Today on Refrederator: Little Swee’ Pea. A trademark of the Zukor cartoons were the multi-layered backgrounds that moved at different speeds, creating the impression of 3-dimensionality. Some of the Popeye cartoons use them, this one included, and all of the Betty Boop cartoons feature them as a mainstay. Have a look and see for yourselves!
Too many passwords equals less security
Found an article on CNET News which details a survey done in Britain. It showed that there is a directly proportional relationship between the number of passwords one has to remember for work, and the number of unauthorized accesses on the company’s networks. Here’s the link to the CNET article.
Having been a director of IT twice in my career, this is a no-brainer to me. And here’s another thing I’ve found: the more inane the password rules are, the easier you’ll make it for your users to write their passwords down on a sticky note, which they’ll store either right on the screen, under their keyboard, or in the top desk drawer. If you’re going to use passwords, you need to strike the RIGHT balance between password security and real-world usability. Sadly, many companies fail in this area.
Seems the way to go is single sign-on, with added proximity devices if needed.
On-Off Alarm Clock
Engadget has a post about this, and I couldn’t help writing one either. This looks like a pretty cool alarm clock, and the price is very reasonable given that it’s made by a designer. The clock is angle shaped, and it has two positions. One side is for alarm-on, and the other for alarm-off. I have to ask the same question Engadget did. Is there a Snooze functionality?
Here’s the link to the designer’s site (Nina Tolstrup), and here’s the link to the Engadget post. Photo courtesy of Nina Tolstrup and GreenerGrassDesign.
Just designed two new websites
My wife teaches piano lessons to children and adults, and has also started to do primer music camps for children, so I designed two websites for her. The first is Fun Piano Lessons and the other is Fun Music Camps.
I want to point them out because I’m using the WordPress CMS to drive the sites, yet you won’t be able to tell that at first look. I designed completely custom templates for each that hide the usual WordPress functionality, so the sites look like normal websites, yet everything on them can be updated on the fly. Of course, I used pure CSS to drive the layout, styles, colors and graphics.
The other cool thing is that it only took me a day to do each site. That’s the power of leveraging the WordPress CMS platform! One can focus on the design aspects and the content, and leave the back end to WordPress. Why reinvent the wheel, right?
Disney recycled animation frames
Cartoon Brew has a post linking to a Russian site, where they do side by side comparisons of frames, to show you how often Disney animators reused animation sequences. The site is in Russian, but the photos are readily understandable, so I encourage you to visit it. This is pretty interesting. I hadn’t known about it, but it makes sense. Hand animation is very hard and tedious work, and if one can use shortcuts without taking away from the viewer’s enjoyment, why not? Here’s the link.
Raoul Pop 