There’s this wonderfully bittersweet steampunk-styled animated short on Vimeo right now called Water Brain done by a Chinese animation collective. It tells the story of children forced to bury themselves in endless homework by monsters in order to power their city. Watch the video below, and then check out the Vimeo page and give the guys who made this some props. Great stuff!
From The Tubes
25
Apr 09
Why McDonald’s Delivery Online Service Is Stupid (And How To Fix It)
I just decided to try to become prediabetic this evening on a whim – and there wasn’t any junky food that looked tasty enough for my liking at home – so I thought I’d order some food from McDonald’s. I had heard that they’d established an online ordering service, so I thought now would be a good time to try that and see how good it is.
It isn’t.
At first you think, hey cool, they really went all out on this one. Drag and drop your main order, set extra meal parameters (such as drink size, fries) if any. Design-wise it’s quite sound and user friendly. Where it fails is in the execution of it’s service. Here’s why.
23
Feb 09
Eric Avery’s Bass Is Awesome
There are so many awesome things about Jane’s Addiction. For one thing, you can say that no one in this entire blue world makes music quite like they do. There’s the fact that after nearly two decades, they’ve got the original lineup back together and are ready to tear up a couple of dates with Trent Reznor and NIN. Then, there’s Eric Avery’s bass. Never mind the fact that the man himself is a big pile of awesome.
HE HAS A FRICKIN’ SPEED RACER BASS.
Photograph by Carl Johnson. Check out his photoset of the JA Echoplex gig here.
11
Dec 08
This Might Possibly Be The Worst Guitar Solo I Will Have Ever Heard
If I ever played something like this in front of anyone, I’d lock myself up inside my bathroom for a month. Where’s Wes Borland when you need him? Gawlee.
21
Nov 08
The New Gmail Themes Thing
Google has been gradually rolling them out to everyone; I finally got mine today, a day after some of my plurk buddies got theirs. Finally, something to make Gmail less of an eyesore! (I didn’t really want to bother with using the Better Gmail plugins. But that’s just me).
You’ll know you’ve got it once you get to Gmail’s sign-in page. On the settings page, you’ll see the “Themes” link has been added. For now there’s only a handful of themes, but this is likely to be added to. Google designed most of the themes, with a few being designed by outside artists.
According to Google, some themes will change based on the user’s local time, and some themes are also customizable depending on the user’s location. Right now, though, what I’m interested to know is if third parties can create themes for Gmail? Tapping into creative communities such as deviantART’s plethora of artists is bound to create a huge pile of awesome themes for just about everything.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.