Little Prick

Line version of this awesome gif.

Flickr

Started a Flickr account to house my illustrations and the odd gif that I'll be creating. Don't know why it took me so long, I've always had complaints about blogger and photobucket being shit and resizing or compressing my images, but whatevs.

File under: tablet has changed my life.

"This is Relevant to my Interests"

This is too rad to merely reblog.

Via UUIUU

Uno Moralez

I can't remember where I got this link from, but I found it again in my uncategorized bookmarks yesterday when I was bored with everything else on my computer. Having recently acquired a graphics tablet, these illustrations got me excited again.

I don't know much about the artist Uno Moralez, his livejournal page is low on text, and what is written is all in Russian, but he does seem to do quite a bit of work for different publications. I love his line work.

Twitter

I've started using Twitter, even though I originally signed up to it ages ago. I never could get into the idea of just posting the odd line about whatever. I felt more comfortable with the Tumblr format, my being more visual than textual. The reason I'm reviving the Twitter, though, is because it's getting a lot of use amongst the London bike polo crew thanks to the league (using the #lbpl tag) and it's another thing to check when I'm bored. I can't imagine I'll use it that much but I'm adding a twitter feed to the site for shits'n'giggles. If anybody has any suggestions as to who I should follow just send it my way to @AdrienneH.

Nasty Nets is Nasty

Spiritual Internet - Heaven

Heaven, Tabor Robak (2009)

(via ◕‿◕)

Bandwidth Exceeded

Never thought I'd see the day that my stupid photobucket account would run out of bandwidth. I blame the lolcat posts I made ages ago and have decided to delete them. There are enough of those damn cats floating around to not need mine, dammit!

Animated Minor Planet Orbits

One of my favourite things about the Wikimedia Commons is that they're constantly being updated, which means new animated gifs! Today's subject is Animated Minor Planet Orbits.




What I love the repetition and subtle differences. Although they are diagrams, they're very aesthetically pleasing, and could easily be viewed as abstract works. They'd even make a great collection of digital pogs!

This last one is pretty great as well, I especially love the file name - HildasOrbitWithLagrangePointsLousy.gif. I've opted to manually enlarged it here, after having developed an appreciation for clearly enlarged pixels thanks to Tom Moody.

Illustrating

So I haven't been paying much attention to the blog or the tumblr lately, since my attention has been directed mostly to bike polo and the bits of illustration jobs that it's surprisingly given me.

Illustration was something that I originally wanted to do before dropping out of OCAD and going to fine art and art history. Lately, with reality staring me in the face (in the form of an unfulfilling job in customer service), I've begun lamenting that old ambition which has grown recently with some minor jobs I got from friends.

I got to do the illustration and typesetting for a couple Bicycle Film Festival side projects - an alleycat race and the annual bike polo tournament (the ones posted here are becoming spoke cards).



Another fun project is making team logos for bike polo. I'm taking part in this winter's London Bike Polo League, as is my partner, Mark, so I got to design both our team logos. Right now, you can find a post featuring all the different team logos - there are many creatives in the community, so many of them are quite good and entertaining.


Polo Fiasco (my team)


Three Beards, One Cup

Up with creative jobs! Lets hope this is the beginning of a more interesting future (of making money).

Things I like about this image: The chance to give your computer "Freedom of Speech".

Although the potential of giving my computer freedom of speech makes me feel morally superior as enlightened liberator, I'd rather not give my computer any actual individual rights fearing a robotic uprising. Instead, I'll let it think it has "freedom" and only have it repeat my commands ... like a parrot.

(via pootee.tumblr)

Spiritual Internet - Cyclic Universe

Cyclic Universe, Robert Lorayn (2009)

Image search your birthday - 032080

Taking the Loshadka challenge.

Maxi Minis

More at literatureinminiature.co.uk.

Goya

I'm pretty sure this is awesome.

Via jbaij via Animated Gifs on Delicious.

Krist Wood Follow

Tumblr being referred to on Spirit Surfers. WWJF?

Spiritual Internet - Buddhism in GIFs

http://www.buddhaline.net/annuairedubouddhisme/gifs/ (view with picsee)

(link via Blessthismess)

EHBPC 2009

If anybody is going to be in London on the weekend of August 1st and 2nd and has nothing to do or would like to see something interesting you should come watch the European Hardcourt Bike Polo Championship. There are 40 teams coming from all over Europe, which should make for lots of exciting polo.

The two courts will be set up on Union Street just across from Borough Market (Google Maps), so stop by even if you're just in the area for a gourmet sandwich or esoteric beer. I'll be around all weekend, working on my sweet sweet tan.

Tumblr Dramr, or How Tumblarity Made Tumblr Less Good

A very interesting bit of Tumblr drama played itself out to all of those who follow Mogadonia. Recently, it was discovered that Lovegifs had been posting animated gifs without re-blogging or posting any credit, a number of which came from Mogadonia (including some original creations), and therefore unleashing his/her(?) wrath. Mogadonia has put everything together in one tidy post, though a good number of posts were made on the subject.

For those who haven't got Tumblr accounts, beyond just being a public blog, Tumblr acts as an image/post sharing community, where users can "follow" each other and thus build an expansive and continuously updated stream of material on their "dashboard". One feature that comes in really handy is the ability to "re-blog" at the click of a button. This will automatically create a kind of "quoted" blog post (that you can edit) with a digital mark that saves info like who was the original poster, who liked the post, and who re-blogged the post.

This in itself is quite good at maintaining a kind of posting integrity, where even if you choose to strip the post of back-links and previous poster comments, there will always be a link to the original poster that can be accessed by other Tumblr users.

To make things even more interesting, a new feature called the "Tumblarity" was recently added to the dashboard. From the Tumblr staff blog:

[...] we’ve been using an internal metric called “Tumblarity” to sort and filter content on the Search and Popular Content pages. Tumblarity is derived from every blog’s activity and popularity across our network.

Tumblarity is a popularity guauge that only the user themselves can see (unless they decide to publish it, and many have boasted about it) and seems to be calculated by a combination of stats that include number of posts per day, number of likes, number of re-posts and who knows what else (Tumblr doesn't actually lay out what makes up the number).

The number can fluctuate like mad, and originally had users posting about their confusion, which was probably even more confusing for "outside" readers. Initial reviews were mixed at best (there's a great one on Gawker that puts it best IMO), but the topic has more or less faded from the collective Tumblr conscious. It does, however, manage to tacitly resurface from time to time when issues such as this one come about.

Though Tumblarity may have nothing to do with Mogadonia's frustrations, having it there to remind you of how "successful" your work, taste and curatorial skills are makes "credit" that much more important. It's no longer just a matter of properly citing your sources, but also of giving "props", and though I empathise and respect an artist's copyright, I can't help but feel that a lot of this is based more in the ego trip of popularity.

I am by no means above this, I always revel when my "finds" get re-blogged or posted elsewhere, linking back to either here or my Tumblog, but one can't justifiably force themselves upon others by saying "I made this!" or "I found this!" when so little (especially when it comes to animated gifs) is ever found only once or by only one person. Part of the joy of the internet is the anonymity and reproducibility - success is when a gif spreads like a virus and can no longer be traced to an "original" (what and where is the original when it comes to digital material, anyway?) - it is no longer "mine" but of the internet.

Perhaps I'm being too idealistic, but what is represented as conspiracy looks to me like a show of laziness and/or a desire to have (yet another) hot new animated gif Tumblog. Lovegifs is little more than a minor symptom of the internet and, at worst, a major symptom of Tumblarity.

Screen Cleaners

Screen Cleaners (via blessthismess)

How Catnip Gets Cats High

This is a pretty sweet video. Seeing the cats foam at the mouth was a relief, I always thought it was weird when Charlie left the catnip pouch all wet.



(via BoingBoing)

The Goddess in Me