I've made my delayed present for my cousin Lautaro this afternoon. On a dark blue t-shirt I bought more than a month ago, I got it printed a special tehet it tigit drawing on black and white on the front, and a cool logo on the back. It was more expensive than I first thought because they had to double layer the thing to get real white over the dark cloth, but it was worth it. Too bad I had no proper camera here to take a decent picture, but here's a quick spy-shot:

It's the second t&t t-shirt ever produced, and it's a really neat piece of clothing. Too bad dA isn't doing shirts on its store.
Anyway, for you to get a full idea of the image, I did a minimalistic dark wallpaper, much in Tim's like (and myself). Here are the links to different sizes:
1600x1200 | 1280x960 | 1024x768
Tehet is saying "Run Tigit!" in german, a kind of homenage to Lola Rennt, one of my favorites films ever, and I know Bassem would agree here. The t-shirt has the upper square on the front and the lower logo banner on the back between shoulders. I hope he'll like it at least half what I do.

Long, long ago, after the times of Napster, and certainly before the times of Overnet/eMule, before the magic wand of broadband knocked at my door, where you could almost trust what you found was actually what you looked for, I used KaZaA lite. And I had much more free time than now. That equals I did a dark skin to suit my aesthetic needs of that time.

I posted on deviantART, on my very beginnings. October 2002. Wooo. I also got a mail from a guy who was starting a site only with skins for kazaa, and asked my permission to put mine there. I just found the link by a referrer on my site's stats and voilà. Here it is. It seems it has 7700 downloads, plus 3804 at dA. Incredible (for me).

Finally my sister's play has started showcasing on a local theater here in Buenos Aires. It's a nice play, with a interesting layout and some common strong themes, dark, tense, and well-paced. It's called Guárdame como las pupilas de tus ojos, which is a section of a psalm from the old testament I think.

You have to seat on one of four cardinal points, around which the play develops, with I think nine actresses and one actor always on "stage". They never leave the scene, and they keep acting, so each time you see it you should discover new things. Anyway, I've filmed them and made their promo DVD, plus a simple website with stills captured from the video, and the overall graphic design (flyers, cards, etc). Take a look even if you can't go because you're in another continent, for example.

Some days ago I did this hilarious poster for TCSud about the importance of washing your hands to keep yourself away from dangerous microbes and other ugly tiny bad fellows.
Too bad it's in spanish, but the speech each one says its really funny, just for example: Buh! I'm the Escherichia Coli. I cause diarrheas and infections on the urinary tract!
And they all say it so happy... impossible not to at least smile.

UPDATE Due to several requests I've put it at my dA Prints account where you can order prints if you need too. Go here for details and purchase info.

Today it was the first really cold day of the year, if you ask me. Earlier I needed to go for a walk, just step outside, away from the heating, away form the noise, and walk. I have no preconceived route, but I ended up inside a small supermarket, a few blocks away. As I was thinking, walking down the corridors, I saw this strange image (mentally) of myself walking there between the goods, and I remember the feeling of the cold smooth floor, which was of a warm very desaturated yellowish tone, and the reflection of myself on the glossy ground. I also thought about those classic really painted paintings, and their themes, and begin to wonder how would a Van Gogh painting of a flower inside a supermarket would look like, or a DaVinci, or Gauguin, for example. Later on, and back inside, I feel the need to picture that strange moment.

I shouldn't waste too much time on it, so it has my usual sketchy feel, but I think it's the best way to draw these things. It has some freedom on the strokes, that uncertainty on the edges, that makes it much more like the way I remember those images. Later on, back in my room, I scanner and painted it. Over and over again I liked it better on grayscale, but only for the floor, from which I remembered the feeling of the reflection on the yellowish floor, so I started to think about the way feelings or images stuck in our heads (or at least in mine). That's were its title comes from and you can see it at higher size here.

Like the old Simpsons saying: I got some cool Alf Pogs. Remember Alf? He's back... in Pog form!

_TEHET
Hey look Tigit he finally did a new drawing of us!
_TIGIT
And we waited that long for this? Is this a joke?
_TEHET
(looks at the drawing)
Humm, no. It looks more like a drawing to me.
_TIGIT
Hey that's my line!
_TEHET
Oh you're right, we're a little rusty. We have to do this more often.
*HINT* *HINT*

I wanted to get this little thing out of my head since two days ago. Made for a friend's podcast, full of tips for digital photography. It's recorded on the top floor where he lives in Tübingen, Germany; so it has a pretty house with a roof, an a window shaped like a camera. Am I clever or what?!
Btw, you should see it with smooth PNG alpha transparency on Firefox. Not in IE. NYAHA! I know it's not that good with my dark brown background, but... I just love PNGs.

Well, it's not a big deal. I thought you may take a look at a overlayed composite of a misscalculated sketch. I even put some tiny tehet and tigit there, jut for the fun of it.

Since iPodder seems not to add a few things that would make life easier for us, I thought I may share what I do here, because other may find it useful. I'm almost perfect so feel free to comment any mistake I may have commited on the making of this little piece. So far I've not seen these features on iPodder:

1. Configure size limit to be used for downloaded podcasts' posts.
   (It lets you put remaining space, which is not good enough.)
2. Status of played/not played items.
3. Ability to delete a file, not just get it out of the list, but actually delete it from the hard drive.
4. Sort items by different criteria.
   (The most useful being sort them by latest, or by 'show')

So here's what I do:
I use iPodder to get the podcast, which is what it's really good at. I configure the mentioned size limit to be really big (use less space), but that's just a personal preference. Subscribe to your podcasts of choice. Then on preferences use a special folder somewhere on your drive. Use it only for podcasts. One little nice thing iPodder does is to put each podcast on a different labeled folder, that's useful. If you can, check the run a check for podcasts when started thing. On player, no player (you're using winamp, remember?) which could also be labeled Yeah, I'm geek enough, I think I'll choose my player. You can use the Power Users setting for that, automatically open it with winamp.exe and filename there. If you want to make it really automagically you can use iPodder's schedule to update things for you. It will prove useful with Winamp.
Then in Winamp 5, you can make use of the so-called Smart Views of your Media Library. First of all, include your podcasts folder (if it wasn't inside a Watch Folder already) on your Media Library Preferences > Watch Folders.

Now, if you care (like I do) let's just exclude our podcasts from being listed on the Audio. Right click on your default Audio (inside Local Media) > Edit, then add sth like this to the query: AND filename NOTHAS "\Podcasts\" (where "Podcasts" is the name of your podcasts' folder between brackets)
Now, on the Library button down there, select New Smart View..., use the name you want it to display on your list, and use a query like this: filename has "\Podcasts\", hit the Ok and you're done.

You will now have a Podcast view on your winamp library. Is it magic or what? I advise you to use the Simple Media View for this, but both views work great. You will also like to customize the columns and their order, take out unnecesary ones, etc. Mine ended up looking sth like this:

Remember, you can configure your Media Library to scan automatically for new files given a certain ammount of time, or simply to add to library player items. Choose your setting basically acording to your desired performance. Now you can get your podcasts sorted the way you want them, have stats on the number of times each item is played, and physically delete files from your hard drive. If I've made any mistake please comment me. If you found this tip useful, please also comment. I haven't discovered anything here, though.

On this other post I've commented how to get album or podcast images along with the audio in Winamp and a very useful plugin.

After what seemed too much time you get a hug from the one you love. Can you feel the tickling? Can you sense the warm air in between. That's what this little drawing is about.

I've just read a Slashdot post about supposely self-replicating robots and, I won't enter the fight of whether these are really self-replicanting or not. But just take a look at the video and tell me if it's not beautiful the way those things move and breaks into weird cubes. Almost like a threedimensional kaleidoscope. It also brought me to a hilarious SNL's fake commercial that I've seen long ago, it's robots related, and funny. Not as funny as the bathroom monkey one I remember, but funny.

I was trying to record some quick audio clip for my friend Christoph, host of the Tips From The Top Floor photography podcast, but it was hard; mainly I must say, due to my lack of spoken english capabilities.

Check the mp3 if you want to laugh from my lameness. Also, btw, isn't that a cool photo I took with my JB1 and some Picasa enhancements?

Earlier today I was approximately one hour before leaving my house for the Book Fair here, rushing the day before the close until next year, when I remembered a special book I've read my friend Gary reviewed on his blog as the best book of 2004. I had to write up the long name so when I was at the english books stands I would know what to ask for. Anyway, of course I forgot to write it down and then remembered about it while driving, one hour and a half later. I had no expectations to find that book here anyway, with such a limited offer for imported books (mainly for the language and the exchange rate). The thing was that close to the entrance was the Kel stand. My girl headed right to it, of course, and I followed. I started browsing through the novels' shelves, when I saw The Club Dante. I had seen it before, and read it was great so I started reading the excerpts at the back just to refresh my memory when I heard a couple next to me talking. The whole stand was pretty crowded btw. The girl was reading him out loud the teaser from The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time's back. I quickly but very 007ish glanced at the book's cover between the giggling girl's hands. It was it. The book. Incredible.
So I obviously waited patiently until she put it back on its place, wishing she won't take it, even though she'd found the synopsis very amusing, and as fast as a puma and as subtle as a hamster, I grabbed it.
So I bought it, or course, along with the other one; and then later I found a very interesting Taschen book of 16^th Century Paintings, which I found very interesting. It's a quick analysis of 12 painting from that period, about hidden meanings and peculiarities. I'll write reviews about them if I found them worthwhile.

Well this is an interesting idea. I don't know of its accuracy, but it depicts the importance the world (the part of it I should say) that domines the biggest channels for information gives to its own areas. Well, check the idea.

I should also add this image is supposed to be automatically actualized. That's a cool thing. Also notice how far away I am from the news, maybe luckily.

I'm not going to jump in the podcasting wagon. I promess I won't. I have enough small little things to improve here on my blog, my unfinished gallery, new animation projects, and even the spanish (i'm from Argentina in case you didn't know that) version of this very site you're reading right now. So that's a lot of things to do, if you want to make them well. But I'm into podcasting as a listener lately, not that I have an iPod (which I wouldn't mind if you want to make a donation I would gladly send you my info), but I can listen to some posts while being busy on my latest work for HMCo, and it's a nice way to spend the time and keep update at the same time. Plus the majority of real radio stations here are not of my particular interest, so it seems like a logic step.

Well, about podcasts. They're like audio blogs, where the fun comes from subscription to RSS feeds that could be automatically updated by a reader, and listened on-demand. Beautiful. I would recommend iPodder as a good reader, which id pretty simple to use and already contains several lists of popular podcasts.


One special podcast I would like to suggest is Christoph Mardquardt's Tips From the Top Floor, a great podcast about digital photography and the way to get better results from your pictures. It's great, really. I know I know the guy, so I'm not absolutely objective but, c'mon, he's a really talented digital photographer, plus he knows how to be clear and concise explaining things (helloo he's german for chrissake), and what's more, he's a sound pro! So you probably won't find a podacast that sounds better than this one, period. This podcast project seems like the logical outcome of his various skills. Ok, enough for the lame friendAds® and go there and give it a shot!
(got it? a "shot" haha man I'm dumb sometimes)

I had to write about this. The people at the MIT are going to have a time travelers convention, yes you read well. And it's such a good idea, I mean, I don't expect it to be succesful, but c'mon. It's as beautiful as it is simple. Nothing more to be said about it, just give yourself a little time to think about this and the many possibilities involved. Just like a good Philip K. Dick short story.

Tired about the phone weirdness I think I'll buy a cheap cellphone, it was about time anyways... they finally got me.