Today is our second day of shooting for Portable Stories. We’re doing the office scenes and maybe some street level stuff if things go smoothly. I’ve also been hard at work on one of the sub-projects of PS, the Fort Street Project which will eventually find another home at the new openspace.ca website I’ll be building in the new year. I’m basically building a 3d version of the end of Fort Street that we’ll use in some special effects shots. Crazy.

In other news I signed up for a nifty Flickr Pro account so that I may be more like my friends and people I admire. My latest shot is entitled “but Drew had never seen a camera before.” and it is awesome.

There have been a few occasions in the last couple of years when the question of “where to host ___” comes up. There is a sense among those of us who have our own domains registered that to host something on your site implies ownership and that can make for awkwardness. But really, who wants to host a site on google pages or… ugh, tripod?
Jimmy Wales to the rescue. Free hosting, free bandwidth, but best of all… a decent host name and some real control over the look of your site. I’m going to load up an animations gallery and focus the page on VJ stuff for the time being. I haven’t gotten access to the ftp side of things yet (apparently the service is not yet up and running) so I can’t say whether or not it’s worth the time investment. Who knows exactly how it will all play out, but I have faith. Faith in Jimmy that is.

Register yourself and come along for the ride,

http://www.openserving.com/register.php

Tomorrow night T Clark has an opening at Deluge (636 Yates St) of photographic works and it promises to be quite a smashing time. Chaindlk.com has a little bit of text about it here. Smashing.

In other news, we’ve started shooting Portable Stories and I’ve started on the animations as well. The first shoot was on November 30th at the Bibli Ophelia with Russ and Erin.

You don’t have to know me very well to find out that I am cukoo for mobile devices. silicon.com has this top ten mobile design classics article that made me feel happy. My top favorites are actually numbers seven and eight, the Nokia 7600 and the Siemens Xelibri respectively. via slashdot

It’s my day off and I’m excited to go on a bit of an adventure and then… snow. Snow everywhere. Lots of it. And it sucks.

Since getting my mac a few months ago I have become obsessed with mac apps.
So here is my list of my favourite apps that you must have.

disk inventory x website
As a multimedia artist and general internet addict, I am constantly suffering from data residue on my hard drive. You know, the files that get hidden away when you’re doing a render in a hurry and things like that. Well, disk inventory x will give you a nice little picture of how much space files are taking up and then give you the chance to delete it or just launch it’s location in the finder.

handbrake website
Often I need to rip a dvd to use for web documentation or in live video performance (all legal, of course ) and handbrake makes it really simple. Simply insert a DVD and minutes later you’ve got a tidy .mp4 on your desktop.

ipoddisk website
Rip the contents of your ipod to your hard disk. Now you can have it both ways. (A word to the wise: make sure you shut down iTunes before you use ipoddisk, it always seems to crash my system.)

jumpcut website
Saves all your clipboard contents for easy retrieval later. A must have for web designers and developers.

smc fan control website
MacBook Pros get hot, hot, hot and this will cool them down.

todos website
Organize all your apps with this meta-app. Command-Option-Control-T launches a palette of all available apps on your system.

For one brief moment the chaos subsided, and now the clock is ticking once more, the wind howls and Jesse hates Aerosmith. In the next few weeks we’re getting ready for Dowsing for Failure at Open Space, which is shaping up to be one of the most interesting shows I’ve ever been a part of. I’m still mulling over the exhibit manifesto and I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet, but I likes it. I likes it just fine.
I’m also planning my next website, a showcase site for Grand Theft Bicycle: Babylon. It’s going to have a media gallery, artistic statement, etc, etc, etc. Of course we will have all of your favorite GTB characters as well.
Speaking of web projects, I’m pretty much finished the site I’ve been creating for Kristina Campbell. It is a minimal affair, but highly functional and soon it will be bursting at the seams with images, video and sounds. I have also finished instructing Russ on how to use his blog. You should take a moment and visit him at russellreilander.com.

Feeling like a lookey loo? These photos and these photos are amazing. Props to the peeps at Dorkbot SoCal. via boingboing

From the streets of Victoria:

My next video project Portable Stories is well underway and if all goes according to plan we’ll start shooting next month. I’ve been lucky enough to sign up some really talented people to help out on the production end, and soon will start casting and shooting. The script has been developing nicely so I hope to find some actors to do it justice.

An excerpt from Portable Stories:

You can take your story anywhere these days.
You can colour it RED, BLACK or BROWN.
Practically any colour you want.
You can make your life an episode in some one else’s…
Talk, be talked about and discuss
These are talkative times.*

*Please note that I have blatently stolen the words “talkative times” from Dylan Robinson. I swear I’ll give them back some day.

On a slightly unrelated note,

Once upon a time, but not that long ago, I had a radio show on a local college fm station. It was a funk/soul show. And I know what you’re thinking, I don’t seem the type that would listen to that sort of music. But that’s where you’re wrong. Even though I took over the show from another guy, I love the sweet, sweet sounds of funk. In particular, artists like James Brown, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and… (forgotten until recently), Lee Fields. Lee is a complicated man. He hasn’t enjoyed the commercial success of the number one soul brother, James B., but by god Lee has soul. My favourite album of his is called Problems and you’ll be doing yourself a favour if you take a few moments and give it a listen. In particular, Rapping with Lee is a killer tune.

Despite two power failures in the same set, Eploding, Plastic & Inevitable was a giant nerd-killing success. We had a huge crowd at the show and pictures + video will be posted as soon as they’ve been proccessed. Thanks to everyone who made it to Open Space for the event.

For those of you who wonder what’s next, it’s happening this Friday. Channel10 will be performing visuals at the Alter Ego party in the Visual Arts building at UVic. I, of course, will be appearing in my brand new robotoverlord costume. It is mostly tape and cardboard but I assure you it is very, very awesome.

If you’re not up for a trek all the way to UVic then you should definitely see the Hank and Lily show at the Metro that same night. Our friend Scott Amos will be showing his magical movies along with the unmistakable, unrestrainable force of Hank and Lily.

If you like cyberpunk, then you must read this…

It may have been Isaac Asimov (though I first heard it via Howard Waldrop) who said there were three orders of science fiction, using the automobile as an example. Man invents the automobile and uses it to chase down the villain: adventure fiction. Man invents the automobile, and a few years later there are traffic jams: social problem fiction. In the third type, man invents the automobile, and another man invents moving pictures: fifty years later, people go to drive-in movies. It is this third order of fiction, social fabric fiction, that was at the heart of cyberpunk.
read the full article from slashdot…

After a week of tech glitches, if finally looks as though we’re ready for the show this Saturday, Exploding, Plastic & Inevitable. Justin has done a great job cutting up new content for the visuals, and I even had some time myself to create a few new animations (see below for a preview.) Among the tech issues we have covered this week; 1) the default settings that my mac book pro + bootcamp shipped with do not allow for dual screen mode in XP and changing those settings, while extremely easy, is not exactly clear when one looks at the video app supplied by ATI (see here http://www.embraced-dc.com/articles/1/ for the fix); 2) the midi keyboard loner that I arranged for broke so I finally bought my own – the axiom 25 – and it is very, very slick; and finally 3) while I really like freeframe plugins I don’t have a hope in hell of ever understanding them well enough to write my own. So much for my 4 years at university.

This is our Channel10 theme image for Saturday night: