Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

The CG Society has published an article detailing the technical advances in DreamWorks upcoming “Shrek The Third” 3D animated feature. Expect to see a lot of fussing over hair and fur.

Recently I’ve begun a project updating my Five Senses animations. These are very popular on the Media Spin web site and are visited and linked by people all over the world.  New text and narration is being written for this multimedia publication developed for high school science teachers and classrooms.
Part of the update is to improve the realism of the surfaces and textures of the anatomy, so I started with the eyeball. It was a joy to rework the eye while listening to the guiding voice of Alex Alvarez in his four part Gnomon Workshop “Creating Believable Eyes” QuickTime tutorial. Really good information and a fun way to learn.

Postal rates being influenced by a large media company? Who would have believed it? In a world where big money greases the wheels of politics, this is what the little guys face. Smaller publishers will be asked to pay higher postal rates than big media publishers due to economies of scale if this rate change goes through.

PBS has been airing a thought provoking nightly series of programs, “AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS.” Much of the series goes into depth and detail not normally covered in mainstream media, including daring film and video footage shot while bombs and mortars are exploding on the streets of Baghdad. A surprise segment is Richard Perle’s “The Case for War: In Defense pf Freedom.” To Perle’s credit, he opens up the debate over America’s foreign policy, and exposes himself as a stubborn believer of his distorted views which I’ll name, PerleVision.

Unfortunately for those of us effected by his powerful abilities to lobby and pursuade US government policy officials, PerleVision pushes the simplistic and jingoistic Reagan ideals that America can run around the planet saving everybody with an aerosol spray can of All American happy dust, and a fresh paint job of red, white and blue stars and stripes forever.
The crossroads America stands at is whether or not to continue playing at the old Superpower game. The concept of Superpowers has been somehow accepted as reality, based on the nuclear arms race between the USSR and the USA. Today we see many more nuclear players and ever more growing economies. The playing field is gradually being leveled. Americans need to clean out their closets and discard their old Superhero costumes. In PerleVision to clean up your own house and restore it in order is to do nothing. Tell that to New Orleans, and the rest of the country’s tightened budgets.

The voices at home are speaking louder and clearer than ever for cleaning up American’s own house. Such is the case at the citizen built Lafayette Iraq War Memorial where we recently videotaped and interviewed volunteers for the project. Politicians and policy pushers such as Perle should take notice. See the video.

Wha? This is no outer space language, it’s VUZE the new name for the Azureus website distributing long-form, high quality video. Many of the videos available on Vuze are HD resolution 1280 720p widescreen formats.

Azureus engineering has been busy at work on this major upgrade since early 2007.  The site has many new Channels of content to browse, and the Azureus client application has undergone a major upgrade as well.

The company has recently announced content partnerships with Showtime Networks, BBC Worldwide, Bennett Media Worldwide, G4, A&E Networks (including A&E, History, and Biography channels), National Geographic, and Starz Media.

Azureus Inc. is the provider of the most popular P2P application for the transfer of large media files. With more than three years of technology innovation, proven robustness, and more than 140 million downloads of its application, Azureus users connect with one another from more than 100 countries and 40 languages.