I've been tinkering with Mood Tracker again (my Facebook app - try it here http://www.new.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=25355222452 )

I've made it so you can edit your reports and added in some new charts. Personally, I'm finding it rather instructive. It's nice to have some hard scientific data to hand when making decisions about how to change your life. You should try it. Prioritising, of course, the activation of the IM bot 'Auntie' who will make sure you keep your data fresh!

When I was creating assets for my Bread Bin game I made sure to name things usefully at the earliest possible stage.

So here's how my PSD looked:



This allowed me to use Photoshop's "Export Layers to Files..." script to create a folder of images in my (sprouts-based) Flash project's assets folder.





Note that when exporting to PNG files, the layers can be automatically trimmed, resulting in a folder like this:


The next task was to get rid of the leading numbers in the file names (I wanted total purity of file name :) ), a task for a bit of Ruby:

I recorded a new song on Sunday and had in mind to produce a video for it. However, I've realised I find music videos rather boring. I was hoping I could produce something in a couple of days but it seems that ludicrous quantities of footage are required, and my animation style feels sorta ropey at best. The lip synch is off, and the movement isn't particularly accurate.

Perhaps I need to bite the bullet and get friends involved. I played a good DJ set on Friday night and in a conversation afterwards somebody pointed out that I can't do everything by myself. As much as I would like to avoid relying on other human beings, it's basically impossible, so I should let people in more.

Trouble is, my artistic concepts tend to be rather complicated and the motivation is not always clear to collaborators. For example, I'm often motivated as much by the pragmatic necessity to finish work within my limited attention span (generally about 2 days per thing) as I am by any particular desire to achieve a certain vision (although ironically if I was producing something for a client I'd spend a lot longer due to the simple fact that I was sure somebody cared and was paying attention!)

I do my best work when I don't care too much about it. Unfortunately now I've spent over 2 days on something that still isn't showing signs of taking shape. It's only a 'first run' (my first go at making a 'proper' music video) so I suppose this struggle was to be expected. I am hoping iMovie '09 makes my life easier (it's installing as I type this post). I am too impatient to work with software that doesn't work in real time!

What was my point? Um.. something like "AMAZING NEW MUSIC VIDEO FOR MY ELECTRO POP FUNK JUNGLE SONG". "COMING SOON". "YEAH YOU KNOW DAT TRUE BLOOD!". Etc... "It's gonna be HARD CORE!" Etc... etc... etc.. yawn...