I am however going to get back into this blogging business. I know you missed me during my hiatus but I’ve been busy, so deal with it.
What have I been busy with? Well, I’ve been working on a ton of websites, my comedy career and there was even a hint of some scandal thrown in there. I won’t go into it because it’s exhausting really. It was pretty juicy though. Oh the mystery…I’m currently sifting through some of the work I have been doing and updating my portfolio slowly but surely. Feel free to check it out periodically and see it in all it’s glory.
I just upgraded to OS X Lion so I’m going to go play with that for the rest of the day. I’ll be back Monday with my review. Also, coming up next week I will be giving my thoughts on iOS 5(beta) along with other trending things. It will be riveting.
In almost every social media tool we use there is usually an option to set an avatar. The most common ones are either an image of yourself or a logo. I’ve been having fun with a few different sites that will make images of yourself a little more interesting and personalized. Here are a few sites that you can use to create cartoon images of yourself!
EightBit.me is a new one that has just popped up and I really love it. 8 bit graphics are awesome, so naturally I jumped at the chance to create an 8 bit version of myself.
Androidify is an Android based app that let’s you create an Android version of yourself. Good way to show your love for Android phones! (requires an Android phone)
MadMenYourself – Who doesn’t like Mad Men? Ok, well I’m sure a lot of people don’t but if you love the show as much as I do, you would definitely want one of these avatars.
South Park fan? Well now you can be your own South Park character.
Portrait Illustration Maker- This one is a fun Anime style illustration avatar creator and has a ton of customizations to it.
James Gulliver Hancock has started a fairly impressive project of illustrating all the buildings of New York. What? All of them? Yeah. The idea of it alone made me exhausted so I really do admire the drive behind this guy – not to mention his illustrations are fantastic. He is originally from Australia and has just recently moved to New York. You should check out his blog displaying his building illustrations and you can also buy them as prints from the online store. I will definitely be following his progress and wish him the best of luck in this endeavour.
7up has gotten a nice logo refresh. It seems to only be displayed on their german site, where the american site is still displaying the old logo. The new design uses solid colours, which I usually prefer over gradients in most cases and it has been simplified a bit by making the “UP” smaller. The new 7 is much nicer in my opinion, being taller and cleaner looking it stands out a little better then the old version. The only gripe I really had with it was the second tint of red in the circle which for some reason is bugging the hell out of me. I tried removing it (see third image) and now I really don’t know which way I like better. In any case, I think it’s a decent enough refresh and is a little more up to date than the one being used on the american site.
UPDATE: I just remembered something that made me extremely happy and sad at the same time. 7up needs to bring back Fido Dido. I would drink 7up all day if he was on the cans.
It looks like Warner Brothers has decided to tap into the power of social media by using Facebook as a platform for movie rentals. Starting off with the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Warner Brothers is allowing people to rent the movie using Facebook Credits. The movie will run you 30 Facebook Credits ($3) and will be available for 48 hours starting from the time of purchase. Now they haven’t said anything about releasing other movies but I’m assuming that if all goes well they will start expanding the movie base.
Now I see how lucrative of a system this sounds like. You will probably end up seeing popular movies in your news feed and see what movies you’re friends have watched/liked. Seems like a win win for the movie companies and for Facebook. Although, I’m having mixed feelings about it. First off, 3$ a movie seems steep. I know, I sound stingy but I watch a lot of movies and being spoiled with systems like Netflix, where I pay 8$ a month to watch as many movies I want, 3$ for a movie for a limited amount of time seems like a huge step backwards. Besides, do we really need more of these add-ons to Facebook? I thought it’s original plan was to keep it clean, simple and to the point (social networking). I’m really tired of all the Facebook spam that already exists and I don’t think we need to add more to it.
What are your thoughts? Are you for or against this? Or do you even care?
If you don’t have a iPhone/iPad/iPod then you are really going to miss out on the greatest waste of time since Angry Birds. Tiny Wings is a phenomenal game created by Andreas Illiger. The games illustrations are one of my favourite styles; textured, vectors and very colourful. The gameplay is fairly straight forward. You have to keep your (let’s not beat around the bush here: adorable) bird ahead of the sunset by sliding down a hill and ramping off the next. It’s a simple game of timing but the music, sounds and graphics are all so well done you just can’t put it down. The point system is rewarding enough with bonuses for timing your landings/take offs perfectly and for flying really high. Overall I’m obsessed with the thing and hopefully I will tire of it soon or I won’t be able to get anything done…
Currently the developer has stated that there is no plan for an Android version of the game
Friday night I had the pleasure of going to see a musical trio, 3 meter day. They are a fantastic group, creating amazing music but it wasn’t them that really got my attention that night, it was the venue they were playing in. It was in a small music store/museum called Musideum located on the corner of Spadina and Richmond. They carry an abundant amount of unusual, interesting and cultural instruments that will surely fascinate anyone that walks into the store. The stores ambience, dim lit and earthy only amplifies the organic feeling of the instruments and really makes you wish you knew how to play every single one of them.
It’s definitely a place worth checking out if you are in Toronto, it’s a very inspirational place. You can check out their website to learn more about the store.
(Sorry for the crappy images, only had my phone to take pictures with)
I know you have been missing all my extremely riveting blog posts and have been waiting on the edge of your seat, furiously refreshing the page thinking “When will the new post come!”. I’m here to tell you that they will be back. So it’s ok, you can calm down now. In the mean time here is a present for you (I wouldn’t get to excited about it though).
For some time now (and with great interest), I have been following the progess of the Watson computer developed by IBM Research. What makes Watson so special? It (I almost say “He”) is a computer that has the capability of processing natural language and data analytics in a way that no other computer has done before. A Computer will normally receive a straight forward and specific input/question and provide an answer through mathematical equations. It is simple for a computer to be programmed to answer predetermined questions. Although a totally different story if you are just giving a computer a wide range of information than asking obscure questions and having that computer, on it’s own sift through the information it has and give you a correct answer, much like how a human brain will work. The concept both amazes and scares me, changing the way we will think about computers completely. Soon we will be able to have computers, just like on Star Trek that can answer questions to us within seconds.
IBM has put Watson up to a great challenge playing Jeopardy, which was determined as the ultimate testing platform for Watson. The nature of Jeopardy provides answers using ambiguous clues and hints to the players to which they must find the question. After a lot of testing, Watson has been put up against two of the best Jeopardy contestants and in that past two nights, Watson has been dominating. Be sure to check out the final round tonight as it will be a big part of our history and a marking of a new change in the way we use computers.
