.

⬐ jwco

It's not clear how memories degrade as you rely on videos more, but it is an interesting hypothesis.