funwithstuff

Some great photos at this Japanese photoblog. Yes, the comments are in Japanese, but the titles aren't and the photos are still photos. Depth of field control (using a shift lens in some pics) makes cityscapes look like models. Could probably do this in Photoshop with the old duplicatelayer-blur-addlayermask-mirrorgradient trick.

Derren Brown is a fantastic illusionist. Wish one of the Australian networks would pick up his show, as I'd love to see the last and current seasons. Anyway, check out his site, which sets a new standard for great Flash design. Stylish, great audio, consistently freaky and interesting.

This is good. This is interesting stuff. Xooglers is the blog of ex-Google employees. Very interesting if you've ever wondered what happens in the company that claims to "Do No Evil".

So I'm searching for album art for some of the weirder albums in our collection, trying to feed the fabulous CoverFlow, a great program that lets you browse through your albums as if they were real again. Check out the movie on the site for a demo.

Anyway, found a blank for "This Is Isis" from Isis, a once-Brisband. Now CoverFlow does look up covers on the internet itself, but if it can't help, you can try Clutter, which shows album artwork for whatever's playing in iTunes. Clutter came up blank too, so back to CoverFlow, right-click, choose Google Image Search. That's useless, so in a last ditch attempt I put quotes around the album name: Isis "This Is Isis" - Google Image Search.

And came back with a great number of new pets. All called Isis. Love the net.

If Bush's presidency was an Infocom text adventure game: defective yeti. Fabtastic.

Since Channel 7 has actively chosen not to allow email feedback, let's air some dirty laundry here, on my blog. Where few people are ever likely to read it. Sigh.

1. The tennis is on a delayed telecast here in Brisbane, so looking at the current scores online means you're waaaay out in front when returning to the TV.

2. Jim Courier, commentator, is an annoying, disagreeable, bleathering wanker.

3. They've managed to sneak ads between games by cutting to a shot of a big screen outside the stadium, then superimposing their own ads on that screen with a poxy pseudo-commentator voiceover. Pure evil.

These bug the shit out of me, and I'm not even a tennis fan. Making a program more enjoyable with the sound off is a tricky feat, but they've managed.

So here's the plug. I like Second Life. You might like Second Life too; it's a virtual world without goals but with a ton of freedom to create, chat, and do anything you want. You can skydive, fly, drive weird vehicles, snowboard, make buildings, design clothes, make friends, change gender, learn languages, discuss politics, explore sci-fi wonderlands, fight people, have sex, gamble and even, if you want to, look like the chef from The Muppet Show.

If you have a Mac or Windows box (Linux coming soon!) made in the last couple of years, you can check it out, and it's free to join. Anyway, if you sign up through this link, they'll send me L$1000 of the in-game currency, as a referral fee. (That's about US$4 today.)

Then, I'll give half of that L$1000 back to you. The other half I'll waste on something stupid like a new jetpack or some clothes. Or on uploading textures for something fun I might build. See you in-world?

Happy 2006 everyone. Since you can read this, your system has updated itself to point at my new site, which has mucho space and bandwidth. There'll be more multimedia stuff coming soon.