Bert tells it like it is…

“we’re bro like a real bro”

When Carolyn and I went on our little road trip, we did a few things. First, we bought snacks. Gummi snacks to be precise. Second, we went through a desert. Now, many people don’t know this, but deserts are hot. In fact, when we stepped out to get gas in Needles, CA, it was 117 degrees hot. Third, we learned that although human flesh is just barely capable of surviving 117 degree heat, gummi skin is not. :(

And yes, I realize this is kind of late to post about the road trip still, but we were cleaning up the apartment today and thought we should get rid of our little souvenirs.

so in that blurry photo you can see me.
and a whip.
and someone whipping me.
in the neck.

so yeah, it was a good day at work. we’ve been working on our whip animations and tech and all that for the Indiana Jones game but there’s only so much that you can get from looking through a dvd and google videos. so we brought in a professional whip-o-grapher to show us how it’s done. it was a great time. getting to see how a professional moves with a weapon like that was just great. to see how she handled it just walking around and whatnot, pure gold. reference rocks.

she started with basic stuff like whip cracking. then she moved into attacks and stuff that involved “volunteers.” i say volunteers in quotes because it involved only the animators and it started with the newest members to the team (me being #2). so she would whip poles out of our hands and for a short while she was whipping it around one of my co-worker’s arms and yanking him toward her. then it was my turn again and she started with my torso. she’d whip me and then yank and i went spinning like a top. it was fun. and, surprisingly it wasn’t painful so i agreed to letting her move on to my neck. likewise, it wasn’t painful but it looked cool.

also cool was learning about whips. like learning that the crack of the whip is from the tip breaking the speed of sound and creating a sonic boom. the tip moves at something like 750 miles per hour but could go even faster. the crack is also the apex of it’s energy. as soon at the whip cracks, the majority of its power dissipates. so if you get hit with a whip after it’s cracked (like we were), you’re in good shape.

just some good stuff to know. you know, in case you run across some thugs with whips…

i can’t believe i forgot to mention my super advanced space toaster in my last post. this toaster is super advanced. it has two features that identify it as so….

• instead of flipping up the pushy down thing to get your toast up prematurely, you hit a cancel button. CANCEL!!!! amazing.
• it hasn’t broken yet and i’ve used it more than thrice. all other toasters break immediately on a third toast

i had to hook my toaster up to the internet to get it to download all the proper settings for different flavor eggo’s though. that was lame :(

jeremy started up a company to book jazz ensembles in nyc. so, if you’re in nyc and would like to get some quality jazz, hit his site up for more info.

and yet again google rocks. i found myself flipping through way too many webpages looking to see if people like keith or spline doctors had written any new articles. so, google addressed this need with google reader (which, since it’s made by google, is in beta). so far as i can tell, this rocks and i’m very much into it. it feels very much like any google app, similar to gmail. check out their faq if you want more info.

so, if you need a good rss reader, go check it out, yessum.

i’ll be in san francisco tonight and tomorrow. it’ll be a quick one, but gimme a call if you’re there and you catch this.

yay, april 1st :)

a bunch of websites are pink today so i thought i would join in the fun.

that is all.

Penny Arcade’s Viva Decapitation reminds me of the adventures of rupert, so i thought i would share it for everyone :)
click the image above, click the image above!

in honor of Carolyn’s birthday, you can view a video of her from when she was on ESPN. she was filling in for a friend as a sideline cameraman (in this case, a camerawoman). pain and broken camera equipment ensued…

happy birthday Carolyn!