May 15, 2009

Bloginator: Salvation

Cue Neil Young warbling “Tonight’s the ni-iiiight…”
Well, after many years of discussion, planning, and pauses, Adobe’s blogging infrastructure team is due to push us live to a new system (based on Movable Type 4.25) tonight. Much goodness should result (at a minimum not having the server crap out when you’re trying to post a comment), though from about 10pm Pacific time (0600 GMT) I won’t be able to post anything for a while. More importantly:

Commenting will be disabled until the transition is complete, and you’ll experience errors if you try to post a comment.

I’ll post the all-clear when things are back to normal. And if that doesn’t happen & you never hear from me again, well, it’s been real!

Tilt-shifting in AIR; Slick, simple 3D

• Developer Art & Mobile has created TiltShift Generator, a simple little Flash app that lets you selectively blur parts of an image, simulating very shallow depth of field. You can download the app for use outside your browser, too. [Via Rich Townsend]
• Box Shot 3D is a very simple, very easy-to-use little app for mapping images onto common 3D objects (boxes, bottles, business cards, etc.), then rendering a nicely lit result; see screenshots. I downloaded a copy and got good results in a minute or two.

Photos from Above: Punking satellites & more

• Dig Alex MacLean’s Dinghies Clustered Around Dock.
• Real-Life Dead Pixel in Google Earth: Helmut Smits “somehow came upon the decision to burn an almost 3-foot by 3-foot square of ash into the grass somewhere out there in the world in the name of art in public places. When it’s viewed from 1 kilometer above the ground (3,280 feet), it looks just like a dead pixel on your monitor at home.” [Via]
• Hubert Blanz’s splintered airport collages make me think of Charles Demuth’s Figure 5 in Gold.
• Rod Wynne-Powell recently posted a large gallery showing London from above.