Hey! I made a new reel of sorts just cause it’s that time of year. It’s been almost 2 years since I graduated and started working already. Seems like that went by way too fast. Anyways, here it is, except this time I’ve included personal projects in the mix as well. Seems like including them is a better representation of the things I like to make. Plus it seems like half the projects I’ve worked on this year can’t be shown yet anyways.
The music is the main theme song from the game Skullmonkeys, which was this really awesome stop motion sidescrolling game for the playstation back in the day. I’ve been wanting to play it so bad lately. If anyone happens to have it still let me know!
Yay? My birthday was on Thursday but I was feeling out of it for most of the day. It’s complicated. But the family & I went out to Poppy in Cap hill for dinner which was pretty good though. My parents loved it and kept telling the waiter how good it was. So that part was nice.
Where is my mind?
That Pixies song keeps playing over and over in my head. I’m really not sure where I’m at lately, but it doesn’t feel like it’s here. The other day I went to use a gift certificate I got almost a year ago for a massage and once I got to my appt. I realized I had left it at home, so I run back and get it. Another day I wasn’t paying attention and thinking that I was logging into facebook but actually fell for a facebook phishing scam which ripple effected myspace and twitter. I drove to work earlier this week (I’m usually on the bus) and forgot that I drove in and bussed home. I didn’t realize until the next morning that I had left my car. And the other day I accidentally got on an express bus, which dropped me off about 12 blocks away from my house. And my cycle has been wonky and I’ve lost about 10 lbs in the past few weeks (I mostly attribute that to walking Jack several times a day but also being too stressed to eat much). And I feel like I’m losing interest in a lot of things. And there’s all the other stuff that has been going down.
I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe I’m not getting enough sleep. Maybe I breathed in too many paint fumes while painting the garage. Maybe watching too much Heroes during my time off turned my brain into mush. I just hope it clears up soon.
Experience
I was watching this lecture the other day. It was posted almost 2 years old, but I didn’t get around to it till recently. It’s Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture about lessons learned and achieving your goals. It’s a pretty amazing talk and totally made me cry at the end. It even made me want to go to CMU a little bit. The whole thing is good, but there was one quote he pulled up that stuck:
Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.
I keep thinking about that line lately. Although maybe it’s not just about not getting what you want but getting what you never could have imagined. I’m just trying to learn from everything.
Blarg
I don’t know why anyone else even reads this rambling. Sometimes I go back and forth on whether I should keep the blog more superficial and less personal. There is something both unnerving and comforting about sharing personal things with a few friends and complete strangers (which, according to site stats, is apparently a larger audience than I had imagined–who are you??). I’m just much less comfortable sharing personal things in person. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been writing for so long it’s what feels natural. I don’t know. Hopefully the next post can be less emo.
My very first legit music video is finally up on The Boy Least Likely To’s vimeo/youtube/myspace! It feels so good to have it officially up there for everyone to see. I kind of can’t believe I actually got to make a music video for these guys. One of my life goals/dreams ever since I started watching MTV back in middle school was to make a music video. These guys are one of my favorite bands and I feel like their music & my style seem to fit together pretty well. And on top of that it just so happened to work out that I had this window of downtime at work so DK let me pretty much just focus on working on this as a personal project for the past few weeks, which I’m super grateful for. I was also lucky to borrow Brian Cole’s editing eyes, Tim Howe’s roto hands, and a jean quilt made by Tim’s wife, Cindy.
My favorite review so far is that its “so adorable, it makes my ovaries weep.”
Weekend
This past weekend we took a little trip over to Whidbey Island for a little day hike around Ebey’s Landing which was really nice. It’s basically this big loop up the side of a bluff and back around on the beach. A pretty leisurely little hike overall, perfect for our first treck of the season. We also went by Deception Pass park which was nice, though super packed with families. I was just happy to be out in the sun.
On Sunday we went to Dim Sum with the family which was tasty as usual. We also got my parents set up with a new 20″ iMac. I’m not sure if they fully appreciate how much of an upgrade it is from the 9 year old Powerbook they were using before, but it makes me feel better knowing how much faster it will be for them. I had to explain to my dad that it was indeed possible to read news online WHILE listening to music on iTunes.
Ahead
I feel like the huge wave of super busy work time has finally passed, but I’m sure it’s just a calm before another storm. I feel like I’m going to be slammed again soon, but for now I’m really enjoying not working on much other than enjoying the nice weather. And looking for a dog.
Actually, I guess you could say that’s been my project for the past few weeks. Most of the time I’ve been online has been spent obsessively checking petfinder and craigslist. It’s so heartbreaking how many pets are being lost or given away every day. There are just so many awesome animals at the shelter & in foster homes all the time. I’ve put in an application for a rescue dog in foster that I’m waiting to hear back on, but there are two other people who applied for the same dog, so we’ll see how that turns out. The process of going through a rescue seems a lot more complicated than I thought it would be but I guess it’s better for the animals that way.
But anyways, overall things are good. The weather’s getting nice so I’m loving Seattle again (Sometimes I forget after a long winter) And I’m getting a haircut tomorrow! Yay!
Yay! I can finally post some of the stuff I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. These two projects were pretty major and happened to be happening at the same time. Yeah, I was busy.
DIY::HCI
Here’s some pics of the DIY::HCI book I designed for Amanda. It’s full of fun instructables by various people at the DIY for CHI workshop in Boston that I wanted to go to but couldn’t make. There’s lots of fun ones in there like how to make:
a hoodie that turns off tvs
a rotary input device from an old hard drive
a book publishing empire with Amazon Mechanical Turk
a NES controller from fuse beads
…and a whole bunch of other random but awesome projects. You can buy a copy too if you’d like. This is the third book I’ve made through Lulu and I have to say I’m pretty happy with how the quality of this one came out. Everything printed nicely and the colors all look pretty good. It’s so strange to see something I’ve been making on the screen turn into something tangible I can touch and flip through.
SIFF Trailer
We spent a pretty compressed 3 weeks making shadow puppets and crazy environments and things for this year’s trailer for SIFF. I was most heavily involved in designing the characters (all but the little boy) and the syleframes & boards, which I’ll post at some point. But I also did some animation (the shadowy intro and the FIND drift to lockup) and some post production compositing/coloring afterwards. I think it ended up being pretty cool.
Max passed away last night sometime while we were sleeping (almost exactly 1 year after his brother, Sam). He was a little over 4 years old which is pretty old for a gerbil. But he was always a tough little guy. He lived through 4 different cat housemates (almost getting eaten by 2 of them) and many daring leaps off the couch. He was awesome at scaling all sorts of pillowy terrains. He was always active, running around building elaborate nests and making his cardboard tube art. Even last night when he could barely drag himself from one side of the cage to the other he was determined to chew on his tubes.
He has always been super healthy up until just a few weeks ago. I noticed he was having trouble going up and down the ramps in his tower and spending more time sleeping in the bottom portion, so I took off the wire top and moved everything down into the bottom potion. I thought it was just because he was old. Then he seemed wobbly and started loosing control of his left hind leg, falling over often and dragging it behind him. I thought maybe he had a stroke, which is apparently common in older gerbils. And for a bit it seemed he was getting over it. But he started breathing heavier and getting skinnier and skinnier. I took him into the vet, who was amazed at how old he was, to get some antibiotics. The vet suggested it was kidney failure, and I’m pretty sure that it was. He was drinking lots of water and loosing weight incredibly fast.
I stayed home yesterday to look after him, and trying to make him as comfortable as possible, giving him food and water. It seemed like all he wanted to do was be picked up. So we held him a lot letting him rest in our warm hands. He was so skinny you could feel all his little gerbil bones as he just laid still in our hands.
I’ve been crying a lot these past few days (I’m crying right now as I write this). It’s been really hard watching him especially these past few days as he got worse and worse. I’m sad he’s gone but at least he doesn’t have to suffer anymore. And at least I know he had a good long life.
I feel like I shouldn’t be so upset over a little gerbil, but he was my baby. I’m really going to miss that little guy…
