Ticklebooth is a charming collection of personal vidcast and miscellaneous video links - both amazing and terrible - from around the web. Choice cuts include, Otafuku Rex - Do Me, Zioni - Soo Tall, classic Michel Gondry, Ratatouille (new Pixar trailer) and Monalisa Descending a Staircase:

A visualist with a digital camera is stop-motion video just waiting to happen. Since gaining access to a Pentax *IST DS digital SLR I’ve hacked together a functioning cable release which produced reasonable results. This was a very inelegant setup, though simple, and I feel it may put undue stress on the shutter mechanism. So I’ve been looking around for something which would allow variable-interval timelapse shooting, but not cost as much as a professional timer switch, or intervalometer.

Et Volia!

Australian electronics-nerd supplier extrordinaire Jaycar Electronics has the Countdown Timer project for AU$12.95 (+$2 for the beautifully photocopied instructions). It’s not a precise timer - the digital version costs much more - but it is adjustable from ~15 seconds - 5 minutes.

I’m no solder-ninja. The last circuit I put together was a crystal radio, and it didn’t work. This looked reasonably straightforward though, and I have the benefit of an excellent assortment of electronics equipment lent to me by a friend who didn’t know any better.

As reported on CDMusic, Max/MSP/Jitter is in beta on Mac for version 4.6 (Max) and 1.6 (Jitter). Intel Mac native support is just half the story; Mac and Windows users alike have a whole bunch of goodies to enjoy in Jitter:

If you haven’t used Flash lately, you’ve missed a lot: it’s been quietly becoming more powerful. ActionScript 2.0 finally made Flash into a suitable programming environment, and Flash 8 brought awesome pixel-processing features via the BitmapData API. Add these to Flash’s lovely vector animation features, and Flash becomes a must-have tool. We’ve had a lively discussion about Flash maturing on the Create Digital Motion forum. There’s just been one problem: performance is not what it ought to be, because of bottlenecks within ActionScript and the program’s core.

That’s why Flash 9 is exciting. ActionScript 3.0 promises up to a ten-fold boost in performance. Here’s a simple example of the kinds of changes in store: previous versions of ActionScript didn’t actually have an integer variable type, so if you run a loop, you actually have to specify the loop variable using floating-point numbers. (In plain English, imagine if you had to learn to count as “1.000000, 2.000000, 3.000000 …”. You get the picture.) For you bleeding-edge types, you don’t have to wait until 2007 when Flash 9 / ActionScript 3.0 is set to ship. It’s here today in preview form:

Adobe Labs Flash 9 Preview, via a great blog called, oddly enough, The Flash Blog

Adobe says this is the only glimpse we’ll see of Flash before it ships next year, and they’re keeping plenty of secrets — all the features of the new Flash and even some of the new ActionScript features are hidden. (Ah, proprietary software.) It’s still worth testing, though, especially if you’ve built some complex animations that choke in ActionScript 2.0. Flash ninjas out there, do let us know how this works out for you.

“2007″ should sound familiar to Mac users; it’s when Adobe promises their Creative Suite will support Intel Macs. Let’s all just take a big vacation and backpack through Europe or sail solo around the world in the meantime; agreed?

Laptops are wonderful things. But they’re not always the best tool for the job, particularly when it comes to visuals. Notebook computers with even basic video cards command a huge price premium, and they’re not upgradeable. Desktop computers offer cheap, fast, upgradeable components, from the processor to storage to the video card. I didn’t want to sacrifice either: I wanted a powerful machine that I could take with me on a subway. Think fragbox for live visualists. In this series, I’ll set up, configure, and then gig with a Small Form Factor (SFF) PC running live visuals and audio.

First up: assembling the custom PC. For a little twist, you get to watch me do it comic book form, courtesy the fun Mac app Comic Life from plasq. If you’ve never built a PC before, or never an SFF machine, this will show you what it’s about. (Hey, I was a mostly-Mac person from 96 through ‘04 before returning to a cross-platform setup!) If you’re an old pro at custom machine building, you can laugh heartily at my mistakes.

Before we get into the how-to comic, though, a word about the Shuttle SN26P and why I’m so excited to be using it as a portable visual powerhouse.