I don't care who you are, that's funny right there!

This is one of the greatest web videos I've seen recently, and I just had to share it.

EDIT: The original video disappeared, so here's a link to the same video on YouTube (in case it goes away again, it's a video of Obama and McCain having a dance off. It was done by digitally overlaying the candidates' faces over those of dancers. It was really well done):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMpcv2t6Er8

That's some pretty slick work, pasting the candidates heads onto the dancers bodies like that. And I love the expressions they picked for them, they actually fit well with the dance styles of each.

Man oh man. Major kudos.



...wait, did I really just quote Larry the Cable Guy in the title? Crap...

1st Photo Composite: Zombies!

I haven't mentioned it on this page yet, but I've recently gone back to school. I've had an Associate's Degree for almost eight years now, and in that time I've learned two things: I need a Bachelor's Degree to get where I want to be, and I don't like the field I'm in. Don't get me wrong, drafting is fine (and I'm good at it), but the career path ahead of me has me becoming an engineer, or a project manager, and I simply don't want either of those for myself.

So I decided to go back to school, but not just any school, I wanted to go to art school. When I graduated from High School I had a choice, art or drafting. I went with the safe choice then, and I don't think it was the right choice. Oh well, lesson learned, so this time I'm doing what I want to do. I'm two weeks into my first quarter at the Art Institute of Atlanta in the Media and Animation program, and I'm loving it. I went with animation because it neatly combines my interest in art, with my love of computers, and my desire to be a story teller. Who knows if I'll become an animator, but it seems like a good place to start. After all, several people I admire greatly started out as animators (Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, and Brad Bird come to mind).

My classes for this quarter are English II (I placed out of English I due to my prior degree), and Digital Photographic Production, which is basically an intermediate Photoshop class (also because of my previous education, I took a Photoshop class to finish off my degree). I just completed my first photographic composite, and I'm thrilled with the results:



That's actually five photos combined into one. One of the background (a Catholic cemetery in South Portland, Maine), one of Eric (on the left, from his wedding reception actually), and one of myself that I took just for this. Photos four and five are close-ups of my teeth, which allowed me to create the torn cheek. My favorite part, by far, is Eric's shirt. It's amazing what you can do with the burn tool.

I'm going to be re-doing my hub site (www.jclarkonline.com) as a gallery or my work as I progress through school. I might be making some big changes here as well, but we'll see.

Now I can't wait until Thursday to see what everyone thinks of this, and to see if anyone manages to upstage me this time (like they did for our first in class exercise, darn it).

Let's see how long it takes the PC makers to copy this one...

Whoa. The new Macbooks and especially the new Macbook Pros are insane.

Here's what excites me about these:

The track pad is huge, supports multi touch gestures, and the whole thing is a physical button (kind of like the "click wheel" on the iPods). It's also made of glass, which is odd, but I suppose that would make them durable (glass is actually very tough in the right application), and judging by my iPod Touch it'll feel nice when doing the gestures. I've actually been saying, for years, that they should mount the track pad on top of the button. Seriously. I like the big buttons that Apple's laptops have had for some time (hunting for the tiny ones on some PC laptops is quite annoying by comparison), but of course a larger track pad would be a good thing, so it seemed like a no brainer to me. I'm guessing it's the iPhone's touch screen technology that finally make this feasible.

The new graphics cards sound great, which will help with things like Photoshop (when I can finally afford one). I don't think I've mentioned this here yet, but I'm an art student now, and Photoshop (and other programs like Flash, Illustrator, and eventually even Maya) is going to be a big part of that. Eventually I'd like to get a laptop that can handle all of that (my trusty old iBook, alas, can not), and these are a step in the right direction.

The new manufacturing process is amazing. I can't be the only person who's held a Macbook Air and marveled at how light and, well, solid they feel. The fit and finish is unparalleled by anything else on the market. Now that's been brought to the Macbooks and Macbook Pros, and I couldn't be happier. My only complaint about the last three Apple laptops I've owned is their fit and finish, which looks nice, but doesn't feel as solid as I'd like. Problem solved, from the sounds of it.

Finally, the prices. As far as I can tell (the store is down now, and the news reports are a bit frantic and off the cuff at the moment) nothing has gone up in price, and a few things have gone down. There's still a plastic Macbook that sells for $1000 now, so there's a cheaper option even if it doesn't have the great new fit and finish. And it sounds like the $1300 Macbook might be just what I'm looking for. A follow up to the 12" Powerbooks (I had one once... it didn't end well, through no fault of Apple or the laptop itself). Booyah!

Of course, all of this will have to be confirmed once the store is back up, and as usual early adopters should beware. Luckily (?) I won't be able to afford a new laptop for some time, so I'm covered!

Shouldn't a "Moderator" be a Moderate?

I've been looking forward to tomorrow's Vice Presidential Debate for some time now. Personally, I'm hoping that Biden shows Palin for the know-nothing she is (I'm pretty sure that I could beat her in a debate). Unfortunately, there's a new wrinkle that might spoil all my fun.

Gwen Ifill is going to be moderating. Gwen Ifill is also openly pro-Obama. Rats.

In this case it doesn't matter that I agree with her, what matters is that she has an obvious bias at all. Even if she performs perfectly, and with absolute fairness, this opens the debates up to doubt. It also gives anyone wanting to cast stones after the fact a target.

I know that Ifill is a competent and respected journalist, and I'm sure she'll do fine, but couldn't they have found someone who won't raise such an obvious question mark?