a lot of stuff and nonsense from eclectech

... but I can't write about them online yet as I haven't got my act together and told all my offline friends. I am officially rubbish, but not quite rubbish enough to send a mass email round to my oldest friends with a pointer to a blog post so, in the meantime, I provide a quick blast of disco cats and run away again.



You can prod them and poke them at The Revo site, a fun project I've been working on recently.

I hope all is well in the wider bloggy world. Back soon! Love e.

Labels: dance, flash animation

Enter his world.

Taste his grooves

Marvel at his glittery balls.

I have been animating the foremost German composer of 1970's erotic film scores. Oh yes. Flares, moustaches, glitter balls and glamour girls.

And some damn fine groovy tunes.

Klaus Harmony, Rear View Lover. 280KB Flash.

Labels: dance, flash animation, klaus harmony

After an enormously busy year I am officially on holiday and not working until 2007. Hooray!

I have had a problem finding free time this year, and I know I shouldn't moan as it's due to lots of fun animating work which is a Good Thing, but I don't function very well without time to play.

I haven't even done much festive silliness this year so I might pop off now, rig up the mic, get the kazoo out and do some festive tooting. I have some reindeer standing by, festive animation time I think!

Anyhow, I hope you're all having a fun festive time, dancing round your trees wearing silly hats, drinking mulled wine and not spending too much time going mad in shops.

Labels: blether, dance

The Open Right Group have just launched a new campaign aimed at preventing the extension of copyright terms on music recordings.

In the UK there is a 50 years period where a sound recording is protected and after that it becomes part of the public domain - part of our common cultural heritage which anyone may use or exploit.

That's not so bad is it? How many other people get paid so long for a single piece of work? Most of us are paid for the time we spend on something, not every time it's used. 50 years seems like a fairly good deal to me, but for the Cliff Richards of this world it's not enough.

Ah yes.

Cliff.

A cynic could suggest that donating his Barbados villa year after year for the Blair's holiday has paid off. Cliff had his first hit in 1958 so in a couple of years its time is up. Unless the law is changed someone could sample it or mash it into something new or, perish the thought, I could take it and make an animation for it.

As well as stopping work entering the public domain the proposed legal changes could mean that over 40 years worth of music currently in the public domain will be returned to the organisations owning the rights.

The release the music website has more information and a petition you can sign or you can always contact your MP to talk to them directly about it.

In the interests of honesty I'll admit I have my own interests here. I like making musical animations and locking the music away restricts what I can do. I'm lucky as I have friends who makes great music and let me play with it, but I have been trawling some public domain archives recently and making use here and there, and I'd rather this wasn't taken away.

That said, I promise that even if this change is rejected and Cliff's songs start becoming public domain over the next few years I won't animate them.

I do have my standards.

Labels: dance, news links, open rights group

I have been thinking about manners, and good taste, and bad taste and where the limits of expression should be. This is, in part, because I've been reading Jane Austen and manners are such a critical part of her world. It is, in part, because I spend time at b3ta and it's flung up numerous issues of good taste in terms of the book they've released and the pulling of an image challenge after Virgin got offended.

Trust me, comparisons between the world of Jane Austen and the world of b3ta are not to be taken lightly.

Some thoughts...
1. I still love Jane Austen, and am apparently more sympathetic towards her heroines now than when I was an angry teen.
2. I'm sorry, b3ta is great but jokes that are sick for the sake of being sick just don't do it for me. It seems rather dull.
3. Surely Virgin can't be that stupid? They've had more publicity as a result of pulling the challenge than they would have got from leaving it up, and they've even given prizes out. I am suspicious.
4. I found it strangely annoying to have a place I post described as one where "design types let off steam and post offensive animations and pictures". Change "offensive" for "funny" and I'm happier. Being funny often leads to being considered offensive in someones eyes, but it's not offensiveness for the sake of it. See 2.
5. There should be no limits to expression. Freedom of speech has to mean freedom to offend. If the thought is there in somebody's head we may as well hear it; better that than it be shoved underground. If I say one person can be silenced I acknowledge than one day it could be me. And I like making noise too much.
6. I can still find things to be offensive twaddle and say that. That's part of the point.
7. The name Jeffrey is, for me, forever associated with Rainbow*.
8. I have had a drop of wine, it's Friday, and life isn't so bad.
9. I'd like everyone reading this to have a good weekend.

I forgot the links as I was writing so have them here.
News about b3ta and Virgin. The Inquirer | The Register | The Guardian | VNUnet
The works of Jane Austen
Someone else with doubts about the bad taste thing

*This isn't a comment on b3ta or Jane Austen. Just something that popped into my head whilst catching up on Jonny's blog this evening.

Labels: blether, dance, news links

Too busy to do anything at the moment, which makes no sense at all.

I get to a point where I have so much to do I don't know where to start, and I skirt round the edges doing lots but achieving nothing. Not good for my state of mind.

Anyhow, I was away and now I'm back. If I'm lucky my brain will catch up with me shortly.

To avoid this being a thoroughly self indulgent post about why I've not posted anything (good grief, I'm at the top of a terribly slippy slope here) have a few links of interest.

Rather depressing news from the states (via Miss Prism).

Outstandingly cheeky news from the UK, where the Government plans to exclude details of celebrities' children from a new national child database. They're confident about its security then? Heh.

A few new photos from my whistlestop tour of London. Not much time for photos as I was there for a work meeting but I managed to catch steely eyed stares given to me by the household cavalry, a pigeon and an enormous number of CCTV cameras. They're getting a bit intrusive aren't they? Unpleasant things.

And now I must away; back when I've stopped going round in circles.

Labels: blether, dance, disgruntled, news links, photos

The Fartsichord is possibly the classiest thing I've been involved with. It's an online musical keyboard, you can choose between two instruments and play, record and save tunes. The instruments are farts and burps.

I am so proud.

On completion Mr Tech immediately played the National Anthem and I giggled far too much.

I am a child.

Some other fun things that have ended up in my bookmarks recently...

Liquid sculpture, beautiful high speed photography

Musical rollerblading (video)

Flame Warriors, a pertinent oldie revisited following the disintegration of one of my online haunts

Ridiculously cute cat. I wish the photographer published them under a creative commons licence allowing derivatives, as I would very much like to play with these photos. There are some ace ones.

Apple campaign site from Greenpeace. I was genuinely surprised by some of the information here. Apple have good PR obviously.

Passport offices map, ignoring all the stuff about having to go for interviews for passports and the Government grabbing all manner of personal information from you for no good reason, what on earth have they done to Scotland?! It does look like they've redrawn some rather critical bounderies and claimed a large amount of lowland Scotland. Shocking!

Finally, a new song from DogHorse. A quite scary and sinister recording using Rachel North's lyrics, have a listen to The Rules of the Game are Changed.

Labels: dance, flash toy, neat links

I've got the first part of my bakedbeats animation online.

Voodoo Trombones, 900KB Flash.

Colourful birds, cheesy dancing, robots, penguins, kangaroos, gently swaying flowers and, ooooh, STUFF!

Music provided by the funky Voodoo Trombone Quartet.

Labels: dance, flash animation, voodoo trombone quartet

Greenpeace are protesting the use of illegal timber in the refurbishment of Admiralty Arch. The Government has told Greenpeace that the timber being used in Admiralty Arch is legal and it has the paperwork to prove it. Unfortunately they can't provide it to Greenpeace because their fax machine is broken. Heh.

Good vertigo inducing photo from the activists on their moblog.

In other news I really must finish my ORG related animation soon. Along with the BPI trying to get UK ISPs to cut-off their customers without going through the courts ABC are trying to stop you being able to fast forward through adverts. Really. These organisations are getting far too big for their own boots, we must do something about it.

I suspect it needs more than an animation but you've got to play to your strengths.

Edit: Does anyone else find that as soon as they've hit the Publish button they notice a typo, missing word or other mistake in their post? I swear it happens to me every time. I don't seem to do it on my web site, just on my blog. Why am I so careless here?
*corrects yet another typo*

Labels: blether, dance, news links, open rights group

If you're in London this Saturday I recommend heading along to the midsummer bakedbeats - music we like event, "a veritable feast of music with fantastic live bands, DJs and laptop artists, visuals, food, booze and lovely people".

I can vouch for the loveliness of the people running it and have been listening to music from the contributing bands and DJs the last couple of days. It's quite splendid.

I can't make it myself due to being 400 odd miles away but I have sent a few minutes of animation in my place which will accompany some of the music.

Go, listen, watch, enjoy.

Labels: blether, dance

... and it's coming for YOU!

*ahem*

I've made a new animation. It stars a sheep in an unfeasibly large bow tie, some dancing computers and criminal penguins. Soundtrack by DogHorse and Miss Prism.

Daily Mail Picnic.

Labels: dance, flash animation

I had an email pointing me at this transcript of an Australian TV show. In case it's not kept online I'll point out the relevant moment:

"ANDREW DENTON: Do you get surprised sometimes at the intensity with which people want to take exception to your music? I've seen a website which is 'You're Beautiful', but it's 'You're Gullible', with a doll of you singing and tomatoes being thrown at you.
JAMES BLUNT: I have quite a high score on that website.
ANDREW DENTON: Do you?
JAMES BLUNT: Yes. I did, I cleared over 100 points.
ANDREW DENTON: Is that right?
JAMES BLUNT: Yes."

Hehehe. Good man. You can throw tomatoes too.

And whilst I'm here, have a look at this.

Labels: dance, flash animation, james blunt

Forgive me, but I am here for a moan. I got caught by a chugger and I realised why I have such a problem with them.

I'm polite.

If someone talks to me in the street I respond politely. This is NOT a good tactic if you're disinclined to give strangers in the street your bank details. Politeness is seen as a weakness to be exploited.

They cost me around 15 minutes today, first off in explaining why I wasn't going to sign up a Direct Debit and then in taking a long route back to avoid being harrassed again. If I blanked them or was rather more blunt in my response I could have been through in a moment. In the past I've even been chased by an organisation to which I regularly contribute; they were very close to having my membership cancelled.

So please, if you must use street fundraisers at least understand that polite doesn't mean gullible or weak willed and once someone has said no they should be left alone.

Sometimes politeness is someone trying really really hard to avoid shouting rude words at strangers.

Labels: blether, dance, disgruntled

Hmm. This blog is officially a year old today, although in spirit it's probably only 2 or 3 months. It's taken me a while to adjust to it as a channel for blether. Still, worth a wee boogie I think.

To stop this being a self indulgent blog post about blog posts, have a couple of news links too. First up, the Lords gave the ID cards bill a bit of a hammering. Good stuff. If we're going to have an archaic institution like the House of Lords it's good to see them doing something sensible. I feel they made the right decision for the wrong reason, but making the right decision is a good step.

Next up, drunken idiots post hamster. This made me angry for a couple of reasons. The first is obvious I hope, they posted a hamster; poor wee thing. That in itself probably wouldn't have caught my attention sufficiently to post it here; I don't mean to be cruel, but there are worse things happening in the world. This is here because of a personal foible. I got annoyed by the quote from someone defending them, "These two young men are clearly very intelligent and have made a very foolish and stupid error."

I'm just going to repeat that with a look of astonishment on my face. They are "clearly very intelligent". Good grief, what terrifically low standards she has. I realise they managed to get into a good university but that just means they're educated. That's different.

I shouldn't let it bother me really; intelligence doesn't exist. It's a hypothetical contruct used to describe something that we want to measure in order to understand ourselves, so maybe she's quite right to call them intelligent... if it doesn't exist we can define the term how we like.

My definition varies somewhat.

Labels: blether, dance, disgruntled, NO2ID

Apparently You're Gullible was just on Channel 4 News. It's hard to imagine quite what makes it news, but I assume it's something to do with Mr Blunt's nomination for a few Brit Awards. Anyhow, it has sparked something of a frenzy on my website which is no bad thing, bandwidth munching aside.

Now I must stop getting distracted by telly things* and get my head down and do some animating, I have a deadline and it's close. Have a jolly picture in my absence.

*Cheers to all who contacted me to let me know though!

Labels: blether, dance, james blunt

I've been sticking santa hats and baubles on lots of fluffy creatures recently; a combination of designing my christmas cards, working on a christmas animation with DogHorse and Beau Bo D'or and work projects which seem to wholly involve festive visuals. As a result I am temporarily festived-out so I drew a robot in fancy shoes bopping along to the music in its head instead. I quite like her although I fear the Eric and Ernie on her screen is an unwitting festive reference. There's a robot wallpaper as well.

I've been scribbling with pen and paper recently too, although I appear to be unable to just leave things be and end up scanning and playing with them. It's nice to drift between formats every now and then though, and I quite like how this one turned out, for all my lack of accomplishment with non-digital formats.

Although looking at it again, it needs more baubles.

Labels: blether, dance

For the first time in over a year my web site is down and it's disturbing me greatly. A hardware fault took out my server, and lovely people are moving the site to a new machine and it should be back in an hour or so, but it feels very wrong for it to be unavailable. I fear I have bonded in some unhealthy way to a web site.

Oh my.

Update: And we're back. Yay! *does the happy dance*

Labels: blether, dance