Site Information


Do you think this site is a very simple design, and one that someone not very experienced in programming would make? Maybe. But winning a graphic design award is not my concern here. Making a webshow is. I want this site to be very fast in downloading on low speed connections, like 56K dial up. I've had high speed DSL and Cable Internet for several years now, but I know what it's like to have to wait for a 56K to do anything. If you still have 56K, either get high speed internet or move to a place where there is high speed internet! There's no excuse anymore!

So that's why this site looks like it does. Because I want everyone to be able to see the entire site quickly, regardless of your connection speed.

I'll use this page to post information about the site and the amount of traffic to it as time goes along.

Here's a timeline of some of the events that resulted in the creation of this site:

4/1/23 - The 20 year anniversary and 200th episode of this webshow are now here. Think back over the last 20 years. Where have you been and what have you done? I was here doing this, among other things.

1/1/18 - 14 plus years of this site and show, the longest running web series in internet history, still going strong!

2/2/16 - Coming up on thirteen years of having this website and webshow running, with no end in sight!

5/21/14 - Eleven plus years of this site being online, and it is still going along well!

4/1/11 - We've now hit the EIGHT year mark of keeping this show and site going, with much more to come!

4/1/10 - Today is the SEVEN YEAR anniversary of Online Video and this website! 7 years of my thoughts, attitudes, and opinions, and some other people too. The show continues, I'm not done telling other people what they are doing wrong yet!

Today, I'm thinking of all the other webshow sites I have seen. And every one of them have failed and gone out of production in far less time than my 7 years to date.

1/12/10 -- I just uploaded episode #160. Keeping things on a more or less regular 2 month time spread between episodes. I've thought about starting to do episodes more frequently again, but I don't have as much free time as I used to. I'm keeping it going though, someone has to do it!

12/31/08 -- The site and show is still going along, although the episodes are less frequent now. I see some other sites with web episodes, and some of them are pretty good. I'm handicapped in my efforts to make a quality webshow by not having a lot of cash, and NO assistance from anyone with any actual on-camera skill or potential aside from myself.

5/6/7 -- Today I completed episode #145, which shows how I made an advertisement to promote the site and show. Why did it take me 4 years to think of this? I should have been doing this from Day One. It should be a good and cheap way of getting more viewers around here. I was going to put a file on the Photos page of the finished ad, but I ended up having the photo as 1 file and the text as another. Then I went to the local Staples store with a USB flash drive and told them which files to print out. After some experimenting with the finished sizes, it came out looking pretty good. But trying to make a copy of the photo of me required the actual photo, using another photocopy of it looked really bad. Now I have to go around and hand out these ads at gas stations and other businesses and get the word out!

10/29/6 -- I recently released Video Trailer #3 in episode #139. Aside from the first 5 seconds and Richard's famous ending scene, it's all new material from the episodes. Nothing else was carried over, as was done between trailers #1 and #2.

The episodes that provided the scenes in this new video trailer are as follows and in this order: #'s 1,15,119,124,112,111,127,99,137,138,128,131,117,132,133,and 15 again.

10/20/6 -- I shut down the Store page. No one had EVER asked for anything from it, so there wasn't much point in leaving it on the site anymore. Their loss, not mine.

8/19/6 -- It's been quite a while since my last update. How's the site going? I think it's going okay, but the days of a new episode every week are pretty much over. Hey, it gets tough to think up new ideas after 137 episodes! I have a few episode ideas written down right now, I just need to get myself going with filming and editing and releasing them as episodes on the site.
I really like the intro trailer that has been in the past 53 episodes, but then again, it's been in the past FIFTY-THREE episodes. Maybe I should make a new trailer sequence to show some of the things I've been doing since the last version of the trailer came out. I've got a few scenes in mind. Scott biffing it on the minibike, something from my recent #137 Speed Traps episode, a new scene of Richard "Agee" Maxwell doing something, the list goes on.

3/12/6 -- I just released episode #128 - "Halo 2". It was quite a job to create that episode. 47 minutes of video game footage, 6 hours to edit it, including the voiceover and music additions. But it turned out pretty good. There was much more that I wanted to show, but at 12-3/4 minutes, it was already the longest Online Video episode ever made.

8/2/5 -- The current biweekly show schedule is better for my summer activities. I still have to make sure the new episode gets out at about the right time, though.

7/5/5 -- It's been a while since I updated this page! I'm thinking of going to a biweekly show production schedule for the summertime. Why? I've got a lot of things to do, and more things that I'm trying to do, and it makes it hard to get everything done on the normal schedule. Don't panic, I'll notify you of any other major changes. According to my site stats page, this is typically the slow time of year for my viewers to be watching anyhow.

3/29/5 -- I was doing some calculating today, and I found that on September 8, 2005, "Online Video" will become the longest running webshow on the internet. "SnackBoy" at www.thesync.com was in production from June 24, 1998 to November 30, 2000, for a total of 890 days. September 8 will be day 891 for me!

3/15/5 -- Today I renewed my registration of the www.loudmouthtim.com domain name for another 3 years. Now I'm all set until March 17, 2008.

2/28/5 -- Today I released episode 98. A return to the woods just over a year later, to see the same scenery, unchanged from the last visit. Something to make people think. It took a while to film it, I had to wait over a week to get enough snow on the ground to make it look right. It should have been a more cloudy day, but I wanted to get this episode in before I got to #100. So it was done. I added the music from Pink Floyd because I thought it was just right for the occassion.

1/3/05 -- With the widely growing availability of broadband internet connections, I've decided to make some changes to my bit rates for release versions of the shows. I've always tried to keep the finished file sizes under 10 MB, but that's less of an issue now than it was in 2003 when this site first went online.

So now most videos will be made at a 300 KiloBit per second data rate unless it's really no better looking than 200. This would be for indoor shows only. And instead of limiting shows filmed outdoors to the same 300 KiloBit rate, I will raise them to 400 or maybe even 500 KiloBits per second for increased video quality. 300 really isn't good enough for outdoor shows.

Yes, this is the purpose of the HBR versions - to make a high quality copy available. But not many people are taking advantage of the HBR downloading page when they have the chance. So I'm going to improve the base versions of the shows to partially compensate.

11/9/04 -- For episode #84, I have rebuilt the opening video trailer sequence. The original trailer video that I used for 28 episodes was good, but it had been made from low bit rate release versions of the shows, and I have made 28 new shows since it came out. So it was time to redo it and add video from the episodes that have been done since I got the first trailer video.

So I went through every scene in the original trailer, and then reviewed and selected a variety of scenes from newer episodes. I kept some of the original scenes the way they were, then I kept some of the original scenes BUT recut them from High Bit Rate source files (HBR episodes), and finally, I added a lot of entirely new scenes, all from HBR episodes. When I was done, a full 80% of the trailer was either entirely new scenes or recut High Bit Rate scenes to match the originals.

Here's the list (in order) of the episodes represented in the new trailer video:

1,16,15,80,20,74,75,40,44,58,61,62,24,28,31,34,39,59,78, and 67. 20 different episodes in 46.80 seconds, compared to 16 episodes in the first video trailer.

Even when the new episodes are compressed to 150-300 KiloBits per second for the release versions, the new trailer video will still look better, as many of the original trailer scenes were taken from video that was compressed to as little as 100 KiloBits per second! And new HBR episodes will really look better!

9/23/04 -- Lately I've been putting out new webshows that have much larger file sizes. I've always tried to keep them below 10 MegaBytes, but I've been making shows that run longer AND are filmed outside. When filming outside, even a 300 KiloBit data rate doesn't make a very good picture, as can be seen at times in Episode #78 - "Par 3". Any movement of the camera or background puts a lot of demand on the data stream to provide a quality image.

Does anyone think the file sizes are getting way too big? I want to keep them as small as possible, but not at the expense of having poor image quality.

8/1/04 -- I'm back from my time off! I didn't really go anywhere except to film one episode, but some others got done. The first new episode is #73. Even at 300 Kbits, the video quality is still not very good, due to the movement of the background (trees and leaves) and a camera operator who had no sense of what "Hold the camera STILL!" means. But it's something to watch for a few minutes anyhow.

7/7/04 -- Vacation time! Actually, it's not really a vacation for me. I won't be adding new shows every week for the rest of the month of July, because I have several more complex episodes that I want to film. They will require much more time and involvement from other people than the usual weekly episodes do. So take this time to go back and review all the 72 episodes to date, and see the SnackBoy shows that have FINALLY been made available again at www.thesync.com . Have Windows Media Player and the Real Player on your computer. Some are available in one format but not the other. Several of the best ones are only on Real Player. I'll post them on my HBR downloading page for a week or 2. So start downloading now!

5/26/04 -- I decided to close the P.O. Box address that I've been using. Why? Because I rarely got anything useful in it, and it's not worth the yearly rental fee to keep it. If you want to send me something, email me and let me know. Then I'll give you an address to send it to.

3/15/04 -- A couple days ago, I got an email from a guy named Jon Ray, who operates LJR Productions at www.lordjonray.com . He had assembled a trailer video to be used at the start of each webshow episode. At 46 seconds it's pretty long, but it gives a fairly good view of the variety of topics that have been discussed on the show so far. Inside of the 46 seconds, there are clips from 16 episodes in this order:

1, 16, 2, 20, 3, 40, 44, 53, 8, 24, 28, 31, 34, 39, 54, and 15.

It was assembled from low bit rate release versions, but I think it's pretty well done and gives a good first glance at the webshow series I've created. According to Jon Ray, the software used to create the trailer video includes: Adobe Premier 6.5, Sound Forge, Acid Pro, Corel Draw 9, and AP's RGB layer tool. I have never used any of those programs, so I don't know anything about them. I'm planning to use the trailer video in the episodes, except maybe the really long episodes that are already pushing 6 minutes without the trailer.

3/1/04 -- Today's episode #54 is a first for the show. An actual interview with Tim and 2 people who watch the show. Something like what you'd see on TV when reporters are interviewing people on a movie set. It was a big change from the usual method of making an episode. 28 minutes of footage were cut to 5 minutes and 20 seconds to get this show put together, along with multiple shots of some scenes from different camera angles. The guitar player from Episode #39 is one of the interviewers for this show.

12/22/03 -- I've been making the High Bit Rate versions of my webshows available for several weeks now, and they are all being downloaded. You should save a copy of them. If I ever become rich and famous, they might be worth something if you have a complete set! Once I've worked my way through every episode, I'll start over with the first 5, so don't feel like you'll never get a chance to download them again. Just visit the site once each week to check on which episodes are currently available.

11/30/03 -- The 11/22/03 edition of the local newspaper ran a story about me and my webshow. The reporter did a fairly accurate job, but included some information that I told her NOT to print. The story also mentioned the time and date of my next audition meeting to get new people on the show, and NOT ONE person showed up. Except Richard "Agee" Maxwell and Brian with his guitar. We filmed some more stuff but I haven't even looked at the footage yet.

10/20/03 -- There will be an audition for a short film that will be shot in the next month or 2. If you're in the Pittsburgh, PA area, come to the Community Library of Allegheny Valley, at 1522 Broadview Blvd in Natrona Heights, PA from 1 pm to 3 pm on Saturday, October 25th. All kinds of people age 16 and up will be considered for various roles in the film.

9/28/03 - Today I filmed episode #32 - the ATM machine episode. And it wasn't easy. Even though it was a sunday, it seemed like people always wanted to use the cash machine when I was trying to film. After about 4 attempts that each got interrupted, I came back that evening and reshot the ATM segment. You'll notice the light level outside is darker. The beginning, ending, and pay phone part were all filmed earlier in the day, and I put it all together in the editing process.

9/1/3 - Today is the five month anniversary of this site. 5 months and 28 episodes so far, with many more to come!

We have had our first full month at the new ISP. Here are the site statistics from the first full month (August):

Unique Visitors: 185
Hits: 2808
Bandwidth used: 1.30 GigaBytes

Spread the word to other people! I want to see MANY more viewers in the month of September!

The contest ended without a winner. I'm very disappointed in all of you. They were not hard questions! I think my prize wasn't big enough. I'll bet if I offered $500 I'd have gotten a lot more responses! I got ZERO responses for this first contest.

Here are the 8 answers:

1. April 1, 2003
2. 2
3. James Agee / Albert Einstein
4. 1979 Dodge Aspen R/T numbers matching A57 E58 360 4 barrel. 1 of 872 Aspen R/T's made in 1979 , and 1 of 384 Dodge Aspens to get the 360-4 High Performance engine factory installed in the 1979 model year.
5. Canon ZR45MC
6. People were being too cheap with the tips. I was driving pizza to MAKE MONEY!!!
7. This was the trick question. You know what day I was born (May 21), but not what year, because I never told you!
8. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Perhaps next time I'll offer a more substantial prize, but you'll have to try harder to win!

8/11/3 - I'm thinking of raising the bit rates of all the shows to a set minimum. Something like 130-140 KiloBits per second or so. Why? Because I see the older shows, and I just don't like the video quality, especially during times of a lot of movement on the screen. 100-115 KiloBits just isn't enough. This means that everyone will have to wait a litle longer for their weekly show to download. I think this'll only be a real issue for people on dial up 56K connections. Email me and tell me what you think of this idea.

8/3/3 - Since no one was able to correctly answer these 8 questions, I revised the list to leave out some of the questions that require extensive research. You now only have to answer #'s 1,3, 4, 5, and 7. Let's see if anyone can get these questions right.

7/28/3 - Today we have our first contest. Here's how it works. The first person to answer these 8 questions correctly gets a 2 CD set of the HIGH bit rate versions of all the shows to date! All the information needed can be found on the site and in the shows. Email your answers to loudmouthtim@hotmail.com . There may be some trick questions on the list. Or maybe not. You may think there IS a trick question because I mentioned it, but perhaps I knew you'd think that, and there really isn't a trick question. Or maybe there is! Or not. The first person to correctly answer these 8 questions wins:

1. When did the site officially go online?
2. In how many episodes can you see Tims' green 1971 Plymouth Valiant?
3. Who is in Richard "Agee" Maxwell's picture in Episode 15? There are 2 possible answers. See the LMT Photos section also.
4. What is the make, model, and year of the black car with the faded factory installed stripes on it?
5. What kind of camera is used to film the shows?
6. Why did Tim quit a part time job as a pizza driver?
7. How old is Tim, and what year was he born?
8. What big city does Tim live near?

The contest winner will be announced after someone gives the correct answers to all 8 questions.

7/11/3 - We're on our new server now, and so far everything seems to be okay. We'll see how it goes. Now that we've got lots of disk space, I can make the release versions of the shows at a higher quality level. Only problem is the 56K people will have to wait for a larger file to download.

7/6/3 - I changed Online Video #19 from a 115 Kbit rate file to a 200. I thought the audio / video quality of the 115 rate was horrible, and not a good representation of me or anything else in that show. So it got bumped up a little. 200 still isn't all that great, but it's better. All the loud noises and movement in the background is what hurts the quality. To all the 56K users - sorry about the longer wait time for the download. I also added #20 today at a higher than normal 150 Kbit rate.

6/11/3 - The site gets its 10,000th page view since it opened on 4/1/3! I wonder when #20,000 will come along.

5/1/3 - The complaints about the nice bright colors on the pages kept coming, so another round of color changes was made, except for the buttons on the Home page and the entire Webshow page. They stay. The appearance of this site is becoming like many others on the internet - plain, boring, and dull. No one seems to appreciate a little color and creativity anymore.

4/19/3 - After receiving over a dozen complaints about people getting sunburned eyes from looking at the bright background colors of the pages, I went to the home page and most of the other pages and detuned the colors. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW ?!?!?! But I'm not changing the colors of the buttons on the Home page. I like the bright colors. And since it's MY site, they stay.

4/16/3 - I'm starting to get into a pattern for creating new shows. Generally, weekends are when I have the most time to film them, but now and then I can do it during the week also. I've had a number of people mention that my color selection is too bright. I like it the way it is, but perhaps I could tone it down a bit. No one has sent anything to my P.O. Box address yet either.

4/2/03 - The second show is added. I finally got to the post office and established a mailing address.

4/1/03 - The site is now officially online! I begin to tell people the domain name so they can come and see it.

3/20/03 - The individual web pages are uploaded to my ISP account for beta testing of the site over the Internet prior to telling anyone the web address. Official launch date planned for 4/1/03.

3/14/03 - The domain name www.loudmouthtim.com is registered with the ISP.

3/13/03 - After a long and frustrating search for an ISP who can provide enough disk space, bandwidth, and log files at a reasonable cost, one here in the Pittsburgh area is chosen to host this site.

9/02 to 3/03 - The site slowly takes shape. Each page is designed and redesigned to make it just right. Pictures, different formats, and a lot of digital video editing testing takes place. Finding the proper bit rate for the shows is difficult. One size does not adequately suit every show situation.

8/23/02 - The first HTML code is written to create this site. It's all hard-coded, no page builder programs were used. I thought up my domain name and checked to make sure it was available. Much procrastination follows.

4/02 - The thought first occurs to me that having a webshow of my own would be a good idea, and it is something I can do on my own, assuming I take the time to learn about the technologies involved in the process.

7/01 - Started at a school for computer network administration. After a few months, I found I had a knack for writing programming code and switched majors to learn more about programming.

1999 - After a year or 2 on the Internet, I came across the idea of webcams, which led me to www.jennicam.com and her webshows, which in turn led to me discovering www.thesync.com and the different webshows there also, like SnackBoy, CyberLove, and /etc . Started watching shows now and then. Low speed connections to the Internet were a problem.

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