From multiple resources:

A father who has a good relationship with the mother of their children is more likely to be involved and to spend time with their children and to have children who are psychologically and emotionally healthier. Similarly, a mother who feels affirmed by her children's father and who enjoys the benefits of a happy relationship is more likely to be a better mother. Indeed, the quality of the relationship affects the parenting behavior of both parents. They are more responsive, affectionate, and confident with their infants; more self-controlled in dealing with defiant toddlers; and better confidants for teenagers seeking advice and emotional support.

Don't embarrass your child. Be sensitive to his reaction to your actions. With tweens, it's easy to cross a line you didn't even know was there.

Set a positive tone. This is a time for fun, not an opportunity to discipline or force a teachable moment.

Turn off the cell phone. This goes for both of you.

Follow the conversational lead. Friends are your tween's No. 1 priority. More than likely, you'll hear numerous tales of stuff going on at school, who got invited to the latest party and who's going out with whom. (Don't worry; at this stage, "going out" means they like somebody, not that they're actually dating.)

Don't interrupt. Be open and listen carefully, especially if your tween starts relating a problem she's having. Let her talk freely, simply adding a word or two to encourage her to keep going. This is a time to resist your proactive problem-solving impulses; tweens will shut down every time you try to fix something before they feel you understand what it is.

Enjoy yourselves. Plan your next outing soon.

Eventually, fathers came to be regarded as merely breadwinners who fulfilled their paternal duties by providing.

But is that image changing again?

Research shows that tweens and teens need the firm leadership a father provides. A child performs better in school if his father takes an interest in his education. Children have more confidence when their fathers spend time with them and show them affection. Kids learn from watching their fathers’ decisions and listening to logical explanations.

More on this pseudo-life. Yes blogging is great, yet consider those comments & pretty much having the right attitute towards your feeling & life.

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Warning: Social Networking Can Be Hazardous to Your Job Search

Kate Lorenz, CareerBuilder.com Editor

That cute, affable guy who brags of his drunken exploits on FaceBook.com may be meeting a lot of other partiers online, but he's probably not getting added to the "friends" lists of many corporate recruiters. A recent study by the executive search firm ExecuNet found that 77 percent of recruiters run searches of candidates on the Web to screen applicants; 35 percent of these same recruiters say they've eliminated a candidate based on the information they uncovered.

"You'd be surprised at what I've seen when researching candidates," says Gail, a recruiter at a Fortune 500 company who recently began looking up potential hires on the Web. "We were having a tough time deciding between two candidates until I found the profile of one of them on MySpace. It boasted a photo of her lounging on a hammock in a bikini, listed her interests as 'having a good time' and her sex as 'yes, please.' Not quite what we were looking for."

"Another time I went to a candidate's site and found racial slurs and jokes," Gail continues. "And there was yet another instance where a candidate told me he was currently working for a company, yet he left a comment on a friend's profile about how it 'sucked' to be laid off, and how much fun it was to be unemployed!"

As the amount of personal information available online grows, first impressions are being formed long before the interview process begins, warns David Opton, ExecuNet CEO and founder. "Given the implications and the shelf-life of Internet content, managing your online image is something everyone should address -- regardless of whether or not you're in a job search," he says. Because the risks don't stop once you're hired.

Twenty-three-year old Kara recently took a job as a management consultant at a high-profile practice in the Los Angeles area. An Ohio native, with no friends or family on the West Coast, Kara put up a profile on MySpace in the hopes of meeting new people.

Kara was judicious in how she set up her site: "I didn't fill out that cheesy questionnaire many people post, where you describe your best feature and say whether or not you shower every day." she says. "I used a photo that was flattering but not at all provocative and was even careful what music I chose."

Within a few months, Kara met many others online who shared her interest in biking and water sports. One Friday morning, Kara decided to call in sick and go surfing with a few of her new pals. That weekend, unbeknownst to Kara, her friend posted some of the day's pictures on her profile and sent Kara a message saying, "We should call in sick more often."

Unfortunately for Kara, her boss happened to be patrolling MySpace to check up on her college-age daughter and came across Kara's site and the dated photos!

Mortified, Kara says she learned an important lesson -- not only about honesty, but about how small the world of online social networking can be and how little control you have over any information put out there.

Not all employers search candidates and employees online, but the trend is growing. Don't let online social networking deep-six your career opportunities. Protect your image by following these simple tips:

1. Be careful. Nothing is private. Don't post anything on your site or your "friends" sites you wouldn't want a prospective employer to see. Derogatory comments, revealing or risqué photos, foul language and lewd jokes all will be viewed as a reflection of your character.

2. Be discreet. If your network offers the option, consider setting your profile to "private," so that it is viewable only by friends of your choosing. And since you can't control what other people say on your site, you may want to use the "block comments" feature. Remember, everything on the Internet is archived, and there is no eraser!

3. Be prepared. Check your profile regularly to see what comments have been posted. Use a search engine to look for online records of yourself to see what is out there about you. If you find information you feel could be detrimental to your candidacy or career, see about getting it removed -- and make sure you have an answer ready to counter or explain "digital dirt."


Kate Lorenz is the article and advice editor for CareerBuilder.com. She researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues.

Kelihatannya 3D belum cukup ada di SecondLife, rencananya juga akan ada di Facebook! Company ini http://www.vivaty.com/ berencana utk mengeluarkan produknya utk bisa barengan dengan Facebook juga. Kelihatannya masih ada saja perusahaan yg mengeluarkan produk utk social spt ini, walaupun jumlahnya udah puluhan.

Borrowing "this week tip" of creativity from istockphoto. To my surprise I've pretty much been doing a few of these points below. Just to remind us on to 'think different' or just simply having fun.

As a creative, you’re a rebel by nature, but it’s easy to feel trapped under a boring, non-risqué cloud where it rains isolation and discouragement. iStock wants you to banish that stormy disposition with a furious hurricane of risk, creativity and exploration.

1. Take Risks – Rebels don’t follow rules, so start by admitting what habits you retreat to when you’re uninspired. Introduce alternatives to those habits, which will throw off your routine. Try a new cafe, change your haircut or leave your house more.

wilson: same goes if you'd like to do your own biz. Risk & being secure doesnt work well sometimes. Does controlled risk really work?

2. Invite Creativity – If you’re a photographer, take your camera somewhere unfamiliar. You never know what you’ll see on a trip to the dump or a walk through the neighbourhood on the other side of the train tracks (iStock’s HQ is on the other side of the tracks, for inspiration purposes, of course). If you’re more of an illustrator, take your sketchbook everywhere, from a garage sale to the aquarium, you just never know when inspiration might strike.

wilson: You could also go on a slightly different route when time allows. This way you'd get to see things slightly differently than your usual environment. Or buy magazines that may not be too relevant just to see other point of view.

3. Seek Inspiration – Whose art baffles your mind or arrests your soul? Not sure? Well, now’s the time to find out. iStock’s Design Spotlight, Article of the Week and Artist of the Week are a good place to start. Branch out to the ultimate rock stars of your genre who you dream of one day competing with. Take a tutorial you've been avoiding.

wilson: you must have liked someones artwork, person or amazed by his/her creation. Read his bio, his way of thinking and philosophy than just admiring the work. This will empower you more into creation than just on the surface.

4. Scrapbook it – No, not quite like your mother used to do. Gather artifacts like photos, ads, concert tickets, articles, lucky shoelaces or fabric samples. Whatever floats your boat and stirs your imagination.

wilson: sticky notes, use social bookmarking like digg, facebook, delicious to keep your most important link to come back next time. Talk about scrapbook, my desk is an organised mess!

5. Surround Yourself with Creativity – Pump up the volume on your stereo or iPod, rent that old Alfred Hitchcock flick or play a little music to get into that creative space.

wilson: music, items collectibles and definetly good friends to brainstorm ideas are your best source of creativity.

With creativity, those who add more risk and adventure will find more creative rewards. Now, go mix it up!

Sharing w you all a pretty good link for those animation enthusiast, for the biz side and the hard fact/truth from the frank comments :http://www.animwatch.com/podcast.php
You'd need iTunes for best experience.

I think the worst of people who run their own biz is the tempation of doing everything. Everything as in everything. I'll take care the concept, design and the campaign. And for that I'll do the photography part.. and why not do the video production as well at the same time. Of coz we can do the editing and DI process from there. And i think you'll need a website to convey the message and it would be great if we design a flashy website with a host that greets you in 3D environment. I can go on... But again i think i'll stay focus on the content making than doing everybit of production ourselves.. even though we could. How about collaborating and outsourcing to your trusted partner?

RhinoFX http://www.fxguide.com/article443.html

Has grown from a small company to an amazing work with high level creativity. I'd say we shld focus more on the creativity and execution than trying to do everything across the board.

If you have seen Transformer the movie, this is exactly what I mean. Story was simple, save the cube from the bad ones. But execution was so good people forget about the simple story.

As DenDarto was recommending me this book, I'd recommend this to readers as well: http://www.amazon.com/Juicing-Orange-Creativity-Powerful-Advantage/dp/1591399270/ref=pd_bbs_5/104-5700500-3931131?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185856846&sr=8-5

Highly recommended to understand this: Outsmart as opposed to Outspend your competitor through creativity.

Rather disturbing news of how Apple treats artist to produce their commercials. News here: http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/05/apples-little-problem-with-ripping-off-artists

Just want to share with you a new way of interacting with a device. The idea is invented by this genius, Jeff Han in 2006 as a spinoff of Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences by developing the most advanced touch screen.

http://www.perceptivepixel.com/

Now that this idea too, with it's capability and further exploration, is interested by many parties around the world. Including Microsoft. So they came up with this:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

More complete features of what it can do here:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html

Something that we've been animating through CG and motiongraphics (the famous minority report and others) now came to life.

Equipment = effeciency. Good team work + pre-planning = smooth operation.

Dengan spirit low budget (to save client's budget) tapi dengan hasil maksimal memang kadang mempunyai price sendiri-sendiri. Bbrp hari ini kita shoot satu internal video dengan 8 talents yang termasuk anak kecil dan professional actors. Ini kira2 pengalaman kita:

Onsite:
Mulai pagi2 sekali utk take yg tidak tergantung sinar matahari. Kita kelar lebih cepat dari schedule, tapi anak2 mulai rewel pas siangnya.. karena memang ada aktifitas maen bola dengan dialog. Tapi anak2 memang tidak mudah untuk harus dibawah panas2an, beberapa kali take. Untung producerku orangnya cukup bagus dengan anak2, krn director udah mulai ngomel. Anak2 harus dimenangkan hatinya bukan diancem2.

Offsite:
Editing on DVCPRO50, 16x9, hasilnya cukup vibrant spt biasa. Sharp lens seperti yg dibutuhkan. Editing kita pakai Premiere Pro2 tanpa capture card. Oleh karena keterbatasan ini kita sewa DVCPRO deck kerumah temen yang cukup baik utk stay back late utk tranfer semua data ke harddisk. Padahal dia baru pulang dari shooting event.. thanks to him big time!
Blackmagic card ini kudu punya utk editor yg kadang bisa ambil HDV atau mungkin HD karena qualitynya bisa terjaga. Maklum kita sekarang banyak multimedia dan motiongraphics work daripada serious video production. Definitely Blackmagic is on my list!

Edit:
Dulu ada offline, sekarang keliatannya off n online sudah sangat tipis. Berhubung waktu sangat mepet utk deliver videonya, semua graphics dan treatment kita edit 12 jam straight. Video kita langsung ftp ke bagian audio production utk bisa set mood, peak dll. Alhasil kita dapet balik lagi resultnya dlm 5 jam. Good team.
Gak bisa dibayangin kalau internet kita slow utk tranfer data sharing.

Review:
Client saw the edit, very minor changes and we are done!


A few tools that helps our workflow without meeting up (waste more time)
1. Send your rough edit (zipped) with: http://www.yousendit.com
2. Send your clip for online rough cut (faster preview) using youtube or google video. Disable on public viewing to maintain viewing exclusivity. IMPORTANT: Take it down after all parties has viewed the clip - security purpose.
3. Use multiple internet uploader. Office & home. In my case, home is faster.
4. Save more often. I've had crashes worth of 2 hours of work.
5. Prepro meeting n set of expectation! Do more screen sample prints, whatever samples you can find to set the mood board and reference. This way they will have more bigger idea to what to expect. 80% preplanning - 20% production.
6. Get the best team if you can. From cameraman, gaffer, producer.
7. Better machine doesnt mean better quality of work. Faster maybe. Prepro is.

Tambahin deh.. :)

These are some blog spaces that rule the world today.

LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Technorati, Feedster, Ice Rocket, and Google.

Would like to share this a very2 intuitive web consumer application.

http://scrapblog.com/

Looks like we can leave our software at home.. those old apps, no need to download for patch, clicking the "OK" button when it's not actually ok. At least that's what one company's statement (cant remember the company name). They are getting most of the thing online, so you literaly have our basic OS with you (or PDA, miniPC..or car PC) and do all your work on the fly/mobile.

Let's see what's going to happen soon. Wireless may not always offer you the good signal strength that you want. Mobile network may. As for me, I'm getting most my stuff online now too, from the invoices that's been paid, appointments, address book, other personal data on gugel spreadsheets and all. I noticed Starhub will come up with it's own apps to cater for the similiar idea to your mobile. So you'll never need to save your data in your mobile. Let it resides somewhere.

Memang sangat menarik perkembangan digital world belakangan ini, terutama yang di much overhyped Web 2.0 dengan interactive community dan the supporting Ajax technology. Justru disini saya lihat sepertinya akan terjadi trend seperti dulu Flash keluar pertama kali. Banyak website bermunculan menjadi full flash driven, interactive, bombastic type of animation.

Mungkin sekarang adalah masa seperti demikian dengan cyber community yang menjunjung tinggi community sebagai kunci utamanya. Web + Mobility + Media Info + Database.
Justru menurut saya sekarang yang menjadi tantangan bukan technologynya karena mereka akan berjalan sendiri dan terus maju. Disinilah peran designer, artist dan praktisi visualer berperan sangat penting. Mempunyai technology yang sangat canggih tanpa adanya designer yang handal menjadikan website, aplikasi kita menjadi terlalu rumit dan non-user friendly.

Saya kira Apple dan Google sangat menyumbangkan case study yang sangat baik utk hal ini. Lewat interface yang simple terdapat hal yang rumit dibelakangnya. Even your mom can do it.

Again many things to do, too little time. But this is not an excuse of not executing the best resolution of current situation. Being content developer it's never enough to know anything, about everything and to think you know enough.

It's a blessing to be surrounded by motivated people that knows many different media, as well as the combination of those expert in their own specialities. The hardest is to prepare the mentality and mindset of each personel that you can make the change of the current industry. Your world is beyond what you think you know and you are part of the change. If you have the will.

The following will even make your experience fuller, like edit your video on the web.
http://jumpcut.com/

We're talking youtube + myspace + jumpcut + google community.

Philippines animation industry almost export all of its output to large international studios.
Labour cost are cheaper compare to the US:
2D animation: 15-20%
3D animation: 20-30%

There are more than 30 studios in the country with the cost of production falls in the range of $50 - $100k per eps.
The Phillipines animation industry is able to produce more than 7000 minutes of content annually. The animation industry in the Philippines has received supports from the goverment, as animation is seen as one ofthe main drivers of the technology services industry in the country. However labour cost are now rising, making the country increasingly vulnerable to competition from low-cost studios in territories such as China and India.

source: 3D world 0706

Sekarang kalau kita lihat Indonesia, kalau ada yg invest di infrastructure, kalau ada yg invest di datacentre dg 500 renderfarm, kalau ada orang-orang yg passionate terhadap animasi, kalau ada orang luar yg mau invest dan datang untuk membawa script dan directornya, kira-kira bagaimana keadaannya ya? Semua sudah ada tinggal duduk saja.

Apakah kita yang terbiasa kerja kebut semalam (commercial) bisa survive di industry ini? Saya kira teman-teman di Frameworks Batam dapat bercerita banyak suatu hari nanti.

Got my time to do some idea research on some visual reference and found this vvvv  to be extremely cool. For one thing it has got cool visual movements, scripted and never look exactly the same, and they interact with you. I've been wanting to do more of this type of projects with scripts on AE, Flash and the growing "very" popular Motion (well now it's got Conduit).

I do really hope that photoshop too one day can be procedural. Just like Houdini and Shake does. Not that it's not sufficient for now.

On photography, Nikon is about to release a new camera .. again with 10.2Mbpx. Just as Sony release it's alpha DSLR, this is Nikon's answer to the challenge. The all new D70s?

Wah belakangan ini terlalu banyak hal terjadi.. dari yg positif sampe negatif.. tp ternyata yg negatif justru jadi positif... Bukan berarti jadi bagus krn yg negatif tersebut tetap sifatnya negatif... ngerti gak sih.

Mulai dari project di jkt, office space dan planningnya di SG, sampai biz collab yg termasuk hal yg sangat baru dan potentially interesting.. hmm..

Well anyway, got to go day by day. Setiap hari ada kerjaannya sendiri dan kerjakanlah hari itu juga. Besok ada kesusahan dan challengenya sendiri.

Had an opportunity to do a photo shoot in Chicago. It's pretty big city with amazingly nice people who will greet and help. Whenever I have a chance to go to a place where advertising and graphics are very much mature in the way they behave, I enjoy the different fonts they have than those in Asia in general. Colour scheme, typo, icons and branding are a real deal here. Almost every company, big and small, really care with how they put across their message to viewers on the street. And I'm not talking about multi-national company.

I think this is where educators in general are very much in the "know" on how to put across certain feelings and motivation to the general audience. Here I hardly find design that doesn't really fit or somewhat just don't make it - at least from the way I see it. Maybe again, because in general whoever execute the design process (company owner, designer, marketing dept) has this in depth common understanding of good & what works.

The question is will I perform better if I were to live in those rich & abundant resources? I dont see why not. Due to the fact that internet too has changed our lives so much in developing ideas, references and learning matter, having to live in supportive environment don't think it will make you worse, it'll only get better. If you keep seeking for it.

Been bz with different things at the same time. Dont want to spend days like it's just another day in life. I've got design proposal to do, TVC proposals, comic making in the pipeline soon, I think they shld be more.... (see my point?).

Well, now I've been using Google's wonderful emails and daily calendar to share with people in the project ('tho some bugs). This will keep us in tune with each other. Wait till I hv my collaboration tool up. Things gonna get a little more exciting.