Meltdown

Try besting this!

The toll on vfx

Variety has an interesting article on the pressures being placed on visual effects houses these days. Makes for an interesting, and all-too-familiar read. Find it here.

Battle of Kruger

Another reason why youtube is better than TV. Although the video clocks in a 8.23 seconds, it’s the best 8.23 seconds you’ll spend today. Marvel at the wild, and how the passives can take it up to the aggressives! A truly amazing video…

(probably not suitable for young children)

Happy Birthday to…

30 years ago today (25 May 1977)

Timeless.

We all know Spam is the tool of the devil…

Here’s the proof, courtesy of my gmail today…

The budget and our need for broadband relief…

“Fuel International, a small special effects company in Newtown, does business all over the planet. Raw footage is sent to it over the internet; it adds its touch of magic and sends it back overnight to clients in Los Angles, London and Wellington. It employs 70 people and has annual turnover of $12 million. These are the jobs of the future and they can’t happen without a world-class broadband network. “

An editorial article which uses Fuel, a company I have worked for several times, as an example of the need for broadband infrastructure to grow business. The full article can be found here.

The Methane Blaster

What NASA’s been up to in the desert…

iPod dramas

At midnight two nights ago my iPod was kaput. After failing to mount all day and emitting that interminable “click” I finally snapped in frustration. But I found (and this is the purpose of this post) an unconventional solution, that worked!

So kudos to THESE GUYS for their alternative solution for getting my iPod up and running sweetly again!

The consequences of work

Buzz Andersen is, or rather was, a programmer with Apple. He announced his resignation via his vox blog and it makes for interesting reading. I can certainly empathise with the phases his job went through and the consequences of working such a demanding job. A fascinating read I recommend with some noteworthy advice within.

Apple: A Romance – Buzz Andersen

Time for Feisty Fawn

I’ve been running Ubuntu’s Edgy Eft on my laptop for about a month now and I’ve got to admit that it’s conquered all my concerns regarding a stable linux OS for my laptop. During this time I’ve purposefully migrated most of my daily computing tasks to the new OS to “test drive” it and I’ve been very impressed.

For starters it had the easiest install setup of linux distros I’d encountered, particularly the setup for my laptops video card drivers. It also detected and configured my inbuilt intel 802.11 through the install, meaning all I had to do was provide the network SSID and key and I was running wireless from the get-go.

But apart from the stable install, the speed factor is the biggest thing I’ve noticed. Boot and load times are a fraction of what my XP-SP2 is taking. This is a big step in removing my dependence on Windows and all which that entails. Although it is early days, I look forward to seeing more of what comes with Feisty Fawn.

Feisty fawn is available here…
and some useful info can be found here…