Flying lessons wanted

I want to get me one of these.

C’est magnifique!

While having a wander around Cather in the Rye’s blog, I found this amazing film for a French kid’s TV channel. It is so beautifully animated and is such a sweet story. Mmmmmm…

The latest thing on the web is more than 2 years old

My old colleague, Matt Mayes from MRM, sent me a link yesterday to a BBC report on the ‘latest craze’ on the web. And it just so happened to be a campaign I did a couple of years ago for Hewlett Packard. It seems that the intertubes work a bit slower around Broadcasting House.

So I recorded it using Jing - an incredible free application that lets you capture video and store it on their server. If you want to see the report, click on the image to view it on Jing’s site.

Or if you want to see the original thing that started the craze, go to fingerskilz.tv

And Jesus turned the water into …ehm… Coca Cola

Dearly belovéd,

One of my older posts got a bit popular last week. It was the one where I decided to sort out the world’s religious troubles by using Amazon to compare the ratings of all the holy books. You can see it here, if you missed it.

One of the strange side effects of this is that I’m getting loads of hits every day from the search term ‘god’. So I decided to put it into google and see what else people were finding. And I came across GodTube. Yup. Just what you’d imagine - YouTube for God botherers. Praise be!

What really amused me was the blatant capitalist sell-out. Just look at the animated Coca Cola banner at the bottom! I do hope they’re giving the full tithe of their earnings to the church.

Amen.

I don’t generally put dancing on my blog

But this is awesome. I just grinned and giggled all the way through. Just wait for an ad agency to steal it.

Cheers Knotty

The Michael Jackson white glove tracking project

Something that I entirely missed last year was the White Glove Tracking project. In the space of 72 hours a whole bunch of people tracked Michael Jackson’s white glove in every frame of his famous Billy Jean TV performance. They then gave people access to the data to do what they wanted with it.

Most of the stuff was a bit dull - but this one is great. Some guy just magnified his hand making the video feel like something between Kenny Everett and Jim Carey in The Mask. Enjoy!

Thanks to Dickon

I know this isn’t a furniture blog

But I can’t help sharing this amazing table. I don’t actually want it - but I want someone I know to have it. I could play with it for hours on end. OK, well minutes, anyway.

I think I’ve fallen in love with a software package

Before I got into the ad industry, I worked as a sound engineer and musician. It’s something that still comes in handy and just this week I’ve written several pieces of music for some online films. (That’s what happens when you’ve got a low budget and you’re a bit of a control freak).

I’ve had my eye on Melodyne for a few years now and it’s always impressed me - but their latest stuff just blows me away. I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it.

New animation from BLU

I’ve just found this new animation. It is more than 7 minutes of epic animated street art surrealism. Wonderful.

Start brushing up on that CV

The European Space Agency are recruiting astronauts. I’m probably a bit old now - and far too unfit - but this is the job I always wanted to have. If you want to go for it in my place, drop me a line and I’ll write you a good reference.

Find out more here.

And put in your application here

Good luck!

The best yet from The Decapitator?

I love The Decapitator’s stuff. So I was pretty happy to come across one of his latest pieces under a bridge on Old Street. He’s beautifully defaced a couple of UNIQLO posters. And in a much more sophisticated way than this. Lovely.

Show us your arts

I’ve blogged before about how I love the Jackson Pollock site because it gives you an experience of what it’s like to create one of his famous splatter paintings. I discovered another site today that gives you a bit of a Picasso experience. So this is a self-portrait I did in the Pablo-esque stylee. Not quite as good as the Jackson Pollock one - but it’s getting there.

Watching the bee-bee-sii

A couple of days ago the BBC announced that they had developed their iPlayer so that you could watch it on your Wii. Not bad after their iPod announcement last month. So, I tried it out a couple of nights ago.

As you’d expect, it works just like the website - except it’s on your TV and you control it with your Wiimote. It would probably have been a bit more impressive for me if I had a more impressive TV. As it is, my TV is only fractionally larger than my laptop screen. I’m just not a 100 inch plasma kind of guy. The one drawback was that full screen didn’t seem to be available. But this is probably an issue with the Wii browser itself. However, on their blog, the iPlayer dudes say that they have plans to build an actual Wii app which would obviously give you a much better Wii-like experience.

But for now, this will do nicely. I just love it that the BBC are trying so hard to deliver technical innovation. That’s something I’m happy to pay my license fee for.

iTunes and Firefox had a baby

I have a little system going. I allow myself 5 Stumbles a day. No more, no less. And yesterday on the third time I hit the Stumble button I discovered Songbird.

If you imagine the bastard offspring of iTunes and Firefox, you’re pretty close. You see, it’s like iTunes with a web browser built in. You use it to visit music blogs or do a web search for mp3s. Alongside the webpage, it shows you a list of the linked mp3s and allows you to listen to them, download them or buy them. (Please steal your music responsibly, children.) It’s not even in beta stage yet - but you can download the slightly glitchy developers’ version from their site. I’m enjoying it - but I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll revert back to iTunes for most of my listening and just use it occasionally. But, for now, I’m hooked!

Face #76

Something that makes me happy

I love nice stationery. It does something to me. I am a recovering notebook addict with an unhealthy collection of unused and barely used notebooks - as well as a bunch of completed ones. A fresh Moleskine makes me incredibly happy. But I’ve managed to stop myself from buying any more in the last year, trying to use up the unused treasures on my shelf instead. But these notebooks may just tip me off the wagon. I’ve got a bad case of stationery lust.

What’s so different about them is that you can connect them together to create a REALLY BIG notebook. And you can customise them with pockets and foldouts and stuff. Like this:

You can get them from Start Here. I’m going to try to hold off but I’m not sure I can resist temptation like this.

Tron in cardboard

I loved the film Tron as a kid. I wanted pyjamas with those crazy blue light strips in them. But, then again, I also wanted a light saber, a long-necked alien and a bmx. Oh yes - and a monkey. And the power of invisibility. And a Spiderman lunchbox. Back to Tron, though. A couple of French dudes have remade the famous race scene using bits of cardboard. Pointless but brilliant. Enjoy!

Taking robo dog for a walk

Boston Dynamics have been working on a robotic dog. And they’ve had millions of dollars in funding towards the project. Presumably they want to use it for some kind of military use, like biting the ankles of terrorists and pissing corrosive fluid on the wheels of enemy vehicles. This thing is amazing though. It’s movements look ‘animal’ rather than robotic. You can see it here being put through its paces in different kinds of terrain. The only drawback is that it sounds like a garden strimmer and doesn’t have a head.

If aliens played piano

Wallets at the ready. This is the Pegasus grand piano and it’s going on sale today. Although, from the way it’s been designed, it looks like it’s maybe going on sale 300 years too early. I think I’ll have a word with the partners at Poke and see if we can get one for our reception area.

Epic is back

This is the latest Australian TV ad for Carlton Draught lager. It’s pretty spectacular, would have cost an absolute fortune and couldn’t have been easy to sell to the client. I love the fact that the product does so much damage - which most clients would say is associating negativity with the brand. It’s very much like the Skittles ad that I posted yesterday. There’s negative shit happening because of the product - but the entertainment value the ad gives you makes you feel warmer towards the brand. Why aren’t we seeing anything this good in the UK at the moment? I feel cheated.

Thanks to Stan Lee.