Listening to: Listen - Toad The Wet Sprocket

Just an warning… based on the last week I have sneaky suspicion that updates to
the blog will be spotty over the next few weeks. Something else is consuming a lot
of my bandwidth at present.

Listening to: Bullets - Editors

RIMG0014

>

Originally uploaded by flash5.>

I have produced another test gilding… unfortunately the earlier tests are starting
to show some sort of breakdown in the Size. I think I might need to move to a water
size method.

Listening to: The Andy Warhol Effect - Strawpeople

Welcome to 2006 people. Thanks so much to the people who have signed up as readers
in 2005 and thanks to people who have helped me out over the last year.

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

RIMG0025

Originally uploaded by flash5.>

The set. Next step
glass and gilding.

UPDATE: Note to self… plastic stensils, covered in black paint in the midday sun…
not a wise move I now have a couple of little crumpled balls of plastic.

Listening to: River - Natalie Merchant

Skateboard
On Wall

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Originally uploaded by flash5.>

I finally (like after 2 years) gotten my skateboard hung on the wall. I am very pleased
with the end result.

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

Today my blog is a year old… 19 Oct 2004 saw my first
post.

Why did I start? Because I was going a little potty not being able to vent. I am still
a little potty, but I am able to vent . It also means that I don’t subject a
good friend in Seattle to the
most inane ideas when I become unhinged… he can come along here and read about
said inane ideas.

Some stats… I now have between 20 and 30 subscribers and last month I got about
17,000 visits:

About 1/3 of those visits are from bots… so discount accordingly. Not huge numbers,
but not bad for something that really doesn’t have a specfic focus.

So thanks to those who read… those of you I know and those of you I don’t

Cheers

Dave

UPDATE: As promised, the graph of hits:

Listening to: What If - Coldplay

I have upgraded (problematically… in that the conversion tool spat the dummy) to
dasBlog 1.8.5… I don’t expect a change in service, but let me know if things
are playing up.

Oh! And if anyone knows where I can get some good dasBlog themes gimme a yell.

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

Weta
Visit

Originally uploaded by flash5.>

This is the photo taken from the Capital Times story
of the visit
to Weta.

Listening to: Civil Sin - Boy Kill Boy

On Wednesday I packed up my stuff early, jumped on a bus and went over to Mirimar.
After getting momentarily lost and spending a little time pondering the fresh cut
grass smell of suburbia I stumbled into the reception of Weta.
What followed was one of the most interesting afternoons I have experienced in a very
long while.

The afternoon was split into two sections. The first hour was spent listening
to Richard
Taylor and the second was spent wandering around the workshops (we didn’t get
into the Weta Digital areas unfortunately).

The talk by Richard was much like one on the previous
The New Cool seminars. For me it was the most useful and inspirational part of
the whole experience. Richard spoke at length about how the company came about, how
it has stumbled and succeed, and how they are positioning it for the future. He was
very candid about failures and openly proud of the successes of his team. Some of
the key insights for me were:

• Weta babies
  He mentioned that the 149th (I think) child had been born to a Weta employee. The
  importance of this to him was that it marked the 149th person who had been able to
  make a life secure enough to make a family while working at Weta. A very simple, utterly
  compelling and holistic measure of success.
• Movies aren’t the be all and end all - Creativity is
  Movies are just an outlet for their creativity… creative output is the primary goal
  of Weta and movies are a way of getting the money for it.
• Selling hours is a blue collar job
  I have always known the limitations of service based companies… but I have never
  had it painted so starkly. He’s right… you only ever make as much as you care to
  give time wise and that’s your limit. Doesn’t matter what your service is.

Richard talked and talked and talked and talked and it was all good. He, like every
person we met at Weta, was passionate, intelligent and incredibly articulate. I enjoy
listening to smart people talk.

We spent the second half of the trip being guided around the workshops but one of
the head costumers (whose name I can’t remember (much to my shame)) and being subtly
watched over by the giant Weta Attorney Michael
McNeil (who was a bloody nice guy… but if I pulled out a camera I suspect he
would’ve picked me up by the scruff and politely asked me “to not do that sir
or I will rip your arm off and beat you ’round the head with the soggy end“).
The workshops are breath taking both because of the scale (I really have seen shops
like that since being an air force brat) and the collection of talented people…
you get a palpable feeling that they could make anything happen on film.

The other thing that struck me was that it is an intrinsically international company. Groupings
of clocks were ever present… four faces telling the times for Wellington, LA, New
York and London.

I always find these experiences are real catalysts for reflection (especially when
I hear some one describe an animation system I was working on two years ago and then
canned because a) I didn’t want it enough and b) I believed the people who told me
I couldn’t do it). All in all the old clichés apply:

• do what you love
• follow your gut
• get advice, but you need to balance it
• you competitors are always gaining on you
• you’re partners a probably more interesting in making cool cash than they are in making
  cool things
• ideas are cheap, the thing that seperates goats from sheep is execution

I also realised that a lot of my failure in starting something in the past was that
I never really had something that showed off the idea… and that it made it very
easy for people to dismiss it or say that it couldn’t be done. If some one described
the things that I have described I would do the same thing. Hence play’n’see.

The Dowse and the various city councils have
done a phenomenal job with this series of seminars and visits… it has been a very
fruitful experience. Thank you.

Listening to: Living for the Weekend - Hard Fi

Our article (I co-wrote it with Zef Fugaz) Using
Persona to Drive Software Design and Customer Satisfaction has been republished
on Usability News.