Don't answer that phone!

If you bought a box of cereal at one time, you could send in the box tops for a toy they couldn't fit in the box. How many people do you think did that with Bug Spray?

This was in the age of Sports Illustrated football phones, or Tennis Shoe phones, when Raid "Kills Bugs Dead" bug spray got into the act. There may have been an attempted revival of the classic Bug Spray spots at this time. I loved those commercials enough to enforce Brand loyalty years later. I did whatever it took to get the phone and it has been sitting around unused ever since, because I don't reckon many took advantage of the offer. It was a natural concept though, most of the commercials gags centered around a bug getting a 'call' from Raid, and just like many actual phone calls today, it was totally unwanted, with negative consequences. The Raid phone epitomized the true nature of the typical phone call better than any football, Tennis shoe, BatPhone or whatever you might have.

Steve at ASIFA - Hollywood Animation Archive just posted an interview or two on video with Bob GIvens who designed these ads, among with much more during his long career.

Givens interview on the Animation Archive

Thanks to John K for the heads up. It goes without saying, if you care about animation, and you are not reading John Kricfalusi's Blog, you should. And I doubt you are reading this if you are not reading John.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

Rip Van Winkle awakes.

Its been over a year since I posted, and I doubt anyone has found this blog. Even in that week of posting setting it up, I never got close in the slightest to my original concept, which was to post all the "doodles in the margins" that I created mostly during the k-12 years, perhaps some from college. For one thing, I would have to find where I have those physically archived, perhaps lost to the elements, then I would have to scan them in.

I'm on my laptop mostly, and never near a scanner anymore.

And my blog got hijacked by the iPhone. I was busy trying to figure out how to blog directly from the iPhone (not so easy without MMS).

Since then, I thought maybe I should split those tech shenannigans to another blog. Or blog period. I tweet more now, microblogging has perhaps killed my urge or need to blog. Google has made some changes in Blogger since then, and perhaps, I will set up Flock, and post more. We will see. What intially seemed to be the easiest blogging system out there still stymied me with the amount of windows I needed to keep open to post to the account, on top of my dial up account slowness at the time.

Plus, it seems Googles spiders never stopped here, with no links in or out to attract it. Blogger has been attractive, as it seemed to have attracted a lot of animation artists, in the way that MySpace attracted musicians. Its not about the technology, as much as it is about the community.

Meanwhile, Facebook, Twitter, et al, steal the social thunder while Google works on multiple other projects.

So this is that toe in the water for now.

They usually make better proofreaders, too!

I think I can post from my iPhone now.

This was not posted from an iPhone, mostly because my "mail to blogger" was set in drafts modes, rather than publish.

It would be nice if the iPhone had MMS, then one could post WITH IMAGES from the iPhone, from the iPhone.

I suppose it is possible to attach a photo in email, but most email gateways will not be helpful in getting the image to your blogger account automatically. Also, I do not think it helps that the default for the iphone emails is HTML, which will be rejected by blogger.

Have you had better luck, posting from your iPhone? Does your mail gateway make a difference? Can you post an image, directly from your iPhone?

that rumor that iphone data plan includes att wifi and Passwords on the iPhone

I read it a few days ago on Digg, but it wasn't dugg that much. I would love for the rumor to be somewhat true, but I doubt it.

As rumor would have it, and perhaps this is why it was buried on Digg.com, was that the data plan that ATT had every iPhone user sign for, would include all the wifi hotspots they operate. Which at the moment, include a few less spots at UPS Stores (which I think you would have to be fairly needy to use generally, as there has never been space to set a laptop in those old mailbox etcetera stores), because UPS doesn't do that anymore. Apparently.

But anyway, ideally, you could be in Mickey D's, and the ATT wifi there would let you surf on your iPhone as you wait for your clownburger, or wash it down with fizzy water. Automagically. Because iPhones have the data plan, see? And its just being an iPhone would let it on the wireless broadband without thinking.

But that is not the way those hotspots work. They push a page to you, and ask you to sign in with a user name and password.
Which you can use, if you have such. I have such. I had such before the iPhone was officially announced, for my powerbook.
It is slightly awkward to fill in passwords on iPhones Safari, and you get the feeling your password is being announced to people peeping over your shoulder, as the keypads leap out at you.

Ironically, looking at these whiz bang apps from iPhoneDevCamp, which I think are a good start, to be kind, you notice that almost all of the webapps they are creating require you to Sign IN. With a password.

I sure would like to surf without showing my papers at every border crossing, and it certainly isn't anything I intend to do on my iPhone. Maybe some sort of keychain will come into being. Perhaps there already is a keychain of sort already in the phones... you need it to have your email pushed to you, for example. But logging in to every webpage you want to see is for the birds, besides being unnecessary, and a security risk to boot.

How about it ATT? How about just letting the iphones in on your hotspots without the hurdle of passwords and contractual agreements? Afraid someone would spoof an iPhone and use the sites for free?

In other words, That Data Plan you may be paying for somehow? I think that is merely for the EDGE network.

Create your own abstract iPhone wallpaper

You do not need your computer to create abstract photography for your iPhones start up screen, you just need to keep in mind that the camera built in to the iPhone is fixed aperature so in certain light situations (most) the shutter will stay open. And if you are moving the phone, the camera, at that time, you will get a smeared exposure.

I tried to get some sort of slit shutter stretchiness on some objects, but I liked the pure smears better.

Try it, and blog your own monkeybusiness.

Hey, a finger painting app WOULD be cool. But it ain't happening on an ARM processor.

My roof is on fire!

Well, no it isn't. But I just want to say, the title of this blog reveals an intention to post some marginal doodles, if I ever find them, if I ever scan them.

I will blab on about far more, if I carry this out properly. So far, it appears I cannot get past the tabs in the Blogger interface without losing what I just created. Perhaps I should use Ecto or something. Anyone reading (ha!) use Ecto for their blogspottiness?

The 'far more' I will blab on about, other than art and music and animation and apple and urban planning and whatever bat is in my belfry, will become self apparent.