Hi Mike,

Being my first term teaching web design in an official format, I don’t have any students that I think would be ready for this, but thought maybe you could pass it on to some of your former or current/advanced students.

Go to – https://www.jobs.cmich.edu

It’s only a provisional gig, but might be a great opp for an advanced student.

Mike – We have an opening for a part-time Web Designer at LCC and wondering if you know of anyone who might be interested. The position is posted at the Human Resources web site.  Please feel free to contact Nancy Ernsberger (ernsben@email.lcc.edu, 483-1966) if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Paul Price
Director, Media Services
Lansing Community College
Lansing, MI 48901-7210
(517) 483-1692

Sometimes the best time-wasters aren’t games at all. Case in point: isotope2. It’s an engrossing Flash toy by Martin Jonasson that draws fun mathemagical patterns. You start out with a blank canvas and a mechanical arm. You can add segments to the arm (by clicking on the plus and minus buttons) and then adjust the speed and direction at which each joint rotates (by clicking on the joint and dragging up or down). With the right combinations, you can generate some very cool and very pretty patterns. You can zoom in and out and control the speed (higher speeds make for more angular lines), and you can also copy the “formula” for your pattern to share with your friends. Simple, but totally addictive.

(Via Download Squad.)

Video: Oscar nominee and his brother created Photoshop. Movie visual effects master John Knoll and his brother built Photoshop as the result of a hobby. At the time, Knoll was working full-time at Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic. Knoll, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Pirates of the Caribbean II, talked with CNET’s Veronica Belmont about how he built the program.

(Via CNET News.com.)

Video: Meet Industrial Light & Magic animator Hal Hickel. At 12, Hal Hickel submitted a plot idea to Lucasfilm. It was politely rejected. Now the grown-up Hickel is animation supervisor for the Pirates movies series at Lucasfilm’s ILM. That rejection letter hangs proudly in his office, and now he’s hoping he’ll have an Oscar for his Pirates work to place next to it. CNET’s Veronica Belmont reports.

(Via CNET News.com.)

The Small Business Administration (SBA) has been around for a while mostly trying to make the life of a small business owner easier, and boy we need it. Running a small business is hard, and for many business owners, getting started, or better yet, keeping the thing going is especially tough. The SBA wants to help by offering a bunch of free podcasts to help you get or keep going with your fledgling enterprise. Here is the list of currently available podcasts:

• Check List for Starting a Business
• SBA Programs Support Entrepreneurial Veterans
• Is Entrepreneurship for You?
• The SBA Small Business Training Network-Log On!
• Selecting a Business That Fits
• Disaster Preparedness for Business Owners
• Financing a Small Business
• Creating a Business Plan
• Making Your Business Plan Work for You

(Via Download Squad.)

Rocket Studio apparently does artwork for various advertising agencies and their website shows some of the stuff they’ve done. No big deal right? Yeah, but, look in the upper right and you’ll see a button labeled “Show original images.” Roll over that button to see what they started with. Some of these pieces are inspiring.

Jump

Running with scissors isn’t recommended for kids, but it might be ideal for your next big development project. With interfaces becoming more complex and schedules growing shorter, the best prototyping tools may be simpler than you think. All you need is paper, pens, scissors, and your imagination.

(Via A List Apart: for people who make websites.)

Cory Doctorow:
Attendees at FOO Camp — an invitational geek weekend — created a giant scene out of Space Invaders that’s visible from space, which was subsequently photographed for Google’s sat photo database (they also made a giant Cylon).

…one of the fun things that happened over the weekend was that Chris DiBona announced that Google were going to be doing a flyover of the campus and that we should take the opportunity to make some interesting art projects that would subsequently be visible from Google Maps and Google Earth. So we did.

Link

(Via Boing Boing.)

Finally, someone gets it. This video made me weep.