FuzzyCo

• SNEmulDS: SNES emulator for Nintendo DS
  the blog is broken, but the download links on the sidebar are correct
  (tags: games emulation snes nds)
• NDSTT
  (tags: games emulation nds)
• dslibris
  ebook reader for the DS
  (tags: ebook books nds)
• How to Convert Most Video Formats to .Dpg in Mac Osx - wikiHow
  (tags: movies video nds)

FuzzyFest has kicked off this year with a great lunch with some of my workfriends at Bandera. The terrible weather we're having today actually worked in my favor -- I had been a little worried because Bandera doesn't take reservations for lunch and they're often pretty crowded. But today they were half-empty. Thanks, snow storm.

Day Two of FuzzyFest 2008 was both productive and chill. I knocked out two different video projects (links to come -- one has to wait for the client to post it, the other is secret until mid-day tomorrow), we went to a baby shower for Dan and Vicky, and I ran tech for Sickest Stories. But we also found time to knock out the last few episodes of Season 2 of Arrested Development and have a delicious breakfast and dinner. Tomorrow -- more meals with friends and pie. Pie!

Chicago director, producer, raconteur, and all-around swell fellow Don Hall has the same birthday as I do. He also has a wonderful (and crazy) wife. You may remember that last year she organized a bunch of Don's friends to wake him up at 6 am by singing Happy Birthday to him while gathered creepily around his bed. This year she set up a blog called "Don Hall is a Horse's Ass" and solicited posts from all of his friends. Here's my and Erica's contributions.

So day three of FuzzyFest 2008 was the big day -- my actual birthday. And I have to say it was a pretty great day. Erica and I met up with Shaun at the Little Corner Restaurant for my favorite breakfast (pork chops with two eggs-scrambled, raisin toast-buttered, grits, coffee -- 7 points in the Ordering Game). After breakfast, Erica surprised me by whisking me away to a massage and pedicure. On the way home we stopped at Metropolis and had a nice conversation with one of the roasters about their different blends and picked up some coffee for home and Erica's office. We made the tiniest effort to straighten up the house and then went out to dinner with some friends. Everyone came back to our place during the snowstorm for pie and coffee and kitty wigs. And then Noah stuck around afterwards to show Erica and I how to remix songs in GarageBand. How can you beat a day like that?

Thanks to everyone for all the kind emails and text messages and phone calls and Twitter shoutouts and Facebook wall writings and MySpace comments.

Order has been restored. Thanks, Mustache Factory. (But how do you feel about sandwiches, Fuzzy?)

For Christmas, Kate gave us a Kitty Wig (the "Pink Passion" model) with the condition that she get photos with the cats. The wig comes in a very nice wigbox and with careful instructions about not just shoving the wig on your cat's head. We had been following the instructions and trying to get Parker used to the wig over several days. But then last night Kate was over for my birthday and we just, you know, shoved the Kitty Wig on our cats' heads. Sorry, guys.

The 365 Days project challenges you to take a self-portrait a day for a year. I've been thinking about attempting it for a while, but I've sorta been looking for a good start-and-end date. I missed New Year's Day (not, perhaps, a good sign for the project) so I've decided to do birthday-to-birthday, inclusive. Add in the fact that this is a leap year, and I'll be doing my own personal 367 Days project.

I've got some ideas for fun kinds of self-portraits to take, but to keep it realistic, I've also set myself some rules:

The day isn't over until I go to sleep. I anticipate plenty of post-midnight "brushing my teeth and... ooops haven't taken a self portrait today, yet." Which leads to...

It's OK to suck. This whole thing is going to go down the tubes real fast if every picture has to be great. I'm going to start off with (as above) some crappy camera-held-at-arms-length photos just to get myself in the habit of taking one a day.

Failure is an option. If I miss a day, eh, it's a self-imposed goal. No one is going to cry over missed photos. If the whole thing does go down the tubes, oh well.

A couple weeks ago I decided that I should finish up the third series of Doctor Who because Torchwood season 2 has started and the whole "What Captain Jack did between the seasons" story is told in the last few episodes of Doctor Who. So I started charging through the episodes and I came to a realization -- Doctor Who is totally skating on my childhood nostalgia. As a child, I loved Doctor Who because of the sense of grand adventure. The writers of the current series seem much more focused on exploring the Doctor's "humanity" (as such) where "humanity" seems to mean to them a certain soppy sentimentality. And crying. There should not be so much crying in Doctor Who!

And then, of course, the last few episodes of the season, "42". "Blink", and the three stories of the final arc, were all pretty darn good. Darn you, Doctor Who. Now I'm going to have to actually watch the next season.

FuzzyCo: grade B

* Oh, how my inner fan rankles at that designation. Because, of course, it's Season 29. Gah.

Sometimes when you power-watch a television series you really start to notice internal cliches of the show or repeated jokes or so on. With Arrested Development it's exactly the opposite for me -- I'm really noticing how intricately crafted each episode is and catching subtle call-back jokes that I might have missed if it had been weeks since I'd last seen an episode.

FuzzyCo grade: A+

The new Entourage 2008 has changed the way that custom sound sets (for the new mail sound, sending mail, etc) are stored. The old style, from Entourage 2004 and earlier, packaged up all the sounds as 'snd' resources in a single file. If you've come to the Mac OS platform in the last decade you're probably wondering what a 'resource' is, and it's understandable, because that's just not the way things are done anymore and it's getting harder and harder to even find applications to deal with resources, especially now that Leopard has killed off Classic mode.

But the good news is that the new format makes it really easy to throw together a sound set, and it's not terribly difficult to convert an old Entourage sound set.

Much more than you ever wanted to know, after the jump...

• Royalty Free Music
  Nice CC-licensed music
  (tags: free music filmmaking)

The other video project I knocked out over the weekend was an editing job for the Neo-Futurists. I was handed about 90 minutes of footage of Contraption rehearsals and a loose script and I edited together this one minute trailer for the play.

To preemptively answer a question that's come up a couple of times, I deliberately didn't use any 'scratches' or 'jittery film' effects for two reasons. First, since I knew that the target venue here was YouTube, I wanted to keep the image as clean as possible -- YouTube's video compression already makes video plenty ugly-looking. And second, it almost feels like a cliche at this point. I know it's an accurate cliche for silent films, but it still feels over-used.

As with so many of my video projects, I'm really indebted to the multitude of musicians all over the world who have freely shared their music under Creative Commons (or other) licenses so that a very non-musical fellow such as myself can score his films. The delightful piano music in this trailer is a piece called Mister Exposition by Kevin MacLeod.

I've been well-hyped to see Sunshine for almost a year, so I was surprised that it came and went with so little splash. And I'm doubly-surprised now that I've seen it, because it's a really tight hard sci-fi thriller. Seven astronauts are on a mission to restart the dying sun with a giant bomb, a mission that an earlier team has already failed at. The tension is palpable, the action is exciting, and it's visually fascinating. What's not to like?

FuzzyCo grade: A

I'm of two minds about The Host, a 2006 monster movie from Korea. The monster's great--and the movie certainly loves showing it off. No coy reveal of the monster in dark alleys for this movie--you see the whole thing in broad daylight in the first 5 minutes. And the plot is at least slightly different than the usual "monster picking off a small group of people"-type.

But the dialog was totally terrible. I was watching the English-dubbed version and I'm entirely willing to believe that poor translation may have contributed to the awfulness, but even the gist of the dialog was often ridiculous. I think there might be some sort of layered "the effect of the west on our country has been for the worse" thing going on (you know, the way Godzilla is really about nuclear weapons) but it just didn't gel for me.

FuzzyCo grade: C+ (though an A- strictly for creature effects)

• Movable Tweak: Creative Ways To Use Subcategories
  (tags: mt movabletype webdev)
• Address Book - Gmail sync
  (tags: macosx software utility gmail applescript sync)
• Action Streams for MovableType
  (tags: webdev movabletype mt)

There are more reasons to like The Bourne Ultimatum than just that Bill O’Reilly doesn't like it. For example, there's kicking and punching, and a little shooting for good measure.

FuzzyCo grade: A

But the browser on this backstage computer is too old to support Twitter, so this is the only way to answer the question, "What are you doing, blogging?" with "yes."

But actually, no. Not really helpful at all.

I owe a bunch of people Christmas and Birthday thank you cards, but I owe one more to some anonymous person. I got a book in the mail today that must be just for me, but I have no idea who sent it. The Importance of Being Fuzzy - and Other Insights from the Border Between Math and Computers. So thanks, anonymous friend. I will, I'll shamefully confess, probably never read it, but I'll proudly display it nonetheless. (I can put it next to the copy of Life and Erica that I got Erica for Christmas.)

• YouTube - Shunt
  short film by Jen Ellison and Michael Brownlee
  (tags: film)

All credit for the Mii and the clever title go to Erica. If you want to add our next president to your Wii, just go to Check Mii Out, Posting Plaza, Popular, Search (the magnifying glass), Change (the circular arrows), and then enter the entry number 4764-4332-9025.

Update: Better image, and tshirts, available here.

Pixish is a new website from Derek Powazek, the founder of JPG Magazine, that aims to be a marketplace to connect people who need illustrations, images, and design with artists, photographers, and designers. The site has only been public for a day now and there's already criticism that the whole thing is terribly flawed because it's spec work. Spec work is when a design client says to one or more designers, "mock up the work and maybe we'll buy it". Spec work is bad because it devalues design, spec work is bad because sometimes clients use speced work and don't pay for it, and spec work is bad because it wastes the time of professionals.

As well, the cheap nature of many of the "rewards" on Pixish has already been well-mocked.

And I agree that if someone who was going to hire a design professional instead uses Pixish, then yes, that's spec work and designers shouldn't participate (and should at least take note of that company's actions, if not following Adam Howell's suggestion to outright boycott them).

BUT I think there's still a place for Pixish. I was struck by one of the very first Assignments, posted by Derek Powazek himself. Derek is offering $100 for a tattoo design. And that price point and that level of design need is where I think Pixish could be a real benefit.

Let's say (as a real example) I'm in an improv group* that performs a couple times a month at a non-profit co-op improv theater and we think it'd be groovy to have a logo for our MySpace page and maybe print up a dozen shirts for ourselves and our six fans. I'm not going to go to a real design firm, because that's not my budget or need. I could bug my artist friends, but I've already had them design stuff for my last six groups. Now, I could go to Pixish and offer $50. And someone who is willing to work for $50 will give me a design that's worth $50, which is all I need.

And I'm not just speaking as a consumer of design. A long time ago I had a (very) small graphic design company in a smallish town. These days my full time job is as a network guy, but I keep my hand in the game by designing improv show posters** and such. I just did a job for a group where I did a poster, postcard, and show photos all for a bundle price of, guess what, $100. It's cheap, I know it's cheap, but they don't have the budget and I'm not going after higher paying jobs. Heck, I don't want the responsibility that comes with a higher paying design job. Before this it's been hard to find those kinds of jobs. So maybe I'll enter a few designs in Pixish contests assignments. And maybe I won't win them, but for me half the point is just about keeping my design skills up. Heck, that's why I entered all those side-contests and remixes on Layer Tennis.

So doesn't this devalue design, though? Well, yes, somewhat. But it's also a democratization. There are people with design needs and people with design ability and they deserve to get hooked up. It's messy. It's change. Ask the music industry -- do bands with free music on their MySpace pages devalue CDs? (Or Jonathan Coulton, to pick on another Pixish Assignmenter.)***

OK, I'm typed this out pretty fast and my thoughts on this are still geling. Partly I wrote this because neither Daring Fireball, nor Adam Howell, nor Pixish has open comments. But comments here are always open, so feel free to tell how I'm wrong.

Update: Well, they said the site was a beta and would be evolving, and I guess they mean it, because they've already removed all design assignments from the site.

Erica and I talked about this whole brouhaha on our way to dinner with friends tonight and one of the things I realized in that time is that I some of my thoughts might not actually be about Pixish as such, but about this niche I'm seeing. Ever since the desktop publishing revolution, the tools of design are in more and more hands. And more and more people are realizing that they have design needs. There have to be ways to connect those people. Colin, who commented here, has some interesting ideas about a portfolio-and-bidding based site.

It probably doesn't help that I'm in the middle of Accelerando, so I'm thinking about post-scarcity economics. Which is, of course, science fiction, as of yet.

* If you're not in Chicago with our odd improv comedy culture, think "band".
** Again, for the rest of the world think "rock show poster".
*** This is likely a very shaky analogy -- comparisons to the music industry may be the new Godwin's Law.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, valentine!"

"Freedom", eh? Sorry, but I think Optimus Prime is trying to break up with you. "I need my freedom, human. I'm a truck *and* a robot -- there's more of me than just one person can love."

You know, I love her more and more every day. Which is pretty astonishing, because I already loved her a lot.

I know you don't trust me, but the Onion AVClub gave the new Laugh-Out-Loud Cats book an A.

Through some inexplicable alchemy, cartoonist Adam Koford has turned seemingly every annoying Internet meme—from hobo worship to "I see what you did there"—into something whimsical and charming in Meet The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, a collection of single-panel cartoons packaged to look like a old 1973 Dell paperback.

We couldn't resist using part of our long weekend to get through the last half* of the third season of Arrested Development. I'm almost sad we finished, because now there's no more (unless the oft-rumored movie ever gets off the ground).

FuzzyCo grade: A+

* "Last half" being less impressive than usual since there were only 13 episodes in the third season.

One of my favorite fantasy series as a kid was Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising quintology. I re-read the series a few years ago just to check, and indeed it wasn't just the youthful me that enjoyed the books. I think the books may have been my first exposure to a re-imagining of the Arthurian mythos. In any case, they rock.

The Seeker - The Dark is Rising does not rock.

The film isn't bad, as such. It's just pretty blah. Visually it's fine, even well-made. And the acting is pretty strong (though, Christopher Eccleston really doesn't seem to be into his role as the Dark Rider. But he's appropriately creepy as the the cheerful Rider-in-disguise-as-a-friendly-doctor). And I don't mind, as I gather some fans do, that Will Stanton has become an American.

But the story has been stripped of any subtlety, or oddly enough any Arthurian references. And it's not Susan Cooper's fault, writing in 1965, that the "the power of the [y] was split into [x] pieces and hidden" would become a video game cliche, but it has and you think the filmmakers might have de-emphasized that part of the plot. So the whole movie just flies by in a "only you can do it, oh look you did" blur.

FuzzyCo grade: C

In the category of ridiculous action movies, The Transporter is top-notch. The fights, especially the several close-work sequences and the rather inventive bus depot scene, are all great. And plot, well it's not Shakespeare, but it doesn't actually go out of its way to insult my intelligence.

FuzzyCo grade: A

Jason Shuga's Bookhunter imagines a world where the special Library Police investigate book thefts with SWAT Team-level firepower.

FuzzyCo grade: A.

(via Making Light)

It was a wonderfully clear night tonight, perfect for standing out on the lakefront watching the moon get swallowed by the great wolf Fenris eclipsed by the Earth. Perfect except for the fact that it was about -100°. I came in after an hour when I started to lose feeling in my fingers. So I only have photos of the first half of the eclipse (and a nice little hacking cough). Science!

(Originally published on the Chicago Metblog)

• US vs Allen (pdf)
  An awesome story of a terribly bumbling robbery of rare books. The punchline is the court's decision on their appeal of their sentencing calculation.
  (tags: books crime law)

• morguefile.com Where photo reference lives.
  (tags: design free photography webdev)

I'm working on a longer blog post about this in general, but I'm not done with it and I couldn't make this fit in a tweet as hard as I tried:

Cabel Sasser asks if Threadless is spec work: No, it's not 'spec work' to accept unsolicted designs, which is all Threadless is doing. They just happen to be very open about their process and their initial selection committee is 'everyone who participates in the site'. If your design is selected you get paid and you're entirely free to use your unaccepted design elsewhere.

It's got to be karmic payback -- occasional-designer-Fuzzy defended Pixish against charges that it was spec work, and then actor-Fuzzy was presented with an audition this week where the power relationship was very askew and pay is uncertain.

Derek Powazek defended Pixish again in more detail, mainly by talking about the power-relationships difference between spec work and Pixish. That is, it's spec work if a big company does it to a little design company. Pixish, he argues, is different because the power relationship is different, especially because the process is open. (Insert here the stuff I said about Threadless earlier.)

But besides the power (and the money) there's another criticism -- spec work is both a symptom and exacerbation of a devaluation of design. Some companies, I'm sure, solict spec work as business proposition -- why pay for anything if you don't have to? But many others likely do it out of ignorance. Design is "just moving words and pictures around", right? I could do that, if I just had the time, the client thinks, so it should be cheap and easy for the designer to throw something together. (Clientcopia abounds with just such stories.) (Of course, I think design is becoming a more accessible and distributed skill.)

It's a lot harder to quantify that devaluation, of course. And it's a lot more emotional because it's tied up with questions of respect. (Threadless, to go back to that example, has, I think, increased the respect for design among their audience -- the comments in the scoring section of the site are often filled with cogent and constructive design criticisms.) Every time a client lowballs you because they don't think design is important, it reminds you of when your Archtypical-Aunt-Tilly asks if you're "still doing that work with the little pictures" and you want to scream a little*.

And if you think you hear that as a designer, it's a lot worse as an actor/comedian, believe you me. If someone asks me about "your skits" one more time -- to the moon, Alice, to the moon. Last week, I came off stage after an improv show, which the audience had paid to see and I had been paid to perform, and one of the audience members congratulated us on the show and asked if any of the cast were "aspiring comedians". Sigh.

So we're back around to the audition I just did and I probably shouldn't say anything more because I do actually want the work (it'll be fun! it's building relationships!) but just know that it's all a little wonky and you probably shouldn't trust any pontificating I do. Because lord knows, I love me some pontificating.

* Feel free to yell "projection!" at any point here.

Charlie Stross' Accelerando is available for free download and that's the version I read, on an open source ebook reader running on a lightly-hacked consumer electronic, no less, which felt very Strossian. At least, like the first few near-future chapters, until the run-away pace of technology (hence the book's title) took the characters and the plot far off into post-singularity weirdness.

FuzzyCo grade: A-

"We must all rainbow our puppy princess with butterfly hugs; when we do, all children can unicorn chocolate snuggle with Jesus hang glider." -- Merlin Mann

Update: There's a desktop background version and a Zazzle poster (which you should not buy -- download the Original Size from Flickr and print it out at work).

Update 2: No one was clamoring for a Glitter-spirational version to leave in MySpace comments, so I made one.

JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound were in the studio this last weekend and I stopped by to snap some shots.

"Inspiration is a Magic Cow whose Teat we Squeeze into our Imagination Pail. Dare a Dream of Cows to Fly over the Moon! Also, Scrapbooking." -- Merlin Mann

Seriously, while Layer Tennis is off, I could do these all day. I'm, dare I say it, inspired.

Contains CC-licensed images from ann_blair2003, DogFromSPACE, macieklew, and Lenny Montana. Many thanks (and apologies) to them.

• In Defense Of Complaining -- Cory Doctorow -- InformationWeek
  The response to complaints about complaining.
  (tags: essay complain freemarket)

Apelad has a new site, onomatopedia (Onomatopoeia + Encyclopedia), where you supply an onomatopoeic word (and $20) and receive an original 4x6" drawing in the mail. Did I commission this impolite word? Maaaaybe. (Yes.)