Taco Bell, V-Day, and Flash

For those of you who went to some less romantic locale for dinner on V-Day, you probably missed out on their purple sauce packs.


DirectDaniella.com

When we got home, my wife and I decided to check out this website and see what it was all about. Visiting the site gave me flashbacks to Carl's Jr's stunt with SI a while back. (I am not a Paris Hilton fan at all. Though she looked good in an interview I saw in a burger joint in Florence.)

Paris in Shanghai


Where was I?

Oh, right. DirectDaniella.com.

If you haven't linked over to the site already, it is a very cleaver use of Flash. They shot footage of one of the swimsuit models (Daniella), placed that within a website that allowed you to "take pictures" within the cheesy storyline's confined timeline, and then let you save these images (in theory, I haven't gotten it to work, hence none of my "work" posted here).

All in all, it's pretty fun. Nothing to "write home about", but obviously enough to blog about.

But this post is about more than just the fast food industry's latest attempt to use sex to sell their greasy grub (which I love, by the by). This is about the trend to use Flash as the foundation for all sorts of new creative applications online. I've now created an editing tutorial over at Production-Now.com using the power of JumpCut, which is built on Flash. This is not to mention YouTube, Homestarrunner, and many other sites that are built on Adobe's acquired technology.

Cool stuff.

~Luke Holzmann

Honk if You're Perfect

The following came from the Sonlight Curriculum Forums:

I recently heard this on the local Christian radio station.

They have a "Call-in Confessional" show. One man called in and said that he was driving his wife's car to work. All of the sudden, a car behind him started laying on the horn. He looked back, and the guy just kept honking. The guy kept getting angrier and angrier. He knew it wasn't a Christian thing to do, but as the guy passed him, he gave the other driver the finger.

Still upset, the guy got home and parked his car. As he turned around to make sure he locked it, he saw his wife had a bumper sticker that said, "Honk if you love Jesus!"

That's how I feel right now. Can't really explain it any better than that.

~Luke Holzmann

Nature Abhors

Guess what Brittany and I spent two hours today doing?

Yep. Wandering Sears looking at vacuums. The sales people push the Dyson, Brittany loved the Halo, and I didn't like any of them. So, we bought a $50 Dirt Devil until the Halo has been proven and we've ended up in a bit more money to warrant a $500 carpet sucker.

But, yes: Two hours. And we spent a couple of hours back in December when we first went to try to purchase a vacuum. So, in all, we spent about four hours in Sears discussing vacuums. It was ridiculous, but it wasn't until we were driving home that the comedic nature of our adventure really hit us.

Ah, the amazingly romantic and exciting life of marriage.

I guess all that to say: If you don't like wandering around Home Depot with your significant other, perhaps it's not time for marriage. As one of the speakers in Chapel so aptly pointed out: You'll spend more time waiting in line in the grocery store than you will having sex.

That, or in Sears discussing vacuums.

~Luke Holzmann