Dave Olson hangs with Leo

In quite possibly one of my favorite Lab with Leo segments ever, Dave Olson chats with Leo about his multimedia publishing empire that started back in the 80’s and how now with the internet, it’s all coming back around, except this time, you don’t have to pay for copies on his parents ditto machine.

Dave, we have to hang out again soon….it’s been too long!
 

Muto

This is another amazing video I came across….”a wall-painted animation”.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Fucking amazing…I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into this short film.

Again & Again

Here’s a really creative music video done on a Mac:

I love stuff like this.

Via the big noob.

ps. check out the PC version as well

Update: TUAW has an interview with the director that made this video

Bridging Media

I’ll be heading down to the Centre For Digital Media on Saturday to attend the Bridging Media event organized by Megan Cole and Erica Hargreave. I think you can still register if you’re interested in attending this free event.

I’m looking forward to a number of the sessions as I’m contemplating a couple of side projects that harken back to my ‘roots’ as a film school grad and a film nerd. More and more the techy stuff I do around here and other stuff I am interested in seems to cross back over into the film world so it will be interesting to see where this all goes.

Creative outlets FTW.

Northern Voice 2008 Wrap Up Part 2

A few of us have been noticing that there hasn’t been as much chatter on the internet about Northern Voice during or immediately following the event. As well, the page views on Flickr seemed to be a lot lower than last year. Personally, I think it’s just that everyone hasn’t fully had a chance for it all to sink in yet. As I’m finding by new followers on Twitter, new contacts on Flickr and a bunch of new feeds I’ve been reading, it’s slowly gaining some momentum after the fact.

Let’s face it, a weekend of conferencing takes it’s toll on people and especially since most of the attendees have normal day jobs that they returned to almost immediately. It takes awhile to get your head around what you participated in and find a way to record or publish those thoughts. Not to mention taking care of all the things you didn’t tend to during the conference.

So in that vein, I thought I’d followup my somewhat brief recap with a few more cool things I’ve found since the weekend:

• my pal, Duane Storey, pulled some awesome out of his hat with his amazing photo mosaic of all the tagged photos in Flickr he could hoover down. He called it 1600 reasons to love Northern Voice and I’m sure he’ll have to rename it as that photo number keeps growing as attendees get out their card readers and upload more shots to the Flickr stream. As Gene said in his post, if you can’t find yourself in those photos, you weren’t there.
• I twittered about it a bit and mentioned it in my first recap but I keep coming across blog posts and photos of people that I wish I had a chance to either spend more time talking to or even just meeting at the conference. I guess one of the cons of going to a conference in your own town, with a lot of friends in attendance, is that you don’t get outside your circle as much as you would if you were somewhere you didn’t know many people. That and there is never enough time.
• I wish I had an opportunity to chat with Stewart Mader whose presentation about Wiki’s I really enjoyed at last years NV and missed his this year. He’s been rounding up some great links and comments from other people as well as doing a great job liveblogging a lot of sessions
• Another missed meet/chat was with Alan Levine who gave a great presentation on “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story” in which he outlines some of the amazing web tools out there you can use to tell a story. Something he did with all 50 tools and the same story. Alan also managed to capture one of my favorite open mic sessions at the Opening Night party by Scott Leslie called Trackback Love.
• Bobby Dassler took an awesome set of polaroids that turned out really cool…and I’m even in there
• DaveO’s amazing “F*ck Stats, Make Art” session is now available via Audio (MP3) thanks to Cosmo and Matt’s keynote audio is here although he says that it may not be a great experience without the slides. Stewart has a transcript as well.

There is a ton more stuff that I missed that I hope makes its way online eventually. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to next year already.

Check out the Northern Voice wiki for other things you (or I) may have missed.

Update: Looks like videos of Miranda’s natural light talk and Reilly’s modified light talk have been posted. Both are great parts of PhotoCamp. Great video capture job too!

Upcoming Events

There is a lot going on over the next little while around town and elsewhere. Here’s just a few of the events you should check out.

Tonight (Sunday, January 20th for you slow feed readers)
Watch Rebecca (aka Miss604) on CBC’s Test the Nation where she (and a few other locals) ‘represents’ on the Blogger’s team. I think I can actually get away with saying “You go girl” and not look like a tard in this case. I’m sure she’ll find a way to live blog via her iPhone. My TiVo is set to record so expect some video highlights of Becky beating some flight attendants with her brain.

Creative Thinking Hacks - Tuesday, January 22nd
I’m really going to try to attend this talk at VFS by Scott Berkun put on as part of the VanUE group.

Launch Party Vancouver 3 - Friday, January 25th
I missed the first two parties and won’t be missing this one…hosted by Strutta.com, I keep hearing about how much fun they are and a lot of my friends will be there RSVP on the Facebook group or their site if you’re interested in meeting up with a lot of the local tech community.

Third Tuesday - January 29th
The monthly event just keeps getting better and better (thanks to Tod and Tanya) and this month is no exception with Brian Oberkirch’s talk on Social Media and Brands.

Vancouver Blogger’s Meetup - January 30th
Another monthly meetup that I’ve missed the last couple but will be attending this one….if you blog, or want to blog, you should come out too. Lots of great people to talk with.

Privacy & Security Conference - Feb 6-8th (Victoria)
Due to some projects I’m involved in lately, I’ll be attending this conference in Victoria for the first time. The agenda looks very interesting and the speakers are very impressive.

Northern Voice - February 22-23 (UBC)
Great little local conference I finally discovered last year (this is the 4th year) for people interested in blogging….it’s also not just for geeks. I met a lot of great people last year and look forward to seeing many of them again and meeting new friends this time around. Tickets are very affordable but that is also why they always sell out so get yours as soon as possible.

South by Southwest Interactive - March 6-11 (Austin, Texas)
Easily my favorite tech conference held each year in Austin, Texas. This will be my third trip to the Lone Star state and look forward to meeting up with friends again as well as taking in all it has to offer. It’s also one of the least expensive tech conferences and there is arguably no better place to meet and interact with the brightest people in the tech world. If you haven’t already booked a hotel expect a long commute as all the good ones were booked months ago…I had the foresight to book mine last September. It’s worth the trip for the BBQ beef brisket alone and the Raincity Studios folks put on the best party during the event.

These are just a few of the things on my plate for the next little while…hope to see you at one (or more) of them.

Use a flatbed scanner as a camera

I can’t remember where I first saw it, but a long time ago I came across an article that suggested putting that old flatbed scanner to use as a camera to take interesting pictures of three dimensional objects. Doing a quick Google search turns up tons of hits on the subject but the best name I found for it is Scanography.

It seems to work better with objects that have some real depth. Unfortunately, my scanner is pretty old and despite cleaning the bed before using it, it seems there is dust inside. Oh well, it was cheap. You could easily clean that up in Photoshop.

The other benefit of this method is that you get really nice, even lighting on objects that may be difficult to photograph. You also can get some crazy reflections on mirrored surfaces.

Here’s a look at my setup:

My examples below were done with the lid completely up in a normally lit room during late afternoon. I didn’t have any direct light on the scanner and it seemed to have such a short depth of field that everything a foot or two from the scanner reads as black to the scanner.

Here’s a few things I had laying around that turned out decent:

Sometimes it’s just fun to play so grab some stuff and throw it on your scanner!

My Top 5 in 2007 Post

Since everyone is doing it, I thought I should do the same although I have a hard time putting them in some kind of order…so they aren’t!
Here is my list of the random things from last year that stood out to me in no particular order:

• my iPhone - in case you haven’t noticed, I kinda dig this phone. Sure it’s not perfect but overall, it’s hands down the best cellphone I’ve ever owned (and I’ve owned a lot). It’s also the first phone that has made me stop looking for a better one. It’s been a lot of fun this past year sharing it with friends and helping others with theirs. You’ll notice it’s the only tech item on this list (shocking!) but it’s been hard for it to not be a focal point on this site and with many friends. This is a geek blog afterall so if I had to pick one tech item from last year, this is it.
• Falling in love with photography again - I fully blame/credit kk+ for this. As I’ve said before, after attending Kris’ Photography session at Northern Voice something struck a chord that made me want to pick up a camera again for more than just snapshots. Kris’ passion for taking photos really had an impact. That lead to picking up my first DSLR (after years of point and shoot and film cameras) and reconnecting with a fantastic creative outlet that I had been into before I became a (computer) geek. Thanks Kris!
• Friends - I don’t talk about too many ‘personal’ things on this blog but this past year has been an immensely rewarding year for meeting new people and forging new friendships on and offline (real life FTW!). Social media/networking/whatever has really changed how people communicate, meet, collaborate and generally be human. I’m still surprised how many friends from my past I’ve reconnected with on Facebook as well as how many real life friends these tools has helped stay in contact with in ways that I never expected. Everything including SXSW, Northern Voice, photowalks, tech events, Camps (how come I never see tents?) and meetups has put me in contact with some truly amazing people (way too many to list). I look forward to building on those friendships and making more new ones this year and beyond.
• Buying our first home - my wife and I made probably the biggest financial move of our lives this past summer and it has been an amazing experience. Even when we were stressed out and woefully unprepared for our big move, our friends came through and helped in ways that I can’t ever repay. It has been a fanatastic experience being a ‘homeowner’ - like a really good rollercoaster that can make you sick and giggle like a schoolgirl at the same time. The commute isn’t that bad and has been totally worth it!

I know that’s only 4…I can’t think of anything else from last year that’s had as much impact as these 4 things have had on me at a high level at least.

So 2007 in summary: I’ll call you with my iPhone to invite you over to my house and take your picture.

Good Experience: Crumpler Bags

I think I have a problem.

Is it weird for a guy to like gadget bags? I think I have a bag/pouch/container for just about everything gadget I own. I guess I like to protect my stuff. I especially like Crumpler bags.

The latest one I bought a few months back was the Crumpler Keystone which is a laptop and camera bag. It’s very light, small, heavily padded and perfect for running around taking pictures at geek events.

What else can I say, I love the bags that Crumpler makes and keep getting them anytime I see a new one (or get something that needs a bag). I wish there were more companies that cared this much about their products and had such a unique way of marketing them.

Sometimes they send me stuff too (I highly recommend you sign up for their newsletter):

Totally irreverent marketing (who else takes beer in trade for their products?), completely unusable but fun flash website and awesome containers/protectors for geek tech - what more could you want?

More of them of course!

First Holga prints

Just finished scanning the results of the first roll of film I put through the new Holga camera I recently picked up. I was pretty convinced that I had either loaded the film incorrectly or that I didn’t handle it properly and all the shots I took would be exposed. Unlike 35mm film, medium-format film comes on rolls without a shell or cover. This means that the film spools from one spindle inside the camera onto another. You also don’t ‘rewind’ the film like a 35mm camera either.
Fortunately, I managed not to screw it up and got some great first results considering the roll of film that the Holga comes with is 100ASA which means it basically needs a ton of light to be exposed.

I seemed to get the best shots when using the red flash.

Although the clear flash didn’t make Duane’s nachos look any less awesome.

Check out the rest of the shots from the roll on Flickr.

Now to get some higher speed medium-format film and have some more fun with this camera.