Back in 1997, travelling through Berlin, I was lucky enough to stay in a couple of amazing rooms in an art hotel called Kunstlerheim Luise. There’s a hostel just down the road called The Circus (Am Zirkus) which had just opened six weeks earlier — but it was full. Their helpful staff suggested trying Kunstlerheim Luise. Little English spoken, no advertising, and a very special find.

Every room is designed by a different artist; it’s amazing and still going today. I wish, wish, wish, I could stay in this room today. Or that I had a thick black marker and a spare room to outline myself.

So Designmycard.com.au is a great idea, right? You get to put your own photo on your credit card or bank card. Lovely. They have a long list of exclusions (no logos, phone numbers, etc.), but ANZ is all too happy to hide behind today’s scaredycat copyright bullshit.

We don’t want a cheesy shit photo of one of us mugging for the camera, so we sent one of our best photos, of Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone. Colour corrected and saturation boosted, because it’s going to last a few years.

They just rejected the photo, without giving a reason, and stating they won’t enter into any discussion about it. So… the photo looked too professional? Could maybe be copyright by someone else? We’re signing terms and conditions that already say it’s not, motherfrackers. Only crappy pictures allowed? Please. Making me angry, and it’s too late at night to be angry.

(Earlier, my stripes were accepted for my card. I like stripes. I guess no professional artist ever used stripes. Right?)

Don’t think I’m jumping on a bandwagon just because I’m embedding a video from YouTube on my blog. It’s my team’s entry from the recent Brisbane 48 Hour Film Project, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it. Hope you like it!

So we just got back from the 48 Hour Film Project: Brisbane screening. Sadly, our film, “5”, didn’t win any of the big prizes, but happily, I did win Best Editing! Yay! So big thanks to everyone on the film (if you need to contact them, email film at funwithstuff.com) for doing a great job, making the editing a pleasure. Until the horrendous audio nightmare.

Yay! Woooo!

1000000

So Second Life has hit a million residents. It’s a milestone on the way to SL becoming the 3D social WWW. Places like The Register can mock and scorn as much as they like, but they’re missing the point. Did they see the WWW in 1994 and dismiss it all as being a pointless waste of time? Sure, Bianca’s Smut Shack served no higher purpose, but that didn’t make the web pointless. And sure, you can walk around in SL as a furry penis if you want to, but that doesn’t make SL pointless.

Of course you can find some spectacularly pointless stuff in SL. But that’s true of the web, and true of any medium. Enjoy the weeding process.