the self-discovery adventure of brett taylor
After talking with Chris Pirillo over Twitter, hearing him say how most short URL services don’t do good pretty semantic URLs, and thinking I could build a better solution, I did.
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.
From O’Reilly Radar (Ya, Reilly.)
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.
Here’s Glutbook, my 12″ iBook mac laptop sporting some new cult-of-mac jamming adhesives!
I know some mac-zealots (namely Kodiak) are gonna hate me for doing it. But that was part of the fun 😀
