SuperVillain: He Has More Friends Now

Ubergeek.tv
is a collection of animated graphics and other fun stuff that
instantly achieved a kind of cult status when it took satirical aim
at Apple's "switch" advertising campaign with an artfully stylized
Flash movie--and hammered it right through the floor.Mountain climbing with video artists, hang gliding with movie
stars. Hang gliding. I'm interesting...My dad used to beat me with his PC...Ubergeek's next video took aim at a breed of true geeks: the
Linux Guy. Here's the copy:We were negotiating with the Pentagon.
We had a blue screen of death. That was the last straw.
When you're holding the Moon for ransom, you value stability
in an application. Linux gives us the power we need to crush those
who oppose us.It's compatible with our orbiting brain lasers.I've got a Beowulf cluster of atomic supermen.I have more friends now.Genetically engineered cyber-goats. Henchmen with bad teeth.
Gorgeous fembots with a penchant for evil.I mean, Linux runs on anything.I'm all about: Open Source. Just changed my love life.You've got to config it. And then you have to write some
shell scripts. Update your RPMs. You have to partition your drives.
And patch your kernel. Compile your binaries. Check your version
dependencies. Probably do that once or twice.It's just so easy. And so simple. I don't know why everyone
doesn't run Linux.Thank God they don't, or then they would all be
supervillains, wouldn't they? Heh heh.I'm Steve, and I'm a supervillain.The Ubergeek site is clearly the work of a lone villain. I
wanted to know more about the guy, so I wrote to ask if he'd be up
for a few questions.He wrote back, "I'm completely up for it! Linux
Journal's great. I'm a fan of your work."His name is Chris Hill and he describes himself as "an
American living in London, England, originally hailing from
Phoenix, Arizona." As for his day job, he says,I'm a freelance web guy. I have my fingers in every pot. I
host, design, manage projects and code. Mainly web sites for
mid-sized corporations in the Southwest. I originally went to
school for graphic design, but I've been into programming since I
was young.When I asked him if any of the Big Boys want a piece of his
success, he expanded on a
World of Ends line
about "companies whose value came from distributing content in ways
the market no longer wants":As a budding animator I've had tons of offers from everyone
to display my animations on their web sites, set up agreements
where people would host or mirror my animations. Some of these
people just want to co-opt my work for their own gain. These media
dinosaurs don't seem to understand that I can own AND distribute my
own content by myself. Why should I attempt to strengthen someone
else's brand with my own work?Although the recording industry needs a wake up call, artists
can benefit themselves from not making bad agreements. The
simplicity and stupidity of the Internet can keep artists from
having to make more complex and limiting agreements with greedy
third parties. Then the idea of a recording industry as
we know it would be just as outdated as the media
dinosaurs themselves.I've also written a short article,
"Making
Animation Open Source". It's not stellar writing, but it
outlines a lot of major hurdles [that need to be cleared] and
paradigm shifting that needs to happen to push on-line animation to
the next level.When I asked him about his own Linux setup, he
replied,Well, I run RH 7.3 and 8 on two boxes (dual boot with Win2K),
and OS X on my iBook. I use Macromedia Flash to create my
animations. I draw directly into Macromedia Flash MX using my Wacom
tablet. I also draw by hand a lot, scanning them into
Photoshop.I must admit I actually do most of my work in Win2K, but I
wish that I was able to do that work in Linux. That was one of the
main reasons I made the animation--to improve awareness of Linux.
My Linux activities are mainly Java programming, PHP and doodling
little programs, scripts, whatever. I'm back in the DOS days again
through a lot of it, which I like.My server also runs RH 7.3, which is where my real Linux time
is spent. I host my own site and all my friends'.I asked if "Steve" is based on anyone in particular. He
said,Visually, Steve is mainly influenced by
Steve Mann
and a bunch of wearable computing geeks on my hard drive.The Steve character is based on real hardcore Linux
evangelists, who are like giant command-line brainsponges, able to
grok and compile anything without a single semicolon missing. These
guys can just do it; and when you can't, they don't understand why.
Accidentally a bit egotistical and a bit evil. Hence, a Linux
supervillain.(For context, check out Steve Mann's
cyborg-community-antenna
and secret photoborg stuff.)I asked him what he's up to next.I don't want to reveal too much, but the next animation is
about Toast and XML. I'm also working on a larger animation with
friends called Robot Parade. This one's more involved, using 3-D to
composite 2-D animation and exporting to video.He also said he was closer to crafting future animations in
Linux:Actually I've been thinking a lot about improving on the
ideas in that
article.
I've had a bit of feedback and done more research. I've also found
a useful open-source animation tool,
Blender.
It needs work, but it might be feasible to create great 2-D
animation in this 3-D program. I think I might be able to create an
animation fully in Linux.Given his track record, we're expecting some killer
stuff.Doc Searls is Senior Editor
of Linux Journal.

email: doc@ssc.com