Having a blog fills me with a sense of obligation – and resultant despair when I fail to oblige. I used to plough out 3 to 4 posts per day when I first started my blog a few years ago but that has since tapered off to a more reasonable 1 per day – or so.
Lately I’ve been remiss and haven’t kept up with the flow of information across the smoothed rocky shores of my mind. I like going to that water’s edge to draw a drink for you to share but I haven’t been able to the past few weeks because I’ve just been so damned busy.
I am still working on the post for the Ruffus The Dog Christmas Carol – and I’m writing scripts for a children’s series for a friend because it’s fun and it pays the rent – and I was working on a proposal for a new web series called My Kitteh! which is a collaboration with my talented wife Karen Valleau which promises to be lots of fun – and I’m making plans for another production which I hope to fund and put before the cameras before the year is out.
And I’m also looking for other revenue generating work.
So, as you can see, it’s been challenging to do all of the above and follow an exercise regime I’ve convinced myself is necessary to stay alive and mobile and keep up with the blogging too.
This week requires a great deal from me but next week I should have enough free moments in my usual ADHDay to plant some brain seeds here for you to watch grow into something resembling a better metaphor than what I attempted to make work at the beginning of this sentence.
See? I can’t even write.
Too busy.
More later.
Cheers.
P. S. Speaking of monkeys – here’s Jonathan Coulton’s “Code Monkey” – enjoy!
After what seemed like an eternity I have finally got the Ruffus The Dog web site up and running.
The only caveat I’ll offer is this: It’s a start.
More material will be added of course – we have a lot of shows to post – and I also have to get cracking on writing (and recording) the storybooks.
We’re going to be putting a fair amount of behind-the-scenes material on the site as well but that’s mostly about the production of the original shows. In addition to that I’m going to provide some documentation here on the history of the show and about the process we’re going through to make all this new stuff happen.
As the year progresses we’ll find out how successful we are at our fund raising efforts to produce new episodes for release online. Fingers crossed.
Tell your friends. Digg it. Tweet it. Shout it from the rooftops.
Many thanks for your patience.
Cheers.
P. S. I’m really liking the music store set up using Bandcamp. You can listen online, download, embed – it’s really great.
I just posted a new episode of In Teh Toobs. In this latest report from Commander Riley, he takes us on a tour of his ship, the STFU-1138, and shows us where he lives and works.
It took me quite a while between episodes which was frustrating because I’ve been wanting to put them out at the rate of one per week. The trouble with that plan is the way I’ve been attacking the work. Rather than organizing myself as I would for a regular television or film production I’ve been treating this as more of an art project – which is just another way of saying I’m a lazy ass procrastinator.
As the show develops I’ve been discovering other themes that I want to explore with it and what was once supposed to be a simple talking-head vlog with a dog puppet has evolved into something a little more – ambitious.
Hopefully, as I continue to iron out the various technical and masturbatory artistic wrinkles associated with my supremely fat headed vision for In Teh Toobs the process of making the shows will become more of a routine – a fun routine – allowing me to post new episodes each week. The effort that went into this show was not in the shooting or the editing or the creation of the CG elements – the bulk of the time was taken up with thinking.
So I guess the lesson is: Don’t think about it, Mills. Just fucking do it.
I do plan on doing a video post here showing off how I make In Teh Toobs but I figured actually making the show was more of a priority at this stage.
Cheers.
P. S. I always appreciate your comments here but please be sure to visit the actual show site and leave a comment for Riley there. Your participation will make the show come alive. And be sure to tell your friends. Thanks.
P. P. S. And a special thanks to Ze Frank for giving me permission to include his mug design amongst the trappings of Riley’s ship.
Every morning when I get up I make a school lunch for my son, Henry. I also make a little folded comic that I stick in with the lunch. I’ve been doing that for a number of years now and the collection that has amassed is still calling to be posted online.
I also make quick little notes for him to read while he eats his breakfast. Usually these are just short little things that serve to brighten the start of his day and get his brain ready for school.
The comics are bizarre because they are more detailed than the breakfast notes, being a serialized story featuring Henry, his sandwich and a trio of demented coconuts; they also reflect some of the stuff he (and I) are going through as we grow older; they are always done before I’ve finished my first cup of coffee; and I never know what’s going to happen next.
Some very weird shit falls out of my skull early in the morning but every once in a while, amidst that morning mental detritus, a small gem pops out.
This is the short breakfast note I made for Henry this morning:
Although today is Good Friday – ( I’m always naturally inclined to shout: “What’s so good about it?!” ) - and that makes it an official sort of holiday, official enough that my son is home from school and underfoot, I am still trying to get my tasks done so I can finally, once and for all, stamped it no erasing, launch my other fucking web site. I’ve used this animated GIF in the earlier iteration of this blog and remembered it fondly enough to include it here. That, of course, lead me down the rabbit hole of leafing through all my image files from the old posts and, just like when you clean out the attic or the cluttered shelf at the back of the closet, found myself saying things like: “Ohhh, I remember that one!” and wanting to post it once again for all to see. In all modesty, I did some funny shit with my Photoshopped images and I will make an effort to re-use them here but for now I can only regard the effort as yet another steaming wad of procrastinaton that stands before me and my goal of project completion. Hell, just writing all these words here is an act of procrastination in itself; dutifully pounding out an endless stream of description that has no deeper meaning or purpose other than to keep me from doing what it I have tasked myself with.
Enough!
I’m still here – I’m still posting – and when I’m done with my work I will post here about that and tell you what went into making it all happen.
Jill Gollick has been kind enough to invite me to participate in one of her great WGC discussions at Camera on April 29th to talk about the project. You can find out more at the Facebook page for the Web Creators Show And Tell event. That should be fun. We might even be streaming the evening online – I’ll let you know if we get that happening.
And now I shall walk away from the interwebs and get my ass to work.
I’ve been having a series of email discussions with my friend Bryan that has become a wide-ranging exploration of how humanity is likely to evolve alongside our rapid technological advancements. I do intend to distill those emails into a one big fat ass blog post but I’m a bit too busy at the moment to get that done for you.
Instead, I found this fascinating talk by Juan Enriquez at this year’s TED conference where he touches on some of the same territory Bryan and I have been treading; and I thought I’d share it with you.
This kind of stuff has been consuming me lately because I think it is really fucking cool and pant peeingly scary. I’m not a technophobe by any stretch of the imagination and have no problems envisioning a future where we and our machines are one. The idea of the Borg makes for good storytelling but it’s not a frightening future in my eyes.
Bryan and I are not profound scholars when it comes to this shit – we just like to think up the most fucked up possibilities and then extrapolate them further to see if we can glean a sense of where the human race is heading – or maybe just scare ourselves like kids telling ghost stories around the campfire. Each time a new article or news report is published we start kicking it around like a big blob of silly putty just to see if it’ll bounce off the walls or leave dents in the ceiling – metaphorically, of course. I do have large quantities of silly putty – I know where to buy it in bulk – and when you drop five pounds of that shit you better protect your kidneys ‘cuz it comes hurtling back at you like a motherfucker.
But I digress.
I’ll come back some other day with all our notes and pimp it up with pretty pictures and links to all the crap that was inspiring us. In the meantime, enjoy Enriques and don’t be afraid of the future. Just keep your eyes on the assholes in charge right now.
I'm going to be slowly making some changes to the website both in format and content - and I'm pretty sure even the URL will change.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.
Although today is Good Friday – ( I’m always naturally inclined to shout: “What’s so good about it?!” ) - and that makes it an official sort of holiday, official enough that my son is home from school and underfoot, I am still trying to get my tasks done so I can finally, once and for all, stamped it no erasing, launch my other fucking web site. I’ve used this animated GIF in the earlier iteration of this blog and remembered it fondly enough to include it here. That, of course, lead me down the rabbit hole of leafing through all my image files from the old posts and, just like when you clean out the attic or the cluttered shelf at the back of the closet, found myself saying things like: “Ohhh, I remember that one!” and wanting to post it once again for all to see. In all modesty, I did some funny shit with my Photoshopped images and I will make an effort to re-use them here but for now I can only regard the effort as yet another steaming wad of procrastinaton that stands before me and my goal of project completion. Hell, just writing all these words here is an act of procrastination in itself; dutifully pounding out an endless stream of description that has no deeper meaning or purpose other than to keep me from doing what it I have tasked myself with.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.