so completely random

i haven't been feeling very creative lately...... i have been losing sleep, because of a girl. (that may be the subject of another post in the future), so i have just spent a lot of time trying to KILL time. while wandering around the internet today, i came across a reference to a cartoon character that i had forgotten about. a character that was created in 1948, and had his own animated show in the 80's, so i looked it up, (as i often do). this is what i found : "The Shmoo first appeared in the strip in August 1948. According to Shmoo legend, the lovable creature laid eggs, gave milk and died of sheer esctasy when looked at with hunger. The Shmoo loved to be eaten and tasted like any food desired. Anything that delighted people delighted a Shmoo. Fry a Shmoo and it came out chicken. Broil it and it came out steak. Shmoo eyes made terrific suspender buttons. The hide of the Shmoo if cut thin made fine leather and if cut thick made the best lumber. Shmoo whiskers made splendid toothpicks. The Shmoo satisfied all the world's wants. You could never run out of Shmoon (plural of Shmoo) because they multiplied at such an incredible rate. The Shmoo believed that the only way to happiness was to bring happiness to others." how completely insane is THAT??????? what kind of twisted bastard can think of those sorts of things? on a slightly related note, i dated a girl who was perfectly described by the last sentence above.........

night lapse

. the other night i just COULDN'T sleep for some reason. i tried every trick i have, and nothing worked, so i just eventually got out of bed and started messing around on the computer. that is when i had the idea to set the computer for time lapse, and have it record the onset of daylight. this video was recorded from between 0300 and 0600, with some of the boring darkness edited out of the version you see here. i also edited the last 3 seconds of the video to make it go more slowly, so you could catch a glimpse of me after being up for 24 hours. the camera was set to capture one frame every second. hope you like it.

just a quickie

this is just something i did while bored one night. nothing too exciting, but i can tell you that it managed to eat up a LOT of my time. it is surprising how long it took to create this little clip. not sure i like the stop motion stuff, because i am far too impatient.

you've got mail

so..... i have had the past week off from work, and have REALLY been enjoying the time at home, since i haven’t been here much in the past couple of months. one thing that i wasn’t enjoying, was my inbox constantly “chiming” to announce to me that there was a new email for me. i found myself wishing that there was a way for me to distinguish between email from different people, so i started wandering around the internet once again. (side note : this was the absolute DEATH of my productivity yesterday, since i got obsessed with making this little idea work.) i came across some automator suggestions, and started messing around with different methods of letting me know the difference between when an important email arrived, and when an email that i could ignore for a while came in. i ended up using applescript to make this work, but i suppose automator could help you achieve the same thing. sadly, i can’t show you PC users a video of how this works. you will just have to believe me that this works..... now you Mac users are in luck, since i have the files and instructions you need right here....... the nice thing is, i wrote a little section in the script that automatically pauses iTunes, so that you can hear the message, and then resumes iTunes after the message has been spoken! and i guess it is important to mention that this whole project was inspired by marlo superstar, so a big thanks to her! ps - i have also made another little applescript that will play a sound file for “specific” emails, rather than the same sound for every email that arrives. if you are interested, let me know, and i will send it to you......

it's all in the timing

my friend richard posted a piece on his blog recently, about the definition of time, and he managed to get some excellent responses, aside from the usual "it's the fourth dimension". and i had posted a video last week, which was "time lapse" so, in keeping with this whole "time theme" that seems to be happening, my brain started thinking about the phrase : "time flies like an arrow". this sentence is one of my favourite examples of how the english language is not only complicated, but also how different words can have more than one meaning, yet maintain the same spelling. (homographs). (which SOUNDS like a concept that my friend rich should be familiar with). in the original interpretation of this statement, we are comparing how the passing of time is similar to the movement of an arrow. but there are other ways for this sentence to be understood...... 1. measure time for flies as you would for arrows 2. there is a kind of fly, (called a "time fly"), and it is fond of arrows 3. there are flies that resemble arrows. measure their speed 4. measure time for flies as an arrow would obviously, a couple of these interpretations are not really possible, but i am still fascinated by the different way to read this. what are some phrases that YOU find don't make a lot of sense, or can be interpreted in more than one way?

summer's approach

. last night, i was out playing basketball with a friend, and we were amazed by the amount of bugs flying up to the huge lights shining down on the courts. all kinds of moths and mayflies and junebugs. i found myself marveling over the fact that if they are insects of the night, then why would they be drawn to such a bright object, which will almost definitely cause them to perish? then i thought of the song by jethro tull, where the frontman, (ian anderson), sings : "The leaded window opened To move the dancing candle flame And the first moths of summer Suicidal came." i looked down on the ground and saw this absolutely STUNNING moth, just fluttering around : the photo just doesn't really do it any justice, since the lens isn't meant to do close-up photography, or even high resolution images. it is, after all, just a phone. i found it rather strange that after all the time i have spent outside in the evenings of the summer, that i have NEVER managed to see anything even remotely close to this beautiful insect. off on another part of the court, i found another interesting moth, that looked like a small version of the hummingbird moth, but didn't manage to take any pictures. and just to fill my narcissism quota for this blog, here is a picture of the moth compared to my hand, in order to give you some perspective on size. i measured the distance afterwards, and the wingspan on this gorgeous moth is around 7 cm. edit : i got the measurements wrong. i was a stupid idiot, and measured the wrong span on my hand. while looking at the picture of my hand. i don't think i can get any more stupid than that. i have corrected above as soon as i have managed to identify what kind of moth it is, i will post it right here : edit : 06.07.07 one of the faithful readers of this tiny blog, (Honker), managed to find out what kind of moth i happened to see. it turns out it is the Hyalophora Cecropia well done, Honker. feel free to stop by the comments section, and thank him for helping solve this mystery!!!

how i stay alert

work was a little more boring than usual today. so i decided to fool around with the camera built in to the computer, and see what kind of cool stuff i could do. you get to see me at my most bored. and a couple of times you can see me get incredibly sleepy, and there are a couple of times you can see me giggling. one of them is because i was flicking little balls of tape at my friend marta, through a little opening, (really not funny unless you are tired, like i was). i am pretty impressed with the results. let me know what YOU think! edit : i just noticed, while showing a friend the results of my "time-lapse" movie, that there is a spelling mistake. i wrote "py attention", instead of "pay attention", and it is driving me crazy that i know it is there!!!! edit 2 : i fixed the video ending, for the whiny complainers, (looking at you, dickcherry), that couldn't figure out that the video had ended when it went to black, but music kept playing. but i couldn't be bothered to fix the spelling mistake. it meant i had to re-edit the whole movie. and really couldn't be arsed, since it is just a cheesy video anyway!

inspired by an unstable character with destructive tendencies

when i was younger, i was obsessed with scaring people. i loved to make people jump out of their skin. i think that this was mostly because i was such a coward myself. (in fact, i am still scared of dark basements, since i am convinced that all manner of scary things lurk there). there were a couple of times i REALLY managed to freak my poor brother out. (sam, if you are reading, i am mostly sorry). the first time, he and i were watching a horror movie that had literally MILLIONS a creepy crawly insects all over the place. sam, (the poor bastard), happened to be laying on the floor watching this movie, and was resting his head on a cushion. i quietly crawled up behind him and gently tickled his ear in the manner an insect might do it. i have never seen anyone leap that high off of the ground before, as he tried to wipe off all of the imaginary bugs that his terrified mind assumed were crawling all over him. oh man, how i laughed!!! the second time, was far worse. we both had these creepy looking clown masks, that i believe we wore one year for halloween. i thought it would be funny to try and scare my brother in some way, so that he wouldn't like the mask any longer. my plan worked a little too well. i put the mask on, and then went to find the biggest kitchen knife we had in the house. i then came creeping up the stairs, brought the knife out in front of me, and peeked my eyes around the top of the stairs. when i was fairly sure that my brother was confused by what exactly was going on, i moved the knife into a threatening posture, moved my clown-mask-head fully in to view, and made this awful noise, which in my memory, sounded like a demented goat. sam's face contorted, and he started to cry instantly. he tried to climb backwards, in order to escape this demon that had come to claim his soul. i instantly felt bad, and quickly took the mask off in order to remove the fear he was experiencing. so i guess i am not ENTIRELY evil. what is the worst fright YOU have ever given to someone? ps - i realise that i probably didn't write the above story very well, but i am at work, and my attention keeps getting distracted by stupid work stuff......

bizarro world

so i finally got a couple of days off, after two BRUTAL weeks of work. and i have done absolutely nothing. except get drunk. which is probably a bad thing, but in my defence, it wasn't exactly like it was a mission of mine. i didn't say to myself "i am going to be drunk lots this weekend". it just kind of happened by accident. especially yesterday. now i feel gross. and unrested. and now i have to go work for another week. damn. i truly believed that i was going to have a really productive weekend. the only thing that i managed to produce was waste. i am a terrible human being.

it ain't easy, being green

so i was messing around with the camera in my phone the other day, and managed to capture a really neat photo of myself. i projected some light on to my face, and switched the camera to "negative" mode, (which is how i take MOST of the photos with my phone), and the result was, to me, pretty impressive. then, while working on a client project, i was messing around with a specific style of dissolve for their logo, and came up with an interesting dissolve technique, and i decided to use the same approach with the photo i captured of myself a couple of days previous. as always, no manipulation of the photo was done after it was stored on my phone. here is what i ended up with........