I’ll never be a hacker

There were times as a teenager that I thought it would be cool to "be a hacker"; live dangerously outside the law, in a dark room surrounded by computer equipment that is somehow ALWAYS running lines of code, and have access to all the information in the world.

TV and movies have done a great job at romanticizing the life of a hacker, even though I've never understood where the heck do hackers get the tens of thousands of dollars you need to be a hacker? You have to eat right? You have to buy all that ridiculous equipment, right? Although I guess if I was a awesome hacker, I would do that thing Edward Furlong and the kid from Salute Your Shorts do in T2 with the ATM, or I would be MacGyver style and just jerry-rig mainframes with paperclips and old TI-55 caculators.

I also know that I'll never be a hacker because I love to draw and paint and write and enjoy the sun and you get the idea.

So after reading the blog of the 17-year-old kid that unlocked the Apple iPhone from having to use AT&T, after which he traded it for a consulting job, a Nissan 350Z, and three new iPhones, I've realized that I'll never be a hacker. Which is fine, because having to download NOR files and reset firmware and reorder your bootsys* just isn't for me.

I'll be the guy in his dirty apartment making toys out of cardboard and watching Rambo First Blood Part II.





*Great t-shirt: These bootsys are made for walking (fucking ha!)

INNER DUDES!

Hey everyone!

I just finished a new short film and would love for everyone to check it out!

You can view it on my profile(I'll embed it at the bottom too.)
You can view it on YouTube
or
You can view a high res version at my website.

Feel free to comment, vote, rate, thrash, adore, and link all your friends to it. It was a blast to make and I'm excited to show it to people.

Many special thanks to everyone that helped out- Eric Price and Chris Garnaas, Alex Hanawalt, Frank Meyer and Bruce Duff, Chris Hagerthy, Ryan Meyer and Sean Meyer, Matt Gourley, DJ Paul, and Andy Goldblatt.

It doesn't stop there though, I've got a bunch of behind the scenes and making-of footage that I'll post up here in a few weeks, so drop a bookmark on this blog or subscribe to your heart's content for some hearty content!

Hope everyone is doing well and having a great summer!

Inner Dudes

Add to My Profile | More Videos

You didn’t play the Go Game, so you lose automatically

This past Sunday, I joined Hanawalt, Hanawalt 2, and Hanawalt GF, in playing The Go Game's community melee "The Menace in Venice."

You weren't there, so you lose. BIG TIME. (OK, John Russell, you were there, but you really did lose, so it doesn't matter.)

What's the Go Game? Run by Myles Nye, the QuizMaster and Challenge-BoyGenius(not to be confused with ChallengeBoy-Genius), the Go Game is described as an urban scavenger hunt, but it's really much much more than that. It wasn't started by Myles, but Myles runs the Los Angeles division (they're all over the map), and this is the second Los Angeles based community game they've had this year.

Basically, you get a computer cell phone and a digital camera, and when the starter gun fires, you start getting missions sent to your phone. Navigating the game zone, in this case, the Venice boardwalk, you complete these missions by answering questions and completing tasks. Sounds easy right? Not so fast, meanwhile, there is a watergun-toting assassin gunning for you, you're competing with twelve other teams, and you only have two hours to rack up as many points as you can.

When you reach the end destination, which is some sort of café, more points are awarded based on your "judgeable missions-" pictures and videos you take that all game participants vote on with their phone-puters.

It's a blast. Our team placed fifth out of twelve, with a total of about a hundred people in all playing the game.

Go to the Go Game website and sign up for their e-mail list about community games so when the next one comes around, you can form a team and compete with us!

Infographic

Found on Boing Boing this morning; brilliant.

Thank You Note

Dear Lindsay Lohan,

I'm a big fan of yours! My name is Amanda and I'm also an actress. I used to be on basic cable, but recently crossed into mainstream feature films. I got to be in Hairspray; I love musicals!

Anyhoo, I just wanted to write a note thanking you for being such a colossal drunken, anorexic fuck-up, because as you become more and more uninsurable, which might as well be a death sentence in this industry, my agent gets more and more calls. You're such a selfless guardian angel, giving all of yourself so that me(screechy, wacky humanity) can live on. It's quite beautiful Lindsay.

I hope you're doing well in Utah. This next pratfall and adorable facial expression is for you!

Yours,
Amanda Bynes

PS- Go see my new movie, Sydney White! I have no idea what it's about, but I'm hilarious in it!

Nerding Out: Chapter 6,784,532

I've joined Twitter. Any one else on it? Or am I the only painfully nerdy, techy, widgety jackass around here. You can see my Twitter stream on my profile page and I guess it will update whenever I update it. I'd love to be able to update it from my mobile cell phone, but I think that costs me text messaging fees. Boooo...I should probably set up unlimited texting.

I don't even have an iPod. I'm such a poseur. A n00b-maxxor. Greenhorn, rookie, did I forget any?

Also joined Flickr linked my iPhoto into Flickr so I don't have to browse and upload everything, can just select in iPhoto and click on Export to Flickr and whoomp there it is! and supposedly I can post photostreams into my MySpace page...hmmm...will look into that tomorrow.

You don't care.

PS- this is a regular Saturday night for me. I do my heavy drinking on Mondays.

Accidentally on TV

A couple years ago I worked on Rob Schrab's brilliant Ch101 show Twigger's Holiday, mostly doing visual effects and playing around in a chicken mask (and an old AYSO jersey). I guess they featured his Twigger DVD on G4's Attack of the Show and one of the clips they pulled is of my geeked out face asking for my easter egg back. Pretty ridiculous, that show was amazing. It's on Channel 101 still for the uninitiated.

You can see the clips of stuff I did with Rob on the Death Cab video "Crooked Teeth" on my site Crockeronline, and you can see all 19 min of Rob's first short, Robot Bastard at RobotBastard.com.

In related news, I finished my short, "Inner Dudes." I'm really happy with the way it came out. I'll get around to posting it in a week or two. I'm busy exploring the fascinating world of film festival submissions. Wish me luck!