The In-Sect - memes

If you belong to the lucky many who haven’t bought a Phillips CD-I during the short time of its commercial existence – congratulations, you’ve successfully avoided the stigma of having purchased one of the worst gaming consoles ever created.

Unfortunately, this means you’ve also missed out on some of the worst games ever created, including the indubitably worst entries in the ‘Legend of Zelda’ and ‘Super Mario Bros.’ franchises – licenses which Nintendo apparently granted to Phillips in exchange for being allowed to opt out of the whole mess…

Thanks to YouTube, however, you can at least ‘enjoy’ the legendary cutscenes from those games – legendary for being cheaply produced in Russia, based on an animation model that seems to assume human anatomy to be akin to Silly Putty. Aside from the original versions, YouTube hosts countless re-cut/re-arranged versions (see above sample) which usually constitute marked improvements over the original plot. Here’s another one, and this one features music and mild profanity.

In conclusion, the CD-I has proven at least all those people wrong, who predicted it would disappear without legacy…

The blogosphere is buzzing with awards. Any blogger can achieve an award if he/she is tagged by a friend. I got no award yet and I think the In-Sect deserves one! So I made up one myself. I hereby declare myself the winner of the “YouTube Babel Movie Award”. This one goes to the person who finds the movie scene available in the most different languages on YouTube. And it goes to me for finding 15 different versions of the “Bare Necessities” from “The Jungle Book”, the last movie Walt Disney made. So watch – by clicking on the image – Balu and Mowgli talking 15 different tongues:

I hereby postulate: There is no single movie scene on YouTube available in more different languages! You can earn yourself an award simply by participating. Leave a comment or send me an eMail and you get a nice link here and a wonderful graphic to place in your blog. The award is available in gold, silver, bronce, copper, steel, wood, plastic and bubble wrap (this one is soo ugly!).

(BTW: I stole the Tower from the infamous Brick Testament and my favorite version is Finnish.)

Related at the In-Sect: Superman – the Movie. A Satire., I know what Gabe did last summer!, I Was a Teenage Moviemaker, Bad Taste, Movie-Fan Princess: Connie Chan, Send More Paramedics!, Hold Handy, You Lovebirds! and Marc Singer is THE Beastmaster.

Seven random photos from my hard drive

Tasha tagged me with the highly contagious “7 Random Facts About Me”- meme. Over 40,000 blogs are already infected! The rules are simple: “Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog post with their 7 things as well as these rules. You need to tag 7 others (I won’t do this.) and list their names on your blog. Remember to leave a comment for them letting them know they have been tagged and to read your blog.”

1. I was never stung by a wasp or a bee nor bitten by a dog or a snake. Gnats don’t share this dislike.
3. I’m left handed. And left footed. (Yes, that’s possible. Ask any soccer player!)
4. I dream every night. I sometimes can control my dreams (or I just dream that I control my dream). Some days ago I dreamt I had lost my son in the center of Rome. I said to myself: “Don’t panic, this is a dream. Just start hovering above the Forum Romanum and you’ll find him.” In the first minutes after I get up in the morning I’m often really disappointed that I cannot change reality anymore. (Telekinesis is handy!)
5. I proposed marriage to my wife after knowing her for two days.
6. Some people are like open books to me. I could tell you every single word they are going to say BEFORE they say it.
7. I lose at Chess, Poker, Backgammon or almost any other game. I once taught Backgammon to my brother – I lost the first game we played. But I like to play and I don’t care too much about losing.

It will be difficult to find someone NOT already tagged. I tag Mushy from Mushy’s Moochings, Jim from I’m Fortywhat!?, Rob from Linknotes.
And -just to make his post completely senseless – I hereby tag Nildot from The Cytizen Blog. Hah!

This is one of the most popular memes right now, maybe because it’s not just a tagging game, but a tagging game called “award”. The funny thing is: Everyone participating gets this award and this could easily mean half of the blogosphere right now. (If you do a Technorati search on the starting page of this meme, already 3166 blogs link to it! And the branch that hit me already forgot his creator.) This one was started by Ilker Yoldas at the Thinking Blog and I got tagged by Hiding Out in the Blogosphere.

Five blogs that make me think:

Damn Interesting: The title explains all you need to know. It’s damn interesting.

O’Connors O’pinions: Written by Frank and Tia O’Connor from Bucharest, Romania.

David Airey’s Blog I like David’s posts about design and his community. Read his post about the 2012 Olympia logo for example

Mirabilis is written by Christine from Canada and is mostly about history and archaeology and always interesting to read.

Metamorphism We of course all understand it, being intellectuals…

I’m REALLY sorry for boring you to death with this article, it was really a pleasure meeting you! Your heirs can satisfy their thirst for revenge at Paul Enderson’s site Reflections, who tagged me with this meme. He will put the blame on Tara at the Graphic Design Blog who tagged him or even on Lauren Marie Krause, who started this out of pure curiosity. Designers, always full of mischief.

1. How did you get started in the business?
It was like a natural thing to do. I’m a classically trained illustrator for 20 years and I am a computer nerd since about 1981, when we played Adventureland for hours on a computer called VIC-20. In 1982 the Commodore 64 entered the world and featured jaw-dropping graphical possibilities for that time. (You can play many of those legendary games right in your browser: Visit C64s.com) Then I bought my first “Fat Mac”, Aldus PageMaker and an Apple Laserwriter with PostScript at it’s heart. (Over $10,000!) It was like paradise! It was hell! Imagine working on a black and white screen with a resolution of 512 × 342 with frequent, unpredictable software crashes! I did not earn one penny for the whole first year with my Mac.

The bootscreen of the VIC-20, my Fat-Mac and the
Aldus logo as PageMaker displayed it.

2. What kept you going in those early years?
The lack of choice. I had sold my soul to Desktop Publishing and spent every penny I owned – and even more – for this primitive system, so I simply had no choice. But there was a strange fascination that got me hooked: DTP gave designers so much more influence in the resulting work – it felt like breathing freely for the first time. About three years later most of the people who laughed at us “nerd designers” had lost their jobs and we were earning their money. I remember walking through the city, when I noticed strange looking man-sized heaps in front of “The Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s” office – which is the biggest newspaper here. The heaps were made of metal types! They had disestablished letterpress printing and ditched all their letters.

3a. Did you ever feel like you weren’t good enough or you would never make it in this industry?
I never worked in a specific industry – media industry changed all the time. I’ve got paid for illustrations, paintings, layouts, font design, web design, consulting, CD-ROM authoring or even digital video. I hereby declare that the result never, ever was like the ‘thing’ I had in mind when I started. So I’m used to think I’m not good enough. On an hourly basis. (*alarm clock ringing in the background*)

3b. How did you work through that?
I never worked through ‘that’: I believe that if you achieve EXACTLY what you wanted to create, if you think you are REALLY good, it is the right time to feel your pulse. Chances are you’re dead.
If you ever used watercolours, you know it’s important to incorporate the randomly flow of colour. A self-pleased artist is just lying to himself.

4. Do you look at others today and think “Wow, I wish I were that good”?
Because the changing media industry demanded it, I am a jack-of-all-trades now. I know something of every trade, but I’m not very good in any specific one – so, yeah, happens to me all the time!

5. How do you measure success?
Costumer’s satisfaction? No, just kidding – that’s self-evident. And to be honest: Some customers are so easily pleased that’s not even a challenge.
Quite the contrary: Success is the possibility NOT having to work under any circumstances. There are some things a customer might require from you that can cross the borders of your ethical or aesthetic values. Never do it – it will corrupt your work for a longer time than you can imagine.

6. By your standard, do you think you are successful?
Yes, by my standard I’m successful. But I cannot take credit for it. Without the help of my wife and some of my customers that are friends now – never do that, btw! – I wouldn’t be where I am now. Fortune favours fools!

I tag Jay Stephens from Monsterama, Chluaid Ashfield from the Woodenblog and Andrée-Anne Dupuis-Bourret from Le Cahier virtuel Those blogs are worth the visit anyway!

Another meme! Somehow they are like the flu, highly contagious and they seem to have seasons. Now is meme-time.
This one was started by David Airey here and he will collect all participants. I was tagged by Paul Enderson from Reflections.
It’s a nice idea to show the blogosphere what you look like. If you incidentally were born asBrad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. I wouldn’t post photos of my family though. Would you?
Because I hope that female bloggers are not as vain as male, I tag Robyn from Practical Blogging, Barbara from Hello, Stranger and Erika from Plain Jane Mom