William S. Burroughs on Human Race and Space

January 29, 2010January 29, 2010 by Editor | 1 Comment

Someone named Brian Duffy at Massachusetts College of Art and Design made this peculiar animation featuring the voice of William S. Burroughs. He gets that face animation of Burroughs just absolutely perfect. And that copy of Naked Lunch is the exact copy I’m reading this very evening. Who is this animator? He’s very good.

You know, this is what’s so great about reading today, so far and beyond what any other time has allowed people to enjoy. It’s that you can read something like Naked Lunch and think ‘Whew! What a weird creature that Burroughs must have been! What a lunatic! Very sharp and very crazy.’ And then you can go out across the Web and find all sorts of fantastic films that have him walking around in them. You can find some kid up in Massachusetts who reads this lunatic and gets so inspired that he makes an incredible film about some one little thing Burroughs said at some point in his long life. Amazing. It’s never been better to read than now.

Apple Declares War on Free Web Content

January 28, 2010February 3, 2010 by Editor | 1 Comment

It’s hit me what I really can’t stand about the new Apple iPad. It’s been mentioned by most of the reviews of this new tablet device, but I don’t think people are really getting the scope of what Apple is up to. The iPad, like the iPhone and iPod Touch before it, does not support Flash. You know, Flash, perhaps the single greatest technical innovation on the Web since the invention of the Web itself. Flash is what brought us nearly universal moving images on the Internet. Flash brought us YouTube. Flash has created almost every single good game you have ever played in your browser. Flash is responsible for the greatest explosion of animation talent in the history of the art form. There is not another single piece of browser software that has brought so much to the web browsing experience as the little Flash player that’s installed on nearly every computer on the planet. Here’s a blog entry by one of the Adobe Photoshop developers that explains why Flash is so great.

But Apple does not allow Flash on its iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone. Won’t allow it to run. That’s why you get a broken plugin icon whenever you encounter a web page with Flash in it. The company says silly things about Flash being too slow, or Flash hogging CPU cycles. Complete horse radish. Apple doesn’t want you to have Flash because Apple wants you to buy apps in its App Store instead. That’s what this is all about.

So, essentially, Apple is fighting for a closed and walled-up Internet where all your cool moving images and games come straight out of their App Store and nowhere else. When you behave this way with a small-screened device like an iPhone or iPod Touch it’s one thing. But when you blow the whole thing up onto a big fat glorious iPad screen it’s another thing entirely. Now it really shows up as a flagrant attempt to disable every creative piece of Web work that any artist, animator, filmmaker or game designer has ever done and force people to accept your little library of 140,000 little applications, most of which cost good money.

Try visiting this web site on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. See all our games and movies in the drop-down menus? Not a single one will work. Not one. Because of dear old super-genius Steve Jobs. Mr. Dingbat gets up in front of reporters at the public iPad unveiling and says idiotic things about having ‘the Web in your hands.’ He presents his new iPad device as a Web browser. It can’t be a Web browser if it disables half the Web. It simply defies logic.

This is really all anyone should need to know about Apple and its devices. They are building little cash registers that limit your view of the Web and lead you to one final destination: the App Store. They are trying to make you pay for the World Wide Web. Great technology. Very dark plan. I’m on Flash’s side. Go Flash! Apple, you suck.

Podcast Novel: Pirate Jack (Chapter 12)

January 28, 2010 by Editor

DOWNLOAD MP3 AUDIO

This book contains pirate battles, violence and death. Please use your judgment before playing for very young children.

Here’s a free podcast of our fantastic pirate adventure novel written for young readers. It’s got hidden scrolls, time travel, ships, battles, navigation, gold, islands, jungles and helicopters in it.

You can purchase the high-quality paperback from Amazon for $11.95 or just $1.99 for a Kindle e-book version.

You can purchase the paperback from Barnes & Noble (Price: $11.95)

You can also get it on Scribd.com as a download for just $1.99

Description:
Young Jack Spencer sees his father’s boat-building business destroyed by a powerful land developer. Then Jack unearths three ancient scrolls that propel him on a dangerous adventure through time in search of a pirate treasure.

When Jack finds himself aboard the pirate ship Revenge with Captain Jameson’s crew, he enters a life or death world of ship battles, jungle islands, prison escapes, gold, and treachery.

Set during the golden age of Caribbean piracy, Pirate Jack combines rollicking adventure with the moving story of a boy’s love for his father and a courageous effort to save a way of life.

You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.

This book is read by the author.

Podcast Novel: Pirate Jack (Chapter 11)

January 27, 2010January 28, 2010 by Editor

DOWNLOAD MP3 AUDIO

This book contains pirate battles, violence and death. Please use your judgment before playing for very young children.

You can purchase the high-quality paperback from Amazon for $11.95 or just $1.99 for a Kindle e-book version.

You can purchase the paperback from Barnes & Noble (Price: $11.95)

You can also get it on Scribd.com as a download for just $1.99

When Jack finds himself aboard the pirate ship Revenge with Captain Jameson’s crew, he enters a life or death world of ship battles, jungle islands, prison escapes, gold, and treachery.

Set during the golden age of Caribbean piracy, Pirate Jack combines rollicking adventure with the moving story of a boy’s love for his father and a courageous effort to save a way of life.

You’ll find regular podcasts of all the chapters over the next couple of months. Subscribe to our feed.

This book is read by the author.

I Take it Back: Apple Tablet is Dopey

January 27, 2010January 27, 2010 by Editor

So after all the hoopla the Apple company has decided that it’s a good idea to sell an iPod Touch that you can’t carry.

The just-announced iPad is big, with a fullscreen display instead of widescreen, has no camera, and cannot multi-task. So only one application at a time will run. The fullscreen thing may make sense when you consider that people will need to be typing on a virtual keyboard, but I’m not sure that it will fly. I see it as going out to buy a fullscreen monitor somehow.

I think I’m finally ready to go get myself a Kindle from Amazon!

I’ve been yawning all morning and I’m still yawning.

Apple About to Announce Extraordinary New Tablet Device

January 27, 2010January 27, 2010 by Editor

Apple really could be preparing to announce something pretty extraordinary for content publishing, creation and consumption today. Its widely rumored tablet device will very likely put most other ebook reader devices out of business simply because the Apple product will be a real computer, useful for reading and for creating. It will most likely build a seamless content-creation universe that ties directly to online sales platforms. It will be a ‘publishing’ tablet really. Not just an e-book device.

Wired is covering the Apple press conference event all day with blog entries.

I have not purchased any kind of an e-reader device, in spite of the hysteria surrounding them, specifically because of Apple’s plans. There is no way under the sun that anyone else is going to compare favorably to what Apple is about to drop on us today.

Poetry Is? It’s a Stupid Question, That’s What.

January 25, 2010 by Editor

In my poetic web adventures I went and found this big long movie by George Quasha about poets trying to tell everybody what poetry is. What is poetry? It’s not an unanswerable question. It’s a stupid question. But these poets do try to answer it. It’s a rather long movie and I always look for a bad guy in every movie. Without a bad guy, a movie just makes me hungry and I get up to go to the bathroom a lot. These poets are all so nice and content looking. So friendly and comfortable. I can’t find out which one is the bad one. Someone once asked me a really stupid question and I ran away with his camera and threw it in the river. Why aren’t any of these poets nasty and depressed? What makes them so pleasant? They all sound like their favorite piece of furniture is a podium.

Here’s a guy who if you ask him what poetry is will very likely give you a good reason to never ask that question again:

Get what I mean?

Short Sci-Fi Film From Kenya: Pumzi

January 25, 2010 by Editor

Writer/director Wanuri Kahiu has made a twenty-minute science fiction film in Kenya about a future that takes place after great water wars have left the earth barren and lifeless. The short, called Pumzi, is playing at the Sundance Film Festival. It was produced by Inspired Minority Pictures. The film follows a woman who works for a museum in one of the great self-contained indoor cities of Africa. She finds a single germinating seed and escapes to the dead landscape outside where she wants to plant the seedling. The film looks beautiful. I can’t wait to see the whole thing.

Crisis Camps: Computer Techies Helping Response for Haiti

January 21, 2010December 13, 2010 by Editor

Computer programmers and other technical people are building valuable tools for helping the people of Haiti after the devastating earthquake on January 12. Crisis Camps have been set up for volunteers to develop applications that help with damage assessment, mapping, locating of survivors, locating first aid stations, translation, radio communications, food and water deliveries, free phone services, and many more. At the root of the effort is the basic understanding that good data must be given to and easily shared between all of the aid organizations, both public and private, helping with aid and rescue in Haiti. Some of the earliest volunteers for Crisis Camp came from Google, NASA, the United Nations, the American Red Cross and the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

Google developed an online tool to help people locate missing persons in Haiti. The technical effort has a Wiki page at Crisis Commons Wiki, that gathers resources, updates on projects, and calls for volunteers in specific areas.

The Crisis Camp volunteer approach is building something very powerful that will have a huge impact on disaster response in the future. This is the internet and tech world at its very best.

Gustaf Tenggren and the Classic Golden Book Style

January 19, 2010January 21, 2010 by Editor | 1 Comment

Sleeping Beauty by Gustaf Tenggren

Stephen Worth of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has an excellent post about how Gustaf Tenggren developed illustrations techniques that led directly to the classic Golden Book style of illustration.

Read the article here