Man Made DIY

I'm not a big zombie movie person. I like Night of the Living Dead, and that's about it. So I was surprised when I found myself really liking walking dead, a lot. One thing that hooked me was how well they pulled off shots of a post zombie-pocalypse Atlanta.

This is the demo reel from Stargate Studios, the company behind The Walking Dead effects, highlighting how they composite in graphics and animation to make The Walking Dead look so good. It's awesome, and it gives a good sense of how much time goes into making those shots.

The video is a little long, but try and stick with it at least to 1:28, when they show how they did… read more

My wife and I were recently in Amsterdam. I know, I know, our lives are amazing. But that's not the focus of this story.

One evening we went to cozy little bar with some outdoor seating. While we were there, two guys sat down on the bench next to us, over looking a canal,like all seats in Amsterdam do.

One of the guys, it turned out, worked in publishing. He'd just brought a print of his client's new book, "Bare Essentials", and was showing it… read more

I know, I know. Your $20 Ikea coffee table is fine. But, the thing is, I'm old now. I just turned 32, and 32-year olds have beautifully crafted, handmade, coffee tables. I think it's something we're legally compelled to do. Look it up on Wikipedia.

To start out our project, we needed some pretty wood to form the top and second shelf of the table. While at an antiques fair in Massachusetts, my lovely wife found three sets of wooden cigar rollers. Since they came in sets of two, we'd have three for the two levels of coffee table goodness.

Next, we needed the rest of the crap to put it all together. It's best, when doing a… read more

Sorry I haven't written much in the last few weeks. I was doing a pilot for the New York Television Festival, and it ate all my time like Cookie Monster at the Keebler factory.

That said, I thought I might write a couple DIYs on different aspects of DIYing a pilot which, except for the script, is run the same way a short film is.

So I'll start with a really general overview by offering a few tips and tricks:

1. Start with a good script. Even if the script isn't amazing, make sure it's something you're interested in doing. You'll be putting time and money up, so you should be at least 80% on board with the writing. If you… read more

Popular culture is filled with killer robots, most famously The Terminator. Unpopular culture, science fiction novels, are filled with all sorts of robots.

Isaac Asimov, in his years of writing science fiction, wrote a lot about robots. He wrote so much about robots he ended up having a series of laws about how robots should and would function. They go a little something like this:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Not too bad. I would have put in a fourth law about robots needing to look super cool, and always have guns for arms, but what do I know? I will say this. So far, deep into the future years of the 2000s, i have not seen one frightening… read more

How about now? No? What's wrong with you?

Is it possible that I only speak on a frequency you can't hear? No. But it's likely that when you take this fun hearing test, there will be frequencies inaudible to you. And if you're over 25, it's cause you're old. Or cause you listen to a lot of music. 

"Here is a list of tones that go from 8Hz all the way up to 22,000Hz. It’s fairly common for people who are over 25 years of age to not be able to hear above 15kHz, so this will help you find out where your high frequency hearing cuts off.

Musicians have a much higher risk of hearing loss that most people do, and many… read more

I really love a weird story behind an artist. Henry Darger was a near shut in while writing his 30,000 page book with illustrations.

Martin Ramirez was institutionalized (possibly because he couldn't speak English) and spent every waking minute drawing on whatever materials he could find.

Recently a friend clued me in to an artist named Mark Hogancamp.

Mark's story is bizarre. In 2000 Mark was attacked and beaten into a coma while leaving a bar. When he came out of the coma he had little memory of his former life, his marriage, or his rampant alcoholism. He found comfort and therapy through his art, an ongoing… read more

Somebody somewhere asked a few very imporant questions about The Charlie Rose Show. The first was, "what if Samuel Beckett wrote a play about the Charlie Rose show?" The second question, a two parter, "what does Charlie Rose really know about technology, and why doesn't Steve like this?"

The answer to both questions was this… read more

Earlier today, I learned that Jim Henson had collaborated with Johnny Hart to make a tv test pilot for a 30 minute "Wizard of Id" show.

The video is okay. I've never been much of a fan of The Wizard of Id to begin with, but it got me thinking about how much I love Jim Henson, and how awesome his work has been for… read more