The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
-Ghandi
In basic terms, I suppose the idea behind this is that treating animals poorly has few negative direct consequences. The rights given to animals are given by choice and not through fear of retribution. Therefore freely choosing to treat animals well, when there are few benefits in doing so, can be a measure of a nation’s moral progress.
For the same principles I believe that “The greatness of an individual and their moral progress can be judged by the way they treat customer service personnel.”
I generally try to be friendly and courteous to all people (although I am quite fond of some light-hearted ribbing). There is however, one group of people that I often find myself treating above others, maybe to the point of insincerity, and that is the fish and chip shop workers. The reason behind this is that $2 worth of chips is so subjective that an extra bit of friendliness could result in some extra chips… perhaps my own morals could do with some further progress.
Australia has, for a long time, been known for punching above its weight and achieving great results in various sporting events. It now turns out that we are no-longer the light weights that we thought we were and have once again beaten Britain and also the US… this time however it is in regards to obesity. A study released today by the ‘Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute’ shows that 26% of Australians are obese, at least in terms of BMI.
So chances are if you are reading this you are over weight. Yes fatty, I am talking to you!
In response to this study I thought I would compile a list of tips and tricks to help people lose weight (although being the fat and lazy bastard that you are, your probably not going to listen anyway):
Eat less
Exercise more
Wear shorts and t-shirts during winter (your body will use energy in an attempt keep you warm)
Don’t snack and don’t EVER buy chocolate (friends that buy you chocolate don’t like you, they just want you to be fat)
Don’t eat more than 25% of your recommended daily calorie intake in a single meal
Don’t tell your friends that you are trying to lose weight, you are only telling them so that they will tell you in return that “you don’t have to lose weight, your beautiful the way you are”… but you do… your fat
Realise that you are fat
Repeatedly and dramatically change your diet eg. don’t eat meat, only eat meat, only eat yellow foods, only eat food you can suck through a straw
Wear tight fitting clothes, you will become self-concious and develop a ‘positive’ eating disorder
Weigh yourself everyday (for the same reason as above)
Ditch your fat friends, that way you won’t be dragged into McDonald’s every time you walk past
Have a serious relationship with a fruitarian (as serious as you can with a fruitarian anyway)
Get addicted to a ‘Class A’ drug (speak to your doctor if you are taking any other ‘medication’ prior to addiction)
Develop a serious illness or cancer
If that all fails, then go back to watching porn on your computer while eating crisps and drinking beer… at least you will be enjoy yourself and be comforted by the knowledge that you are making Australia ‘Number 1′.
The amount of times I have been asked in the street “are you that guy in the sumo suit, wearing clown shoes in the small banner adverts that were shown on a couple of websites on one single day”… is zero. But after writing this post, maybe that number will increase.
Almost a year ago now, I was asked from a technical point if creating X amount of video banner ads, involving people dressed in sumo suits, would be possible within a certain amount of time. My point of view was that it was possible, but went one step further and offered to take a day off and be one of the sumos… which they said yes to.
The day started off fairly easy for me at 8:00am. While the crew setup the lighting, detailed the car and organised the cameras, I enjoyed a nice cooked breakfast from the cafeteria. I then waited around for about an hour or so before getting ‘made up’ and then getting into the 26kg suit… which is probably the same moment that the day stopped being easy.
For a lot of the day, up until 7:00pm, I was running, bumping and falling all over the place, all while under extremely bright and hot lights. The suits trapped the heat and so my clothes were drenched in sweat and I could feel it constantly running down my arms into my gloves… not very nice. The other guy I was doing it with faired even worse than I, and had to be substituted 1/2 way through as his make-up was sweating off his face as fast as they coulld put it on.
The worst part however was when the make-up was removed and some of it went into my eyes. I had difficulting opening my eyes for the next 12 hours and focusing for 36… which I remember being reasonably scared about at the time, however I did still manage to go to work.
It was good fun though.
Here are a couple of ‘mock ups’ of the final adverts, as well as a video of some behind the scenes footage filmed on the day.
How long is a piece of string? A piece of string is one metre in length, unless otherwise specified… or at least that is what I hope will become the adopted standard length. As for a ball of string, well that’s another issue entirely.
“When people gathered and started asking her questions, she pretended that she did not know what had happened.” - Shock or just a clever catwoman trick I wonder?
As bizarre as this article is, it does give an interesting view into the minds and psyche of some people and also makes me think that as a species, we are not as clever as we think we are.
For those of you who are too lazy to read the article, it basically says that some guy hit one of three cats crossing the road with his motorcylce, at which point the cat turned into a woman. The cats were on an assasination mission and when the locals heard what had happened, they formed a mob, bashed one of the cats to death and assaulted the woman.
“One of them, it was learnt, was able to escape while the third one was beaten to death, still as a cat though.”
“Police will still be guarding her so that she will not disappear.”
Surely this could make an amazing cartoon series, “The Secret Evil Cult of the Catwomen”, or at least the basis for an extortionist self-development group which claims to be a religion.
Yesterday, during my quick venture out of the office to grab some lunch, I walked past a man putting junk mail into peoples letter boxes. As I walked past I heard him say to someone on his mobile phone “I can’t talk now, I am really busy”.
I suppose its possible he had a big stack to get through… but serisously?!
Thanks to a few tutorials, some google searches and a few late nights I managed to complete it within a week (and that’s while also working full-time during the day).
The application basically records what you learn everyday and displays this information on your profile eg. ‘Today Trevor learnt how to build a facebook application.’ You can also see what your friends have been recently learning.
I have learnt a lot in a short period of time and have also gained so much respect for the facebook team, everything seems to be so cleverly planned and so well executed… except perhaps their help docs.
… and other big words that I don’t understand either.
My latest experiment combines my previous Anaglph work with my newly written motion parallx (billboard) engine.
Like before, you will need some red blue glasses to fully appreciate it, or as an alternative, a really good imagination.
I would also like to give a shout-out to Chris Houston for giving me a 5 minute ‘biology of the eye and basic 3D principles’ talk, which helped me improve my engine.
It has now been 1 Year, and 2 Months since I left Australia. Although in the past year I have done a lot, one thing I haven’t done a lot of is write emails. So as a superficial band-aid, which will no doubt bore many of you, I offer you a few lists that represent my time away…
On Saturday I purchased an ‘Incredible 3D doodle Kit’ from paper chase for £4.50. The kit included some red and blue anaglyph glasses, a blue and a red pencil as well as contraption that looks similar to a drawing compass but uses the two pencils instead of having a point.
I haven’t actually used the ‘compass’ or the pencils, but I have used the glasses to create the following flash application which allows you to draw, doodle, scribble and squiggle your own 3D picture.
If you are feeling really creative you can generate a random squiggle to which you then have to work into your own picture, similar to what ‘Mr Squiggle’ had to do in his kids show.
