FLCL / Fooly Cooly

Cosplay FLCL

I’ve pretty much backed up all my dvds to my storage array which is great and been watching some of the odder stuff. A good friend Lucas who now lives in Toronto (miss him) bought me FLCL on DVD a while back and I loved it.

So when I watched it again last weekend, I forgot how good this Anime is. Its only 6 episodes but there so involved and a joy to watch. Here’s a brief overview…

FLCL, also known as Furi Kuri or Fooly Cooly, is a fast paced and confusing Japanese animated series. The story begins when an energetic alien girl drives up on a Vespa and hits an unsuspecting adolescent boy over the head with a left-handed bass guitar.

This crazy hyperactive style can easily be misinterpreted, causing strongly opposing opinions of the show’s value. There are many metaphorical plots and hidden meanings underneath its surface. The series is a pun in itself with suggestive and sexual metaphors. The strange situations and dialogue reflect the confusion and awkwardness of puberty (as well as society in general). FLCL is an exercise in unconventional, self-alluding anime.

The plot takes on an unconventional love story, using comedic elements to bridge the story together including satires of John Woo and South Park, not to mention allusions to other anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Lupin III and Gundam. Essentially the series is a coming-of-age story.

If you look carefully you will find most of it on Youtube, but its worth buying or getting in a much higher rez. The cinematic direction is great and up there with some of the best animation I’ve seen.

Data Portability Video


DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.


CREDITS:
Written, designed and edited by Michael Pick, smashcut-media.com

Music – “Bongo Avenger” – Eric & Ryan Kilkenny: CC Attrib. Non Commercial

Hands photo: Scol22 – Stock.xchng

Additional images: istockphoto

Animated Flourishes: Andrew Kramer

So I was impressed with the production value of the video but felt it needed more snap. Chris asked what I meant by “snap?” But I think you will know what I mean and agree, it certainly needs more snappyness. Not that I'm slagging it off, actually its really good and well worth sending around to people who don't know or understand the whole data portability movement.

I've also finally put in a Xtech 2008 proposal for Data Portability at long last. Here is my short description.

Data portability is in a way one of the greatest freedoms users and developers can have. Portability of data underpins the web of data, apis and the ability to move data to other services, platforms and devices. It is silo busting and is deeply weaved into the debate over social platforms, identity and mobile data. In this talk, I will explore the problems, solutions and gamut of policy decisions

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Life explained on film, Video Jug


VideoJug: How To Clean A Laptop

Sheila showed me a site I've never seen before. Videojug.com, explains how to do things in real life. Its a simple concept and honestly when I first saw it, my first thought was so what? But then I started thinking, this is actually really good idea. Its like Sclipo but centred around those situations in life where you may or maynot know how to act, behave or start. I started watching “how to choose the right Television” just to see if the information was correct and upto date. And I got to say I was pretty impressed with the information and tips it gave in the short time.

To most of us the idea of using a web video to teach us how to cook a Rib Eye steak, check your prostate or even How To Fold Trousers Without Creases seems silly, but actually think about it. Where did you ever learn this stuff? School, College, Parents, Friends or even TV shows? Well he's a great site if you ever missed out or was ever too proud to admit you don't actually know.

I have to do my eight things you don't know about me post one day soon, and I was thinking about some really abstract ones. Well this is great because I can now throw some really weird ones in and link to them on Videojug. Nice!

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A Vision of Students Today

In a follow up to the simply amazing The machine is using us. Professor Michael Wesch has started to tackle the subject of students university experience.

a short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

Its the start of a larger project which we can all take part in.

Thanks Robin for the link to the one I almost missed

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Diggnation Live in London

So thanks to the guys at Carsonified, Revision 3 finally (50+ episodes later) landed in London and did a live version of Diggnation in front of 1000+ people after the first day of the Future of Webapps conference. Honestly the only way to get close to describing how mental the atmosphere was in that arena is through pictures (mine and everyone elses) and videos. I'm really happy it went down this way, if I me and Kathy had got the guys over, we would only have got a venue which would hold about 500 people max. Anyway back to yesterday I have a ton of videos and shot in HD with my shakey hand which I still need to upload but others have already done so. As the guys would say, good times… good times.

The offical video is now out on revision3.com

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I’m removing FOWA content

FOWA

I have removed almost all of the Future of webapps footage I shot last week. I was nicely asked to consider what kind of impact this could have on future conferences. I thought about it and agreed to take down the footage which was also fitting with the terms and conditions for the conference. If you have copied the footage off Blip.tv, I hope you will also do the right thing and delete the footage too.

I have however, chosen to keep the video of Mike Arrington up under the interest of public debate and fair use. But all the rest are now gone. I hope you can all understand and will enjoy the next Future of Webapps, as much as I enjoyed the last one. Oh and can you believe the Future of Webdesign is already sold out… Crazy!

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Molly interviewed for bbc backstage

I shot this video with Molly earlier in the week, which I shared with Backstage but I received a great comment which I thought was good enough to quote here.

Interesting interview, thanks.

It's interesting to hear Molly's views on how it can be technologists versus the business with regards to standards. I think this has been true of everywhere I have worked, and it's understandable. I think the points about businesses understanding the ROI from standards is also valid, they are waking up to this, however the biggest set back seems to be legacy issues and timescales. Often there are old systems that are difficult to replace, but also a great many of the contemporary tools that offer faster creation
do so at a cost to the code quality. Can we please get some good standards compliant .Net components?

Also the mention of uneducated educators. This is so true for a great many areas of IT still it is shocking, even university level courses are behind the times, especially where IT is not the primary focus. I remember how quickly as a class at uni we knew more than the lecturer about Photoshop. The problem is made worse when the teacher is too proud or arrogant to acknowledge their lack of ignorance. Which gets me onto a whole seperate rant about the quality of teaching staff and the under appreciated nature
of the job. It should be a desired occupation (like being a doctor) where the rewards are high, but you are held to account harshly for not being up to the task.

I haven't really seen the use of divs as table cell replacements, but it has been along time since I made the transistion from table based layout to CSS driven layout. I can easily believe it though, they are such different ways of working and require you to think so differently about you build a website. I've been made aware of this transistion again recently when learning Flex and WPF, where although some principles carry across, there are different rules and what you thought was the best way of doing it isn't
necessarily the case.

Thanks for the interview though, I hope Molly can engage the business guys at Microsoft

Elsa from Elsa

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