Just stumbled upon this amazing video at Robert Scobleizer’s blog. Apparently, someone claimed that this video was done by Microsoft marketing for an internal meeting with its designers. Why am I not surprised?

This really cracks me up!! For once I’m having fun with Unix commands. Here’s more.
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% cat “food in cans”
cat: can’t open food in cans

% nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.

% rm God
rm: God nonexistent

% ar t God
ar: God does not exist

% ar r God
ar: creating God

% “How would you rate Quayle’s incompetence?
Unmatched “.

% ^How did the sex change operation go?^
Modifier failed.

% make love
Make: Don’t know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% !:say, what is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% %blow
%blow: No such job.

No, no blood samples needed! Haha- that was my reaction when I first saw the word “dna”. I am usually not a fan of online personality tests, but this personalDna survey is really interesting. Apart from the usual yes/no, true/false questions, they have (spoiler alert!) these slider bars for questions and questions where you interactively place your response on a 2D grid. And then you get your own unique DNA color strip along with some cool advice if you want to be different.

Have fun with your self-relevation here.

For the interested folks, here’s mine.

“You are an encouraging leader. Your solid grounding in the practicalities of life, along with your self-assuredness and your willingness to appreciate new things make you a LEADER….”

I am so in a splurging mood today! All the stuff I’ve contemplated to buy, I decided to get them all at one shot. Somebody, stop me!! With a whooping half a k, I’m all peace now! Peace.

1. Case-Mate 5G iPod Case. This Case-Mate premium form-fit leather case is one of the best looking cases I’ve seen for the iPod. Some say it’s pretty much a rip-off from the all-sacred god-pricey Vaja cases, but I think its cool Baha Orange skin is simply to die for.
2. Kingston 1Gb SD Card. Especially for item 4.
3. Crucial USB2.0 SD/MMC Card Reader. I’m trying to use this as a bridge for my ipod and my camera. If all work well, I could survive a long trip with just my ipod and digicam.
4. Canon Powershot S80 Digicam. It just pains me to be unable to take wide shots. I can never comfortably fit everyone in my camera view when the party becomes bigger than 10. This 8.0-megapixel Canon S80 epitomizes the very two things I look for in a point-and-shoot cam - small form and wide-angle-shot capability.

After a full day’s of edge and vertex pushing work, here’s my first shot at modeling a head. No particular reasion modeling Jackie - it’s just easy to find reference photos of him. One of these days, I’m going to try modeling him doing some kung-fu moves. The model still looks very raw and unfinished. Pretty much like a clay model without any color. I haven’t put any texture or color to the model yet. Hah- I haven’t really explore that yet. Also I think his nose looks a little odd from this angle. But for a first head model, I’m quite satisfied for now.

Thanks to Computer Arts UK for this wonderful head-modeling tutorial! Tedious but useful for a good start!

A few things I learned from this exercise:

1. I am a control freak.
2. Use good sketches with the SAME scale right from the start.
3. Save often. (Darn the computer crashes!)
4. Use edge loops for facial modeling. They mimic facial muscles very well. (Also kudos to Maya’s “Split Edge Ring Tool”!)

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Previously related: Sketches for the Model

In last week’s ski, I did my first ever major jump, and also had my first major ski fall ever. It was really just a blue slope, but I didn’t know how to complete the jump. I fell on my back and butt. The skis hit my pelvic. Strangely my chest also hurts. It’s time I see a doctor today just to make sure.

SSA is organizing an ice-skating trip on this Friday. There is another super-duper cheap (the cheapest in the season at $28 for everything) ski trip on Saturday. I wish I could go, but I know I shouldn’t. This should really be the least of my concern now.

Maybe I should keep to sports where my feet are on the ground for now. For quite a while I guess.

Check out this new trailer of A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater’s highly anticipated adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel! This is the director’s second film that is digitally animated using an advanced interpolated rotoscoping process. The actors are filmed live and their movement are traced to create the digital animated effect.

I’m really curious why he chose to produce this film in this manner. Experimentation doesn’t seem to be on his agenda, since he used this method once in Waking Life.

The Dutch agency Solar Initiative just recently developed a set of two regular-costing 39-euro-cent stamps for the TGP Post. The coolest thing about them is that they have moving images! Gone were the days where stamps were stills. This short movie on paper, featuring Dutch speed skater Yvonne van Gennip, is created using the lenticular effect technology.

These dynamic stamps greatly remind me of the postcards and newspaper photos we see in the Harry Potter movies, where the people in those pictures move, talk and have a whole life of their own. A familiar technology with a novel application! I’m looking forward to more of these moving postage stamps in future…

A Johari Window is a metaphorical tool intended to help people better understand their interpersonal communiation and relationships. It is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic device to encourage people to open up to another in self-disclosure.

Help me understand myself better here. Thanks!

The winners of the ‘64 Second Film Contest‘ have been announced! This film contest is sponsored by AMD to challenge filmmakers’s artistic and cinematographic sense in creating a 64-second long film on the theme of ‘Waitlessness‘. The range of ideas were amazing across the pool of 28 finalists!

It’s amazing how the creator of the winning film, ‘At a Glance’, shot the entire film with a Canon SD400 still camera, and animated all the stills into such an amazing masterpiece. My personal favorite is the second place film, ‘Change’ by Steve Bastyr.