Funny: DIY Car Jack

[via There I Fixed It]

Ira Glass on Storytelling

The other media production teacher and I often talk about how our kids technical abilities are ahead of their storytelling skills. We can teach them to set up a shot, improve their sound and edit what they shoot. We haven't been as successful at teaching them to tell a story.

Often our best storytellers are our best writers. The students who have done well in Creative Writing or their English classes. These typically are not the kids attracted to our program though.

I've been putting some thought into this and doing a little reading and web surfing on the topic. Came across these videos on YouTube of Ira Glass, This American Life, talking about storytelling as it relates to video and radio. He has some good information here.

Storytelling #1: Two Building Blocks of a good story.



Storytelling #2: Finding a Good Story is time consuming.



Storytelling #3: It takes time to get good at your craft.



Storytelling #4: The pitfalls for beginners




[Image captured from This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/About_Staff.aspx]

TED: Modeling the Brain

Fascinating talk on how we are mapping the brain and the plans to eventually model how it works by Harry Markram. Also below are a couple of links I found at the TED bio on Markram and his Blue Brain project.

Seed Article: Can a Thinking, Remembering, Decision-Making, Biological Accurate Brain Be Built From a SuperComputer?

Blue Brain Project Website

Cardboard Animations--followup

After watching the cardboard animation by Sjors Vervoort I did some searching and came up with some other cool animations along the same lines. Roger Wieland has several cardboard animations available online. The first one is called "The Stand Up Comedian".

Take a look at his YouTube Channel for lots of examples of his work including the second one below, a great music video: Whatcha Got.



[Image captured from the video: The Stand Up Comedian]

Zombie Make-up Results

In between trick-0r-treaters last night, I decided to mess around with the zombie makeup trick I posted about earlier this week. I had none of the materials but I did have some white glue.

The results were OK.

Main problem was trying to get a good look with my wife's makeup. She just doesn't have a good selection of stage makeup. The white glue worked but I think latex would look more like skin when you tear it?

In good lighting, it looked pretty fake. Turn the lights down some and the results were much more creepy. Of course, isn't everything just a little more creepy when you turn down the lights?

Pumpkin Saw

My wife bought one of those pumpkin carving kits with cutting blades included. Everytime I use the plastic handled tools, I usually say something along the lines of, "Next year, I will make my own saws. These things are awful."

But I never do. I'm a big Halloween talker. But, I'm all talk and no-do.

Saw this post on Make and am now thinking I could whip up a simple pumpkin saw with just a scroll saw blade laying around in my garage and some duct tape. Minimalist. Workable. Better than the plastic junk that hurts my delicate fingers.

Next year I will be ready!

[via Make]

[Image captured from Make: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/10/quick_and_easy_pumpkin_cutter.html]

Zombie Make-Up

Quick easy tutorial on how to create a Zombie using liquid latex, toilet paper and some makeup (about $20 worth of materials). They say you can substitute white glue for the liquid latex if you are in a hurry or can't find the latex.

Halloween Math Lecture

Wonder if I could pull this off?



[via Neatorama]

Space Wolf

Check out this Graham Annable's other animations at his YouTube channel.




[via Miss Cellania]

Funny: Trick or Treat

A bunch Halloween Projects

HauntProject.com many projects you can build. Some easy. Some hard. Directions vary from easy to follow to pretty obscure but all of it pretty interesting and inspiring. Site is essentially a link dump to many other project sites.

Never knew you could use a wiper motor to create so many cool things. Including this ghoulish groundbreaker corpse found at the Garage of Evil.

I had a ton of Halloween fun looking at all the projects.





[via Make]

Funny: Glassy Eyed Automatons

[via xkcd]