Last night I saw one of my best friends John Craigie perform at Molly Malone's - man it was the best I've ever heard him. He even busted out the banjo and it was one of my favorite songs of the night. I also got to catch up with some old classmates that I haven't seen in about 10 years, and I'm looking forward to hanging out and playing guitar with John in our old stomping grounds later this week.

Live Free or Die Hard was actually pretty cool, and really fun.

Orbo is disappointing... my hope meter is running at about 3.7%...

I skipped out on Comic-Con this year and opted to visit my parents, get some work done, test a silk-screen printer with my dad, and finish up the final Harry Potter instead. Book 7 was way better than 5 and 6, but I wish the book ended about 30 pages before it's real ending. At one point, I was like "that is powerful," but then the situation immediately changed into a more canned, happily-ever-after scenario. Oh well, it was still very good. Everyone's back in the studio after their long weekend at the Con, getting back to business. Good to have them back.

Now we have to find a place to move (yet again)... so the hunt continues.

Happy late birthday Ben - I am still hunting for an appropriate gift... something simple simply won't do.

The Process show at Nucleus has a certain mood that I can't describe, but I can show:


On a related note, the Nucleus system is almost ready to go live; some testing and inventory updates remain, then we're gold! After that, it's time to start phase 2 of the project and get the new website up (which I'm most excited about).

Side note: where have all the human beings carrying a conscience run off to? The more I hear about people's behavior, the more I feel trapped in a circus of other people's weaknesses, spinning. My hope-for-more-people-with-integrity meter is also at a shameful 2%. I'm lucky to be surrounded by some of the remaining few. My hope-for-good-hard-work-impacting-one's-karma-level meter is a solid 74%, so... back to work!

Kazu just blogged this photo that Amy snapped, and I couldn't help myself but add it to the Dusty collection. The mighty lion/sphinx/dog naps in our studio lounge:

This is pretty awesome (I think):

On Saturday we went to see the Decemberists play at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic backing them. The show was relaxed and jolly, and they played well. The orchestra was tasteful and appropriate - which is usually not the case with these mixture of genres - and I think only added to the magic of the evening. The haunting sound of Andrew Bird's whistling and music was a great opener. The photos are from various flickr pools of the show... you can click each one to view their photos.

Tonight we saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And that is pretty much my review. I purchased a ticket and saw that movie. Yup.

Jamie and I finished overdubbing the trailer scene of Jurassic Park with new voices (same dialogue). Why are we doing this? Why not? My target to replace the audio for the entire film is June 11th, 2008. I might post up some video snippets as we complete them.

This seems pretty cool:

I feel anxious, and have since yesterday. I feel like something's going on somewhere, something's not right. I feel slightly uncomfortable, slightly awkward. What is it?

UPDATE: Nothing. It is now dark in London, so I'll stay up late checking the webcam until it's light over there again. Tomorrow is pretty much their last chance. :(

Ok, it's 4:00am, but I had to stay up (until 12:00pm London time). It looks like the webcams are starting to work, and this is all you can see right now. The anticipation! How am I supposed to go to sleep now?

Tonight we went up into the mountains to watch all the fireworks booming over LA - most notably, the Rose Bowl show. Lots of sunflower seeds and fireworks. And a kid who said "finale" about 3000 times.

Tomorrow is make-or-break for Orbo. I've been waiting for this for a very long time, and the demonstration of the device (with a clear plastic shell so you can see the magnets inside) will be on display at the Kinetica museum in London, 24-7 for a little over a week. The device will be lifting a weight so that you can clearly see it is doing work, with no energy input, which means it must be creating energy. Is it a hoax, or will it be the most amazing technology humanity has ever known? I hope for the latter, but we'll all find out tomorrow... here is a link to the webcams.

Yesterday we saw Transformers, and Michael Bay shat a pile of dumb onto my face. I don't appreciate that.

Just because, here are some photos of dusty. He just got a bath and haircut and he's all golden and majestic, like a sphinx. It's simply the best when he's at the studio:

Work proceeds on the Nucleus secret-weapon... lot's of progress last week. Went to a gallery show at the Cartoon Network - there was an awesome Zelda piece, and some crackers and cheese. Saw Ratatouille - technically it was really good, and I laughed my ass off - but we've been debating the value of the story around here. The underlying motivations for the characters are pretty complex, and I think ultimately it is a subjective interpretation of whether or not this is all good or bad. It has it's merits and it's weak points, but personally I thought it was very strong and overall one of the better Pixar films. I'm excited to see Live Free or Die Hard, Transformers, and a few others I'm forgetting right now.

We might head up to SB to do some kayaking for the fourth, that would be awesomeness.