Thursday, April 17, 2008

white noise podcast

Back when my daughter had trouble sleeping (which is LONG in the past, she's the best sleeper in the house now), we used to leave her next to the oven vent fan in her carseat. It was the best source of white noise we had in the house, and it seemed to have a soothing effect on her.

When we traveled, though, we couldn't bring our oven fan with us. Except -- we could! I recorded an hour of it, burned it to a CD, and it was one of our most important baby things to remember when we went anywhere ("Bottles, check. Formula, check. White noise, check.").

I always thought it would be great to publish a white noise CD for frustrated parents and others (my mom sleeps with a white noise machine, after all). But now I have an even better idea: the White Noise Podcast.

A little googling shows that "white noise" also seems to be a genre of heavy metal, which I find it funny to think about babies trying to fall asleep to. So there's competition for the name.

Another funny aspect about this podcast is that it will be an interesting test of audio compression algorithms.

I put the first 55Mb file up: the tantalizing hour-long vent fan recording we used for Noe. Watch this spot for future updates. Enjoy, and happy sleeping.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

summer computer animation internship

I'm considering offering a bit films summer production internship. It would have to begin as an unpaid internship, but the benefits (I think) would be fairly tempting for those curious about becoming computer animation professionals:
  • experience in a high-end, industry-grade production environment
  • exposure to tools such as Maya, Shake, RenderMan
  • access to a 100+ processor render farm
  • work experience on a major independent short film project
  • the opportunity to live and work in or around Amherst or Northampton Massachusetts!
I'm floating this idea here to see if I get any feedback on it. Would anyone find this tempting, or does "unpaid" = nobody? Any ideas for how I might promote this position and attract good applicants?

If it were to start this summer, my current show (Tower 37) would need compositing and/or lighting interns. Heck, if you read this and are curious, get in touch.