I’m practicing rotoscoping (think ‘a scanner darkly’) at the moment. I’m terrible (my drawing skills have slumped since age 9) but getting better. So far I’ve animated a hand and a tap. Luckily for me I shot some slightly more engaging footage after that or I suspect I would have gone mad.

I noticed, in the leap from a point-and-shoot camera’s video function to a handy-cam, the invention of mini DV tapes which surprised me because I quite primitively expect all image and film equipment to use an SD card (luckily our media department comes with some long-haired and technical resident types who are lifesavers). DV tapes remind me a bit of mini-disks, which were peculiar and abysmal things, neither of which stopped me nagging my Mother to buy some so I could make mixes, which were in turn also abysmal.

I like this rotoscoped video. Kids are so informative.

I made some candles recently. They didn’t require a massive attention span, and the internet told me I could use yogurt pots as molds, which pretty much sold it for me.

It was lots of fun. I suppose these have turned out to be one of the “well they’re ugly as hell, but they’re mine and I love them” things. They’re probably not very nice for you but I love my little blue and white-ish candles. They’ve been sitting around looking very pretty and I’ve only just braved some terrible fear that lighting them will break them (by break I mean I’ll have fundamentally made them wrong and they’ll explode).

I’ve written up how to make them over at Bitchbuzz.

As for today I’m beginning a long slow fight with a pair of knitting needles. I’m using happy red thread to keep my spirit up.

I am enjoying illustrated tweets today. Lovely and peculiar illustrations by Katie Vernon of tweets plucked from the public timeline. Of particular note are the father-like hairy legged animals; my father is made of 90% beard and had some glasses exactly like these in the 80s. (He was a trend setter, and is still rocking the look today.) Anyway these are ace.

Yeah, okay it’s really old.  But everytime I watch it I love it a little bit more.  More UK venues please Mr Etienne de Crecy, and bring those nice shiny cubes along too.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4697849]

This is a really good idea executed brilliantly. “A real human interface” – basically a human in a box being a computer. Not just any any old human; one with thick glasses and a spinning rainbow loading/freezing circle so you know it’s a mac.

Am I sold because it uses cardboard props? Not solely. It’s got nice style (the hand-pushed loading bars, the small bits of ham floating around, nice use of selotape, and silly nice details like the windcatcher), and I like that it pretends to be interactive, even if isn’t.

By the clever people at multitouch-barcelona.com