Who's Johnny?

I guess I am... for now at least.

Curt Holman is kind enough to ask me a few questions for our local free newspaper The Creative Loafing.

Questions like:

What's your regular character as a puppeteer?
My character's name is "Lil' Tamo the Robot." Officially his job is to be the snarky straight man to Phineas J. Monkey's goofy clowning. But really it's just an excuse for Lil' Tamo to make jokes specifically for the parents who bring their kids to Uncle Grampa. No child has ever laughed at a Full Metal Jacket joke. But hey, who doesn't love a sarcastic robot who makes semiobscure movie references?

Walking with Darwin

We recently went with some friends to see the live puppet show "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Phillips Arena. When I say puppets... I mean three story tall, life size robot monsters. They were awesome.

The Dinosaurs ranged in size from little newborn dinosaur hand puppets to man sized suits for the Velociraptors (very awesome) even all the way up to a huge motorized Brachiosaurus. The "drivable" dinosaurs had a slim pod under their bellies were a puppeteer would sit to operate the giant puppet. They actually walked freely around the stage, that was the most impressive part.

The two Dinosaurs with the most personality were by far the crowd pleasing mother Tyrannosaurus Rex and it's baby. The offspring was another man sized suit. These were a great touch, their natural fluid movement made the minimal clunkiness of the giant robots a lot more palatable. (Even though we're of the opinion that there's nothing more charming than a clunky old clunker of a robot...) The mother's roar was tied directly into the sound system so it sounded amazing. We even got to see the crew testing out the T-rex robot/puppet after the show. You could see right down into the cockpit.

There was another aspect of this show that I really liked. It wasn't all about giant robots and rubber suits. They talked about Science and Evolution, these subjects were treated as matter of fact and not glossed over in any way. I know it's a show about dinosaurs, so they probably figured anyone who was in attendance was at least interested in the subject enough to be familiar with Evolution. However, we're in the south, and I am constantly amazed by how little respect the subject gets here.

I kept thinking about how many mothers in the audience had to quickly cover their children's ears when the Narrator made a big deal about modern day birds being the direct evolutionary descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Keep it up Darwin.

Pleaseeasauce

This saturday our friends and favorite band, Pleaseeasaur, will be in town and performing at The Drunken Unicorn.

You might remember Pleaseeasaur from that time we did an animation for them. They released a 2 disc DVD on Comedy Central Records filled with videos and cartoons detailing the musical exploits of our favorite hero, Pleaseeasaur, and his managery of cartoony friends.

Hope to see you saturday night!

Pleaseeasaur @ The Drunken Unicorn Sat. Sept. 15th

Pleaseeasaur Tour Info

A poor representation of something greater.

Madeleine L'Engle, author of the classic "A Wrinkle in Time," passed away last thursday at the age of 88.

In that classic book, Madeleine L'Engle makes reference to one our most favorite theoretical mathematical shapes. The Tesseract. Also known as a hypercube, the tesseract is an imaginary projection of an ordinary 3d cube viewed in the 4th dimension. Sound complicated? It is.

In honor of her passing, physicist David Morgan explains the tesseract in this NPR video. (via boingboing)

And of course what would a post about the tesseract be without a little help from Carl Sagan. Actually, what would one of our posts be without mention of our most beloved of science persons. Here he explains the tesseract:

Voyager Turns 30

Yesterday Sept. 5th in 1977 the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Wired magazine has an awesome photo essay about Voyager.

Besides being developed by this website's patron saint, Carl Sagan, there are many other interesting things about Voyager 1.

The spacecraft was designed to take advantage of a newly developed technique for space travel called "gravity assist." It seems like common place now, but for it's time this idea was revolutionary. The spacecraft would use gravity wells produced by the planets in our solar system to slingshot itself through space. This method not only reduced the amount of fuel needed to travel the distances intended for Voyager, but would also allow the spacecraft to make the journey in 12 years instead of 30!

The timing of Voyager was critical. A planetary event would occur in the late 70's that would make for a perfect opportunity to use the new gravity assist technique. This event was called The Grand Tour, and it consisted of an unprecedented alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. An alignment this perfect would not recur for another 176 years!

Bolted to the outside of Voyager is the now famous "Golden Record."

The Record was designed by Carl Sagan, with elements drawn by Jon Lomberg, an artist whose work is inspired by astronomy. The record also contains 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earthlings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

Here is Jimmy Carter's Presidential message to the cosmos:

"We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some -- perhaps many -- may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."

Aaaaaaaaaaapple!

Apple held a press conference today to announce a revamping of their popular iPod music player. Tis' the Season!

Lot's of cool new iPods with cool new features to stuff into your holiday stockings. The iPod Nano has gotten smaller and a bit wider to accommodate it's new, bigger video screen. The iPod Classic has expanded it's storage space to 160GIGs. That's crazy! And it's still smaller than the original iPod we got way back when, it was 10GIGs!

Steve also announced the iPod Touch. It's an iPhone without the phone. It does everything the iPhone does except make calls, comes with wifi, built in browser, and a new wifi iTunes store that you can buy songs from directly from the iPod.

Our Beloved iPhone was not forgotten at this keynote. The iPhone will be getting the Wifi iTunes Store on the next software update, sweet. We'll also be getting custom ringtones that can be purchased (for an extra $1 beyond the song price... Boo) and then edited directly in iTunes.

Then Steve drops the big bomb.

The iPhone now costs $399
In two small months, the price of the iPhone has dropped by $200!!!!!!
*room begins to spin*
*pukes, passes out*

OK... I'm back. Yeah, that made me a little queazy. Sure, we just paid the full price for our phone 2 months ago. But we said all along that this was not a decision we made based on logic and reason, we are suckers for Apple crap. We paid for the privilege of having the phone the day it was released. Yes, I agree with you, stop yelling at me. However, Instead of shipping a whole new improved "version 2" of the iPhone, as many predicted, Apple has decided to simply bring the price down to a reasonable bracket.

This is because the phone is so freaking perfect. I know because I DON'T have the $200 to prove it.

Overdrift: Stage 2 [Teaser]

There's more the the multi-dimensional story of drift racing and dinosaurs.

Teaser Trailer:

Previously, the first installment of Overdrift:

Who's Johnny?

I guess I am... for now at least.

Curt Holman is kind enough to ask me a few questions for our local free newspaper The Creative Loafing.

Questions like:

What's your regular character as a puppeteer?
My character's name is "Lil' Tamo the Robot." Officially his job is to be the snarky straight man to Phineas J. Monkey's goofy clowning. But really it's just an excuse for Lil' Tamo to make jokes specifically for the parents who bring their kids to Uncle Grampa. No child has ever laughed at a Full Metal Jacket joke. But hey, who doesn't love a sarcastic robot who makes semiobscure movie references?

Walking with Darwin

We recently went with some friends to see the live puppet show "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Phillips Arena. When I say puppets... I mean three story tall, life size robot monsters. They were awesome.

The Dinosaurs ranged in size from little newborn dinosaur hand puppets to man sized suits for the Velociraptors (very awesome) even all the way up to a huge motorized Brachiosaurus. The "drivable" dinosaurs had a slim pod under their bellies were a puppeteer would sit to operate the giant puppet. They actually walked freely around the stage, that was the most impressive part.

The two Dinosaurs with the most personality were by far the crowd pleasing mother Tyrannosaurus Rex and it's baby. The offspring was another man sized suit. These were a great touch, their natural fluid movement made the minimal clunkiness of the giant robots a lot more palatable. (Even though we're of the opinion that there's nothing more charming than a clunky old clunker of a robot...) The mother's roar was tied directly into the sound system so it sounded amazing. We even got to see the crew testing out the T-rex robot/puppet after the show. You could see right down into the cockpit.

There was another aspect of this show that I really liked. It wasn't all about giant robots and rubber suits. They talked about Science and Evolution, these subjects were treated as matter of fact and not glossed over in any way. I know it's a show about dinosaurs, so they probably figured anyone who was in attendance was at least interested in the subject enough to be familiar with Evolution. However, we're in the south, and I am constantly amazed by how little respect the subject gets here.

I kept thinking about how many mothers in the audience had to quickly cover their children's ears when the Narrator made a big deal about modern day birds being the direct evolutionary descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Keep it up Darwin.

Pleaseeasauce

This saturday our friends and favorite band, Pleaseeasaur, will be in town and performing at The Drunken Unicorn.

You might remember Pleaseeasaur from that time we did an animation for them. They released a 2 disc DVD on Comedy Central Records filled with videos and cartoons detailing the musical exploits of our favorite hero, Pleaseeasaur, and his managery of cartoony friends.

Hope to see you saturday night!

Pleaseeasaur @ The Drunken Unicorn Sat. Sept. 15th

Pleaseeasaur Tour Info

A poor representation of something greater.

Madeleine L'Engle, author of the classic "A Wrinkle in Time," passed away last thursday at the age of 88.

In that classic book, Madeleine L'Engle makes reference to one our most favorite theoretical mathematical shapes. The Tesseract. Also known as a hypercube, the tesseract is an imaginary projection of an ordinary 3d cube viewed in the 4th dimension. Sound complicated? It is.

In honor of her passing, physicist David Morgan explains the tesseract in this NPR video. (via boingboing)

And of course what would a post about the tesseract be without a little help from Carl Sagan. Actually, what would one of our posts be without mention of our most beloved of science persons. Here he explains the tesseract:

Voyager Turns 30

Yesterday Sept. 5th in 1977 the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Wired magazine has an awesome photo essay about Voyager.

Besides being developed by this website's patron saint, Carl Sagan, there are many other interesting things about Voyager 1.

The spacecraft was designed to take advantage of a newly developed technique for space travel called "gravity assist." It seems like common place now, but for it's time this idea was revolutionary. The spacecraft would use gravity wells produced by the planets in our solar system to slingshot itself through space. This method not only reduced the amount of fuel needed to travel the distances intended for Voyager, but would also allow the spacecraft to make the journey in 12 years instead of 30!

The timing of Voyager was critical. A planetary event would occur in the late 70's that would make for a perfect opportunity to use the new gravity assist technique. This event was called The Grand Tour, and it consisted of an unprecedented alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. An alignment this perfect would not recur for another 176 years!

Bolted to the outside of Voyager is the now famous "Golden Record."

The Record was designed by Carl Sagan, with elements drawn by Jon Lomberg, an artist whose work is inspired by astronomy. The record also contains 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earthlings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

Here is Jimmy Carter's Presidential message to the cosmos:

"We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some -- perhaps many -- may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."

Aaaaaaaaaaapple!

Apple held a press conference today to announce a revamping of their popular iPod music player. Tis' the Season!

Lot's of cool new iPods with cool new features to stuff into your holiday stockings. The iPod Nano has gotten smaller and a bit wider to accommodate it's new, bigger video screen. The iPod Classic has expanded it's storage space to 160GIGs. That's crazy! And it's still smaller than the original iPod we got way back when, it was 10GIGs!

Steve also announced the iPod Touch. It's an iPhone without the phone. It does everything the iPhone does except make calls, comes with wifi, built in browser, and a new wifi iTunes store that you can buy songs from directly from the iPod.

Our Beloved iPhone was not forgotten at this keynote. The iPhone will be getting the Wifi iTunes Store on the next software update, sweet. We'll also be getting custom ringtones that can be purchased (for an extra $1 beyond the song price... Boo) and then edited directly in iTunes.

Then Steve drops the big bomb.

The iPhone now costs $399
In two small months, the price of the iPhone has dropped by $200!!!!!!
*room begins to spin*
*pukes, passes out*

OK... I'm back. Yeah, that made me a little queazy. Sure, we just paid the full price for our phone 2 months ago. But we said all along that this was not a decision we made based on logic and reason, we are suckers for Apple crap. We paid for the privilege of having the phone the day it was released. Yes, I agree with you, stop yelling at me. However, Instead of shipping a whole new improved "version 2" of the iPhone, as many predicted, Apple has decided to simply bring the price down to a reasonable bracket.

This is because the phone is so freaking perfect. I know because I DON'T have the $200 to prove it.

Overdrift: Stage 2 [Teaser]

There's more the the multi-dimensional story of drift racing and dinosaurs.

Teaser Trailer:

Previously, the first installment of Overdrift:

Who's Johnny?

I guess I am... for now at least.

Curt Holman is kind enough to ask me a few questions for our local free newspaper The Creative Loafing.

Questions like:

What's your regular character as a puppeteer?
My character's name is "Lil' Tamo the Robot." Officially his job is to be the snarky straight man to Phineas J. Monkey's goofy clowning. But really it's just an excuse for Lil' Tamo to make jokes specifically for the parents who bring their kids to Uncle Grampa. No child has ever laughed at a Full Metal Jacket joke. But hey, who doesn't love a sarcastic robot who makes semiobscure movie references?

Walking with Darwin

We recently went with some friends to see the live puppet show "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Phillips Arena. When I say puppets... I mean three story tall, life size robot monsters. They were awesome.

The Dinosaurs ranged in size from little newborn dinosaur hand puppets to man sized suits for the Velociraptors (very awesome) even all the way up to a huge motorized Brachiosaurus. The "drivable" dinosaurs had a slim pod under their bellies were a puppeteer would sit to operate the giant puppet. They actually walked freely around the stage, that was the most impressive part.

The two Dinosaurs with the most personality were by far the crowd pleasing mother Tyrannosaurus Rex and it's baby. The offspring was another man sized suit. These were a great touch, their natural fluid movement made the minimal clunkiness of the giant robots a lot more palatable. (Even though we're of the opinion that there's nothing more charming than a clunky old clunker of a robot...) The mother's roar was tied directly into the sound system so it sounded amazing. We even got to see the crew testing out the T-rex robot/puppet after the show. You could see right down into the cockpit.

There was another aspect of this show that I really liked. It wasn't all about giant robots and rubber suits. They talked about Science and Evolution, these subjects were treated as matter of fact and not glossed over in any way. I know it's a show about dinosaurs, so they probably figured anyone who was in attendance was at least interested in the subject enough to be familiar with Evolution. However, we're in the south, and I am constantly amazed by how little respect the subject gets here.

I kept thinking about how many mothers in the audience had to quickly cover their children's ears when the Narrator made a big deal about modern day birds being the direct evolutionary descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Keep it up Darwin.

Pleaseeasauce

This saturday our friends and favorite band, Pleaseeasaur, will be in town and performing at The Drunken Unicorn.

You might remember Pleaseeasaur from that time we did an animation for them. They released a 2 disc DVD on Comedy Central Records filled with videos and cartoons detailing the musical exploits of our favorite hero, Pleaseeasaur, and his managery of cartoony friends.

Hope to see you saturday night!

Pleaseeasaur @ The Drunken Unicorn Sat. Sept. 15th

Pleaseeasaur Tour Info

A poor representation of something greater.

Madeleine L'Engle, author of the classic "A Wrinkle in Time," passed away last thursday at the age of 88.

In that classic book, Madeleine L'Engle makes reference to one our most favorite theoretical mathematical shapes. The Tesseract. Also known as a hypercube, the tesseract is an imaginary projection of an ordinary 3d cube viewed in the 4th dimension. Sound complicated? It is.

In honor of her passing, physicist David Morgan explains the tesseract in this NPR video. (via boingboing)

And of course what would a post about the tesseract be without a little help from Carl Sagan. Actually, what would one of our posts be without mention of our most beloved of science persons. Here he explains the tesseract:

Voyager Turns 30

Yesterday Sept. 5th in 1977 the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Wired magazine has an awesome photo essay about Voyager.

Besides being developed by this website's patron saint, Carl Sagan, there are many other interesting things about Voyager 1.

The spacecraft was designed to take advantage of a newly developed technique for space travel called "gravity assist." It seems like common place now, but for it's time this idea was revolutionary. The spacecraft would use gravity wells produced by the planets in our solar system to slingshot itself through space. This method not only reduced the amount of fuel needed to travel the distances intended for Voyager, but would also allow the spacecraft to make the journey in 12 years instead of 30!

The timing of Voyager was critical. A planetary event would occur in the late 70's that would make for a perfect opportunity to use the new gravity assist technique. This event was called The Grand Tour, and it consisted of an unprecedented alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. An alignment this perfect would not recur for another 176 years!

Bolted to the outside of Voyager is the now famous "Golden Record."

The Record was designed by Carl Sagan, with elements drawn by Jon Lomberg, an artist whose work is inspired by astronomy. The record also contains 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earthlings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

Here is Jimmy Carter's Presidential message to the cosmos:

"We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some -- perhaps many -- may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."

Aaaaaaaaaaapple!

Apple held a press conference today to announce a revamping of their popular iPod music player. Tis' the Season!

Lot's of cool new iPods with cool new features to stuff into your holiday stockings. The iPod Nano has gotten smaller and a bit wider to accommodate it's new, bigger video screen. The iPod Classic has expanded it's storage space to 160GIGs. That's crazy! And it's still smaller than the original iPod we got way back when, it was 10GIGs!

Steve also announced the iPod Touch. It's an iPhone without the phone. It does everything the iPhone does except make calls, comes with wifi, built in browser, and a new wifi iTunes store that you can buy songs from directly from the iPod.

Our Beloved iPhone was not forgotten at this keynote. The iPhone will be getting the Wifi iTunes Store on the next software update, sweet. We'll also be getting custom ringtones that can be purchased (for an extra $1 beyond the song price... Boo) and then edited directly in iTunes.

Then Steve drops the big bomb.

The iPhone now costs $399
In two small months, the price of the iPhone has dropped by $200!!!!!!
*room begins to spin*
*pukes, passes out*

OK... I'm back. Yeah, that made me a little queazy. Sure, we just paid the full price for our phone 2 months ago. But we said all along that this was not a decision we made based on logic and reason, we are suckers for Apple crap. We paid for the privilege of having the phone the day it was released. Yes, I agree with you, stop yelling at me. However, Instead of shipping a whole new improved "version 2" of the iPhone, as many predicted, Apple has decided to simply bring the price down to a reasonable bracket.

This is because the phone is so freaking perfect. I know because I DON'T have the $200 to prove it.

Overdrift: Stage 2 [Teaser]

There's more the the multi-dimensional story of drift racing and dinosaurs.

Teaser Trailer:

Previously, the first installment of Overdrift:

Who's Johnny?

I guess I am... for now at least.

Curt Holman is kind enough to ask me a few questions for our local free newspaper The Creative Loafing.

Questions like:

What's your regular character as a puppeteer?
My character's name is "Lil' Tamo the Robot." Officially his job is to be the snarky straight man to Phineas J. Monkey's goofy clowning. But really it's just an excuse for Lil' Tamo to make jokes specifically for the parents who bring their kids to Uncle Grampa. No child has ever laughed at a Full Metal Jacket joke. But hey, who doesn't love a sarcastic robot who makes semiobscure movie references?

Walking with Darwin

We recently went with some friends to see the live puppet show "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Phillips Arena. When I say puppets... I mean three story tall, life size robot monsters. They were awesome.

The Dinosaurs ranged in size from little newborn dinosaur hand puppets to man sized suits for the Velociraptors (very awesome) even all the way up to a huge motorized Brachiosaurus. The "drivable" dinosaurs had a slim pod under their bellies were a puppeteer would sit to operate the giant puppet. They actually walked freely around the stage, that was the most impressive part.

The two Dinosaurs with the most personality were by far the crowd pleasing mother Tyrannosaurus Rex and it's baby. The offspring was another man sized suit. These were a great touch, their natural fluid movement made the minimal clunkiness of the giant robots a lot more palatable. (Even though we're of the opinion that there's nothing more charming than a clunky old clunker of a robot...) The mother's roar was tied directly into the sound system so it sounded amazing. We even got to see the crew testing out the T-rex robot/puppet after the show. You could see right down into the cockpit.

There was another aspect of this show that I really liked. It wasn't all about giant robots and rubber suits. They talked about Science and Evolution, these subjects were treated as matter of fact and not glossed over in any way. I know it's a show about dinosaurs, so they probably figured anyone who was in attendance was at least interested in the subject enough to be familiar with Evolution. However, we're in the south, and I am constantly amazed by how little respect the subject gets here.

I kept thinking about how many mothers in the audience had to quickly cover their children's ears when the Narrator made a big deal about modern day birds being the direct evolutionary descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Keep it up Darwin.

Pleaseeasauce

This saturday our friends and favorite band, Pleaseeasaur, will be in town and performing at The Drunken Unicorn.

You might remember Pleaseeasaur from that time we did an animation for them. They released a 2 disc DVD on Comedy Central Records filled with videos and cartoons detailing the musical exploits of our favorite hero, Pleaseeasaur, and his managery of cartoony friends.

Hope to see you saturday night!

Pleaseeasaur @ The Drunken Unicorn Sat. Sept. 15th

Pleaseeasaur Tour Info

A poor representation of something greater.

Madeleine L'Engle, author of the classic "A Wrinkle in Time," passed away last thursday at the age of 88.

In that classic book, Madeleine L'Engle makes reference to one our most favorite theoretical mathematical shapes. The Tesseract. Also known as a hypercube, the tesseract is an imaginary projection of an ordinary 3d cube viewed in the 4th dimension. Sound complicated? It is.

In honor of her passing, physicist David Morgan explains the tesseract in this NPR video. (via boingboing)

And of course what would a post about the tesseract be without a little help from Carl Sagan. Actually, what would one of our posts be without mention of our most beloved of science persons. Here he explains the tesseract:

Voyager Turns 30

Yesterday Sept. 5th in 1977 the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Wired magazine has an awesome photo essay about Voyager.

Besides being developed by this website's patron saint, Carl Sagan, there are many other interesting things about Voyager 1.

The spacecraft was designed to take advantage of a newly developed technique for space travel called "gravity assist." It seems like common place now, but for it's time this idea was revolutionary. The spacecraft would use gravity wells produced by the planets in our solar system to slingshot itself through space. This method not only reduced the amount of fuel needed to travel the distances intended for Voyager, but would also allow the spacecraft to make the journey in 12 years instead of 30!

The timing of Voyager was critical. A planetary event would occur in the late 70's that would make for a perfect opportunity to use the new gravity assist technique. This event was called The Grand Tour, and it consisted of an unprecedented alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. An alignment this perfect would not recur for another 176 years!

Bolted to the outside of Voyager is the now famous "Golden Record."

The Record was designed by Carl Sagan, with elements drawn by Jon Lomberg, an artist whose work is inspired by astronomy. The record also contains 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earthlings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

Here is Jimmy Carter's Presidential message to the cosmos:

"We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some -- perhaps many -- may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."

Aaaaaaaaaaapple!

Apple held a press conference today to announce a revamping of their popular iPod music player. Tis' the Season!

Lot's of cool new iPods with cool new features to stuff into your holiday stockings. The iPod Nano has gotten smaller and a bit wider to accommodate it's new, bigger video screen. The iPod Classic has expanded it's storage space to 160GIGs. That's crazy! And it's still smaller than the original iPod we got way back when, it was 10GIGs!

Steve also announced the iPod Touch. It's an iPhone without the phone. It does everything the iPhone does except make calls, comes with wifi, built in browser, and a new wifi iTunes store that you can buy songs from directly from the iPod.

Our Beloved iPhone was not forgotten at this keynote. The iPhone will be getting the Wifi iTunes Store on the next software update, sweet. We'll also be getting custom ringtones that can be purchased (for an extra $1 beyond the song price... Boo) and then edited directly in iTunes.

Then Steve drops the big bomb.

The iPhone now costs $399
In two small months, the price of the iPhone has dropped by $200!!!!!!
*room begins to spin*
*pukes, passes out*

OK... I'm back. Yeah, that made me a little queazy. Sure, we just paid the full price for our phone 2 months ago. But we said all along that this was not a decision we made based on logic and reason, we are suckers for Apple crap. We paid for the privilege of having the phone the day it was released. Yes, I agree with you, stop yelling at me. However, Instead of shipping a whole new improved "version 2" of the iPhone, as many predicted, Apple has decided to simply bring the price down to a reasonable bracket.

This is because the phone is so freaking perfect. I know because I DON'T have the $200 to prove it.

Overdrift: Stage 2 [Teaser]

There's more the the multi-dimensional story of drift racing and dinosaurs.

Teaser Trailer:

Previously, the first installment of Overdrift:

Who's Johnny?

I guess I am... for now at least.

Curt Holman is kind enough to ask me a few questions for our local free newspaper The Creative Loafing.

Questions like:

What's your regular character as a puppeteer?
My character's name is "Lil' Tamo the Robot." Officially his job is to be the snarky straight man to Phineas J. Monkey's goofy clowning. But really it's just an excuse for Lil' Tamo to make jokes specifically for the parents who bring their kids to Uncle Grampa. No child has ever laughed at a Full Metal Jacket joke. But hey, who doesn't love a sarcastic robot who makes semiobscure movie references?

Walking with Darwin

We recently went with some friends to see the live puppet show "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Phillips Arena. When I say puppets... I mean three story tall, life size robot monsters. They were awesome.

The Dinosaurs ranged in size from little newborn dinosaur hand puppets to man sized suits for the Velociraptors (very awesome) even all the way up to a huge motorized Brachiosaurus. The "drivable" dinosaurs had a slim pod under their bellies were a puppeteer would sit to operate the giant puppet. They actually walked freely around the stage, that was the most impressive part.

The two Dinosaurs with the most personality were by far the crowd pleasing mother Tyrannosaurus Rex and it's baby. The offspring was another man sized suit. These were a great touch, their natural fluid movement made the minimal clunkiness of the giant robots a lot more palatable. (Even though we're of the opinion that there's nothing more charming than a clunky old clunker of a robot...) The mother's roar was tied directly into the sound system so it sounded amazing. We even got to see the crew testing out the T-rex robot/puppet after the show. You could see right down into the cockpit.

There was another aspect of this show that I really liked. It wasn't all about giant robots and rubber suits. They talked about Science and Evolution, these subjects were treated as matter of fact and not glossed over in any way. I know it's a show about dinosaurs, so they probably figured anyone who was in attendance was at least interested in the subject enough to be familiar with Evolution. However, we're in the south, and I am constantly amazed by how little respect the subject gets here.

I kept thinking about how many mothers in the audience had to quickly cover their children's ears when the Narrator made a big deal about modern day birds being the direct evolutionary descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Keep it up Darwin.

Pleaseeasauce

This saturday our friends and favorite band, Pleaseeasaur, will be in town and performing at The Drunken Unicorn.

You might remember Pleaseeasaur from that time we did an animation for them. They released a 2 disc DVD on Comedy Central Records filled with videos and cartoons detailing the musical exploits of our favorite hero, Pleaseeasaur, and his managery of cartoony friends.

Hope to see you saturday night!

Pleaseeasaur @ The Drunken Unicorn Sat. Sept. 15th

Pleaseeasaur Tour Info

A poor representation of something greater.

Madeleine L'Engle, author of the classic "A Wrinkle in Time," passed away last thursday at the age of 88.

In that classic book, Madeleine L'Engle makes reference to one our most favorite theoretical mathematical shapes. The Tesseract. Also known as a hypercube, the tesseract is an imaginary projection of an ordinary 3d cube viewed in the 4th dimension. Sound complicated? It is.

In honor of her passing, physicist David Morgan explains the tesseract in this NPR video. (via boingboing)

And of course what would a post about the tesseract be without a little help from Carl Sagan. Actually, what would one of our posts be without mention of our most beloved of science persons. Here he explains the tesseract:

Voyager Turns 30

Yesterday Sept. 5th in 1977 the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Wired magazine has an awesome photo essay about Voyager.

Besides being developed by this website's patron saint, Carl Sagan, there are many other interesting things about Voyager 1.

The spacecraft was designed to take advantage of a newly developed technique for space travel called "gravity assist." It seems like common place now, but for it's time this idea was revolutionary. The spacecraft would use gravity wells produced by the planets in our solar system to slingshot itself through space. This method not only reduced the amount of fuel needed to travel the distances intended for Voyager, but would also allow the spacecraft to make the journey in 12 years instead of 30!

The timing of Voyager was critical. A planetary event would occur in the late 70's that would make for a perfect opportunity to use the new gravity assist technique. This event was called The Grand Tour, and it consisted of an unprecedented alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. An alignment this perfect would not recur for another 176 years!

Bolted to the outside of Voyager is the now famous "Golden Record."

The Record was designed by Carl Sagan, with elements drawn by Jon Lomberg, an artist whose work is inspired by astronomy. The record also contains 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earthlings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

Here is Jimmy Carter's Presidential message to the cosmos:

"We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some -- perhaps many -- may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."

Aaaaaaaaaaapple!

Apple held a press conference today to announce a revamping of their popular iPod music player. Tis' the Season!

Lot's of cool new iPods with cool new features to stuff into your holiday stockings. The iPod Nano has gotten smaller and a bit wider to accommodate it's new, bigger video screen. The iPod Classic has expanded it's storage space to 160GIGs. That's crazy! And it's still smaller than the original iPod we got way back when, it was 10GIGs!

Steve also announced the iPod Touch. It's an iPhone without the phone. It does everything the iPhone does except make calls, comes with wifi, built in browser, and a new wifi iTunes store that you can buy songs from directly from the iPod.

Our Beloved iPhone was not forgotten at this keynote. The iPhone will be getting the Wifi iTunes Store on the next software update, sweet. We'll also be getting custom ringtones that can be purchased (for an extra $1 beyond the song price... Boo) and then edited directly in iTunes.

Then Steve drops the big bomb.

The iPhone now costs $399
In two small months, the price of the iPhone has dropped by $200!!!!!!
*room begins to spin*
*pukes, passes out*

OK... I'm back. Yeah, that made me a little queazy. Sure, we just paid the full price for our phone 2 months ago. But we said all along that this was not a decision we made based on logic and reason, we are suckers for Apple crap. We paid for the privilege of having the phone the day it was released. Yes, I agree with you, stop yelling at me. However, Instead of shipping a whole new improved "version 2" of the iPhone, as many predicted, Apple has decided to simply bring the price down to a reasonable bracket.

This is because the phone is so freaking perfect. I know because I DON'T have the $200 to prove it.

Overdrift: Stage 2 [Teaser]

There's more the the multi-dimensional story of drift racing and dinosaurs.

Teaser Trailer:

Previously, the first installment of Overdrift:

Who's Johnny?

I guess I am... for now at least.

Curt Holman is kind enough to ask me a few questions for our local free newspaper The Creative Loafing.

Questions like:

What's your regular character as a puppeteer?
My character's name is "Lil' Tamo the Robot." Officially his job is to be the snarky straight man to Phineas J. Monkey's goofy clowning. But really it's just an excuse for Lil' Tamo to make jokes specifically for the parents who bring their kids to Uncle Grampa. No child has ever laughed at a Full Metal Jacket joke. But hey, who doesn't love a sarcastic robot who makes semiobscure movie references?

Walking with Darwin

We recently went with some friends to see the live puppet show "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Phillips Arena. When I say puppets... I mean three story tall, life size robot monsters. They were awesome.

The Dinosaurs ranged in size from little newborn dinosaur hand puppets to man sized suits for the Velociraptors (very awesome) even all the way up to a huge motorized Brachiosaurus. The "drivable" dinosaurs had a slim pod under their bellies were a puppeteer would sit to operate the giant puppet. They actually walked freely around the stage, that was the most impressive part.

The two Dinosaurs with the most personality were by far the crowd pleasing mother Tyrannosaurus Rex and it's baby. The offspring was another man sized suit. These were a great touch, their natural fluid movement made the minimal clunkiness of the giant robots a lot more palatable. (Even though we're of the opinion that there's nothing more charming than a clunky old clunker of a robot...) The mother's roar was tied directly into the sound system so it sounded amazing. We even got to see the crew testing out the T-rex robot/puppet after the show. You could see right down into the cockpit.

There was another aspect of this show that I really liked. It wasn't all about giant robots and rubber suits. They talked about Science and Evolution, these subjects were treated as matter of fact and not glossed over in any way. I know it's a show about dinosaurs, so they probably figured anyone who was in attendance was at least interested in the subject enough to be familiar with Evolution. However, we're in the south, and I am constantly amazed by how little respect the subject gets here.

I kept thinking about how many mothers in the audience had to quickly cover their children's ears when the Narrator made a big deal about modern day birds being the direct evolutionary descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Keep it up Darwin.

Pleaseeasauce

This saturday our friends and favorite band, Pleaseeasaur, will be in town and performing at The Drunken Unicorn.

You might remember Pleaseeasaur from that time we did an animation for them. They released a 2 disc DVD on Comedy Central Records filled with videos and cartoons detailing the musical exploits of our favorite hero, Pleaseeasaur, and his managery of cartoony friends.

Hope to see you saturday night!

Pleaseeasaur @ The Drunken Unicorn Sat. Sept. 15th

Pleaseeasaur Tour Info

A poor representation of something greater.

Madeleine L'Engle, author of the classic "A Wrinkle in Time," passed away last thursday at the age of 88.

In that classic book, Madeleine L'Engle makes reference to one our most favorite theoretical mathematical shapes. The Tesseract. Also known as a hypercube, the tesseract is an imaginary projection of an ordinary 3d cube viewed in the 4th dimension. Sound complicated? It is.

In honor of her passing, physicist David Morgan explains the tesseract in this NPR video. (via boingboing)

And of course what would a post about the tesseract be without a little help from Carl Sagan. Actually, what would one of our posts be without mention of our most beloved of science persons. Here he explains the tesseract:

Voyager Turns 30

Yesterday Sept. 5th in 1977 the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Wired magazine has an awesome photo essay about Voyager.

Besides being developed by this website's patron saint, Carl Sagan, there are many other interesting things about Voyager 1.

The spacecraft was designed to take advantage of a newly developed technique for space travel called "gravity assist." It seems like common place now, but for it's time this idea was revolutionary. The spacecraft would use gravity wells produced by the planets in our solar system to slingshot itself through space. This method not only reduced the amount of fuel needed to travel the distances intended for Voyager, but would also allow the spacecraft to make the journey in 12 years instead of 30!

The timing of Voyager was critical. A planetary event would occur in the late 70's that would make for a perfect opportunity to use the new gravity assist technique. This event was called The Grand Tour, and it consisted of an unprecedented alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. An alignment this perfect would not recur for another 176 years!

Bolted to the outside of Voyager is the now famous "Golden Record."

The Record was designed by Carl Sagan, with elements drawn by Jon Lomberg, an artist whose work is inspired by astronomy. The record also contains 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earthlings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

Here is Jimmy Carter's Presidential message to the cosmos:

"We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some -- perhaps many -- may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."

Aaaaaaaaaaapple!

Apple held a press conference today to announce a revamping of their popular iPod music player. Tis' the Season!

Lot's of cool new iPods with cool new features to stuff into your holiday stockings. The iPod Nano has gotten smaller and a bit wider to accommodate it's new, bigger video screen. The iPod Classic has expanded it's storage space to 160GIGs. That's crazy! And it's still smaller than the original iPod we got way back when, it was 10GIGs!

Steve also announced the iPod Touch. It's an iPhone without the phone. It does everything the iPhone does except make calls, comes with wifi, built in browser, and a new wifi iTunes store that you can buy songs from directly from the iPod.

Our Beloved iPhone was not forgotten at this keynote. The iPhone will be getting the Wifi iTunes Store on the next software update, sweet. We'll also be getting custom ringtones that can be purchased (for an extra $1 beyond the song price... Boo) and then edited directly in iTunes.

Then Steve drops the big bomb.

The iPhone now costs $399
In two small months, the price of the iPhone has dropped by $200!!!!!!
*room begins to spin*
*pukes, passes out*

OK... I'm back. Yeah, that made me a little queazy. Sure, we just paid the full price for our phone 2 months ago. But we said all along that this was not a decision we made based on logic and reason, we are suckers for Apple crap. We paid for the privilege of having the phone the day it was released. Yes, I agree with you, stop yelling at me. However, Instead of shipping a whole new improved "version 2" of the iPhone, as many predicted, Apple has decided to simply bring the price down to a reasonable bracket.

This is because the phone is so freaking perfect. I know because I DON'T have the $200 to prove it.

Overdrift: Stage 2 [Teaser]

There's more the the multi-dimensional story of drift racing and dinosaurs.

Teaser Trailer:

Previously, the first installment of Overdrift:

Who's Johnny?

I guess I am... for now at least.

Curt Holman is kind enough to ask me a few questions for our local free newspaper The Creative Loafing.

Questions like:

What's your regular character as a puppeteer?
My character's name is "Lil' Tamo the Robot." Officially his job is to be the snarky straight man to Phineas J. Monkey's goofy clowning. But really it's just an excuse for Lil' Tamo to make jokes specifically for the parents who bring their kids to Uncle Grampa. No child has ever laughed at a Full Metal Jacket joke. But hey, who doesn't love a sarcastic robot who makes semiobscure movie references?

Walking with Darwin

We recently went with some friends to see the live puppet show "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Phillips Arena. When I say puppets... I mean three story tall, life size robot monsters. They were awesome.

The Dinosaurs ranged in size from little newborn dinosaur hand puppets to man sized suits for the Velociraptors (very awesome) even all the way up to a huge motorized Brachiosaurus. The "drivable" dinosaurs had a slim pod under their bellies were a puppeteer would sit to operate the giant puppet. They actually walked freely around the stage, that was the most impressive part.

The two Dinosaurs with the most personality were by far the crowd pleasing mother Tyrannosaurus Rex and it's baby. The offspring was another man sized suit. These were a great touch, their natural fluid movement made the minimal clunkiness of the giant robots a lot more palatable. (Even though we're of the opinion that there's nothing more charming than a clunky old clunker of a robot...) The mother's roar was tied directly into the sound system so it sounded amazing. We even got to see the crew testing out the T-rex robot/puppet after the show. You could see right down into the cockpit.

There was another aspect of this show that I really liked. It wasn't all about giant robots and rubber suits. They talked about Science and Evolution, these subjects were treated as matter of fact and not glossed over in any way. I know it's a show about dinosaurs, so they probably figured anyone who was in attendance was at least interested in the subject enough to be familiar with Evolution. However, we're in the south, and I am constantly amazed by how little respect the subject gets here.

I kept thinking about how many mothers in the audience had to quickly cover their children's ears when the Narrator made a big deal about modern day birds being the direct evolutionary descendants of the Dinosaurs.

Keep it up Darwin.

Pleaseeasauce

This saturday our friends and favorite band, Pleaseeasaur, will be in town and performing at The Drunken Unicorn.

You might remember Pleaseeasaur from that time we did an animation for them. They released a 2 disc DVD on Comedy Central Records filled with videos and cartoons detailing the musical exploits of our favorite hero, Pleaseeasaur, and his managery of cartoony friends.

Hope to see you saturday night!

Pleaseeasaur @ The Drunken Unicorn Sat. Sept. 15th

Pleaseeasaur Tour Info

A poor representation of something greater.

Madeleine L'Engle, author of the classic "A Wrinkle in Time," passed away last thursday at the age of 88.

In that classic book, Madeleine L'Engle makes reference to one our most favorite theoretical mathematical shapes. The Tesseract. Also known as a hypercube, the tesseract is an imaginary projection of an ordinary 3d cube viewed in the 4th dimension. Sound complicated? It is.

In honor of her passing, physicist David Morgan explains the tesseract in this NPR video. (via boingboing)

And of course what would a post about the tesseract be without a little help from Carl Sagan. Actually, what would one of our posts be without mention of our most beloved of science persons. Here he explains the tesseract:

Voyager Turns 30

Yesterday Sept. 5th in 1977 the Voyager 1 spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Wired magazine has an awesome photo essay about Voyager.

Besides being developed by this website's patron saint, Carl Sagan, there are many other interesting things about Voyager 1.

The spacecraft was designed to take advantage of a newly developed technique for space travel called "gravity assist." It seems like common place now, but for it's time this idea was revolutionary. The spacecraft would use gravity wells produced by the planets in our solar system to slingshot itself through space. This method not only reduced the amount of fuel needed to travel the distances intended for Voyager, but would also allow the spacecraft to make the journey in 12 years instead of 30!

The timing of Voyager was critical. A planetary event would occur in the late 70's that would make for a perfect opportunity to use the new gravity assist technique. This event was called The Grand Tour, and it consisted of an unprecedented alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. An alignment this perfect would not recur for another 176 years!

Bolted to the outside of Voyager is the now famous "Golden Record."

The Record was designed by Carl Sagan, with elements drawn by Jon Lomberg, an artist whose work is inspired by astronomy. The record also contains 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, and thunder, and animal sounds, including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earthlings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

Here is Jimmy Carter's Presidential message to the cosmos:

"We cast this message into the cosmos... Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some -- perhaps many -- may have inhabited planets and space faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: We are trying to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of Galactic Civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe."

Aaaaaaaaaaapple!

Apple held a press conference today to announce a revamping of their popular iPod music player. Tis' the Season!

Lot's of cool new iPods with cool new features to stuff into your holiday stockings. The iPod Nano has gotten smaller and a bit wider to accommodate it's new, bigger video screen. The iPod Classic has expanded it's storage space to 160GIGs. That's crazy! And it's still smaller than the original iPod we got way back when, it was 10GIGs!

Steve also announced the iPod Touch. It's an iPhone without the phone. It does everything the iPhone does except make calls, comes with wifi, built in browser, and a new wifi iTunes store that you can buy songs from directly from the iPod.

Our Beloved iPhone was not forgotten at this keynote. The iPhone will be getting the Wifi iTunes Store on the next software update, sweet. We'll also be getting custom ringtones that can be purchased (for an extra $1 beyond the song price... Boo) and then edited directly in iTunes.

Then Steve drops the big bomb.

The iPhone now costs $399
In two small months, the price of the iPhone has dropped by $200!!!!!!
*room begins to spin*
*pukes, passes out*

OK... I'm back. Yeah, that made me a little queazy. Sure, we just paid the full price for our phone 2 months ago. But we said all along that this was not a decision we made based on logic and reason, we are suckers for Apple crap. We paid for the privilege of having the phone the day it was released. Yes, I agree with you, stop yelling at me. However, Instead of shipping a whole new improved "version 2" of the iPhone, as many predicted, Apple has decided to simply bring the price down to a reasonable bracket.

This is because the phone is so freaking perfect. I know because I DON'T have the $200 to prove it.

Overdrift: Stage 2 [Teaser]

There's more the the multi-dimensional story of drift racing and dinosaurs.

Teaser Trailer:

Previously, the first installment of Overdrift: