Dec 30, 2009 @ 06:58 pm by Spiff
I got an email from a guy (or, “bloke”, as the case may be) who just made a video for a British charity called “Alcohol, It’s No Joke“. They’re using British comedians in a series of videos that start out funny before descending into darkness. He thought I might be interested in them because, as he says, “as someone who clearly knows a thing or two about ironic juxtaposition, you might enjoy taking a look”.
He’s right, I did like the videos. I like that they hook you in with something you like (comedy) and before you realize you’ve been flipped, they’ve already delivered their message to you, non-preachy ninja-style.
If you’d like to take a look too, you can check them out here, and here. They’ve also got a website and are on Twitter @alcoholnojoke, if you decide you really dig what they’re doing.
Dec 17, 2009 @ 10:23 am by Spiff
The folks over at Spintown interviewed me recently, and I think it may be the only actual video evidence that I exist out in the wild (apparently I’m quite elusive). Here’s Part one, and Part two of the interview, in which I talk about my videos and the experience of making them.
The interview was actually a series of questions that I answered while talking into the iSight camera on my wife’s MacBook. So I’m not actually interacting with anyone while I answer the questions (which is probably painfully obvious in the interview as I stare blindly at the laptop’s screen). But I really enjoyed the interview because the questions were so good. I’ve been interviewed before, and the questions are usually of the “so, where do you get your ideas?” or “what does Jonathan Coulton think of your work?” variety. But the Spintown questions were much better than that, allowing me to answer them in the form of telling little stories. It definitely made it interesting on my end, and hopefully you’ll find it interesting on your end too.
Dec 17, 2009 @ 10:14 am by Spiff
I have no idea how many people out there will care about this, but I’ve made Spiffworld t-shirts available on Zazzle.com. It was easy enough to do, since I actually used Zazzle to make the Spiffworld shirt I wore to my first Blizzcon, back in the day. So now, anyone else who wants to sport my site’s logo, can do it too. Merry Christmas!
Dec 17, 2009 @ 10:10 am by Spiff
Oh yeah, I posted a new video last week and forgot to mention it here. Oops. It’s for Jonathan Coulton’s song “Blue Sunny Day” about a depressed vampire (I know, a stretch for Jonathan Coulton).
Believe it or not, this video was really tough to make. Usually, JoCo songs are a little vague. We don’t know for sure what happens at the end of “Re: Your Brains”, or “Code Monkey”, or “The Future Soon”, which is great for me because then I get to fill in those blank spots with my own stuff in my videos. But “Blue Sunny Day” is unusually specific. We know what happens at the end, and pretty much all throughout the video. So there was little wiggle room for me to add my own gags and other stuff.
In fact, it’s completely normal for me to get through the first rough draft of a video and then have to go back to re-edit it to squeeze out the suckiness to make the final version as good as it can be. But the first draft of “Blue Sunny Day” had the most suckiness any of my first drafts have had, and it took quite a bit of editing to squeeze it all out of there (hopefully I got it all). There was just something about the song that made the timing of shots hard to get so it felt right. But I’m happy with the end result.
Even though I say the song is very specific, I’m also impressed by the level of ambiguity that Coulton baked into the song (a paradox, I know). Like I say in the ending scroll in the video, if you go back and listen to the words Coulton used, he never actually says the song is about a vampire. It could just be a normal guy who’s depressed by blue sunny days for some reason. But, he admits when asked, it’s totally a vampire. 
Dec 10, 2009 @ 09:51 am by Spiff
As I just announced with a short little video, I’m joining the Machinima.com network. Hopefully this will bring many new eyeballs to my videos, which is a good thing. However, I’m still going to continue posting my vids to my normal YouTube channel, so if you don’t care about other people’s machinima, you can just keep doing what you’re doing (i.e. stay subscribed to my YouTube channel) and you’ll keep getting my videos as you always have. And that’s a good thing too. It’s a double-good thing!
My vids on Machinima.com: www.machinima.com/series/view&id=245
My vids on Machinima’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p= FCE740C094DDCEAF.
And in case you missed it in the announcement video, I’ll be posting a new vid this coming Sunday, Dec. 13, 2009. So keep your eyes peeled for that.