I made a Quality Image

I really hadn't expected this. I just made a simple, quick animation and thought it'd be cool already if it'd just be put online somewhere. Of course I put it online myself, but I've done that before, so I knew what to expect, what would happen. And that it should take months to see if it had any effect. But now this all happened in a week.

But what happened, you may ask. You see, I was a bit bored the other day and was looking to do something constructive on Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia). I knew a few pages on the Dutch wiki, listing pages that needed attention. Whether they needed wikification or have their external links checked or anything. So I was browsing those and came across a page asking for images. Well it was all stuff I couldn't deliver, but way at the bottom was a section for animation requests. And there was the request, posted something like two and a half years ago.

I read the article in need of the animation and agreed it needed one. The text described how the object in question functions. But that was so much text, it was very unclear. I could make up from it and other images how it works, formed an image in my mind, and went ahead to make the animation. A mere 20 frames, it took me more time finding a good GIF animator for Mac.

I uploaded it to Wikimedia Commons, so it can be used in other wiki projects too (Dutch wiki, English wiki, wikibooks, wherever they want it). And put it on both the Dutch and English page where it was needed (btw, also has a French and Finnish page, but I don't speak the languages, so I'm letting somebody else add it there).

This wasn't new to me. I've done it before with photos and an animation of a movie camera shutter and film transport. So I thought what'd happen was people would put the image on other language pages and maybe their userpages. I even found my movie camera animation on somebody's blog (of course with attribution, the Commons images are generally free to distribute or edit). But all that took a long time, so I didn't expect much happening soon.

But when I checked it later, I noticed somebody'd put it on Commons' Quality Image Candidate list. And not much later, somebody else promoted it. And just a few days later now it's on the Quality Images page (and on the French Image du jour for 26 November 2008).

So now I hope you're curious about the image. And in turn I'm curious of course about what you think of it. So opinions may be posted in the comments here.

See the image on Commons: [[Image:Lever tumbler lock animation.gif]] ;) .

Out Of Order & Love Hurts - short films

I recently did on-set sound recording for two short horror films, both produced by Media Republic. I got them both on dvd, but I never knew they were online, until now. I thought it'd be cool to show them on here too, hopefully you enjoy them. As they're scary movies, they should be just right for Halloween.

I'd like to add today's my 29th birthday. That's completely off-topic though.

Oh, and the playback of these Vimeo things is terribly choppy on my machine, I hope you can see it somewhat ok. It's extremely annoying though. Don't you just hate Flash?!

Now without further ado, here's the first short film, Out Of Order, starring actress Hanna Verboom.



And what's behind door number two? Or should I say, what's film number two? Well, it's Love Hurts, starring the lovely Medi Broekman (and others, just read the credits).



Opinions and questions can be left in the comments. :)

GraphJam, I'm on it

You may have heard of GraphJam. Especially if you regularly visit sites like ICHC. Then you know what it is. If not, let me try to explain.

GraphJam is a site with, as the name implies, graphs. Afaik initially started out as graphs about songs, for example lyrics breakdowns. But the song chart meme became a bit lame, after the 8th Doo Wah Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Doo graph.

So people also started making graphs about other pop culture phenomena and general things (like: Time needed to buy jeans; Women: 4 hours; Men: 4 minutes).

All graphs on the site are user-submitted. So after my Creation of a universe video, I got this idea for a graph about the LHC, made the graph and submitted it. It got listed on the Vote pages on GJ, where people can vote thumbs-up or thumbs-down on graphs. If they're good enough, they'll be featured on the main site. And after a few days I noticed my graph had 95 votes, of which 91 thumbs-up and only 4 thumbs-down.

So today my graph got listed for real and people generally seem to like it, with 4.5 pies in 144 votes currently. And comments like "love it", "sexy graph" and sparking discussions about the fate of the Earth (linked to Ghostbusters). Is it really that good? Well decide for yourself. Anyway, I'm proud of it :D



Oh yeah! The GraphJam people have put an interesting video about the LHC on the same page, be sure to watch it!

Creation of a universe

Big Bang - a universe is born.

We travel through space and time, to a planet called Earth, where in Switzerland at CERN a particle accelerator known as the LHC shoots two protons into eachother. And deep within that LHC...

Big Bang - a universe is born.

We travel through space and time...

What if -we- are living on a yet undiscovered particle deep within an enormous LHC?



(If you don't get it: this is not the destruction of a universe. What the video shows is an artist's (me :D) interpretation of what goes on inside the LHC, at subatomic level. We keep zooming in, the second Big Bang is the size of a pea or so. It looks like it's as large as our universe, but it's not. We zoom in further and further. Could we go on endlessly? If we can have a tiny Big Bang, could our Big Bang also appear to be as tiny to somebody millions of times larger than our universe?)

User Generated Content Database

I once found a link in the Revver forums to the ugcDb. I was told I should register there. I followed the link, but couldn't easily figure out what it was and how it worked, so I left it, thinking I'd check it out sometime later.

As it turned out, 'later' was now. I registered yesterday and that already made it clearer to me what it's for.

First, the name. User Generated Content Database. Is that a Content Database generated by users? Yes and no. Mainly no though. It's a Database containing User Generated Content. Think about YouTube. The site itself is quite small really, just a few pages. But it's the content that makes it popular and that content is generated by users.

But one person may also have a Blogger account and a deviantART account. Of course people often use the same username, but there are most likely more people called Daedalus out there. So, if you want to know, how do you find out what one person actually made and what he appeared in?

So there's the ugcDb, which links all the accounts for one person together and even lists what the person did for the content. For example, I can appear as my avatar Daedalus Young in a photo made by Torley. I personally am in no way connected to Torley's flickr account, so I did not create his content. Rather, I am an actor in his content. So I can now be linked to that photo. Anybody interested in me (I know, I know, but it's a nice fantasy to think someone actually is) can look me up and see not only my mad art and video skillz, they can also see I can pose an avatar in the 3D Virtual World of Second Life, owned by Linden Lab, but Content generated by Users (disclaimer in the left sidebar plzkthx).

In this way, the ugcDb is much like IMDb, only not for Movies, but for online content. I think in this world, focussing more on the internet, with things like Creative Commons becoming more popular, user generated content becoming more professional (for example lonelygirl15, also on ugcDb), this database could become a very useful resource.

Their search could be improved though, if you search for my full name, I'm not found, search for my first name only to find me.

If you want, you can add yourself, but it's also possible to add other people (and works). I currently only added myself, I think it's up to everyone to add themselves. What if I add someone who doesn't want to be added?

Oh, and the cool part is you can put up a button on your blog or site :D See:

24 hours time-lapse: A day in the life

I was playing and experimenting with iMovie's built-in time-lapse function and decided it'd be cool to make a 24 hour recording with it.

I did some testing (among which a 5 hour cloud movement recording compressed to 5 minutes) and paid attention to the weather forecast as the camera would be partially outside and I didn't want rain on it. 16 August seemed to be the perfect day, so I set it all up and got ready for the recording.

I should however point out I didn't yet wanted to record 24 hours, I first wanted only the part of the day when it's actually light outside. Therefor I started the recording somewhere inbetween 2 and 3 am, just before I went to sleep, to edit out the dark part at the beginning later. The next morning (or afternoon ;) though I figured I would just let it run until 3 am to have the full 24 hours anyway. This is why it starts and ends at 3 am, rather than midnight.

After the recording it needed some more tweaking. The video initially was 48 minutes long, I squeezed that back to 24 minutes (for a technical reason: the time-lapse records frames with adjacent fields (as delivered by the camera), rather than frames with fields 30 fields apart. Recording twice as much and squeezing that back fills in the correct fields for smooth motion). This meant one second in the video represents 1 minute of the day. But 24 minutes really is too long and too boring for one shot, so for internet use I sped it up even more to its final 4:48 minutes (that's 4.8 mathematical minutes, which is 1/300th of 24 hours, so the video is sped up 300 times). I also increased the contrast in the clouds and in the shadows a bit.

I think I was lucky with the weather too, the clouds didn't move so very fast, so even at 300 times the speed you can still follow them. I personally like the part where you can actually see the sun rays underneath them most :D

The time in the upper right corner should be fairly accurate. I ended the recording at 3 am on my Mac's clock exactly, which is fed by a timeserver. The times for various positions of the Moon and Sun are taken from various internet sources and seem to be correct. Fun to see how it's light before the Sun is up and after it's set :)

Music is the song Nucleus from Epiphany, it can be found on Simuze.nl. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

So I hope you enjoy as much as I do the video 24 hours time-lapse: A day in the life! :D

I can has T-Shirt?

Yes, you can! For all the broken hearted people out there (and those feeling sorry for them), I designed this cool t-shirt. Can be printed on white or several colours dark shirts. Do check out my Cafepress shop to see all options.

[Update 23 Jul] Now also available in more Euro-friendly Spreadshirt shop.



Heart and text designed by me, drawn by hand, then modelled in Blender, blood splatter and dripping taken (legally) from [CG Textures].

My Drawing Day 08 drawing

Yes, I participated too in Drawing Day 08. The problem though is that I can't draw. But I thought, compare something bad to something that's even worse and it won't look so terrible, so I drew "The artist who couldn't draw but still participated in Drawing Day 08". It is available for everybody's joy and excitement under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 license on deviantART. And of course you can see it right here on this blog!

Drawing Day 2008

Today, first Saturday of June, we celebrate Drawing Day. A day on which we remember the joy we had when we first picked up a pencil and created a piece of art. Well I don't remember my first pencil, nor do I know how joyful that experience was, but I do like this idea.

There's no real goal to achieve, although Mick Gow (who I think is head of the project) and his team are hoping for 1 million drawings to be made for the project today. That's a whole lot, especially since the number of people voting 'Yes' on the question "Will you be drawing on Drawing Day?" is at the moment I write this 9036. Of course people will work on the project without voting, but still it's far from a million. But that's ok, it's not like there needs to be a million drawings in a few hours from now or else the world will end. The point simply is the celebration of drawing.

In a chapter on sculpture in his Natural History, Pliny the Elder relates the legend of the Corinthian maid Dibutade who, when faced with the departure of her beloved, sat him down in candlelight and traced his profile from the shadow cast against the wall. Her father, the potter Boutades, pressed clay on the outline to make a portrait relief, thereby inaugurating the genre sculpturing. And from there all other Western art was born. So next time you're in a museum, just think about this, it all started with a drawing.

People can draw today on Drawing Day the traditional way, but also its digital equivalent is allowed. Art can be posted on the appropriate websites, such as flickr, deviantART or YouTube. For more links where to go and more information, do visit Drawing Day.

I may be posting a drawing later today, but if you can't wait to see other people's work, here's already a one in a million (ha!) drawing as posted on YouTube. Enjoy!



* this blog post uses a quote from souvenirlab.com.

Who really should've won

Yeah, I know, it's a good while ago by now, but I really needed to give my opinion on this matter. You see, the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 was won by the wrong country.

I don't have anything against Russia in general, it's just that their song sucked. Sucked bad. As a musician, I know what I'm talking about and I know what's good and what's terribly bad. Or at least I think I know. And therefor, I hereby announce the votes of the Daedalus Youngian jury:

1 point, Georgia (I think you could've done more with the song, there's not enough contrast now)
2 points, Greece (just put in a guitar and some more real instruments, you would've scored more)
3 points, Latvia (just because I was rofl during the performance, you can't be serious! the song still sucks though)
4 points, Armenia (could've done more with the song too, I don't like the beginning)
5 points, Croatia (nice and original)
6 points, Denmark (could've had a bit more surprises, otherwise cool song)
7 points, France
8 points, Azerbaijan
10 points, Finland
and finally, 12 points go to...

Turkey!



So there you go, ESC 2009 in Ankara, if they'd just asked me.

SLang Life ad

Ayumi Cassini made this cool video ad for SLang Life magazine. Check it out and if you haven't subscribed yet, then what are you waiting for? It's a completely free subscription, it won't cost you even a penny. So there's really no reason for you not to subscribe. Now. Well, after watching this video.



Now you can go ahead and subscribe.

Back!

You're probably wondering if I was gone then. Yes, I was actually, for a while, for the reasons listed below...

First of all, I went on vacation at the end of April, first week of May. Destination Istria, Croatia. As usual, I have photographic evidence. :P So I was gone for a week, but that still was a fun absense (for me anyway).

Second, and this is the no-fun part, I had some severe hard disk issues on my beloved iMac. I had the issues for a few months really, but they weren't so serious in the beginning. There was a tiny error somewhere on it which caused it to be extremely slow. I attempted to bypass this error by dividing the disk into two partitions, hoping I caught the bad part in one and could install OS X on the healthy half. This cunning plan backfired however, installation was not successful, every attempt at interacting with the drive resulted in a critical input/output error.

The only solution was to bring the poor machine to the nearest iCentre, to get it a brand new disk. However, as a famous Dutch soccer player once said: "every downside has an upside," as I was to find out when the Mac was back where it belonged (in front of me) a week later: they had installed Leopard on it, which otherwise would've cost just about what the repair cost me now.

I suppose that's all part of the Big Plan, everything happens for a reason, everything's connected to everything.

So, I'm back! I'm catching up to some work that was waiting with me for the machine's return and re-installing the necessary software, such as GIMP, Blender and Opera. You know, the usual software everybody just needs to have. ;) When that's all done, everything should be again like it was meant to be.

Being a Linden

Imagine you've been away for a weekend or a week and haven't been on SL. Whenever you log in again, surely you have some IMs waiting, some Inventory offers, some Group Notices. No big problem, you read it, check it all out and do what you came inworld for. Now imagine you have lots of IMs and Inventory offers every single day!

A while ago I saw a site made by a Linden with a small storyline about you being the Linden that gets a nightmare about never-ending IMs coming in (I couldn't find it anymore though, if anybody knows, post a comment). That was scary already, but it still appeared to be fiction.

So now Torley put up a video showing it's really everyday reality:

I named a mainland region!

A short while back, Linden Lab announced a new project, the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW). Of course it also got a page on the SL wiki, on which they asked Residents to come up with region names for the first large LDPW project, Bay City.

The LDPW was launched to build Linden objects and stuff with help of the Resident community. Residents can apply for a job in the LDPW as 'mole builder'. I applied too, but I don't have much work to show, so I wasn't selected as builder. I wanted t help out in any way though, so I went to think about a good region name.

I figured they'd need to name a region after the Resident mole builders, the people that work hard to get the Bay City project rolling happily. I searched Wikipedia for stuff about moles, in any of its meanings, and came up with Molesworth, a name some RL towns already have. I added it as suggestion on the SL wiki and hoped for the best.

And so a few weeks later I read they'd selected the names for the regions and found they actually used Molesworth. Coincidentally enough, I noticed they used it for the location in the city where I'd always imagined it to be. I had actually taken a Snapshot on the day of the Bay City announcement, looking towards Molesworth's future location:



From the region Barcola, there'll be a bridge spanning one 'void' region right into Bay City - Molesworth.

With Linden Labs using my suggestion, I can now say I made it into SL history! :D



(Note the Bay City regions aren't yet accessible publicly)

So this is goodbye

It all went so fast. One day I happily paid my L$600 rent for the next month. The next day I found it was refunded. Must've been an error, I figured, however, there was an accompanying Group Notice. Oyster Bay Sculpture Garden and Aquarium was closing.

Oh surely I never had the illusion it would exist for thousands of years, but surely no-one would've thought it'd be there for just over one year. But life in the end is unpredictable and it's a RL situation that kept owner Morris Vig too busy for him to also keep Oyster Bay a lively, moving place. So we only had a few days left.



A final closing bash on February 19th was all we had left. Oyster Bay regulars Spaceman Opus, Doubledown Tandino and Andreus Gustafson performed there one last time.

So why is it such a big deal? SL changes so fast. Places come and go before you even know they existed. Well, but Oyster Bay was so unique. It was voted Most Influential Venue and Owner at Best of SL Art 2007. If you wanted to see the best and newest artwork by SL's best artists, all you needed was a teleport to Oyster.

But yes, SL changes fast. And for a world that's not even five years old itself, one year of dynamic existence is really a long time. There have been several great shows at Oyster Bay, it's hard to imagine it all happened in 2007. Shows and events like 14 Days, 14 Sculptures, showing the biggest, coolest, hottest and greatest sculptures from Madcow Cosmos. Or Hidden Starax, a lot of the most awesome artworks by SL's legendary artist Starax Statosky (who already was gone when Oyster Bay opened). Lost of freebie items too! Still in my inventory is the "Huge Manatee" hot air balloon, Madcow's entry for Oyster Bay's balloon show.



The end of Oyster Bay, but surely not the end of the world. We can be sad for a while, but we should be looking forward now. There are new Residents every day. The next Morris could be registering right now! The next Oyster Bay could already be on the (WindLight hazy) horizon.

And also for myself I see this as a new beginning. You may know me as a photographer, Oyster Bay closing somehow gave me inspiration to start making sculptures. All the time I had my shop up with photos and textures (and a free Resident Bear), never taking the time to try out something new. Now the shop is gone, I don't need to worry about how I should remake the vendor and how many prims I have left for new stuff. All is open now.

And I would encourage others to think his way too. Think of all the new possibilities now the anchor in Oyster's lake broke loose. We're headed for open sea, who can tell what we'll find on the other side of the ocean.

SLang Life!

I was pleased this week to find an envelope in the RL snail-mail labelled with the SLang Life logo. About a month ago it was brought to my attention by Ayumi Cassini. She told me it would be a RL magazine about SL. Subscription and delivery would be completely free! So I subscribed myself and the rest, as they say, is history.

I didn't yet read the entire magazine, as it's 40 pages, including ads and front page, and I only have it since yesterday, but it looks to be really cool. On reading the editorial and reading easily over SL jargon (or slang ;) ), like the abbreviations SL and RL, and even seeing a smilie in the cover article, I was reminded by old-skool computer magazines back in the early 90s. Only so many people were subscribed, it dealt with matter only people really into computers knew enough about. Every few months a new issue, sometimes it took a bit longer, sometimes it had a diskette with cool software. Reading it felt like you belonged to a special elite group.

Then internet became more popular and people would say: "Oh, it's much easier to get info now. And it can be updated as soon as there is news, you don't have to wait 3 months to get it out. And it's so much cheaper!" To quote Zigi Bury in this 1st edition of SLang Life: "In RL media there are many discussions about whether or not paper media have a future." I think now the novelty of internet is getting old, people will want to see things on paper again and smell that ink. The arrival of this new magazine imho is the proof of that. Because it's not just a new magazine, it is one bridging the gap between something strictly online and our lives outside that.

I hope to see many more issues of this wonderful magazine. Do pay their site a visit and if you want, subscribe. It's completely free!


And to bridge the gap between SL and RL myself, see me reading SLang Life here :D