Yahoo vs. Google

I have mentioned how Google modifies their logos for celebrating special events, yet I just noticed that Yahoo does it sometimes as well. Here it is a Halloween standoff.

Its in the Game

I am not one usually for politics, yet I would like to see Obama become the President of the USA. It would be good to see the first black president in the US and CTU come into the action. I bring this up as this year their seems to be large amount of American politics in the news, more than I can remember anytime previous [I might just be more aware now :)]. One story I read this morning said that political advertising has proved itself to be in the game.

How the Obama ad appears in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise.

In other US news, one of my favorite DJs (DJ Z-Trip) had some parties to change. He released his mixes to the public along with some pics. Listen here http://downloads.djztrip.com/Z-Trip_ObamaMix.zip (84mbs). A mix of hip hop and other pop songs with a political bent. Some nice Bush outakes.

From the website:

Recently, Shepard Fairey and I threw some fundraisers for the Obama campaign. We called them "The Party for Change". (If you don't know who Shepard is--among many other things--he is the one responsible for the image on the right).

I've been wanting to put the mix I've been doing at these shows online, in hopes of spreading the word to people who need to hear it most. So, here it is:

http://djztrip.com/obama/

I encourage you to download it and pass it along to anyone you think should hear it. Feel free to burn copies, share it with friends, family, co-workers, strangers, and especially anyone you know is on the fence about this election. I'm also putting out a radio friendly version, in case anyone wants to broadcast it.

Please share the message. Educate those who may not know what is really going on. There is still time.

If you, or anyone you know, isn't registered to vote, I encourage you to make it a priority and fix that before it's too late. This election is WAY too important for anyone to not get involved. If you need more information on how and where to register, vote, or participate, please check the links below.

I honestly feel if we make our voices heard, this time WILL be different.

Peace,

Z-TRIP

For more Information, check out these links:

The Official Obama Campaign Site - http://barackobama.com/

MoveOn.org Political Action Group - http://moveon.org/

Rock the Vote - http://rockthevote.com/

OBEY - http://obeygiant.com/

Z-Trip News, Downloads, More - http://djztrip.com


http://downloads.djztrip.com/Z-Trip_ObamaMix.zip

Google UK

Concrete canvas

I got to watch what I think is a pretty cool documentary yesterday. It was called concrete canvas and it was about a street artist who specialised in 3d Chalk art. I have seen some of this in Melbourne before, yet nothing quite like in this show.

The show basically takes you through what the artist is thinking. It talks about the infamous Banksy and his art all over London, as well as some of the graffiti art that is under threat due to the Olympics. I was amazed at the creativity of the whole piece. I must admit when he showed me (or us the viewer) the wall and started talking about extending this here and that there I was like what? Yet after he started to put some of the sketches down between bouts of rain showers, I started to anticipate that something pretty cool was about to happen.

The art was pieced together slowly, and as time went on it was revealed what was going on, why certain things were being done. It also cut away to give the effect of time lapse. I searched on You Tube for the video and only came across this one (see below). Here are some photos off flickr and a web search that I was able to find to see the finished product.

You can view other works by Julian Beever here.

Angels and Demons

Today, the artwork for Google is based on the large Hadron Collider. Now I have no idea what this thing does yet it sounds impressive. I read in paper today that we should not be messing around with this thing anyway. After I read Angels and Demons, I found the name CERN everywhere and prior to that book, I had never even heard of CERN. Now I like my cocoon yet what these guys do is pretty out there stuff. What I can gather is that they are trying to create a universe under the Alps. I think this is probably not the best place for such a thing, yet I really am clueless about creating universes and such. I am reassured by Steven Hawking's comment that it is vital for the survival of humanity. I know we are in danger with global warming and the day after tomorrow world, yet that is quite far fetched from what I understood. I may have been a bit too quick there, I am already feeling a sense of doom falling on me, I just read that they are making Angels and Demons into a movie now.

GTArt

I am amazed still by the impact of the GTA series, it is everywhere. I was reloading my music to my computer and found in one of the folders this image. Clearly from GTA San Andreas, in one of the splash screens loading the game infact. Also, was reading about it in the newspaper. I feel it might be the star wars of the video game generation.

More GTA art this time from GTA San Andreas

Today's Google logo

Read all about agricultural technology in Australia here.

Google

Whenever I go to google for the first time during the day, I am always eager to see the logo. I have always noted that the logo changes, and in most cases I learn something about that day (like a day in history or youth day or something). I have been collecting a few of the logos lately so that I can see them for inspiration in design ideas (for the website and other artistic projects under planning) and share them here (dissappointned that I lost a heap when transferring data to the new computer, I dream of a simple world).

Google in Lego

To try to collect some old ones I used with "google logos (and doodles are what they are called)" and came across quite a few places to get them. There are plenty of other sites which collect the logos as well. Well I collected a bunch for the Olympics logos only to find that they are now all on that website and all together in one image below (not in order).

Beijing Olympics

And here is a video of how he does it.

Adobe Master Collection

I have been lucky enough to get a hold of the Adobe CS3 Master collection. This suite is the bomb. It has Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, Flash, and Acrobat. I have been playing around with these for a couple of hours or so and have found them to be highly addictive.

The first photo I edited in Photoshop is the box the stuff came in. Nothing really new has happened in Photoshop, or it is with the features that I don't use, which appears to be most of them.

I have created some artwork for my thesis highlighting the hypothesis that I am testing - fuel/ feed/ food. The basis of the thesis is that biofuel production is pushing up food prices, along with the current drought in Australia and the Mekong rice basin (An Giang and provincial friends). I used some of the microsoft clipart photos and modified them in Illustrator, as trying to create my own images seemed to difficult at present.

For some reason all the colours changed and labels disappeared

I have also messed around with the flash tutorial yet haven't included that here as I don't know how to put it into the webpage. Lastly, I mucked around with premier and put this together in about 20 minutes. There are tonnes of features yet to be explored yet I feel like I will be making Star Wars transitions in my videos really soon. The quality of the uploaded video is not so hot as I had to reduce the file size from 220 mbs to less than 100 (I got to excited and dropped it to 7mb). Things to improve include video matching soundtrack smoothing between videos. I think it has a lot of potential and definately was fun to play around with and eager to do a few more, once I shoot some more videos.

Driving around Melb to Deep Purple ;)

I really got to get some books as the suite came with only the online help, yet until then it is experiment, experiment, experiment. Oh yeah, I need CAN BAND VIDEO.

Cartoons Part 2

I was introduced to the rut today. I was quite amused by the cartoons I read there (more are available with content not suited for here). Here are some of the more tame cartoons. The topics I chose to share are varied from pirate fashion, Pacman, James Bond, and Star Trek to reflect different themes discussed in the blog.

Pirate fashion

Video Games



James Bond

Star Trek

Cartoons

A while back I came across some cartoons from the climate change cartoon competition. I think the second place should have been first, and the runner up shown second. I don't quite understand the significance of the first place, then again I don't really understand political and artistic expression anyway. As they say, light does not penetrate dense wood.

Winner

Second

Third

Runner Up

More Cartoons

Life in Pictures - Degraves Lane

I usually go to get a coffee in the afternoon at a place called the quarter. It is located in a place called Degraves which is just off Flinders St and Flinders Lane opposite the best know icon in Melbourne - Flinders St Station. This place has great coffee/ chocolate and the staff are really friendly which makes it a nice highlight for the day. This poster amused me on the way one day, as I recall some late night discussions in the ER.

Photoshop Disasters

Somewhere, somehow, someplace, I came across the website Photoshop distasters. Having dabbled in the crop photo and red eye reduction features in photoshop I have found myself an expert in photo touchups with photoshop. I have been proven wrong. There is a whole bunch of things out there that I can do. Here are 3 of photos from this week I found interesting.

No matter how photogenic I am I will never look as good as the red, yellow, and purple clothed girls.

I am confused, two bodies, how many legs?

Great! A book that can teach me to make freakish photos with photoshop.

Corporate world

Today I found was going through an art site to looking for pics and I was surprised by these more serious art pieces. I couldn't help feel that their really is such a focus on material possesions and super achievement, that people have forgotten what it means to live your life. One day we will all wake up like Lester and wonder what the hell happened. Maybe it is because I recently watched American Beauty and feel reflective. I don't know :)

Anyway here is some thought provoking art.

Its not what you think

Well at the end I just started to laugh as it is quite amusing, how wicked my thoughts are.

Whoa!

Last Thursday night I was invited to share my experiences in the Mekong Delta. I had a good time however I was curious as to why every story I told started with after drinking x amount of y, then main point of the story. I am sure I did more than just drink in my time in Vietnam. Well anyway Friday was hell, because the night before I drank too much wine. The head was throbbing all day and my concentration easily departed from the task at hand.

Trying to find some photos of the crocs that escpaed in Hue and filling the flooded town with fear, I want to offer Tyler some advice if he meets one. I want to let him know about how we handle crocs down here below the equator. Now you have all seen The Crocodile Hunter, and I just want you all to know that it is a little Hollywoodised. You don't need to go to the bush to find them, they are in all the cities here. Anyway, also when we catch them we cut them up and eat them or make boots out of them a la Crocodile Dundee.

Sometimes we are not so lucky and the croc gets to eat the steaks.









Anyway I came across this picture which took my breath away with how amazing it is. I found it like one of those pictures on perspectives where you look and see an old woman for about 10 minutes then bam! you find the young woman and the old woman left the building.

I really am not sure if this is a true rock formation or just some photoshop trickery, yet I like it. Just in case you are having trouble with seeing it below is the bam! factor.

Retired

After watching some videos on You Tube using Adobe Illustrator, I have been playing around with my copy. The videos made it look so easy, and at times manipulating the artwork was quite frustrating. Other times I was inspired.

Since I was no longer far from the Great Southern Land, I thought it might be good to update the logo. I had a discussion with Tyler for some names and the best we came up with was Standing on the Great Southern Land. I didn’t think that was that good so I let the unconscious run wild and came up with Under the Southern Cross. I know you can be under the Southern Cross (Crux if you’re an astrologist) on many continents, yet is has quite a symbolic meaning in Australia, check the flag.

I had this picture of Melbourne looking westwards from the Rialto Tower at night and thought that would make a good backdrop for my new logo. I sat at home and designed a little sketch of what I wanted on paper and then tried to illustrate it. As I was working through on the computer I could see what I wanted was not going to work out so I changed it midway through and came upon the design that you now see.

I had a bit of luck though. With the font I used a brush tool write the characters and then accidentally clicked another button and saw that the font turned out better that way. I was impressed so I left it that way and added it the backdrop. After lots of messing around I finished and it is time to hang up the old logo and add the new.

Officially out of service for a while

Welcome to the team

Bonded!

A while ago while Tyler, Hendrik, and I where still in Long Xuyen we challenged Tyler's Photoshop skills. We asked him to make some photos of people. I got James Bonded. I came across that photo today and thought I might share it with the world. It brings back a lot of good memories, about partying in the ER in LX.

As I stand now, while it was possible to be that popular with the girls in Vietnam, it ain't happening to me here yet!

Random thoughts about work

Sometimes at work when I think about what I need to do to get a promotion ( a little premature, I know). I also think about how the field of economics is just too constrained within its little structure. For example, I was reading a blog about environmental economics and saw that the author was rejected from the journal he submitted the paper to. The problem was that the author didn't use an optimising model of behaviour - such as to maximise happiness (utility) or profits, etc. I am against this sort of thinking personally, as most of us in the real world know that when you go to the shop or restaurant you don't have perfect information to make an optimal choice so we do the best we can (I know it can seem like optimisation). Other choices are made much in the same way.

Some times to get ideas about an optimisation paper I might search the Internet newspapers so that I can something off the wall. One such site is weird news asia, with a tonne of interesting reads. Check out the picture below from China, what was this guy optimising when he was constructing his house? I like music a lot, yet not that much. Perhaps if I was playing an instrument it might suit me more. Anyway, I am confident that once he plants a garden it would be a gem of a house. Definitely a talking point.

Scrolling down the page I came to a picture that pretty much sums up academic economics as I think it stands.

The Artshow

Eric, Jeff, and I finally got to see the art show that I talked about previously. The art show was a lot smaller than I thought it would be, yet it had a roomy feel to it. I found it easy to see Tinh’s work as he had showed me previously on his phone. I was amazed at how different it looks real compared to the pictures. You do miss some detail. I took quite a lot of pics yet I just put the pieces that I really liked here after a picture of the artists. Tinh's piece is the first one. It was a shame he was out of town as he could have explained his inspiration to us over a few drinks. Enjoy!