Storytelling, breaking IKEA, and a proper cup of tea.
8th April 2024
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Heads up! This newsletter is more than seven months old. Links may be out of date or lead to unexpected places, or the context may have changed. Please handle with care.
Hello! And good luck to everyone in North America who's going to try and view the total solar eclipse today: I wish you fair skies and clear roads.
As for what I'm up to? Well, after three months' sabbatical, I've actually started sending outreach messages for a couple of possible new videos and projects. I'm not sure when (or even if) they'll come to fruition, but it's been good to start working out what might come next.
As for what I'm up to? Well, after three months' sabbatical, I've actually started sending outreach messages for a couple of possible new videos and projects. I'm not sure when (or even if) they'll come to fruition, but it's been good to start working out what might come next.
More immediately, though! This week on Lateral, returning players Daniel Peake, Ruth Amos and Shawn Brown face questions about play programmes, dreary drives and captured caps.
And this week on YouTube, I've found:
- Jordan Studdard's a map for my inner child is three minutes of excellent storytelling.
Great craft, great music and sound design, great editing. And it's the sort of thing that this newsletter was made to link to: it can't be clickbaited, it can't be put into a title and thumbnail.
- Jacob Geller won the ticket lottery and visit the giant, private land art "City" in the Nevada Desert, and because he's playing by the rules, he can't show you it. What follows is a fascinating essay about authors' intentions and rights to control their work, and about "art for no-one". (Contains classical art depictions of violence and nudity.) I assume that, at some point, someone will sneak a camera or drone into City; but until then, if you'd like to see what it looks like, the New York Times was allowed to film it and the New Yorker has an interview with the artist. (Strong language.)
- I've mentioned the sodium vapor matte process in videos before: it's a sixty-year old "perfect green-screen" system that Disney invented but which never got big. Well, the Corridor Crew have recreated it, managing to recreate one of the "lost crystals"
that made it possible, with the help of one of the all-time greats of computer graphics, Paul Debevec. This is a great tribute to the visual effects artists of the past.
Around the rest of the web:
- A couple of weeks ago, I
linked to Downpour, a quick-games-on-your-phone tool. Here's another wonderful little point-and-click thing made with it: Terry Cavanagh asks you to make a proper cup of tea, and has somehow dealt with
the combinatorial explosion that might result from that.
- sirocyl, posting on Cohost, broke IKEA. Or rather, they broke the automated system that was calling them about their delivery, because it wasn't expecting an
accidentally-vengeful telco nerd with a weaponised touchtone system. The comments have good discussion about exactly what happened.
- Cream is thicker than blood is a great post from the Vittles newsletter. And it turns out to be in infrastructure story: I'd never heard about "railway milk" before!
And that's it for this week! Good luck eclipse-watching if it's for you, and good luck ignoring all the posts from North Americans if you're outside the shadow.
All the
best,
— Tom
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