This is amazing in so many ways. I suggest you view the HD version full-screen at Vimeo.

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

The jury is still out about moving images on thedude.com.

But there’s no debating the beauty of these renderings.

The animation was done entirely using 3Ds Max and V-Ray render and took about 10 days to complete. Professionally done 3D visualization is the perfect tool to present concepts or new products in a beautiful, photoreal style, while creating a mood with music and conveying a message, through on-screen text or narration.

New tile. Yay!

After the silk-weaving, we moved on to another labor-intensive activity – turning leaf springs into knife blades.

We’ve seen this sort of work before, but the way this team of men worked the hot steel was something to see. Here are a couple of videos.

We left our beautiful room at the Inle Princess early in the morning to take in some of the sites on Inle Lake. On the way, we saw how leg-rowing can leave both hands free for untangling fishing nets. We stopped and had a delicious lunch and cool beers at a restaurant with beautiful lake views.

Click on the video to the left to get an idea of what it’s like in a boat on Inle Lake.

When Andrew said that he knew of a place nearby where we could see “tens of thousands of ladybugs clumped like piles of scarlet coffee beans”, I knew I had to see it. It also happens that Andrew’s better half is an entomologist known to many as the Bug Lady, AND the topic for this week’s photography class is macro photography, so the stage was set. Now all we needed was for the bugs to cooperate. And did they!

The hike darned near killed me, but it was well worth the effort. As you can see, we found millions of Convergent Lady Beetles, um, converging ten deep on the forest floor. There were so many of the tiny beetles that you could actually hear them. They seemed happy.

I shot the images above with my Nikon D3 and a fancy-schmancy 60mm Macro lens. My pal Andrew brought along his basic point-and-shoot and I was surprised to see that he was able to focus much more closely than I could. His camera also allowed him to shoot scary movies like this one.

BUGS!

After the spectacular sunset on the Irrawaddy, we ate our last dinner at the Thiripytsaya. During the meal, the evening’s entertainment began with the adorable singer on the left. She was so cute! Check her out! Later, dancers took the stage and performed a traditional dance. What fun!

I apologize for the poor video quality, the crappy sound and the lack of any sort of editing. We will definitely bring an HD video camera on out next trip!

On today’s return trip from the Golden Rock, we made a few stops. The last of our stops was in Ingabo Village where we happened upon the initiation rite for this 12 year old boy. Tomorrow he heads off to the monastery to do a stint as a monk, where he will begin a regimen consisting of 227 strict rules.

But before he goes, there will be much celebration and dancing. After a blessing and feast, the young man is sent off in style on the back of a costumed dancing (or not) horse.

Some things are best described with sound and motion, and this was one of those events. If you’d like to see how the dancer moved and hear the band or if you’d like to see a non-dancing horse and some adorable kids hamming it up, click on the videos below.

After focus groups revealed that my company’s current corporate image reminded them of a “dull forty-something white male”, they decided it was time to make a change. So, Affymetrix hired a design team to help freshen our brand.

I think the new branding looks great! This is the video used to kick off the effort. In my opinion, it’s too long, and feels too much like a PowerPoint presentation, but it does convey key design elements of the “New Affymetrix”. Nicely done!

Embedded streaming video!

 
I found an inexpensive MOV to FLV converter which produces pretty decent results. The files are much smaller that the source Quicktime files, and still have much of the quality – even at large sizes. This means I can now stream video like this time-lapse of my commute to work directly from thedude.com. New possibilities!

thedude and Kelly joined about 1,000 others last night to show our respect for His Dudeness at the first San Francisco Lebowski Fest.

Yes, there were plenty of Jeff Lebowski and Karl Hungus look-alikes. Music was provided by the hilarious Meshugga Beach Party. Primal drum beats and sexual energy came by way of the fabulous Extra Action Marching Band. NEW! Now with Video!

We tried our best to get close to Jeff Dowd, to get a shot of thedude with thedude, but no luck. Perhaps we’d have been able to better focus if we hadn’t consumed those last two caucasions. “Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!”

We try to see the KFOG KaBoom every year. We normally drive into the city, but decided to avoid the hundreds of thousands on Fogheads in the city and instead watched the fireworks display with a musical soundtrack at the nearby Middle Harbor Shoreline Park – the best park noboby knows about. The KaBoom is California’s largest fireworks display – it really is awesome. If you’d like to see a Quicktime movie of 14,000 pounds of fireworks set off to music, click here. (66 megabytes)

We expected thousands of people, but only a few hundred showed up. The wind was chilly, but the wine helped keep us warm. The moon must have been jealous because it made a grand entrance immediately after the show ended. Lovely!