Last night I finally saw Michael Dudok de Wit’s short film masterpiece “Father and Daughter”, as part of Spike and Mike’s classical animation festival. It’s a beautiful film, well deserving of its 2001 Oscar win. Not needing dialogue, each shot in the pencil and charcoal film is brilliantly composed and reads perfectly. Even if the big studios turn their back on traditional animation, there will always be a place for it in the hands of independent artists with compelling stories.
Monthly Archives: August 2002
My WWDC 2002 DVDs arrived
My WWDC 2002 DVDs arrived yesterday, just in time to be useful.
After ignoring Mozilla for
After ignoring Mozilla for 6 months, I took the latest version out for a spin a few nights ago to try Pie Menus. Although Mouse Gestures worked okay for me, I couldn’t get Pie Menus to work (maybe it doesn’t work on the Mac?). I can’t decide whether I like Mouse Gestures yet. Back and forward can be useful, but the gesture displayed on the left (go to home page) is just silly.
News.com: “More than 100,000 copies
News.com: “More than 100,000 copies of Apple Computer’s OS X 10.2 operating system were sold worldwide during its first weekend, the company said.”
Back in 2001: Microsoft Windows XP sold 300,000 copies over its weekend launch.
No Sense of Place points
No Sense of Place points to a great collection of early 20th century animated films at the Library of Congress. Includes Krazy Kat and The Katzenjammer Kids, among others. But no Mickey.
The movies section at Internet Archive also has some great stuff, but it takes a little bit of searching to find the good ones (look for John Hubley).
And finally, when you’re tired of squinting at small QuickTime movies, stop by Oscars in Animation: 7 Decades of Animation Art if you live in the LA area. Can’t beat looking at the real thing.
Kottke has the same NetNewsWire
Kottke has the same NetNewsWire gripe that I do, and a mockup to go along with it. I submitted this as a feature request in Ranchero’s bug database earlier this week. The software is maturing quickly, but the 3-pane approach and the inability to easily get rid of news items you have read have made me stick with Radio Userland for now.
Brent Simmons: “If you’re not
Brent Simmons: “If you’re not syndicating your site as RSS it might as well not exist.” So true. The non-RSS sites I read now can be counted on one hand.
While skipping around through my
While skipping around through my MP3 collection, it’s easy to forget why I don’t run out and buy CDs frequently. But I bought one a few days ago, which brought back the memory. It’s not that they are too expensive (which they are), it’s that those stupid plastic wraps are impossible to open!
Kottke.org increases the text in
Kottke.org increases the text in RSS files to around 80 characters per post. Excellent. It’s as if he read my mind.
This site was down for
This site was down for a server move over the weekend… Thanks to David and the Interactive Ensemble gang for their generous help and bandwidth.
I hate what smileys have
I hate what smileys have become. Just look at all these from the latest Yahoo Messenger! What’s the point? Give me the :-) and ;-) and I’m fine.
Doug Baron points to an
Doug Baron points to an article on Schlotzsky’s plan for free wireless around their restaurants. They’re also looking into providing access for other areas such as libraries and schools.
There’s a Schlotzsky’s about a mile from here, so I’ll have to check it out once they get an antenna up. For a year or more, most of the chain in Austin has provided iMacs for surfing, and now I guess I can check email while waiting in the drive-thru. But more than that, it’s nice to see a company that understands the benefits of doing something for their customers — and the community — without thinking about every cent they are going to make charging people for access.
Good sandwiches, too.
I registered on BlogTree. Hey,
I registered on BlogTree. Hey, everyone else was doing it. :-)
In other blog news… There are very few sites that I read now that don’t have RSS feeds. Two on that short list were PeterMe and Kottke.org, which in the last week have both put up RSS versions. Unfortunately they trim the post so you only get the first sentence or two in your RSS reader. Ugh. I think this may be a Movable Type default.
I also think that Blogger made a mistake when they chose to only support RSS in Blogger Pro (not in the regular free version of Blogger). There are a lot of Blogger sites out there. With the huge momentum behind RSS, and as more good RSS readers emerge, the way people are browsing news and blog sites is changing. Sites without an RSS feed risk being ignored. (I have paid for both Blogger Pro and Radio Userland.)