the insignificant ramblings of a disturbed graphic designer
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Thursday Top 5
The sinister 4 a.m. conspiracy: Uncovered!
Google Chrome Comics artist Scott McCloud helps the Google team de-tech-ify the company’s open source browser project. www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome
FuturamaMath.com Dr. Sarah J. Greenwald teaches math at NC’s Appalachian State University, and gives the couch potatoes-cum-mathletes a few things to ponder. www.FuturamaMath.com
Get Crafty! Episode 6 Scrapblog gets creative in the videos they produce to show people how their site works. The results are way funnier than the normal how-to screencast. www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5LNHmwb1fw
Posted by espd at 4:48 PM |
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Sunday, July 20, 2008
Jerry Levitan meets the walrus
In 1969, then-14-year-old Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room and convinced the Beatle to do an interview about peace. Thirty-eight years later, Jerry and director Josh Raskin have produced an animated short film using the recording as its soundtrack, and featuring the pen work and digital illustration of artists James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina.
Posted by espd at 2:35 PM |
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Thursday, July 03, 2008
Thursday Top 5
Cool Radiohead video Made by Robert Hodgin using the open source tool Processing. You can read about how he made it on his blog.
Robert Silverberg At 73 years old, he has written nearly 300 novels and 600 works of short fiction, along with 100 nonfiction books. He has edited 100 anthologies and published in 100 magazines. And he’s only slowing down a little bit. www.sacbee.com
TrekPassions Oh, the shame.... Do we really need a personals and social networking community for complete and utter dorks? Here is an actual personal from the site: “Wanted: SciFi ‘partner in crime.’ Are you interested in Midnight performances of ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’? Prowling bookstores for the newest arrivals. Do you find yourself debating ‘Kirk vs Picard’ or ‘Star Wars vs Star Trek’. Are endlessly watching reruns of: Alien Nation, Babylon5, Stargate SG-1, Firefly or Farscape? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above the drop me a e-mail and lets get...” www.trekpassions.com
What penis size is preferred by women? In case you were wondering. And you know you were. www.buzzfeed.com
Uh oh: Actual distribution of male penis sizes Looks like men aren't living up to women’s expectations in this realm any more than we do in others. www.buzzfeed.com
Posted by espd at 8:00 AM |
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Thursday Top 5
Pixar – A Human Story of Computer Animation A long (101 minutes!) but really interesting panel discussion at the Computer History Museum featuring the guys who invented texture mapping and alpha channels back in the early 1970s. They would later do early computer graphics for some films you may have heard of (like the original Star Wars) and go on to found a little animation studio you also may have heard of: Pixar.
Am I Not Pretty Enough? I usually detest this sort of talent show crap, but these guys deserve props indeed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzashX3FglM
Top 5 update: Donnie Hoyle unmasked Back in March I told you about the hilarious "You Suck at Photoshop" tutorials by Donnie Hoyle. Time magazine last week revealed the creators of the series as Troy Hitch and Matt Bledsoe. www.time.com
Posted by espd at 7:02 AM |
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
Thursday Top 5
Penguins Linux ad
Buy n Large From aerospace to food services, robotics to watermills. Now that's a global corporation. Ten points if you can figure out why this site is humorous. www.buynlarge.com
Five dangerous things you should let your kids do I guess I was lucky. I got to do all of these things as a kid. Although it wasn't spears, it was Jarts (later banned), and the I didn't do the driving bit until maybe 13 or 14. www.ted.com
"Lemme finish" In an interview with an Irish TV correspondent, Not-My-President Bush shows just how much of an idiot he is. "History will judge what I'm about." www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fze2J2Ve9is
English Russia A blog of Russian interestingness. Apparently written by actual Russians, since the English is a little broken here and there. www.englishrussia.com
Lev Yilmaz uses a great low-budget animation technique: He films himself drawing his cartoons in realtime, but from underneath, through a glass pane. So he has to write all the dialog in backward letters. It's an effective technique, and it must speed up the animation process tenfold or more (no stop-frame necessary).
But it wouldn't be worth a lick if the narratives themselves weren't downright funny, and Lev's certainly are. You can see more of his work at Ingredient X, or all his videos on his YouTube page.
Note: Most of them are clean but a few contain "strong language." This one's clean:
Posted by espd at 1:13 AM |
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Thursday, February 07, 2008
Jasper Morello and the Lost Airship
Jasper Morello and the Lost Airship is the first of four shorts in an Australian animated series titled The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello. The animation style is at once creepy and deeply beautiful. I'd really like to buy the DVD of the whole series, because they're so wonderful looking (for a teaser of better-quality video than YouTube offers, watch the trailer on the official website), but for some reason the DVD is not sold in the USA or Europe.
Posted by espd at 5:44 PM |
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Thursday, December 13, 2007
Thursday top 5 with extra sauce
The redgrrl and I shall be gone for the next ten days in Hawaii, so I'm graciously serving up this week's Top 5 with an extra helping to tide you over next week too. Don't gobble it all up in one sitting, you might get indigestion.
I hope you all have a good holiday, and I'll post pictures from Hawaii when we return. Oh, and the photoblog has been pre-loaded with new pics through Dec 30, so you'll get shiny new things to look at every day if you like. Come by often! Tell a friend! Take a number! Uh, I dunno what I'm talking about...
Terry Fator doing "What a Wonderful World" on "America's Got Talent" The Onion's AV Club included this song on their list of 23 Songs That Should Never Be Covered Again, but I gotta say this guy's rendition is entertaining.
PETA takes aim at the Olsen Twins Wow. I don't want to get on PETA's bad side. www.peta2.com/trollsens/
Inspirational corporate music video "El Pollo Loco and Denny's mah friend! Our future's so bright, We're gonna let it shine in!" Sooooo. Verrrry. Bad. How do the musicians who wrote and recorded this travesty look themselves in the mirror? www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f2jHaz25RE
Posted by espd at 3:35 PM |
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Thursday, November 08, 2007
Thursday top 5
"Happy" A short animation from Vancouver Film School. This one's for Sage and Dakota. x D
The Russian Avante-Garde Book: 1910–1934 An online exhibit from the MoMA (New York). This one's for Olya and any people who appreciate historical art, design, and typography. www.moma.org/exhibitions/2002/russian/
Carrier Pigeon A well-done video podcast about all kinds of stuff, from designer Dave Werner. minorstudios.com Never heard of Dave Werner? He's a somewhat recent grad of the Porfolio Center. Check out his absolutely exceptional portfolio: okaydave.com
Barista Brat The rants and raves of a Starbucks Barista. Fun and even informative. This link's for Jenny, who recently got a job at a small coffee place in San Francisco. baristabrat.blogspot.com
Posted by espd at 7:44 PM |
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Thursday, September 13, 2007
Thursday top 5
Flight of the Conchords, "Jenny" This one's for Ynnej since I missed her birthday by a couple days last month. These two Kiwis are hilarious. There are a whole bunch of good vids of them on YouTube.
Family Guy Star Wars A preview of an upcoming hour-long episode in which the cast of "Family Guy" does the entire first Star Wars movie. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGyGlp8sEHo
For font geeks and/or Nippophiles Shuetsu Sato is a railway employee who makes intricate, creative, hand-made signs and maps out of colored tape. www.pinktentacle.com
Internet People If you recognize more than half of these people, you're spending too much time in front of your computer. Like me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pPCkhYMQgY
Posted by espd at 3:31 PM |
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Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Blogger video upload test
Blogger's added the ability to upload videos. I'm just testing to see how it works, and where the video file lives if you're hosting on your own domain, like me.
Man builds a living out of LEGO Seriously cool sculptural art made out of everyone's favorite little colored blocks. And yes, that's Han Solo in Lego carbonite. » www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/05/31/lego.artist/
Posted by espd at 5:26 AM |
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
Thursday top 5
Picnik Really well done online photo editor that works with your Flickr account, uploaded photos, photos on the web, or pretty much anything. » picnik.com
"Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger, interpreted by the employees of Connected Ventures Now this looks like a fun place to work. » vimeo.com/clip:173714
Branch I really want one of these cat scratchers but there's no way I'm gonna pay $84 for a chunk of corrugated cardboard. » branchhome.com
The Forest in the Winter This is a really interesting (and slightly disturbing) animation of the Little Red Riding Hood story in Russian (I think) with incredible subtitle translations ("Forest is truly blood-hungry and life-jealous, and violence") and even more incredible commercial breaks (in Japanese!). » billsneed.com
Giant Steps This is a really cool Flash animation based on a Coltrane song. » michalevy.com
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Kansinee
Karl
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
MJ
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Yu-Po