I’m very upset with YouTube and am considering jumping ship.

I’ve used their video hosting services for well over three years and I currently have 86 videos uploaded to their site. I understood (somewhat) when they removed the sound from one of my videos that used a Barenaked Ladies tune as part of its soundtrack. But they have recently started deleting some of my videos “due to terms of use violation.” They have been flagged as “inappropriate” and have been completely removed from their servers along with all of the comments attached to them. These were videos of my daughter – one on the beach and one in the tub. In both videos, she was just one year and a few months old.

I disagree completely with the label of “inappropriate” that was slapped on these videos, the same way I am appalled at how Flickr has been deleting photos of mothers breastfeeding from people’s accounts without prior warning. I don’t mean to tempt fate, but the inconsistency of their rulings also has me baffled as YouTube has decided to leave a similar video of Emily in the bath online. I want to be able to share my videos, my photos, and my joy with my friends and family all over the world and, if YouTube won’t let me do it, I’ll find someone who will.

Enter Vimeo. I was very happy to see that the very first bullet point under the Content Policy of their Uploading Guidelines states, “No sexually illicit material or porn. Non-sexual nudity is okay.” And why shouldn’t it be?! Prohibiting bathing babies and breastfeeding mothers is tantamount to deleting all photos of people wearing flip-flops just because 1.1% of the population has a foot fetish. I don’t need YouTube to protect my family. That’s my job.

So I’m considering making the switch. But I need to make sure that the quality of my hosted videos will be as good as (or better than) with YouTube. So here are two videos from the exact same source, one hosted on YouTube, one on Vimeo. Please have a look and let me know if you notice any difference between the two – either in image/sound quality or ease of use in the user interface. Your feedback will help me make my decision:

After putting Emily to bed, reading her a story, and kissing her goodnight, she usually makes one final request just as we’re tiptoeing out of her room. It could be anything: a glass of milk, to speak with mommy, a different blanket, etc. You know, in an attempt to stay up just a little bit longer. We always say the same thing, “OK, let me just do [x] first and then I’ll get it for you.” Knowing full well that, by buying those extra few minutes, she’ll be fast asleep by the time we get back and thus we won’t ever have to follow through with the request.

Tonight, I was at work so Jan put Emily to bed. Sebastian started crying just as she started the bedtime story. Jan gauged the situation and decided that she had best finish the story before attending to a very hungry Sebastian. So she finished the story, hurriedly kissed Emily goodnight, and said, “Let me just feed Sebastian and then I’ll come right back and tuck you in.” Emily, apparently catching on to our trickery, declared, “Oh no you won’t. I’ll be fast asleep!”

So cute.

And speaking of cute…

I’m totally geeking out right now. You see, I’m thinking about getting myself some new toys. It’s very exciting stuff!! But not just any old gadget will do. It’s gotta be the best. This is what I’m looking at:

A new phone

I want to combine the sleek screen, media playback capabilities, and personal information management of my Palm T|X with the intuitive and sturdy build of my current Nokia phone. It’s gotta be able to handle any video format I throw at it (without having to convert!) and easily sync with any calendar program I need (and work on my Linux platform!). I’d like it to run Android since it’s open source and has the brightest future.

The best phone out there: HTC Hero

Here’s a review. The only reason I haven’t bought one yet is because I’m currently tied into my current contract until February, by which time Android 2.0 may be out and who knows what kind of new phones to go with it!

A new media player

I’ve been using my Rimax Alum Plus for over two years now to watch digital content on my TV. And it’s been OK. But with the purchase of a brand-spanking-new Sony Bravia 32V5500, it’s about time we got some HD content up on that bad boy. Also, those 500 GB on internal storage are disappearing rapidly. So this new media player should handle ANY video file format, be expandable, connect easily from any media server to the TV (PC, USB, network, etc.), have an unobtrusive footprint, and a pleasant GUI. And of course, support HD!

The best media player out there: WD TV Live

Here’s a review. The only reason I haven’t bought one yet is because they were just released in the US this week and haven’t hit Europe yet. But they should be here any day now. Any day…

Here’s a quick update to last week’s Sebastian update. Yes, an update update. With bullets.

• Sebastian will be 8 months old tomorrow.
• As predicted, another tooth has broken through to coincide with the passing of another week. Like clockwork. Tooth count = 4.
• After spending almost three weeks waking up every hour or, with any luck, every two hours, we’ve managed to stretch those nighttime sleeping sessions to upwards of four to five hours. We think it was the teeth.
• Crawling has entered high gear. The kitchen safety gate has been reinstated.
• Sebastian is now pulling himself up to standing all by himself, using any means necessary. In the crib. Along the couch. Up my pant leg. You make it available, he’ll use it to stand up.
• We can’t seem to remember to feed him his cereal, but we’re more than happy to let him eat off of our plate at restaurants. He ate some pasta salad yesterday. We’ve apparently given up.

And here’s another video from about a month ago. No recent accomplishments featured here, but kinda cute all the same.

Little Sebastian turned seven months old when we returned from our trip to New York. Since then, he has shifted into high developmental gear with many changes coming fast and furious. The week after we returned home, his first tooth broke through. The week after that, his second. The next week, his third. That’s two on the bottom and one on the top, for all you fans keeping score at home. I’ve graphed these numbers and, according to the chart and given his current rate of tooth growth, by the time he is one year old he should have 21 teeth. Now that’s science! An unfortunate side effect of all this dental augmentation is that the poor little guy is waking up every hour all through the night. Poor Sebastian. Poor Jan.

I believe I mentioned that Sebastian started crawling while we were on holiday. Mostly backwards. Well, there’s no more of that. Now we’re all forward all the time. Except when we’re sideways. Nothing is safe any longer around the house. If you don’t believe me, feel free to ask the potted plants, electrical outlets, and Emily’s drawings. They all have sad stories to tell. While he enjoys being an upwardly mobile quadruped, he is never happier than when he’s standing tall on two feet, jumping up and down, and walking around the house (with the guiding support of his friends and family, of course). It’s only a matter of time before he’s jumping off the couch.

And after milking it for the first seven months of his life, Sebastian has finally started with the hard stuff. Well, if you can call oatmeal cereal “hard”. We try to give him some cereal every night. It usually goes like this: I try to feed him a spoonful, he tried to grab the spoon, I pin his hands down and insert spoon into his mouth, he makes the Yucky Face, eventually swallows it, and then giggles and asks for more. Repeat. We were very diligent when Emily starting eating solids, making all of her foods from scratch at home, making sure to not introduce a new food until numerous days had passed and we were sure she didn’t have any food allergies, and never letting her eat anything with gluten in it. We were having lunch at a restaurant today when Sebastian grabbed a slice of bread off the table and started chewing on it. Jan and I both freaked out for a split second, looked at each other, and we both calmly said, “Fuck it”. He gnawed on that slice of bread for half an hour and loved every minute of it. Then he went nuts on the lettuce. There might have been a bit of olive oil on it. Second child syndrome in full effect.