admin-blog – Page 56 – funwithstuff — a blog by iain anderson

So glad to see this on boingboing. Gerard and his partner have been producing fantastic chocolate in Lower Sloane St for a few years and deserve to be known as the best chocolate makers in the world, seriously. When we were living in London around 2001-2, we lived in Pimlico, just down the road, and saw them open up. We were some of their first customers, back when they made the most amazing cakes as well as their chocolates. We told everyone and some of them believed us. We went to Brussels to try to find better, and failed. Pierre Marcolini comes closest (small, densely flavoured fillings) but isn’t as good. (Gerard used to work there.)

Try the salted chocolate caramels, absolutely fantastic. If you go at Easter, they might have their chocolate bunny in-store: that is, a female mannequin in a bunny suit, made of chocolate. During winter, they have the best hot chocolate you’ve ever tasted, for half price if you can make it to Borough markets.

If you can, go. If you can’t go, try the site: http://www.artisanduchocolat.com/

Need icons for your website? Want to colour them with CSS? Sanscons by SOME RANDOM DUDE fits the bill. Free, download now, all is happy.

Sometimes, you just need to sacrifice a tree. If you have a library nearby, check their catalogue and see if they have “The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World” from Lonely Planet. It’s completely wonderful: an atlas-sized double-page spread on every country on the planet, plus several interesting territories. Great photography, things you didn’t know. Hey, if you trust me enough to go buy it, just pick it up from Amazon — it’s in paperback now.

Use your choice of referral URL so someone else gets some cash from it, too. (That one’s me for Amazon UK, if you want to use it. I really don’t expect to ever earn anything from it, so use someone else’s if you wish.)

Freaky, cool, handmade sand animation @ Sand Fantasy.

Never seen so many comments: Cartoon controversy: to publish or not? from Guardian Unlimited: Organ Grinder. Got an hour to spend reading them? Please do. Then summarise and post back.

If you know me, you’ll know I don’t really dig religion/belief/faith. A nice quote found recently: “Belief is the point where your thinking ends.” Makes sense to me. From Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist.

Introducing Twelve Fives

Welcome to this little experiment in short short film, delivered as a video podcast. It’s simple: twelve shots, each five seconds long. Why? To find a way to show old tapes that won’t bore everyone (including me).

I’ve edited holiday footage down before: 8 hours from three months on a scooter around Europe. It went down to 2 hours 45, then down again to 1 hour 25. That’s watchable, but I don’t have time to. I do have time to edit and to watch a series of one minute snapshots, so I made up some rules to help. Don’t worry, it’s not Dogme.

Pick twelve good shots and find the best five seconds in each. Add some music, credits top and tail, and you’re done. Easy to edit, and twelve similar shots create a tight little haiku-style portrait.

As I work through the many “USA road trip 2004” tapes sitting in the cupboard, I’ll add more episodes to the video podcast. I’m considering opening this site up to other people’s videos. I’ll add a few how-to guides if people are interested. For now, drop me a line on twelvefives [at] funwithstuff.com.

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.

A change: no more referral bonuses for basic accounts. It’s still worth joining, I just won’t be able to fling cash your way if you click my link to do it. Ah well.

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.