long time no blog

some of the things I’ve done instead:

  • Designed a PDF of Sharing Creative Works, the Creative Commons comic I worked on with Alex Roberts and Jon Phillips. Did this with Scribus, an open source desktop publishing app that seems to have finally reached maturity (usable interface, doesn’t crash every couple of hours).
  • Wrote the copy for Simple Licensing, a Creative Commons infodoc designed by Alex, with contributions from Jon and Tim.
  • Redesigned the Lampoon website.
  • Sold out
  • Bunch of arty stuff. More on this later…

Lots of stuff in the blog queue, gonna get on that.

Columbia High School Documentary: One School

Impressive student documentary of all the intense events that happened at my high school the year after I graduated, when students decided to join together to bring about change and unify the school. Really inspiring. How have I not seen this until now? Why isn’t this happening everywhere?

The whole video is 45min, broken up into parts because youtube is annoying. But very much worth the effort to watch. Anyone know what Columbia is like now? Is there anything alums can do?

After seeing the near-total lack of protest (at least at this scale, relatively) on both the Berkeley and Harvard campuses, I have to give major props to my peers from CHS for making this happen. By luck I was on break from college the day of the big walkout, so I was there, and it was far more inspiring than anything I’ve seen on campus. I would not be surprised if a number of our generation’s leaders come from the halls of Columbia.

One School
Written, produced, and directed by Cris Thorne
one school part 1

One School- Censorship

One School- Black History Month?

One School: The Build-Up

One School- Friday Morning

One School: Walk Out Part 1

One School: Walk Out Part II

One School: Walk Out Part III

One School: Finale

Kucinich on Sex (awwwwww!)

My friend & former housemate Jenna Mellor managed to snag an impromptu interview with Kucinich for Hbomb Magazine. This being the Harvard sex magazine (and Jenna) all the questions are about sex. Most are policy-related but some are quite personal. Then they hug. Twice. Its definitely the most adorable thing I’ve seen all campaign season.

YouTube – H Bomb at the New Hampshire Primaries: STRIPPER CUM NATURIST

She also got a pretty funny one with a virgin paultard.

Sharing Creative Works

Last week Creative Commons published Sharing Creative Works, the comic I’ve been working on for the past month or so.

Sharing Creative Works Banner

Originally intended as documentation for our OLPC collaboration, we settled for trying to come up with something American kids (and adults) would understand, as we realized we were pretty unqualified to educate children in the developing world. So in true collaborative form, the comic is on the wiki (admittedly, a poor presentation format) and all the SVG artwork is online, in the hopes that people who have a stronger knowledge of the different cultures the laptops are going to will give us feedback or make improvements.

Sharing Creative Works Storyboard

I wrote the bulk of the script (with lots of help from Jon, Alex, and Asheesh). This is the product of 4ish years of trying to explain CC to friends, family, and whoever else would listen. I’m really curious about how successful it is. Its definitely the approach I’ve found work best in conversation, but this is a comic. Of course I’ve been working on it for too long to have any sense if it works or not (but Valleywag twice blogged us).

As far as the artwork goes, I storyboarded it and then passed it on to our awesome graphic designer, Alex Roberts. He did most of the panels in Inkscape until he got bored of it, and threw it back to me. The art is kinda tricky because of how abstract the ideas are, leading to an over reliance on arrows and such. I had fun with the facial expressions towards the end though.

Sharing Creative Works 17

This is my first real project using vector graphics and its made me a lot more savvy with Inkscape, which is great. I definitely miss ink & bristol, and hopefully will have something new in that medium up here soon. On the other hand, SVG makes it so easy to revise and mess around, like with this final panel that didn’t make the cut:

Sharing Creative Works cut panel

rolfcon!!1!

Tim, Christina & co are up to some craziness back in Cambridge. On April 25-27, they will attempt to open the hellmouth:

This is the ongoing record of an effort to assemble every famous internet meme or celebrity to come to Harvard in the spring of 2008 to attend a conference.

Presumably, they’re going to talk about fame online.

:::ROFLCon:::

So far the guest list includes xkcd, dinosaur comics, the oneredpaperclip guy, and others. They get goatse and I’m buying a plane ticket.

To get you psyched:

Internet People


Internet People

Animation by Dan Meth
Music by Dan Meth & Micah Frank
From MethMinute39, CC-BY-NC-SA

Suggested Reading: The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos

I don’t have $100, but I do have a blog.

Congressman Kucinich, I believe you’re the only person on this stage who had a chance to vote on the Patriot Act right after 9/11, who voted against it, right away.

That’s because I read it.

I’ve yet to decide who to support for the primary, and political blogging is a slippery slope. But fuck it.

Hearing Kucinich say that in the debate felt incredible. Maybe he’s unelectable, another classic victim of a self-fulfilling big media lie. But thats not gonna stop me from giving mad props to the candidate who doesn’t compromise on things that should be uncompromisable, like the Constitution. The candidate who is sensible and passionate and calls the game out on what it is. Who doesn’t base his policy on what’s gonna get him elected, but instead gets out there on national television/youtube to honestly articulate how broken everything is, and how we could start to fix it. Who recognizes not just how bad the US government is for its citizens, but for the entire world.

Who is almost single-handedly trying to impeach Dick Cheney.

There’s a campaign “to get 100,000 people to commit to donate $100 each to Dennis Kucinich on December 15, 2007, for a total one-day contribution of $10 million.” Even if you don’t think Kucinich would make a good president, $100 is worth it just so that he can keep speaking out at these debates. Worth it just to say suck it to big media.

Now, at the moment I don’t have $100 to spare. Maybe I will by December 15. But I do have a blog, and I think some people read it. So perhaps I can encourage you to throw some cash behind the candidate who is small but mighty. And peaceful! Or maybe 10 of us broke-ass students can get together and pledge $10/each.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programing of drug-induced animation and things that you haven’t already seen on reddit.

Rebecca R. Rojer