Ian Lewis' Blog

The trailer for the peach movie project is out. The title is "Big Buck Bunny" and it looks great. Be sure to check out the higher definition versions on the website!! Or watch the high definition streaming version at vimeo.

I took a look at the Google summer of code mentoring organizations for 2008 and was surprised to see BBC research listed. They were probably previous participants but it seems that BBC maintains a number of open source projects on their open source page. The most notable ones seem to be the ones that they are going to use the interns for, Kamaelia, which is apparently a test system for large scale media distribution, and Dirac, an open source video codec. All in all, some pretty cool stuff.

A couple of days ago Google released some new themes for iGoogle. They also mentioned that they have a new API for creating themes for iGoogle and that anyone can create themes. This is a bit of a misnomer because you can basically create a theme using the API and test it using the testing interface but it won't be added to iGoogle unless it's good and you did you homework and used the API properly.

I'm partial to the John Maeda "Simple is Complex" theme. He's pretty well known. I saw his talk on Ted (which is full of inspiring talks. PLEASE check it out) and I like his work, though some of his work seems a bit trendy and he did come of as a bit of an unorganized speaker (not that I have anything on him though ). He also needs to fix his javascript so it works in Firefox (click the dropdown).

I also liked the Yves Behar's "Earth-light" theme. Though it seemed to not work properly for me in Japan. It's supposed to show you where the sun is but strangely it says that it should be high noon when it's 7:00 at night here in Japan (check the bottom right corner in the screenshot). It almost seemed like it was showing the sun as if I was in California! Maybe it's because the author and the Google headquarters are both there? Didn't they bother to have someone test it in another timezone?

 

 

I can't believe I didn't know about Gnarls Barkley until the other day but I find their St. Elsewhere CD to be pretty creative. From Wikipedia, "Gnarls Barkley is a musical collaboration between multi-instrumentalist and producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) from New York, and rapper/vocalist Cee-Lo Green (Thomas Callaway), from Atlanta". It mixes a several musical styles and capitalizes well on Cee-Lo's full voice.

Creativity seems to be the thing that draws me to music recently. Music like Gorillaz, which happens to be somewhat similar to Gnarls Barkley, and Tool seem to capture my attention lately. At least in terms of "popular" music.

Peach just released on the Peach blog some animation tests that test the new model rigs that they have been working on. The rigger Nathan has been working on creating rigs for the 3D models that are used for the animation. Basically the rig is the skeleton and rules that you use to move the character around. You can check out the blog post here and the rigging demo posts here and here. If you can help it I would encourage you to check out the rigging demo videos first so you can see what features they created for the models and then the animation test to see how they used them. Pretty cool stuff.

I recently came across a recording of a piece of music that I borrowed from my beloved college mentor Dr. Hopkins. It is a piece by Eric Whitacre and performed by the Concordia Choir of Concordia College in Moorhead Minnesota. The lyrics are taken from Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" and it is quite possibly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen or heard. It is also illegal. Or at least the legality of the recording is in question.

After the piece was written and the Concordia Choir had made their recording, Eric Whitacre was forced to discontinue using the words of the poem by the members of the Robert Frost estate after legal action was taken against him. He was then forced to set new lyrics to an already written musical work (This isn't easy given syllabic and poetic restrictions).

The point is that this is probably the most poignant example of a situation where real innovation was stifled and suppressed by the phenomenon knows as copyright extention. Most people complain about copyright extention saying that it stifles innovation but the real reason is because they cannot copy works freely (though they should probably be able to do that too). But this example is one where a very talented content creator was stifled by a group who did not themselves create any content but enjoy the benefit of their ancestors work. I for one think that that's just not right and fail to see the use in such a system.

Society is a place where one's work builds on another's. And that's just the way of it. Even Disney, in who's name copyright is extended for all, did not create works without using elements and ideas from other content creators. Some even venture to say that if Disney did what he did in the early 1900s today, he would have been sued into oblivion for his use of the ideas of others. In today's world unless you are innovating in an unestablished realm or market, the risk of litigation is just too high.

I hope that the lawmakers in the U.S. learns that innovation should not be relegated to just the entirely new fields but be allowed to thrive in well established areas as well.

Today I found the Peach website and became one of the first 1000 to pre-order the DVD. If you get it you should see my name in the credits.

Peach is the next short movie project after Elephants Dream that is being produced by the Blender Foundation. It is an open movie like Elephants Dream so it will be presumably released under the creative commons and available for download for free as well as being developed entirely using free software. Most prominently, Blender.

I simply can't express in words how cool I think this is. The Blender Foundation has done a terrific job promoting Blender, and creating projects and conferences around it. I think they have done a huge service to the free software community by developing Blender into a mature and very usable, professional piece of software, and to academics by submitting the results of both Elephants Dream and, soon, Peach to the ACM SigGraph conference.

Another project to keep an eye on is Plumíferos which I think is aiming to be a longer film project created using Blender. It's amazing to see the interesting projects and work coming from the Blender community.

I really hope for more of the best for Blender and the community as they continue to create quality software and open content.

I recently saw an interesting article on the "Loudness War". Basically it's a sort of loudness arms race between competing music labels and radio stations to increase the loudness of recordings so they stand out. Wikipedia has an extensive article on the subject.

The loudness of the entire recording is increased, but the maximum volume of a particular part of a CD/Vinyl recording is fixed so what results is that any sound dynamics are lost. The louds are loud, and the soft parts are loud.

When I saw this video, I thought this is exactly what I felt was missing from the more recent Rush recordings that the previous ones had, sound wise. It was just a feeling as I was listening to the music, so I assumed it was basically overprocessing with expensive equipment. It's nice to see it codified in the nice, simple to understand example above.

Much to my excitement, Rush has released a new album called Snakes & Arrows. It's Rush's, count 'em, 18th studio album. Rush has my utmost respect continuing to come out with new music that is markedly different than their previous material after all these years and with the same band mates. (Who wants to hear the same songs over and over with no material. Can you say Rolling Stones?) One of my other favorite bands, Jethro Tull, has mostly revolved around Ian Anderson and Martin Barre and has changed band mates several times over the years).

While the album, like the previous Vapor Trails, takes some time to grow on me, I do find myself liking it. It doesn't grab me immediately like the previous albums of the 70s and early 80s. It, in some ways, paridoxical as it is, sounds too mature. You can tell that the band is mature and used expensive equipment to record the album. But in doing that you loose the raw, young, energy that some of the previous albums had. I'm in no way faulting them, but I miss that raw feel.

On the upside, the songs maintain the complexity and at the same time simplicity that Rush has always been able to bring to their music. I also appreciate the 3 instrumental songs on the album which are all exellent, and overdue.

I'm glad that Rush continues to come out with albums as it keeps me young. The day Rush stops putting out music is the day that a large part of me dies.

I was surfing the web earlier and found a link to elephantsdream.org. It's a project to create a movie short created with only open software like Blender. The production files are also available under the Creative Commons Attribution License. The content itself was created by the Orange Open Movie Project studio in Amsterdam and financed equally by the Blender Foundation and Montevideo in the Netherlands.

I checked out the movie and it's actually really good. Though it's only a short about 10 minutes long or so, it has a pretty interesting premise and obviously had high quality production, art, writing and direction. I would urge anyone who hasn't seen it to check it out sometime. They also have a documentary about the making of the short which I haven't watched yet but no doubt that it would be interesting. They also have a DVD which contains everything, the movie, documentary, subtitles in 34 languages, commentary, production files, and original script and storyboards.

It's a good example of the quality of content that can be created with open tools and techniques. I'm awaiting the time when a full length film could be developed this way.

I recently saw Batman Begins and I can say that it's easily my favorite Batman movie to date. It beats the Batman with Michael Keaton by a good margin.


Katie Holmes isn't terribly impressive but Christian Bale pulls off Batman remarkably well. I also really enjoyed the use of the "Tumbler" as the Batmobile. The explanations they gave for the tumbler and the other weapons that Batman uses were also adequate I thought. All around a good movie that finally does justice to the Batman character.

I finally got around to watching this classic film yesterday. I have to say. It does live up to the hype. What an excellent movie.

So enjoyable was it that the 203 or so minutes went by without so much as thought about the length. I was glued to my seat the entire time. I think part of the attractiveness of the film is the believability of the action sequences and the characters. While each character is unique in their own way it's not impossible to believe that the character could exist in real life.

I still deciding who my favorite character is between the wisdom, leadership, and experience of Kanbei and the skill, modesty, and sobriety of Kyuzo. My favorite scene is probably the one where Kyuzo sits under the tree waiting to ambush the bandit scouts while Katshushiro watches and Kikuchiyo keeps lookout.

A flawless film in almost every way. It stands the test of time being an old but excellent and highly influential film that you can watch today without it feeling dated. I can totally understand the #5 movie of all time rating on IMDB. I can't believe that I've waited this long to see it.

I'm excited today because I managed to find my all time favorite game soundtrack online. Mechwarrior 2 had the best soundtrack of them all. Not only does is it really cool to listen to by itself but the music fit the game perfectly. The only gripe is that the tracks were too short. It's 27 songs of electronic music weighing in at about 2:30 each. Every one is gold.

Total Annihilation (my favorite computer game) managed to put together a really good soundtrack too and even though they're similar, I don't think I liked it as much as Mechwarrior 2's soundtrack.

So today was a pretty unproductive day. Didn't get much done. I think it has to do with the season and bordom. Unfortunately being a programmer is like 10% programming. The rest of the time is spent estimating tasks or projects, creating designs, documenting, or in meetings. Fortunately for me they think I'm doing a good job.

On a side note, I've recently started listening to the some of the side projects from Dream Theater members. In few words, they are really good! Liquid Tension Experiment is the one I'm listening to now. Songs like "Kindred Spirits" is what guitar and prog rock is all about. It's a good distraction from the apparent direction Dream Theater is currently taking which is to a simpler, heavier, and don't forget more Christian, tone. Such is life I guess. Despite their recent directions they are still in my top three favs.