Have just watched an absolutely hillarious piece of animation called Gentlemen’s Duel. Around 5 minutes long and it’s got it all, great concept, well executed, good voices and you have to watch to the very end. Just the opening few seconds gives you an indication of the fun in the whole piece – besides, it’s got SteamPunk battling robots. GOLD!
I got a call the other day from Thomas at Jackson Black Films (he’s also associated with Fitzroy Shorts). He was putting together an educational video series with VEA covering a variety of technical issues for Grade 9 to 12 school kids. One of these episodes covers the basics of database systems, and I was asked to come in and be filmed for it.
I wound up in an office with my laptop, talking about database concepts, examples of databases, open source systems, security and APC.au. Over a few hours I was interviewed on camera and then walked through a variety of data-driven web systems, back-end interfaces and scripts. All captured on tape and then to be edited into something coherent (if that’s at all possible given I’m the one doing the talking :)
An interesting aspect was being asked about removing my earrings as the target educational market is generally regarded as being rather conservative. I took one off but the one in my right ear stayed (it’s not designed to be removed). Hell, if they can survive a near-bald head with pink glasses, what’s an earring??? :)
All up, it was a lot of fun and the guys seemed happy with my ramblings and samples, so I guess it went pretty well.
