From all of us, to all of you...
So, for the few weeks before Christmas, I've been doing practical work experience at Spixa, a professional puppet-making workshop in Stockholm. Seeing how it is Julafton, the main day for celebrations 'round here, I shan't ramble about it (need to get back to my family and all, don't I?), but as a pretty neat Winterholiday greeting from we at Spixa, here's what we've been working on while I was there:
Animatronic Internet-controlled Advent Calendar
*sparkles*
Since the text is in Swedish, here's what you do: press the button under the image to control the calendar. Then press any of the 24 windows to make things happen. Sometimes you may have to wait a minute or two if someone else is already controlling it, since it's not Flash or anything like that, but an actual physical model you control in real-time in front of a web camera. You can zoom in, out and to the sides by clicking on the screen on the calendar, and for some of the windows I'd recommend that you do that to see what is going on. You get two minutes to play around each time you activate it, but of course you can activate it any number of times you feel like.
There are maybe closer to a hundred servo motors running the whole thing, and when you start up the events, the mice move around at the workshop at Spixa and the people in the workshop get happy, since we like seeing that people are watching it after all the work that's gone into it. (I'm not there now over Christmas, of course, but I still like to hear it's doing well, obvsly. :) )
Also, since the resolution of the web camera is not good enough to catch all the details of the landscape, this Facebook gallery has some pretty nice pictures of it.
Also, here's one of the sweetest and most intelligent Christmas songs, despite it's rather sentimental nature, I know: Tim Minchin - White Wine in the Sun. Do give it a listen.
Hope you're all doing well, and have a very good whatever you may or may not be celebrating. :)
Animatronic Internet-controlled Advent Calendar
*sparkles*
Since the text is in Swedish, here's what you do: press the button under the image to control the calendar. Then press any of the 24 windows to make things happen. Sometimes you may have to wait a minute or two if someone else is already controlling it, since it's not Flash or anything like that, but an actual physical model you control in real-time in front of a web camera. You can zoom in, out and to the sides by clicking on the screen on the calendar, and for some of the windows I'd recommend that you do that to see what is going on. You get two minutes to play around each time you activate it, but of course you can activate it any number of times you feel like.
There are maybe closer to a hundred servo motors running the whole thing, and when you start up the events, the mice move around at the workshop at Spixa and the people in the workshop get happy, since we like seeing that people are watching it after all the work that's gone into it. (I'm not there now over Christmas, of course, but I still like to hear it's doing well, obvsly. :) )
Also, since the resolution of the web camera is not good enough to catch all the details of the landscape, this Facebook gallery has some pretty nice pictures of it.
Also, here's one of the sweetest and most intelligent Christmas songs, despite it's rather sentimental nature, I know: Tim Minchin - White Wine in the Sun. Do give it a listen.
Hope you're all doing well, and have a very good whatever you may or may not be celebrating. :)