Mike Riversdale

We are very excited - all starting to build for June 17th! http://www.redshoesday.com/ And a great big thank you from me to @Narelle_NZ who's work this is - rock on!

It's wet outside and I'm sitting here watching kick ass (free, non-copyright breaking - LEGAL) videos - enjoy: http://www.openfilm.com/videos/echo Echo - we've all thought about time travel, this short is exactly what I think would happen :-) http://www.openfilm.com/videos/pencil-face Pencil face - plain weird but you can't stop watching. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvvKUtHlDK8 Smithy at Sports Personality of the Year - BBC Sport Relief Night 2010 - love the final part of the video, nails it. http://www.openfilm.com/videos/ark Ark - dark with stunning animation http://timescapes.org/ Timescapes - previews of the upcoming film featuring the incredible time lapse photography of Tom Lowe http://www.youtube.com/movies Seems that lot (all?) of these play in NZ - sit back and enjoy a classic full length movie. I watched  The Third Man ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un26BBFQ5_M ), even if it was for the theme music at first :-) And then I watched

Despite my increased use of Twitter and sometimes Facebook I very rarely find items shared with my "friends" and "those I follow" that are above and beyond the 2 minute engagement range. For that it is almost always from my Google Reader ( my shared items via Buzz) where I follow quite a number of blogs. However, over the past few months (maybe a year or so) I've not refreshed the blogs I'm following with the exception of the fine #30DaysOfMe blogging exercise that brought a few local (NZ) writers to my attention. Last week I added Brain Pickings blog and already I am discovering amazing articles, new websites and creative ideas that take me past the standard 2 minute web blast. For instance: I wanted to find a way to be more in the moment, to be more in every day; to understand time more and to understand my life more, to have more memories — all of these things. Basically, to live more richly, as a human life, not just as a work life.” ~ Jonathan H

I Passed! And Now I'm Google Apps Certified

The last time I went a little mad it involved Harry Potter way back in August 2005 and whilst it was a crazy night it was, at least, more fun that this time around. On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I spent the hours sweating as the brain raced over and over again a Google Apps migration ... you have NO idea how fucking tedious that was especially as it was a successful, not difficult and "worked first time" migration. Over and over and over again. I really did think I was going mad at some point. I recall waking up early in the experience, after yet another successful fucking migration to Google Apps, and thinking, "Bugger me, I must've been asleep for ages" ... it was 11:32pm, I had been asleep (if that's what you can call it) for about 3 hours, maximum. The whole night of endless successful migrations loomed ahead. It was hell but I got through it. Wednesday is lost to me. Thursday emerged out of the fug as an actual day with a start and a finis

A while back Scott Adams (he of the Dilbert cartoon fame and massive fortune) blogged "How frickin' cool is that" (my post about it ) where he talks about standing back from the tech and thinking about it for more than 5 secods and realising it is AMAZING! Well, I had another of those moments today where technology is so cool and I have no understanding at how it works that it is pure magic. The de-wobble (actual YouTube term, " stabilizer ") feature when editing video (editing, via a web browser, video - how frickin' cool is that!) is incredible. It takes my, yours, everyones wobbly handycam video and smooooooths it out: Stabilizer - Ever shoot a shaky video that’s so jittery, it’s actually hard to watch? Professional cinematographers use stabilization equipment such as tripods or camera dollies to keep their shots smooth and steady. Our team mimicked these cinematographic principles by automatically determining the best camera path for you through a