Insomnic Dreams

My brother loves playing his ukulele, and luckily he’s pretty good; but he has nothing on U900 – a ukulele duo from Japan. Just take a look at their recent video animations of a couple of The Venture’s songs:

Diamond Head:

Walk Don’t Run:

Thanks Scott for introducing me to them.

Tilt-shift is a technology implement in camera lenses that adjusts the depth of field in such a way that images look miniaturized.

Here’s a video of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco done with a DIY tilt-shift lense:

This is the first video I’ve seen using tilt-shift and it’s kinda interesting to see. Thanks to Scott for pointing it out.

This video is from Inspired Bicycles. Be sure to visit them for further details and other videos.

I recently switched hosting of this blog to this new site. The full address is now www.insomnicdreams.com for those keeping track.

All previous entries and blog listings and posts will automatically redirect to the correspoding blogpost and hopefully RSS feed here.

There may have been a comment or two that was lost but feel free to re-comment.

There will likely be a couple changes here and there as I get thing working to my liking so please bear with me as I work through some of these fun new toys at my command. If you notice anything that is broken please let me know!

Thank you for your patience.

Tweenbots are a social experiment created by NYU student Kacie Kinzer.

Here is Kacie’s description of her Tweenbots:
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Here is a short video showing the little guy in action and some of his helpers:
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.

Be sure to check out her site for more information about her social experiment and how people reacted to the robots.

Today is Engadget’s 5th anniversary! They are the premier stop for keeping up with the latest gadgets. They cover iPods and laptops all the way up to 108″ TVs and robots. Anything and everything electronic that makes you go “oooooo!”

The other thing happening today that you’ll want to look into is The Daily Cup of Tech doing a string of posts detailing 24 free apps that are extremely useful as part of his 24 in 24 series. These are some great apps to take a look at and at least bookmark for later consideration.

I like animation. As such, many friends have recommended Avatar: The Last Airbender to me. I have resisted this in part because I have particular tastes when it comes to animation – Believe me… that’s a whole different post about the advantages and disadvantages of animation as a story telling device versus as a children’s colorful distraction. You can see I have opinions, and I had put Avatar in the later category because of its marketing and presentation by Nickelodeon. Luckily, enough people whose opinion I trusted said I’d like it that I gave it a shot and my only disappointment was that it took so long for me to watch it.

I highly recommend this show even if you aren’t a big fan of animation – though I understand some people just can’t take animation seriously… I feel sorry for them. If you are a fan of good storytelling I think you’ll like this series. It is a bit saccharine at times – it is a cartoon aimed – but it also treats the audience like they have a brain. I’m impressed. I hope more cartoons take this approach.

Also, there wasn’t a single fart joke in the entire series. Not one. No wonder people think it isn’t an American cartoon.

Oh… they are also making a live action movie with M. Night Shyamalan and the original creators working together to make a trilogy (the series is broken up into 3 parts so it makes sense). Hopefully that will work out okay.

Bill Gates served his last day as a full time employee of Microsoft today. Reuters has a good article about his goodbye.

There really is no denying that Bill Gates is the ultimate example of someone creating a startup and making it big. Bill is really the reason why computers are so common in homes today. It is also good to see that he is leaving Microsoft to help run one of the largest charitable foundations, which he founded, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Good luck Bill … and thanks.

Weezer released the official video for their song Pork and Beans a little while ago and my friend JerBones sent it along to me. The best thing about the video is that it stars all your favorite YouTube celebrities!

Weezer just extended quite a few 15 minutes of fame.

I apologize for the lack of post lately. I have started a new job and I’m still working out the new life schedule. I promise to get back on track with more regular info soon.

In the mean time, here are a couple quick topics I noticed recently:

• If you sync any devices to Outlook (like Blackberry, Palm, Smartphone, etc) then you know that duplicates happen. Outlook Duplicate Items Remover is a good answer to this problem and it’s free.

• If you have a Mac and a large collection of movies, books, games or music then Delicious Library 2 is a great way to catalog that collection. The latest version was just released and it has loads of new features and updates (Leopard only though – but you can still buy the older version which is still a great program).  This program is one of the main reasons I love my Mac.

• O’Reilly has released Google Apps: The Missing Manual to help you get a handle on all those new and exciting Google online applications. It includes chapters on Google Docs, iGoogle, PageCreator, GMail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and even a chapter or two about the business uses.

• Firefox 3 RC1 (Release Candidate 1) is rocking on PC and Mac.  I used to prefer Safari over Firefox 2 on my Mac because FF2 was slow and icky, but I’ve fallen in love all over again and it isn’t even the final version. I’ve been using it on my PC and Mac for a few weeks now and couldn’t be happier.

• If you like keeping up on the latest movie releases – especially their trailers – head over to First Showing.  They have done an excellent job of keeping me up to date with the latest movie trailer releases and upcoming release happenings.

• Tropic Thunder looks like it may be funny – but this short clip from MTV Movie Awards of Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, and Jack Black trying to make a viral video is definitely hilarious.

Don’t forget that you can also follow me on twitter, but I hope to get a more regular posting schedule up and running soon. Thanks for your patience!

UPDATE: Firefox 3 RC 2 just arrived. It is available at the same link.