Plop!

That's more of it.

Why did the cartoonist cross the road?

Looks like there's an exhibition of my work in the pipeline. Watch this space for more details!

Storyboard for a Short Film on YouTube

This is something I worked on with some friends last year. They're due to start shooting it in May having secured some funding, so I popped it up on YouTube. I'm going to put up the trailer they made when I get my hands on it, and hopefully the finished short. It'll be interesting to see the page-to-screen process.
As for the storyboard, it was rattled out over a few meetings. The actual storyboard is here, but I fancied seeing how it read with transitions etc. I scanned each frame, put them together in Windows Moviemaker and dropped some music over it (Aphex Twin and Matrix soundtrack respectively!). It only took about half an hour and there's no dialogue but it really helped to see it moving, even in this limited way.
I'll be posting more about the film as it progresses.

Ur Dream Home in Eighty-Eight Pages!

I met Olga Magliocco, editor of Ur Dream Home last week, and as she gave me a complimentary copy of her magazine the least I could do was give her a plug on my blog!
The magazine has a great spread of features for those feathering their new nest, everything from bill-slashing solar heating to mortgage advice from the experts. It's an indispensible guide to dizzying field of making your home, as well as a really great read!

A six issue subscription is only €24 and for your convenience the subscription form is below. Just click the image to see the full size form (note: you might need to print it in landscape!)

You can contact Ur Dream Home on 091-762703 or email: subscriptions(at)urdreamhome(dot)ie.

Catching Bird Flu on the Internet...

My earlier post on peace-keeping chickens has shown up on a bird flu aggregator. It's an ill wind that a Google Adsense entrepeneur doesn't make an aggregator out of to make a killing on modern paranoia. And I'll bet that they make an avian killing on this one. It's dripping with the paraphenalia of paranoia: face masks for your kids, supplements, and, um, DVDs. Which reminds me of a joke I just made up:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Well it couldn't because the road was full of people who were statistically more likely to die from road traffic accidents than bird flu.
Boom boom. Buck boock.

Father's Terribly Morbid Sense of Humour Rubs off on Son...

My son's favourite motif in his drawings at the moment. Should I be worried? Only that he's going to turn out like me, but that's a good thing. Yes it is. Quiet down the back.


I especially love this:
"Rest In Quiet"?

I find this really reassuring: the guy is smiling the whole way through his life, right up to the end. You're born, you live, then you die. So why worry?

So don't worry. Just keep smiling and waving.

Fowl of the world on Best Behaviour following Birdflu Outbreak...

Clearly word's got out about the Bernard Matthews Massacre among the chicken community. Not only are chickens everywhere on their best behaviour, the're keeping the peace among other species as well:

Surf's Up!

Went for a Sunday drive with the family to Lettermullen in Connemara yesterday after visiting the Coral Beach past Carraroe. As we neared the top of a hill we could see what appeared to be distant mountains- except they were moving. As we crested the hill we saw a sight that took our breath away. The sea was boiling up into 30-40' waves that were crashing onto the coast, creating a thick spray that was being blown inland for miles. It's hard to get a sense of the scale from the photos, but if you can imagine the sea wasn't even a quarter mile from the shed above.

I'd never been out that far before and I've never seen waves that huge so close to land- and I grew up in Donegal! Sometimes the sights you see around Galway when on a whim you take that back road instead of driving on are a treasure, and Galway has so many of these hidden gems warped into the rugged coast that you could spend years finding them all.

New Double Vision Up...

For a delicious piece of Valentine's cynicism check out this week's Double Vision by Charlie Adley (and it wer me what droow it!)

23 Signs That You're Becoming a Design Geek

I found this list of design geekery and alarmingly found most of it highly amusing. I have been looking a little FFFFFF recently- I really must get out more.

The world of design can be a ruthless one; not only do you spend most of your time pondering and tweaking minute details that most people find insignificant – and most likely won't even notice – you also get lured into developing anti-social habits like font-spotting and source-code peeping.


Learn to spot the warning signs in time
– you know you're becoming a design geek when:

1. You giggle whenever you use the colors F0CCED, EFF0FF and 44DDDD
2. You’re in the sun and you look around for a Drop Shadow to sit under.
3. You give your relatives a lecture about color spaces and profiles when you email them your vacation photos.
4. Seing someone use Lens Flare or Comic Sans adversely affects your blood-pressure
5. You maintain a grid system for your refrigerator magnets.
6. You organise your CD collection according to the Pantone chart.
7. You sit at work for eight hours straight just looking at your monitor, waiting for a spark of inspiration that doesn't come.
8. You're up 'til 5am because you came up with the best idea ever while brushing your teeth.
9. The hottest dream you ever had was "Trace contour... Find Edges... Pinch... Extrude... Smudge Stick... Motion Blur.... Sprayed Strokes..."
10. You know Lorem Ipsum by heart.
11. Your kid knows Lorem Ipsum by heart.
12. The preschool teacher complains your child won't color inside or outside the lines – only indicate colors on a separate sheet.
13. Activating your entire font collection makes your computer crash – and you're running OSX.
14. You deliberately butcher your perfectly cross browser compatible site in IE by placing a “Too Cool for IE” banner on it.
15. You prefer a Layer Style of 50% Opacity (or less) on your wife’s Satin.
16. You spend $200 on a font for your personal website because "it's the only one where the lower-case g is just right..."
17. Looking at a menu make you go "hmmm, ITC Baskerville italic" rather than "mmmm, lunch!"
18. And when you finally order, you go for Layer Based Slices with Grain Texture...
19. You use words about fonts you dislike that other normal people reserve for fascist dictators and serial killers.
20. Apple+Z is the first thing that goes through your mind if you drop and break something.
21. You refer to colleagues as Strict, Transitional, Loose and the Future Unemployed.
22. You refer to your privates as "the Magic Wand".
23. You actually understand this post and pass it on to your friends.

Beware of Scam!

This is a scam warning to any small business owners reading this. A company called Vardis are cold-calling Irish businesses offering advertising in directories for the benefit of a charity called Foresters Fund for Children. I was called this morning. They don't identify who they are and the whole thing is like a Derren Brown mind-control exercise- everything is kept very vague and delivered in a very sweet tone of voice. I smelled a rat and politely hung up after taking their name and the charity's name. I googled their name and found this forum, full of the gory details of this scam.
For example:

"I have been involved in an argument with Vardis since 2003 they are without a doubt a complete group of charletans the company has been persuing me for £464.13 for an advertisement which apparently I agreed to in 2003 for an advert in the Forresters Fund For Children Publication. On Numerous occasions I have contacted their office asking for details of the advert I "placed" none has been forthcoming, on the 22nd January I recieved a letter from Crown Debt Recovery telling me that I would be persusued through Livepool County Court for the Money
Liverpool County Court have never heard of Crown Debt Recovery!
Crown Debt Recovery are owned by the same people as Vardis
Crown Debt recovery are nort a regisered debt collection agency and have no licence as such."

Nice bunch of people. And this is from the Daily Mirror's website:

"FOREST DUMPED

A WORD of advice if you're asked to "donate" towards a handbook for the Foresters' Fund for Children - DON'T.

The Fund is a genuine children's charity, but the booklet is published by a commercial Merseyside operation called Vardis.

The Fund told us donations were split "50/50".

A spokesman explained: "We get 12.5 per cent, and Vardis gets 12.5 per cent."

According to our abacus, that's 25 per cent.

What about the rest? "That goes to Vardis as well, that's their costs."

So if Vardis calls and you didn't agree to donate, or it didn't explain how the cash is divided, just say get stuffed. "

So don't fall for this scam: if someone rings about advertising do not agree to anything, ask who they are; and if they're Vardis, hang up.

New Double Vision

Don't forget to check out the new article at Charlie Adley's Double Vision, as illustrated by moi!