A Robot That Flies Like A Bird- TED

Are you ready to see something amazing?

Markus Fischer and the rest of those crazy kids at Festo have built this SmartBird. It's modeled on the noble seagull, but flaps it's wings to fly instead of slurping gross stuff off the sidewalk.

Here is the TED talk where you get to see this super cool robot in flight and work on your German accent.



I don't know what kind of pressure this guy is feeling these days. But it has to be intense.

 http://burrowburrow.com/robots.html 

Month At The Museum 2

So the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is doing a second year of their incredible Month at The Museum project. One lucky person gets to live at MSI for a month. The lovely Kate McGroarty did it last year and it looks like she had an amazing time.

I couldn't not apply.

The museum requested that people post their application videos on YouTube and a most wonderful time suck was born. You can just plop "Month at the Museum 2" into the search bar and all kinds of awesome people will show up for 1 minute.

Here is my one minute application video. It is possible that I kiss a dog in this video. So if you're easily shocked please turn away.



There are so many videos, but here are some of my favorites so far.





















This is a collection of awesome people. I'm so impressed with all the excitement and brain power this project is pulling out of the wood work. 

Must Watch TED Talk- Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education

If you are remotely interested in: education, the third world, economic disparity, human rights, children, the brain, social development, the origins of society, problem solving, computers or anything at all you have to watch this TED talk.

Not just because Sugata Mitra is adorable, but because his experiments in giving children unguided and uninstructed access to the internet will blow your mind.

BOOM. Mind blown. You should also watch it because he's adorable.



"Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching." ted.com

Snakes are cute.

I think it's important to remind people once in awhile that snakes are cute.



We're all very mammal centric on the internet with our cute cats and bunnies. Don't get me wrong, kitties and bunnies are cute. But so are snakes.

See! 

Awwww!!!

You know you love them. 

Herp, herp, horray!!!

Filmmakers: Two book recommendations that will save you at least $1000's

As a co-producer on the feature film The Selling I have learned more about the in's and out's of film production, festivals and distribution than I ever intended. So now that I'm super smart and superior I can sit on my high horse and tell other people what they should do. There are two books that would have saved us a lot of time and money had we read them earlier in the process. So you should read them.
The first is Thinking Outside The Box Office by Jon Reiss.

This book is a must even if you are planning on going through traditional channels. Read it before pre production if possible. There are things that you can be doing early that will make your life much easier. Building audience, having the right useful things on your website, transmedia and digital rights are all in here. This world is changing out from under everyone and this is a great way to stay on top of the new model. Whatever that is going to be. 
The second book is Chris Gore's Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide. You should read this before pre production too. There are things you need to be doing early for a good festival run. It will make your life much easier if you do them. You can't do them if you don't even know they need to be done. 

There are about a billion festivals and getting into and going to them is a huge job. Reading this book will make it so you aren't a complete idiot. I'd say you should read this even if you know the festival world. 
Another great resource if you're in Los Angeles is American Cinematheque's lecture series by Thomas Ethan Harris. This is a wonderful cool thing that the American Cinematheque is doing and you should take advantage of it if you can. 
There is my sage advice. Feel free to send me some of the money this saves you. I think 15% is fair. 

To The Second Annual Kickstarter Film Festival With Robot Jim

Gabriel Diani and I are thrilled that our Kickstarter project "Replacing the N-Word with Robot in Huck Finn" will be at the Second Annual Kickstarter Film Festival in Brooklyn.

You can check out all the other project videos they are showing here.

I'm very excited to see them and to try several edible Kickstarter projects that will be there. I plan on murdering a scoop or two of ice cream from Phinizy & Phebe.

Here is the wonderful video for the film festival. 

See you on the 9th Brooklyn! 

Mini Dogs in Little Tokyo

I just have one question. Why isn't EVERY bakery doing this? 

It's just whipped cream and a slice of kiwi in a little pastry shell. The extra nice touch is that the eyes noes and mouth are blackberry and raspberry seeds. 

The animals you could make with this method are limited by only your imagination. I'm very disappointed with every other pastry chef in the world right now. Way to go bakery in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. 

Eating them isn't easy. I recommend going with head first. It seems the kindest to the little creatures. 

Not everyone is comfortable with this however. Use your best judgment about how eating a mini dog will affect those around you.