Images that inspired me this week

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edison

dang.

edison – tonka truck from edison on Vimeo.

Outdoor projections

I really dug the outdoor projections at Dirt provided by Visual Worshiper. Take a look here.

hazy morning

Originally uploaded by avclub

Here’s a little shot I snapped the other morning on my walk with Pushbutton. Loving those fall leaves.

R2 on the road

When I travel I like to document my journey along the way and email my family (mainly G, who gets into the cool travel sights). This time, I took along a friend of his to keep me company.

Dirty award winning Ben Coleman

At this year’s Dirt Conference I’m proud to have been in the presence of the Dirty-Award-winning Ben Coleman. Here he is accepting his award, and I’ve linked the winning piece below.

iPhone audio organism

You may “get this,” you may not. You may think it’s just plain weird. But it’s quite interesting. The iPhones process an audio signal input, then react off of one another. Musically valid or not, I appreciate concepts that are way out of the box such as this. Fascinating.

Lego remote loader

As Gardner’s getting older he’s starting to really get into Legos. I’m stoked because, next to GI Joe, this was my favorite of all activities as a young fella. The difference with today’s creative model builders is that they’re much, much more advanced than what we used to build. But somehow I think G can handle it. Here’s an example of a recent creation someone built that’s just downright impressive.

Tweetie 2 developer interview

Here’s a great little interview of Loren Brichter about Tweetie 2, my favorite of all the iPhone apps littering my phone. Specifically, he talks about how he landed upon the decision to reload by pulling to the top of the list. Read it here.

Dirt

I just got in from the Dirt Conference. If you’re from there and would like to start communicating, Twitter is my love language. To make sure I catch you all shoot me a comment here with your @ so I’ll know who to start following.

Looking forward to hearing from you all!

Theme park maps

Here’s something a little fun for a Wednesday, lots and lots of theme park maps (link here.

Dub FX – live beatbox mix

In the utmost of live looping and creativity I really dig this track from Dub FX. (head’s up, it is hip-hop and will probably have some NSFW language). But what mastery of beatboxing, looping, effects, and general musical flow.

Wouldn’t you say this is the epitome of white guy hip-hop?

Roland TB-303 Style Synth

Here’s a nice free Roland TB-303 Style Synth plugin. Sorry, this is only for you Windows users out there. (too bad for me).

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iPhone alarm clock app

I know the iPhone already includes a very robost alarm feature… I’m reminded of that every morning… but this alarm clock app by DreamSurface is a tempting thing of beauty. It’s clean, integrated, pulls in web radio and the weather, and is just beautiful.

Now, I’ll say with my stock alarm plugins, but it does provide a tempting alternative.

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Cool things I’ve found cleaning out the garage

I’m taking a few days off. So far it’s been great. I’m spending my week with my family, mostly with G, as we are cleaning out our garage. It’s been a mess 3 years in the making and begging for some serious organization. That’s something I do well. When it’s complete I hope to have (1) a workout space, (2) easy access to all tool, (3) easy access to all kids’ toys, an (4) a place to park at least one car. Bonus would be a spot to create some strange electronic fabrications which will be discussed in another post.

As I’ve dug I have come across quite a few interesting things. Here are two. First is set of safety glasses I dubbed weezer-specs. I got them on a client visit when I was an engineer. I ended up using them most of my time as and engineer, and seriously considered putting tape around the center for laughs. Second… well let’s say my Crocodile Dundee costume would have been much more effective had I found this earlier.

Air Board Personal Hovercraft

I’m going to have to pass on the Segway and go for something a little more, well, practical. Like this Air Board Personal Hovercraft. Think about it, Segways would just sink to the bottom of a pool. Not this guy.

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NewSpring Ghost sighting

No doubt you’ve probably all seen or heard about our recent ghost sighting, but in case you missed it:

For the fun technical debrief. The footage is really from our security cameras. The export feature doesn’t play well with Macs so we ended up literally shooting the computer monitor with a camera (thanks to Will and Justin for running the footage down). This process also added some of the hazy brownish glare.

I added in the crosshairs, REC button, and timecode directly in After Effect. None of those are in the original footage. Why did I include the timecode? It’s there so when I sat in the service I would know when he jumped out (it’s 38:22 in case you wondered).

For the “ghoul,” I started with still image. After some Photoshop extraction and a bit of color grading to get him to fit into the scene it hit me… if he’s jumping in front of the camera he should be blurry. So add in a bit of Gaussian Blur.

My favorite part. I used the mesh warp tool to distort his mouth just a bit, to make him react to the scream.

For audio there’s a slight room noise I pulled from a stock collection just to make you think you hear something.

In the end I think it was pretty effective and got the proper reaction. What did you think? Did you jump.

Like a Magic 8 ball for designers

What a cool idea. Stuck on something in your design? Not sure where to go? Head over here for some advice. Push refresh on your browser for a different opinion.

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Don’t Get Married Until…

This weekend marked the beginning of a new series, Don’t Get Married Until… For the visual package and opener Perry’s sole request was that it should an element of hip-hop. Listening to the 90s station the other day I heard some Heavy D and I instantly knew it was the right choice. The goal in this piece is to set up the series with “if you’re ______, then you’re not ready to get married.” Here’s the resulting opener.

Tomorrow I’ll post of the preproduction details (and a special preliminary video), sketches, and talk a little about the process.

BT using an iPhone

Nice example of BT using the Sonifi iPhone app in a live set.

BT at FOF performing with Sonifi from BTtv on Vimeo.