11 Second Club - Nov 2007 - fourth pass from djotaku on Vimeo.

Background: I’m feeling a little under the weather, so I’m staying home today. Danielle: “I want you to rest today, ok? I’ll send you a list of chores later.”

So I’m using Flock daily now for my web browsing to see how I like it. Since I don’t usually go to Facebook on my own, it’s nice to see the notifications within Flock. Thus, I’ve been more responsive to my Facebook private messages, a good thing since my second-cousin recently caught up with me on Facebook. So I’m liking the Facebook integration even more than I thought I would since I’m not a Facebook-heavy person.

(just so you know, you should be able to click on most of the screenshots to see them more clearly)

Earlier this year, I took a look at flock. It didn’t impress me. In fact, I found it so useless to my browsing habits that I didn’t even bother to review it. I neglected to mention last time that Flock is built upon the same Gecko backend as Firefox. This is, as I have mentioned before, one of the best things about free and open source licenses. Firefox is a great technology, but it’s meant to be the every-man’s browser. This is expressed by Firefox’s own team and it’s why they have the plugin architecture. They feel that the Mozilla Suite became extremely bloated as it had a web browser, IRC client, email, and (I think) calendar built into it. It was a bit intimidating for first time users and took up quite a bit of RAM. Also, from a programmer’s perspective, it’s a lot harder to maintain something so complex. So, for Firefox they went for just developing a solid browser. Anything missing could be implemented via plugins.

This is a test post for a blog post I’m writing about flock 0.9.  It should appear in the next 30 minutes or so after I finish up.   This is bold, underlined, and italics.

• This is bulleted

1. and this is numbered

also, it should be tagged “flock”

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flock

11 Second Club - Nov 2007 - third pass from djotaku on Vimeo.

Just need to lip sync the lil guy.

Just a little more left on the lil guy, then lip sync and final touchups!

11 Second Club - Nov 2007 - second pass from djotaku on Vimeo.

11 Second Club - Nov 2007 - first pass from djotaku on Vimeo.This is my first pass. I’ve gone through and animated nearly everything for the character on the right (mancandy) except the lip sync. To see it in full HD awesome quality, follow the link containing the video’s title right under the video.

I’ve just finished up my second pass. I finished up Mancandy’s animation and did the arm/hand animation on lil guy. I think it’s coming along very well for my first attempt at something like this. I’m going to set it to render tonight at respower and I hope to find all or most of the frames to be done by the time I get up tomorrow.

The 11 Second Club is a great animation learning tool and a fun contest. Every month they post an audio file that is approximately 11 seconds long (it’s 12 this time) and the members create an animation to go along. At the beginning of the next month, the members vote on the entries and a winner is declared. The emphasis is on the acting of the characters and the backgrounds/props are not supposed to matter. I thought it would be a great thing to do so that I can work on my acting, especially emotions and lip syncing. When I saw this month’s clip, I knew that I had to enter for the month of November! It’s a clip from one of our favorite movies, The Birdcage. I will probably be posting my progress as I work on it. Look for my progress over the next few days.

We’re on the edge of the largest disruption in Tv technology since color Tv became mainstream. In 2009 all analog television transmission will cease. Although the two terms tend to go hand-in-hand that doesn’t mean that all channels will become HD. There just isn’t the bandwidth for that in the cable pipes right now. But it does mean that soon nearly everyone’s Tv will be obsolete. Sure, the government plans to subsidize at least one converter box per household, but by-and-large everyone is going to need a new Tv; and a new Tivo….