oyayubizoku

My good friend Leri Greer (I have known him for years now), is just about the most prolific futurist illustrator, designer, animator I know. I mean, when I look at his work, I just get all excited and then I recall Blade Runner and 2001 all over again. He really should be doing production design for ILM or Spielberg or something! Maybe even a video game? Well, just take a look for yourself. I think the next step for Leri is to do an art opening of his best works on HUGE canvases! I would buy them all if I had the dough!

www.pushbak.org

Since I saw HEAT by Michael Mann, I dont think there is another action film with such gritty reality in a gun fight sequence... Well... not until I saw The Nest (or Nides DE Guepes in French). Its a French film starring Samy Naceri of TAXI 1, 2, & 3 fame (all Luc Besson productions) and a whole slew of other hip and edgy looking gangster and paramilitary types.

The basic story line is that this group of thieves stakes a warehouse, breaks, enters, and as they are stealing laptops, a military armored car passing by (late at night) with a notorious crime lord from albania, gets ambushed by the crime lords posse. The police and military armored car crew head for the warehouse and break in as well. Now you have two factions trapped in the warehouse, and huge army of night vision goggle wearing henchmen shooting up the place. The most surprising thing for me was the English dubbed version was actually better and more easy to deal with than the subtitles. When the subtitles say stuff like 'backfiring car drives up' and 'man laughs' thats pretty bad. In the end the dubbed version worked, so its all good.

The Nest is one of the best action films I have seen since HEAT, if not better! Oh, by the way, the director of The Nest, Florent Emilio Siri recently completed a Bruce Willis film called HOSTAGE... so I know I need to see that when it comes to the theaters. Its suppose ot be pretty tense as well!

Buy: The Nest $22.48

Buy: Taxi (Original French Version) $19.00
Buy: Taxi 2 (Original French Version) $9.99
Buy: Taxi 3 (Original French Version) $11.97

One of the things that I am keenly interested in is the whole ubiquitous desktop experiencel. So far the folks over at Konfabulator have nailed it on the head. But, there are other underdog apps out there for OSX users. xSkyDesk from GlobalConcious is one of them. This app makes your desktop into a virtual picture of the sky above you (you enter your Lat/Lon coordinates) and changes according to the time of day.

xSkyDesk basically acts as a window into the outside world above you, for people (like me) who a) dont have a corner office in some skyscraper and b) who stare a computer screen all day (and night for that matter). It renders a highly detailed shot of the sky above. You can customize it to include N/S/E/W readings, and star systems in the night sky. You can also set the frame rate of refresh, so if you have a high end Mac processor you can use the 20 frames per sec setting, but i usually use the 1 frame per sec setting.

Its free to download, but if you use it regularly you should really donate $10. Look up from your own xSkyDesk!

Buy: GlobalConcious - xSkyDesk $10.00

For all you Godzilla (or Gojira if you want to be japanese linguistically correct) fans out there who also love hardcore underground Hip Hop, I just was introduced to this disc by King Geedorah and its truely amazing! Yet another working title release from MF Doom (also known as Mad Villan).

The flow is very laidback and mellow, but has a great deal of grit to it... Probably due to the HUGE amount of samples from the various Godzilla films... and the kicker is a bunch of the guest vocalists are named after some of the more popular Godzilla monsters... Gigan, Biolante, Rodan and my favorite Jet-Jaguar. Very very cool in my homage to movies hip hop sampling book!

Buy: King Geedorah - Take Me To Your Leader $14.99

I have been tinkering with this new Flash based Photo tool called PostcardViewer from Airtight Interactive aka Felix Turner.

This little app parses all your photo images, and then displays them as travel postcards with white borders, in a randomly strewn fashion. Its a real neat take on presenting your photos from a trip.

I have posted images from Tokyo (from my trip to Japan in 2002) using this tool. Use Mozilla or IE as some people I have talked to said they are having problems with Safari.

Felix also has another slideshow tool called SimpleViewer, which is more modern and minimal. Either way, both are great tools for the photo blogger. You can also purchase the source code for more detailed and customized access to the Flash files. Keep it coming Felix!

If your farmiliar with the Japanese design outfit Groovisions, you will be pleased to know that they now have an online shop available GRV 1788 where you can buy any of their fine design items. Its VERY expensive... $85 for a long sleeved Tshirt!!! But a good source to get their limited edition Brockman figures and such. Check it out if your so inclined.

While at MacWorld this year I picked up a very well designed Aqua inspired app called Delicious Library (by Delicious Monster). Its a DVD-CD-Book-Game digital Librarian system that allows you to scan the Barcodes of your various media items w/ your Apple iSight Camera, it then touches the Amazon.com product database and pulls in any information and adds it to the entry along w/ an image of the product. I have scanned something like 185+ DVDs and started on my huge CD collection. I have always wanted to get a handle on what I actually have in my various collections and now I will be able to. It even allows you to sell your products using the Amazon.com auction functionality. Def. on my must have software lists for anyone with a mac and a huge DVD or CD collection.

I saw the Flip Flap by TOMY® on the John Maeda design BLOG. Its a great disruptive power efficient invention, and I think will add a tad of Wabi Sabi to my already somewhat simple and organized desk space here at Idealab. No batteries, no water, just light. Brilliant!

You can buy the Flip Flap on eBay for about $14.99 plus shipping costs to your area. Make sure to download the TOMY® Flip-Flap Message Card Template (Acrobat PDF File) for a personalized plant message.