I got a new email on the Apple Developer Connection mailing list today announcing that entries are open for the 2006 Apple Design Awards, to be presented at this year’s worldwide developer conference. I went to check it out, interested after Blender received runner up last year in the Best use of Open Source category, but upon arriving at the site was quite disappointed to see that the category no longer exists. An open source award has existed in some form since 2002, amongst other fluctuating categories, as documented on Wikipedia’s ADA page and it was great to see Apple recognising the open source applications that helped make the platform great. This year there are two new categories, Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget and Best Mac OS X Automator Workflow, and although it’s understandable that they want to encourage these areas to spur on developers to create content, it does seem quite a shame that these more self-promotional categories seem to have edged out others.

It’s also interesting to see that rather than a category like ‘best new technology adoption’, there is only Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics, which would now exclude apps concentrating on sound, or WebCore, or CoreData, etc or anything that is a good use of the OS technology which isn’t particularly visually flashy. Good use of visual technologies, while extremely important, are still a subset of what comprises good interface design, but I guess Apple are giving away the awards, so they have every right to decide what they want to include. Still, I hope they at least reconsider bringing back the Open Source award in coming years. If anything it’s a nice gesture to let Mac OSS developers feel loved :)

The other day I used the Bleep paid music download site for the first time. I’d heard about it quite some time ago, but at that stage it had quite a small selection of music, mostly stuff from the Warp catalog (of which Bleep is a subsidary thing, or vice versa.. can’t remember but they’re connected in some way).

Now they seem to have much, much more available, from all sorts of labels. You won’t find any top 40 trash in there, and it’s mostly geared to the Warp audience, a bit more electronica, experimental, avant-garde, blah blah, which is fine by me. The albums I picked up this time were Aluminium Tunes by Stereolab and 28 by Aoki Takamasa and Tujiko Noriko.

The other day I dug up a photo taken in Thailand in 2004 that I was talking with the guys about in Amsterdam.

It features me riding an elephant wearing my Blender hat, which just goes to show that all of this movie stuff was pre-destined. :)

Still trying to recuperate somewhat, but I posted a little progress update with two swanky wallpaperish stills from Elephants Dream over on the blog. Still finishing the menus tonight, and tomorrow I’ll start work on putting Andy’s awesome cover illustration into the sleeve template. In other news, I’ve also scanned my first roll of negs from the premiere and put them on flickr, check the first two pages you see there to see some of the preparations and limo ride from my perspective! There’s one more BW film still to come; Kat promised she’d get some chemicals so we can develop and print ourselves in the darkroom she’s a member of now.

I also spent some time helping her volunteer over the weekend at the smARTarts community arts festival, run by Sydney City council. I was roped in by surprise in the evening, filling in for a missing person in a parade through the streets carrying a giant egg lantern, being chased by sperm and a giant barcoded foetus in an anti-conformist street theatre thing put on by a local performing arts school. Fun for the whole family.

From outer space. A lot to write, I think I’ll take it bit by bit over the coming weeks. At least for now I’m having a few weeks off after Orange and will have some time write, amidst trying to relax and gather my thoughts and energy. Thankfully, after a lot of blood sweat and tears, we pulled through at the last minute and the premiere was a big success, not to mention lots of fun.

I’m still working on a few final things for the DVD, so hopefully it will ship soon. Continually putting pictures of the event etc. up on flickr so keep an eye on that. But for now, time to clear up an email backlog and enjoy the nice weather here down under :)