Weekend

We had a good weekend.  On Friday night we went to the play at Inver Hills high school to see the play for which Eryn had been doing tech/stage the last few months.  It wasn't a single theme.  Instead they did The Acting Games.  Much like The Hunger Games, but the competition was amongst the styles of actors to determine who would win.  Losers were relegated to jobs as barristas and waiters.  The second half was musical numbers from a variety of movies such as Moulin Rouge, A Teen Beach Movie, and Les Miserables.

Then Eryn and my sister took off to Southern Minnesota on Saturday to see The Sudden Lovelys play.  So my wife and I had an evening to ourselves.  We went to Chang Mai Thai for dinner and then to the Lagoon to see animation shorts.  Most of them were great, although The Dam Keeper was amazing.  Absolutely beautiful, and a great story about a pig who's bullied but finds a best friend.

Animated Gifs

I saw the link to this in a tweet from Adam Savage.  They're not new, they've been doing the same thing on The Chive for as long as I've been perusing the Daily Afternoon Randomness, particularly the "wind blowing the hair" style animations which, as far as I'm concerned, are the lamest of them.  One of the interesting things about the animated gifs on The Chive is that you can spend quite a while watching what seems to be a static photo only to have it shift for the briefest of instants.  Bit of a game.

But I recommend the article by Fast Code Design, because there are some beautiful examples of how to do it right with the taxi in the window, the barber pole, and the man with the paper.

[Link to Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg's "How to Create an Animated Gif" in the Atlantic].