Francis’ Weblog

I’m doing some work for Jawbone and they have just released there bluetooth mobile headset in Europe yesterday. But I have so say its quite an amazing bit of kit! The noise suppression on it is something else! They have a demo on their website of what a call is like and it really is like that. I was talking to a mate in my house then walked outside into my car and then down a busy local motorway and I asked him if he could hear my car and he still thought I was in my house! anyway kinda cool, anyway check it out…

Escape have announced a 100% free course funded by SkillSet. Not only that you get paid UK minimum wage through the period of the training, you get 4 weeks work experience at a post production house (oh and you get paid for that as well)! I think you’d be stupid not to apply. The course runs from 11th August for 18 weeks and then the 4 weeks in industry. More info can be found on Escapes website.

They have also just launched a competition to win £10k worth of free 3D/CG VFX training! Its in conjunction with Channel 4 and you can find more information at the 4Talent website. All you have to do is write in 50 words or less why you love 3D animation, what you aspire to do in the future and how the Escape course will help you get there!

Ok now this is one hell of a neat keyboard! and I want one! (see if I can persuade my boss!) . The basic concept is that you can change the keyboard keys and say what image or video you want to display on each key. Its been released next month! they have been promising it for.. well forever but now they are shipping it. They have three versions depending on how many active keys you want. The most expensive being ALL 102 active keys which is around £976. But what you can do is buy the keyboard with just one active key and then buy the extra active keys over time. So you can buy the keyboard for £288, with the spacebar being active… and thats about it.
Maybe a bit expensive for me, but very cool!

More info http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

A mate sent me this. Really quite amazing robotics!

Hey guys & girls,
Escape have just put up an online questionnaire and if you fill it out you are put into the pot to win ANY escape studios course!

I copied and pasted this from their site…

“Escape Studios are offering you a chance to win a course.

The winner, who will be announced in one week’s time on Monday 9th July,
will be offered the course of their choice at Escape Studios absolutley free!

That doesn’t leave much time so if you’re interested you’d better get a move on!

To enter the prize draw all you need to do is fill out the questionnaire that can be found on the
following link.”

http://www.escapestudios.com/news_07.php?id=36

Google’s new Street View, a new Google Maps feature that uses vehicle-cameras to take 360-degree street level views of major urban areas, captured all sorts of urban emphemera in the process from tabbies in windows to red light runners. You can now see photos of the street before you walk down it… one woman asked for a photo of her house to be removed because you could actually see inside her house and clearly see at cat sitting on a table.

Now a competition has been setup by Weird to find the best snapshots. Highlights include a guy taking a leak, the actual Google Van taking the 360-degree photos but my all time favoruite a photo of 524 Haight St San Francisco, and the google van exceeding the speed limit! Classic!

I haven’t found any UK street photos but guessing this may not happen for a while due to tighter controls on privacy.

We received bad news last week. Tom Donnelly, the trainer that taught myself and Mike snowboard instructing died during the week, the day after his fathers funeral. He was the BASI examiner who I was training with most of the season in Wanaka.

I never forget when during heli-boarding in the Harris mountains in south island. The guide (a skier!) said that a ledge was fine to jump off, he ollied off it and found it to be a huge jump. It ended in his puffer jacked de-puffering, the cracking of his mobile and the destruction of an iPod… he always knew where the best hits were at TC, even down runs you’d been down 1000s times before and never even noticed!

He asked not to send flowers but to give money to his favourite charity (Angela Donnelly, 13 Harberton Park, Belfast, BT9 6TW).

You’ll be missed man!

I’ve uploaded the Heli-boarding out-takes from the 2006 Rookie Academy heliboarding trip…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkIj1lyNysU

They’ve gone on sale!!! yupiee! You can now buy early bird Mt Ruapehu lift passes at $399, for both sides of the mountain Whakapapa (which is new zealands largest developed ski field) and Turoa. Its interesting to see the price difference to europe nearly 4.5x more to get a 3 valleys season pass, but hey its a bigger skiable area

Off to snow planet tonight for some snowboarding. Its open 365 days a year. I asked them how many people came on christmas day and they said it was totally packed out! Bizzare!

Oh in tech news McAfee FAILED the 100% virus scan at VB. Virus Bulletin tests a load of virus scanners for “100% virus detection”. They failed to detect viruses running on Vista, ironically enough Microsofts’ OneCare also failed.

Many moons ago at the start of time my Bro and me created a film… the film was for a competition. The rules were to create a film which was 60seconds in length and to do with “Lost Identity”. So we took the challenge. We did learn a lot doing the shoot… I think the main one being its impossible to create a complex storyline and fit it into 60seconds. Oh and never work with animals, children or matches.

The first is the actual 60second film and I remember having about 3 hours of other footage which made the thing make sense but we strangly couldn’t fit it into 60secs. The second is a test reel we did to try out a couple of locations and how we were going to do things…

Well you have to start somewhere!

Lost Identity

Lost Identity Test Reel