Last week we met with John, our architect. After some initial paper sketches, he renders his house plans in Google SketchUp, so that his clients can experience the project in three dimensions.
We spent a couple of hours with John walking through the house, discussing various room arrangements, orientations and finishes. Because SketchUp is free, we were able to also spend time at our leisure, mulling over options. Still, we’re probably 85% there. There’s a few changes we’d like made–the removal of a balcony, the re-arranging of a room–but the house’s essence is there. Of course, the practical realities of spiraling costs will no doubt change what gets built. For now, though, we’re pretty happy with John’s work.
We wanted to solicit feedback and suggestions from far and wide, so we made this little 8-minute video walkthrough of the 3-D model. We’re not very good at video editing, narrating or Google SketchUp, so please tolerate the rough edges. I meant to mention in the video that the property is 3.5 acres, and the 3-D model only renders the building site itself.
For those non-gamers who get motion sickness from my dodgy SketchUp work, here are some screen captures that show a few views of the house. They’re quite larger, but you can see smaller versions in this Flickr photo set.
Get Your War On is a series of red-ink comic strips about post-9/11 America, and an important voice of satire and reason in an unreasonable world. And now they’ve gone all stop-motion on us. Here’s the first episode (er, rated M for language):
Is there a name for this style of animation, where an artist draws (or uses some clever video editing tricks to appear to draw) over live video to achieve a very realistic style of character movement?
Lee does an excellent job of explaining the US’s somewhat baroque (and if you ask me, highly peculiar) means of electing a president. He gets through the whole video without once saying “electoral college”.
The title of this post refers to an asterisked disclaimer in the video that indicates that Lee’s explanation doesn’t apply to two states: Nebraska and Maine. What’s with them? From Wikipedia:
Two other states, Maine and Nebraska, use a tiered system where a single elector is chosen within each Congressional district and two electors are chosen by statewide popular vote.
So, Maine and Nebraska have a more complicated system?
We present a framework for automatically enhancing videos of a static scene using a few photographs of the same scene. For example, our system can transfer photographic qualities such as high resolution, high dynamic range and better lighting from the photographs to the video. Additionally, the user can quickly modify the video by editing only a few still images of the scene.
If you watch to the end, you’ll see how they remove an irksome No Parking sign by cutting it out of a single video frame. It’s pretty cool.
On Wednesday, I heard a short CBC piece about an architectural exhibit in London, England on the topic of Vancouverism. It was the first time I’d head the term, so I listened with some interest. The host Jian Ghomeshi interviewed Bing Thom about the exhibit and the concept of Vancouverism. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s a spirit about public space. I think Vancouverires are very, very proud that we built a city that really has a tremendous amount of space on the waterfront for people to recreate and to enjoy.
At the same time, False Creek and Coal Harbour were previously industrial lands that were very polluted and desecrated. We’ve refreshed all of this with new development, and people have access to the water and the views. So, to me, it’s this idea of having a lot people living very close together, mixing the uses. So, we have apartments on top of stores. In Surrey we have a university on top of a shopping centre. This mixing of uses reflects Vancouver in terms of our culture and how we live together.
I did a search in Google, and couldn’t find a Wikipedia article on Vancouverism. I resolved to create one when I found the time. Happily, on Tuesday, somebody already started one. I’ll add this quote.
About a year ago (as I wrote here), Capulet helped produce and promote a series of videos for Elastic Path, an eCommerce company in Vancouver. They were called “The Crazy Messed Up World of eCommerce”, and asked the question “What if offline shopping were as cruel and difficult as buying online?”. Here’s one of the videos:
Last week, I received an email discussing a series of three videos that another eCommerce company, 7 Billion People, had released and showed at an industry tradeshow. You can see them on the front page of their website, or in their YouTube channel. They claim to ask the question “What if all shopping was like shopping on the web?”. Here’s one of their videos:
Does that seem oddly familiar to anybody else? Let’s see–same format, same setup, same comedic premise, similar dialogue. Their videos are obviously a lot slicker–they have professional actors and, you know, lighting, but I think the similarities are pretty striking. Too striking to be a mere coincidence.
I’m obviously not an objective observer. But it sure looks like they saw the Elastic Path videos and, without acknowledgement, blatantly ripped off the idea. What do you think?
I’m a casual soccer/football fan (I struggle with which term to use). I’m a long-suffering supporter of Canada’s national side, and enjoy watching European matches whenever I get the chance. I look forward to the big tournaments–the World Cup and European Championships–every two years.
The second most popular sporting event on the planet, Euro 2008, is on right now. As I’ve mentioned, we’re a TV-free family. I really only miss the thing for watching sports. I’ll go to my parents’ house or the pub to watch a game, but I like to watch the video highlights of each match on a daily basis.
Unlike North American sports, it’s ridiculously difficult to watch Euro 2008 (and World Cup, if I recall correctly) highlights on the web. No domestic network website–CBC, TSN, Sportsnet–shows them, and I’m denied by my IP address from accessing the BBC’s video. As far as I can tell, my only options are:
Spend CAN $30 to watch highlights and ‘full match reruns’ of all the games. Given that every North American league makes their highlights available for free, that seems pretty steep. I don’t actually want to watch many games–just the highlights.
Resort to ‘illegal’ highlights sites like the usually reliable FootyTube.
The Euro 2008 doesn’t offer a cheaper price if I don’t want to see full matches. Plus, they don’t give me any kind of preview of the video for which I’m paying. Am I going to pay $30 for YouTube quality streaming video (”hey, that pixelated blob scored on that other pixelated blog!”).
If I wasn’t going to Chicago next week, I might actually pony up the $30. Instead, I’ll rely on the less legitimate but free options.
She mentions that he “employs classic Singaporean comedic devices (the fake phone call, the “I told you so” disclaimers, stating the obvious to the camera, and swearing in Mandarin in-between the English dialogue).” Be sure to look for those–I would have otherwise totally missed them as, you know, narrative and comedic devices.
I’ve known a number of Singaporean-Canadians in my life, so his accent and speaking cadence feels very familiar. And very Vancouver.
Dave Gorman is a gifted writer and documentary comedian from Britain. I first discovered him while living in Ireland. We watched his awesomely funny six-part BBC series “Are You Dave Gorman?”. Based on a Fringe show, Gorman accepts a bet to find 52 other “Dave Gormans”. The premise is amusing, but his presentation is fantastic, full of dry wit and illustrative charts. Here’s the only video clip I could find:
And he’s got a blog (and a Flickr account). And he’s had it for, like, three years. I’m not sure how I stumbled upon it (er, not that way), but I’m subscribed.
I wanted to post a quick note to say congratulations to the Strutta team for their official public launch today. Congrats to Danny, Jordan and the rest of the Vancouver team for a job well done. Here’s the blurb on Strutta:
From grassroots scrappers to all star pros, Strutta brings players together from around the world in the spirit of true competition. Whether it’s beatboxing, shredding up the slopes, or giving the legends a run for their money with a smack on Guitar Hero III solo, there is a game for everyone on Strutta. Players upload their original performance videos to compete with their peers and prove they are the best in their game.
I don’t have a lot of feedback on the site yet–I only checked it out for the first time last week. The design is unassuming, and it does what it says on the box, which are good things. I’m not sure how I feel about getting randomly redirected when I visit www.strutta.com, but I’m guessing that’s a launch gimmick.
My opinion is a bit moot, though, because I’m really not Strutta’s target audience. I’d guess that they’re shooting for the 12 to 25 crowd. Plus, I’m barely a video watcher, much less a creator. Lastly, I’m not particularly competitive. Or playful. Fortunately, there’s zillions of youthful, chippy video-makers out there.
Last week we met with John, our architect. After some initial paper sketches, he renders his house plans in Google SketchUp, so that his clients can experience the project in three dimensions.