Archive for March, 2009
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »World Builder: A Charming & Visually Stunning Short Film
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 6, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, March 6th, 2009A charming nine-minute short film created by Branit|VFX
I’ve mentioned before that due to my puppy-like attention span, I’ve long been a fan of short media. That’s one of the reasons I like the award-winning short film World Builder, featured at left. I also like it because it takes something usually used to blow things up or create monsters – visual effects – and creates a few moments of sentimentality and simple beauty. If you’re especially hip and cynical, don’t waste your time; there’s no jaded punchline. Although visually rather stunning and clever, it’s really just kind of sweet. Apparently the nine-minute film was shot in a day, but took TWO YEARS to complete in post-production. It was created by Branit|VFX of Kansas City, which has also provided effects for shows like Pushing Daisies and Lost, as well as producing the amusing 2004 short 405:The Movie, “The story of the wrong guy – in the wrong place – at the wrong time.” This kind of material is one of the things I love about the current world of media production: some of Hollywood’s best post-production work takes place in places Like Kansas City, MO! I could watch Branit|VFX’s 2009 Demo Reel repeatedly simply because it uses Kaki King’s music as a backdrop…. Read the rest of this entry »
Are You Really Stupid, Or Do You Just Have Poor Taste?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 5, 2009 by admin in Music
Thursday, March 5th, 2009Correlating Facebook Data With SAT Scores
If you’ve ever been mystified (as I have) by the popularity of Beyonce or Lil Wayne, there’s a fairly good chance that you’re just intelligent. Or at least that you would do well on the SAT. Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith has gotten considerable attention for his tongue-in-cheek but slightly scientific analysis of how intelligence affects tastes in music and books. He plotted aggregated Facebook data against average SAT scores from various schools, and came up with graphs for both Books That Make You Dumb and Music That Makes You Dumb. Personally, I think you can be stupid and still like Beethoven (who was most popular with students that scored around 1400), but it is somehow telling that “I don’t read” and “Dan Brown” correlated with students who scored around 1000. I also have to admit I was a little surprised to not see The Decemberists over on the 1400 side given their popularity with ad-industry types and Stephen Colbert; and these are indeed troubled times when the Bible hangs down with the 900 scores while “Lolita” tops the smarty-pants reading lists, with an SAT/popularity score around 1300.
Lions and Tigers and…Well Okay, No Tigers Or Bears…
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 4, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009Amara Conservation: Sustainable Wildlife Conservation Through Education
…but there are some elephants involved. For several years I’ve worked with a very cool non-profit in Kenya called Amara Conservation. Originally founded by Lori Bergemann of Ann Arbor, MI, Amara focuses on encouraging sustainable wildlife conservation in Kenya, mainly by using a mobile film unit to show educational films produced by the African Environmental Film Foundation to the rural people of Kenya. Amara supports a lot of other projects in Kenya, including lion translocation, various activities of the Kenya Wildlife Service, and is currently working on some other interesting projects, including a mobile radio station in conjunction with UK-based Radioactive. The clip here is an early promotional video from 2001. We’re currently planning a May/June fundraiser in Michigan; if you’re interested in helping out somehow (volunteering, networking, fund raising), contact me or contact Amara via their web site. The clip here was written & produced Chris Cook, edited by Matt Zacharias, with music by yours truly, Ian Gray. Read the rest of this entry »
Laughing Your Axis Off
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 3, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009A Collection of Humorous Graphs & Charts
Looking at yesterday’s Dow Jones chart probably didn’t make too many people happy, which is why I thought it might be nice to take a look at graphs and charts that WILL make you happy. A classic in this medium is the Percentage of Chart Which Resembles Pac-Man chart. Ingeniously recursive. For some reason, music-related themes are particularly popular; GraphJam has so many submissions in this category that it’s hard to find the actually funny ones. No worries, there are plenty of collections elsewhere, like this collection of humorous musical graphs (which somehow managed to omit a couple of important ones like Jay-Z’s 99 Problems and Classification of Young American Females According to Brian Wilson). As you might guess, the tech industry is also partial to this kind of goofing off, so we have collections like A Completely Unscientific (Yet Accurate) Look at Social Sites. And crappy graphs are such a familiar element of doing business that there’s even an online Crappy Graph Builder available to punch up your mind-numbingly dull PowerPoint presentation. No need to get all fancy and technical though, in the clip featured here, comedian Demetri Martin should have you laughing out loud with only an easel, a large sketchpad, and a some simple hand-drawn graphs. View video full size here if you prefer. Read the rest of this entry »
Even TED’s A-Twitter About The Twemendous Possibili-Tweets
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 2, 2009 by admin in Technology
Monday, March 2nd, 2009And You Can Twote Me on That
In spite of Twitter’s ten-fold growth in 2008, a lot of perfectly well-adjusted and otherwise hip people (including myself) have yet to integrate the service into their life in a significant way. If you’re not familiar with what Twitter actually is, the TED presentation by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams featured here here will give you a good overview. Even if you are familiar with Twitter, you may not be aware of Twitter’s effect on ancient history, or more recently, Hitler. And even more recently (and more seriously) you might not be aware of some of the the amazing tools at your disposal, like Twitterfall, where you can mindlessly watch tweets scroll by, or better yet, intelligently customize what you see. Or Tweetoclock, which lets you type in a Twitter username to find out when it’s best to tweet them. And if you’re using Twitter aggressively for marketing purposes, you’ll need Tweetsum, which uses sophisticated algorithms to generate a DBI (Douche Bag Index) to help you manage followers. My personal prediction (but I never saw Reality TV lasting this long, so ignore me!) is that Twitter, as it’s currently used, will become quite popular, but have a short life cycle. Or, as Evan Williams suggests, do something completely unexpected because users find a new use for it. And you can Twote me on that, to use some twerminology I just Twopyrighted. And regarding the buzz going around that Twitter has no viable business model? One of their key venture capitalists is just laughing.