Hey everybody! Long time, no blog.

Things have been crazy around here as of late, but now that it is spring break, I have one week without OLLIE gigs to catch up on everything that I have been neglecting. That means four short movies to edit, some DVDs to create, and a website to build. We'll see how much I actually get done.

In other news, I managed to put together another Kirsten Academy class (after nearly 3 months without one). The topic this time was stop-motion animation! Check out the movies we made here. We used a program called iStopMotion, which can be purchased online for about $40. Recently, however, I was talking with Andrew of YVXN/NYMAP fame, and he recommended a program called FrameThief, which is actually free!

Comment from danielle martin on March 27, 2007 - 12:21am

Hey Gariet,

Good to hear you're getting a breather.

Did you catch the stop motion animation we made with the new CTC VISTA mascot, the robot at a MA area meeting a couple months ago? (Did you get yours?) Julie edited it and posted it on her blog.

I'm SO in for a robot inspired animation show-off!

-Danielle

Comment from gariet cowin on March 27, 2007 - 1:20pm

I can't believe how many robots you have! This is just like when I was a kid, and I could only afford 1 stormtrooper figure. And my friend Matt had a whole army of them! I want more robots!!!

And yeah, I got the robot. And it arrived on my birthday, so that was pretty sweet. I thought it was a birthday robot at first, actually. But I guess everybody got them.

 

I've been playing around with tag and word clouds lately. Clouds are basically interesting (and esthetically appealing, in my opinion) ways to visualize the prevalence of words. Words that are more prevalent show up larger/darker than more rare ones. Oftentimes you will see Tag Clouds which show how many posts there are in certain categories (we have one on the CTC VISTA Digest).

Comment from AJ McGuire on March 9, 2007 - 3:56pm

Its ON.

 

-AJ

Imagine if you could run Windows XP, Mac OS X, and multiple versions of Linux on the same computer.  That's already a reality--you just have to reboot to switch between them.  Now imagine that you could run all these operating systems at the same time on the same computer.  You could run MS Word 2003 at the same time you're running Safari, all while programming in Eclipse.  It's possible.  The technology that makes it possible: Xen.

Comment from cheryl jerozal on January 31, 2007 - 8:37pm

but eclipse is available for many platforms

Comment from John Miller on February 1, 2007 - 3:14pm

My goof! My intent was to pick something that's somewhat well-known and associated with Linux. Perhaps the GIMP would have been better, but it seems like most of the best F/OSS programs these days are cross-platform.

Good Morning,

Well, the sun is rising here in Michigan on chilly Friday. My computer is now by the window, so I can look out on the sky, the trees, the road, and the apartment complex office.

While at the PSO I wore a black t-shrit that said Recoil on it. Recoil is the name of a local free magazine printed on newsprint. On the front is a magazine devoted to local events and advertising, articles about and interviews of bands (local or those coming to town) and reviews of CD's local and national. On the back is a satire magazine of fake and funny news articles a la "The Onion". 

I was wearing this shirt when we took the big group photo. That photo that greats us when we all when we click on"vista blogs". The word Recoil has been removed from my shirt. I'm guessing someone thought that it was a possible copyright issue or something. But I hardly think a local Grand Rapids magazine will be suing AmeriCorp for use of the logo.

Comment from Paul Hansen on October 11, 2006 - 11:23am

Thank you Richard for trying to stur-up some controversy but, no, it was not censorship (I didn't know or care what recoil was) that lead me to remove the word from your shirt... and it was not concern for some copyright issue... it was *aesthetics* that made me do it. I just couldn't stand the sight of the word.

If it really matters to you, I would be willing to put it back... maybe in gray rather than white letters...

-Paul

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on October 11, 2006 - 1:26pm

No, that's okay Paul. No biggie.

It is probably better from an aesthetic point of view.

I hope my blog wasn't irritating or out of line in some way.

Peace,

Richard

Comment from Paul Hansen on October 12, 2006 - 12:08pm

Richard,
Your blog entry was in no way out of line. If it was, I would have simply deleted it.
-PH

Comment from Richard T. Anderson on October 13, 2006 - 3:59pm

Good to know.

=O_O=

Oh my. Now that's the power.

 

Check out the video of VISTAS at this summer's CTCNet Conference.