Just came out of a screening of all the animated shorts
nominated for an oscar. Overall, I’d say they were all excellent and
diverse. Here’s my reactions to each in the order I saw them.

The Moon and the
Son: An Imagined Conversation – John Canemaker’s intimate paternal biography (28:00)

Wow,
very personal and raw. Some segments were uncomfortable to watch but
this is what gives it power. Taps a fear I suspect many fathers have
that their sons or daughters will remember the bad memories over the good ones. A great real-life story of struggle and unwise actions motivated by good intention.
At 28 minutes this is the longest one and it was screened on video as
it was produced in video. I loved the mix of media he used — stills, home
movies, reference footage, hand drawn cels and how well they were woven
together.

9 – Shane Acker’s post-apocalyptic
thriller (10:50)

I saw an excerpt at Siggraph and boy this works much better seeing the complete short. Called a student film but made by a pro over several (4?) years between production work. I love the gritty, post-industrial atmosphere. I liked the minimal lighting and I thought the animation was solid too with the character having nice reactions and emotions. Not clear on the message of the story but I’m pretty thick about these things sometimes. The sound design superbly added another dimension to this film although a few times it seemed too obvious but maybe the volume in the screening room was too loud.

Badgered – Sharon Colman’s charmer (7:04)

Well executed story, charming character and excellent minimal animation.

The Mysterious
Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello – Anthony Lucas’ mini-epic shadow play (27:00)

I saw this on Friday at an ASIFA event at DeAnza college on video (seems like an older projector, too) . Seeing it in 35mm with a good sound system (although there were some glitches in the film copy) made a huge difference. Another case where the sound design really enriches the film. I loved the silhouette style and I appreciated the subtle use of 3D. I enjoyed the story, partially because I like sci-fi but mainly because there was mystery at the beginning about what I was seeing (classic sci-fi) and I didn’t know was going to happen. And I liked the ending – tragic but not dark for the sake of it.

This is my pick for the oscar.

One Man Band – Mark Andrews and Andrew Jimenez from Pixar (4:30)

Super high production values (as we all expect) but I couldn’t rally around the story. Actually, I guess the characters really because the story is kind of interesting with the little girl’s skill. I didn’t find the playing of either one man band very appealing.

Posted by bruce as animation at 1:21 PM UTC

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www.dontclick.it
has an excellent exploration and example of a user interface you can navigate without clicking a mouse button.

It’s very interesting. Fairly effective proof of concept
but I wonder if it would scale. I also am not sure what the real advantage
of getting rid of the click is. Definitely more interactive but seemed
slower than clicking. There’s probably a danger of annoyance if it gets
it wrong repeatedly.

Posted by bruce as usability at 10:47 AM UTC

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I just changed photos.livingpixels to create progressive jpegs for the intermediate sized images. I did this to improve the preceived speed of my DSL connection.

The change was in compress_image() in /usr/share/gallery/util.php: I added "-interlace line" to the exec of ImageMagick’s 
"convert".
 

Posted by bruce as computing at 12:15 AM UTC

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I stumbled on OverClocked ReMix – Unofficial Game Music Arrangement Community. A few days ago there was a band on the front page of AllMusic who played video game music. The concept strikes me as odd but I’m not sure why. Spending possibly more time on a remix than was probably spent on the original (I don’t know this to be true, BTW). There’s probably more work on the soundtrack than I realize, too.

If you love a game, have played it a lot, then your neurons have it imprinted. So I guess it’s more honest than just creating something inspired from the music and calling it your own.

Note: I’m only commenting on the concept. I need to take at listen to these remixes and see if they do anything for me. I’ll report back.

Posted by bruce as Uncategorized at 2:10 PM UTC

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With this very helpful article Secure Spam/Virus filtering system with Debian and MailScanner on debian-administration.org, I got MailScanner using SpamAssassin, ClamAV and BitDefender all going on my incoming mail in about an hour. This is pretty good for me.

I’ve been very happy using SpamBayes but it doesn’t catch all of it and it does involve regular sorting of message it’s unsure about. SpamAssassin is supposed to be pretty good at what someone called supreme court spam (what any regular person would see as spam). I’ve read that others have had good success combining the two filters since they have different strengths.

I’ll post my results.

Posted by bruce as computing at 12:48 AM UTC

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Here’s an interesting intro into how people are dealing with our modern multitasking work environment. Meet the Life Hackers – New York Times

Aspects which resonate:

• I’ve always craved more screen space. I’d max out the res of my monitor and/or card. I just bought a huge (for me) LCD monitor (Dell 2405) 1920×1200. I think more screen space makes me more productive but sometimes I doubt it because of the interruptions.
• the last few months I’ve often returned to work after the kids go to bed and love it because it’s several hours of uninterrupted time.
• I use my drafts folder at work to track to do items since many come from emails anyway. And I can prioritize them and see them sorted that way.

Posted by bruce as computing, vitality at 11:06 PM UTC

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Hello!

It seems like a life time ago since I got a Brock Wilson family update
out to you.

We have our December photos online now at http://photos.livingpixels.com/cc2005-december

Here’s some of what’s been happening for us.

Zeke and Cameron playing with snowshoes out front while
Daddy’s on the roof stringing holiday lights

Playing tickle and belly button booping with Grandma and Grandpa
Wilson who came before the holidays and parked their trailer in our
driveway for a month.

We have a miracle afternoon at the beach in Half Moon Bay before
cutting a Christmas tree. It was looking cold and grey on the drive
over and then when we got to the beach after a picnic lunch in the
greenhouse at Enso where Ryl does process painting on Monday nights,
it was warm enough to be in our t-shirts playing at the beach. We
enjoyed the dose of sunshine.

Grandma and boys were raking leaves instead of shoveling snow and
enjoying another warm afternoon.

Zeke was playing blues clues to find out where his big present for
Christmas was hiding. He got a batman bike and helped Grandpa and
Daddy put it together.

After spending most of the money Grandpa and Grandma Brock gave us for
a wagon on a train table and saying we wouldn’t use a wagon, we got a
wagon for Christmas with the money that was leftover and have been
enjoying it. Grandpa Wilson did a little engineering with it so it
doesn’t tip over when turning sharply to either direction. Thanks!

Christmas day and afterwards we were playing with tinker toys and the
new BBQ set. Miles was trying to fit into the barn and reading his new
books.

Grandpa and Grandma were contributing by fixing all the things on our
handyman’s todo list. We now have a new bathroom faucet downstairs that
young and old can operate without needing a lot of hand strength.

We are well and hoping that the holidays were full of wonderful
moments for you all.

-Ryl

Posted by bruce as kids at 11:57 PM UTC

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