Anyway, since the album was released in 2007 I’ve listened to the track over 200 times, building this music video story in my head for Fast Turtle, a superhero turtle of the same name.

So after attending Webstock 2010 and getting inspired and hearing some other crazy cool ideas and being encouraged when I shared this one with Chris Winchester, here’s my treatment for my music video for Anamanaguchi’s Fast Turtle. Give it a read and let me know what you think…

I think it’s pretty tight, I just want constructive criticism and advice for the next step, which I have a feeling is storyboarding and funding. I also need some concept art: I have a little already, and have lots of ideas for environment, characters and even specific shots.

Read the treatment and leave helpful comments below!

Sure, I did spend some time ‘upskilling’ at work doing the design and html template, but I got the whole WordPress skin done in about 4 hours.

I based it off of the Classic theme (y’know, the ugly default theme) and tweaked the living daylights out of it, adding extra template files.

I’m quite happy with how it came out. What say you?

I would love someone forever if they bought me this! So cute, so awesome!

Make time to have it

You can’t have breakfast if you don’t allow yourself time to prepare and consume it, so allow yourself some time before you leave the house. You probably have a morning routine, so just make it part of that. If it means getting out of bed 20 minutes earlier than you normally do, then do it! Breakfast is worth it.

Mix and match ingredients for a taste sensation

One thing that will stop you wanting to have breakfast every day is it always tastes the same. Stock up on various breakfast cereals and toppings. I’m in New Zealand, so some of this stuff won’t be familiar to my overseas readers, but here’s what I like to have around. Important factors in choosing stuff: Must be tasty by itself, but must be reasonably healthy. Anything with added sugar should be avoided in large quantities, but is nice once in a while.

Bowl: You need to have a bowl that has high edges to prevent spillages, large enough to hold three Weet-bix, standing up on their side and still be covered in milk.

Cereals: Lots of Weet-bix, and a box of Honey Puffs, Corn Flakes, Rice Bubbles, and a couple of Hubbards mueslis: one heavier oat-based muesli and one lighter corn-flake based muesli. In small amounts: Coco Pops

Toppings: Bananas, real-fruit yoghurt (buy in 1kg pottles), grapes, other kinds of fresh and dried fruit. Avoid fresh citrus fruit as it makes the milk curdle. In small amounts: Fruit-based ice-cream or plain yoghurt toppings (strawberry, kiwifruit, black forest, blackberry, but NOT chocolate, caramel). Avoid dairy food (the sweet creamy flavoured stuff that’s not yoghurt, e.g., Swiss Maid, Go-gurt, etc.)

Milk: Homogenised pasteurised Blue-top all the way. Why not low-fat or non-fat milks? Because it doesn’t taste as good. I’m all about the taste. And you do need some fat in your diet.

How to put these ingredients together:

Weet-bix (similar to Weetabix) is the staple of a bowl breakfast in New Zealand and Australia, so use this is a base. Two or three bricks. Because Weet-bix is quite absorbant, some people put hot water over these so they don’t use so much milk. It does result in a watered down taste, but this is an option. If you like large portions for breakfast, then just add more Weet-bix bricks. I put these in the bowl standing on their sides, not lying down or on their ends.

Choose one of your other, more flavourful cereals and ‘fill the gaps’ in your bowl with it. You could add two or even three different bits. Don’t over-do it though; the Weet-bix is the base, we’re adding the secondary cereals for flavour and texture because Weetbix, while lightly malted, isn’t the exactly the taste sensation we’re looking for.

Toppings: If you’re adding fruit today, put this on. If you’re doing yoghurt or another thicker-than-milk topping, add this. Then add the milk. You might not like watering down your yoghurt with milk, but trust me, it helps the flavourful yoghurt get into the Weet-bix. Don’t go overboard with any sugary ice-cream/yoghurt toppings — just add enough for flavour. If you don’t have yoghurt, fruit or toppings, and you’re desperate, you might put a teaspoon or two of sugar on the Weet-bix to make it a bit more interesting — but be aware, you may set yourself up for sugar-crashing easily before lunch time.

Now enjoy a flavourful and nutritious breakfast!

Parallax Backgrounds

Done using simple CSS and a nice bit of JavaScript, but nothing too advanced, and without any libraries!

Enjoy it!

urlTea

A Web 2.0 look at the Short URL services.  Light, simple interactivity. Intuitive design. And even an API! I’ll probably GPL it soon too…
Your thoughts?

My workmates and their students created this short 3D animated film called Amiganaut, and got me to star in it. I’m the giant scottish mech suit guy, dubbed the HGU — Heavy Ginger Unit. Awesome eh?

So I’ve been mucking around with Quartz Composer for Mac OS X recently, and a few nights ago, inspiration struck. So I spent my evening making up this: ESV Daily Verse Screensaver. I am learning a lot about Quartz just making these kinds of things, and the fact that this one goes online to get stuff from the ESV’s RSS feeds is even neater. Maybe someone out there will enjoy this one

I’m working on a ‘star wars’ type screensaver with the same content right now, but am having issues with pixelisation of the text when I get it at the right angle and perspective, i.e., freakishly close up.

As Quartz Compositions tend to be user-editable, I’ve decided to release all of mine under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.

Beau Vrolyk just sent me the following email: “Once in a while someone takes something really simple and makes it absolutely extraordinary. This is a video of someone doing exactly this…. simply amazing… You’ll find this well worth the four minutes of your life it will take to watch it.” Beau titled his email “A zen master???? Dancer??? You decide.”

I totally agree. Wow. As Tim O’Reilly said: “It makes you realize just how much more humans are capable of than most of us display.”. Heart touching stuff. An opus.

At the very least, this makes all those street performers look like noobs.

Update: Jason Garfield does a Chris Bliss diss. With 5.

Yeah, Garfield’s routine is definitely a more technically-impressive display. But as we know in the design industry: bells and whistles a well designed piece do not make. Bliss shows simplicity and imperfection in his routine, and it emotes better because of it.

That said, the last 5 seconds of the video (after the end of the song) is amazing.