My son Owen Clough was inspired today watching an online video at lego.com. It was about a stop motion animator who used his old bedroom at his parents house to create a studio where he could film Lego shorts. Soon after watching the clip Owen began cutting and coloring backdrops for his Space Police Lego’s film set. I was so touched by the 5 year old’s creativity and tenacity that I decided to pitch in and point out some of the basics. For instance I told him to try not to move the camera around and to start the scene from the beginning. I had to tape his little Fisher Price camera to the table for him. Once I did that he was off and running! Owen pulled this little video off in less than few hours and had the whole family involved and cracking up!

Owen Clough - Lego Space Police Animation Episode 1

I’m please to announce the voting of next years SXSW (South by Southwest) panel discussions. Its a music, film, and interactive conference based in Austin, Texas and I have the honor of being in the running for speaking there. You can help make sure I go by signing up and voting for me here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3479/.

You can once again join the most intense online player vs player space game for free! Im so hooked to this game. If you like to jump in and get out like I do this game is perfect for the long run as you can train your character even when you are playing. Look for Melkweg in space Ill try to set you up.

Free Trial:
https://secure.eve-online.com/trial/

User Experience Treasure Map. I love this visual. Most companies don’t want to follow a plan like this, but its so good to show what a development process takes with the user in mind. www.findability.org

I came across this article from Read Write Web and found it interesting and worth the read. Its pretty exciting to see the plans of what companies like Google are doing to make online computing more robust and accessible. Hopefully Google will get the kinks out of its issues with formatting though. It took Microsoft awhile to do that with Word and I still beat my head trying to get layout the way I want. So I will be patient. Having the abilities of Office online for free just cant be beat so keep it up Google. Take a look at the 2009 predictions here.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2009_web_predictions.php

Being a complete dork and one that enjoys shooting people in the office as well I decided to fabricate a Steampunk inspired Nerf gun to make it even more fun for me. I know I am not the first to do this and I was definitely inspired by the many submissions online. Using old parts from my kids toys I was able to create some slight modifications to the already cool design of the Maverick Nerf gun. I did have some help from my son as well. This will be a fun modification to my hyjinks at work and hopefully this will inspire the creative geek in you as well to join the many who have tired.

Datamancer’s Steampunk Laptop is probably the coolest work of art I have seen in awhile. Its just amazing to look at and the details abundant. You can really tell that there was so much effort put into it.

Visit this wild creation here: http://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/steampunklaptop.htm