Coming Soon to Ancient Modern and Ridiculous

I'm in Thanksgiving mode here in Spain, but working on a presentation about Tiberius who was born on November 16th in 42BC. I will put it up some time before the holidays, hopefully. See you soon!

The Ancient, The Modern and The Ridiculous 11/11/2006: The Denarius

Meditations III Personal VBlog

Meditations II: Personal VBlog

Meditations I: Personal VBlog

Trep Again

The Ancient, The Modern and The Ridiculous 11/04/2006

This week a short history of Pertinax, perhaps one of the shortest reigns in imperial history. Also a virtual tour of the Naples Museum.

Tags: history, vblogs

The Ancient, The Modern and the Ridiculous ---A Promo

Why did Caesar regularly pluck out all his body hair? Did this lend credence to the popular saying of his time, "Caesar is a man for all women and a woman for all men"?

Did you know that dear old Uncle Claudius wrote a tract on the importance of breaking wind, and recommended this expulsion even at the dinner table? He even tried to get a law through the senate to the effect. I guess he wanted the senators to pass more than legislation.

History is full of the kind of gossip perhaps even the Enquirer would think twice about printing. Great writers of antiquity such as Suetonius, Polybius, Tacitus and Dio were also the major-league yentas of their time. Procopius, secretary of the Byzantine general Belisarius and author of the book The Secret History, wrote about the Emperor Justinian and his wife Empress Theodora in such terms as would rival the scandal mongering of a modern Hollywood exposé. Robert Graves took Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome as his model for the mayhem-riddled I, Claudius and Claudius the God. He also borrowed from Procopius for his lesser-known but no less exciting book Count Belisarius.

Most people avoid reading the ancient authors for fear of ponderous writing about forgotten places and events. It seems like a lot of investment just to get a little juicy information. Writers like Colleen McCullough, Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis research directly from the classics, wrap them up in an interesting package and deliver it to millions of fans. What many of us don't realize is that, in the realm of the classics, the events as reported by the old historians are in many ways stranger and more exciting than their interpretation by modern writers.

Join me each week on The Ancient, The Modern and the Ridiculous and discover how much fun the ancient world really was.

Tags: vlogs, humor, history

Would You Accept a Drink from this Man?

Click to Play

Some summer hijinx with old friends from New York.

Tags: vlogs, humor

A Great Program

When I was back home in NYC last summer I picked up a new U3 pen drive. Two amazing programs were installed on it, Mozilla Thunderbird email client and OpenOffice. I love Thunderbird, but I was really impressed by Open Office. It's an absolutely free open source office suite with word processor, presentation, spreadsheet and more. What's even greater is that it opens Word documents, Powerpoint Presentations and more without any problem whatsoever. The version on my pen drive isn't the full version, but I'm downloading that now.

Check out this great program. It's great for those of us who can't afford the Word, Powerpoint and Excel upgrades.

Blip.tv

I've found a much better venue for vlogs. I was using PodcastPickle, but the interface is a little old fashioned for the new video podcasting age.

Blip.tv offers personal blogging, formatting and thumbnails to make your posts more attractive.

So now I'm going to spend more time there, and if you want, you can visit my page on blip.tv.

Video Podcast for October 28, 2006

This week I run down the ancient news and chat a little about Steven Saylor's historical detective fiction.

This vidcast turned out a little better, but I'm still having trouble keeping the lighting consistent. Once I'm in full swing I will probably take the production to a larger venue where I can set up a green screen and get some nice backgrounds going. For now, the vidcast is short as I play around with different lighting.

I hope you enjoy this episode and hope you drop me a line and let me know what you think and what you'd like to see on the show.

A Really Bad Video of my Dog

I took this on my cell phone.

At the Beach? In OCTOBER?

Yeah. That's me at the beach in the Canary Islands. Still warm here, and boring as ever. Nothing to do but sit on the sand and listen to Sheryl Crow while people take photos of me.

Video Podcast for October 20, 2006

The new vblog for October 20th, 2006 is up and running. This week a rundown on news from the ancient world and what happens when you ask unsuspecting people who their favorite emperor is.

Please forgive the production quality of this episode. I'm still working on the lighting for the show and I should get it right soon. I just didn't want to spend another week experimenting while my adoring fans waited patiently for the new episode to appear on itunes.

The girl in the "Who's Your Favorite Emperor" section is one of my students. She's very shy so I had to beg her to appear on camera. Once on camera, she couldn't stop laughing. I edited a lot of that out. She told me later that she had a lot of fun. Go figure.

Who is your favorite emperor? Send me a paragraph or two on who your favorite emperor is and why and I'll read it on the show. If you want to go wild, record an mp3 or make a short video and send it to me. You can reach me at amr@i-claudius.com

You can get The Ancient, The Modern and the Ridiculous

On PODCASTPICKLE.COM
Or subscribe on ITUNES

That's all for now. See you soon!

Modem Problems

This week I had the merry misfortune of having my modem go kerblooey right in the middle of uploading some files. I learned that it is nearly impossible to find a cable modem nowadays, at least in Spain, seeing as most people prefer the mobility of a wi-fi connection with ADSL.

I also found out I have a good Internet provider, and I didn't have to wait more than 24 hours for a geek to show up and set up a new modem.

So for those of you who wrote and didn´t get an answer, I'm still catching up on my mail, so please be patient.

I´m still in the planning stages of my new vidcast on The Ancient, The Modern and the Ridiculous. Check back here later in the week to find out what it´s all about and get an approximate publishing time.

That´s all for now. See you later.

Next IC Update

Aside from trying to come up with an interesting vblog (video blog, video podcast) this week, I am going to update the writing section. I want to make the design more in line with the index and video pages, but also add the scripts to last years podcast "Anima Vagula Blandula." There are some great comedy pieces in there and I want to make them available in written form. The audio will also be available on request.

A lot of people have been emailing me asking what happened to Anima Vagula Blandula and my association with Ancient Worlds. Let us just say there was a disagreement with AW over their rather stupid policies regarding harrassment of members, and I can't be a part of a community which not only allows harrassment, but elevates emotionally disturbed people to administrative positions.My choice was to go quietly, and that´s all I have to say on the matter.

Many people have also asked if the end of AVB means the end of Uncle Prod. No, no and NO! The Uncle Prod Show was the most popular section of AVB and it will be so on my new video podcast, The Ancient, the Modern and the Ridiculous. However, Prod will still only be available in audio, as the old lecher is very shy and doesn´t want to be seen on camera.

That´s all for now. Hope to hear from you all.

Itunes

My new vidcast, "The Ancient, the Modern and the Ridiculous," is now available on itunes. Please subscribe! Here's a direct link to the info on itunes:

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCIBE TO AMR!

IC Updated

I've been working a lot this weekend on my new video podcast called "The Ancient, The Modern and The Ridiculous." Every week or so a new video on books, history and personal writings, which tend mostly to be humorous. Aside from it being a video blog of sorts, I will also be putting videos taken during my travels. It really will be an eclectic bag of tricks and, hopefully, an identity for the vidcast will emerge.

You can get "AMR" on podcast pickle and soon (as soon as itunes mails me) it will be available for download in the podcast section of the itunes store so you can download it to your ipod.

For now, take a look at AMR on PodcastPickle.com:

THE ANCIENT, THE MODERN, AND THE RIDICULOUS

A Little About Me

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