If you’re anywhere around Boston, and you’ve any interest in podcasting (? Just like blogging, but with attached MP3 audio files that people can download and listen to later – usually like little radio shows, but often produced by just one or two people), or even just plain old blogging, there’s a great chance coming up to geek out with other Podcasters, bloggers, and others with an interest in ‘new media’. They’re working on getting a deal together with a hotel, but also plan on making it possible to actually camp.

Chris Brogan describes Podcamp as an ‘Unconference’…

That’s the difference with an unconference. In these events, the attendees are also the experts. Sessions get organized on the fly the morning of the event, and there are all kinds of ways to participate: hold a 30 minute session or demo, a 5 minute lightning talk, or participate in a panel discussion. Join an informal round table talk, participate in podcasting demos and actual live podcasts as well!

• Podcamp Boston
• Chris Brogan’s Announcement
• Subscribe to Chris’ blog to keep up to date with news.

First, a couple of changes here at PigPog…

• The Productivity section has been renamed: it’s now Creativity at Work. The URL has stayed the same for now, and if we ever do change it, we’ll set up a redirect so we won’t break any bookmarks or links from outside. It’s also moved up to the secondary row of links in the top bar. This seems to make it fit better with the other stuff, and gets the emphasis back to creativity. All of the content is the same, and if anything, it will probably mean more content there soon.
• The Index pages (Art, Craft, etc, linked in the top bar) have been overhauled a bit. This is still ongoing, but they’re all following a standard format now, which should make it a bit easier to find things. It also makes it easier to spot where we’ve completely failed to write anything – there are no articles under Learning in Craft, for example. We must work on that soon.
• I’ve been envious of WordPress users for a while with their excellent Akismet spam filtering service. Well, there’s now an Akismet module for Drupal 4.7. The spam filter we were using before was ok, but I’d broken it somehow during the upgrade, and it always seemed to either block almost everything, including real comments, or it let through too much spam. We’ll see how Akismet goes, but I’m hopeful it will do well. For the moment, at least, I’ve turned on posting without moderation for anonymous users, so it will get a bit more testing. Comment spam isn’t nearly the same scale of problem on Drupal as it was on WordPress, anyway, so it shouldn’t be too bad either way.

If you’re bored and want to help us test a bit, feel free to leave a comment below, and we’ll see how it works

Also, a very small change…

• The old Tracker link has been renamed to -=What’s New=-, in the hope that that makes a little more sense to people who aren’t familliar with Drupal sites.

I posted before about Josh’s excellent Unboxing site, but he’s taken the stripping a step further now. Not content with just seeing all those gadgets peeled down to the skin, he now wants to get under the skin, and get right inside them.

If it’s not getting too dirty for you, head over to Gadget Autopsy to see what goes on under the plastic of some of your favourite geek toys.

It’s like Rotten.com for the toy-obsessed. (No, that’s not a link. Don’t go looking, you’ll regret it. Really.)

John Kricfalusi is the guy behind Ren and Stimpy, and he’s still making new cartoons. He’s also blogging, and sharing his enthusiasm for animation with the world. Best of all, though, he’s putting together a tutorial on animation, which he says will teach you more about doing really good animation than any college course will. There’s nine lessons so far…

• Lesson 1: Construction: The Head
• Lesson 2: Squash and Stretch on Heads
• Lesson 3: How to Check your Copies: Proportion
• Lesson 4: 2-legged Characters: Full Body
• Lesson 5: Line of Action, Silhouettes
• Lesson 6: Construction of the Head, Advanced
• Lesson 7: When Generic is a Good Thing
• Lesson 8: Proportions Effect Design – Contrasts
• Lesson 9: Hands

If you want to learn animation, this is a great chance to learn from one of the best. If you want to learn cartoon-style drawing, there’s a lot here to help too.

Latest Update: Added the ‘Music Theory for Guitar’ link.

• Music Theory for Guitar: More about learning the music than the playing, but there’s a lot of useful information here, and although the site isn’t the prettiest around (it’s being redesigned at the moment), the information is presented quite clearly. (Thanks to Gary, as usual, for finding this one.)

Create Digital Music have a nice little roundup of places to learn music, including guitar, drums, keyboards, and music theory…

• Free Online Lessons at Create Digital Music.

I’ve not actually visited any of the sites they mention, so I’ve no idea how good they are, but with such resources as scarce as they are it’s good to have some recommendations to go on.

Anything missing? They’re collecting suggestions in their comments, and we’d love to know about anything else too.

Merlin ’43 Folders’ Mann has a fun little blog called 5ives in which he provides amusing lists of five things. So simple, I had to rip it off…

Presenting…

Five Occasions On Which Listening To Paradise City Becomes Hilariously Ironic

1. Going to Mansfield.
2. Going to work. Especially if work is on a crappy industrial estate in the middle of nowhere.
3. Going to the tip.
4. Visiting Grandma in the nursing home.
5. Coming back from Mansfield.

Though for that last one, the line “Oh won’t you please take me home” has never been more apt.

I thank you.

Until next time, see you in the blogosphere.

A Treo running Linux? Cool. Also, Scott Adams is funny – no surprise there, but he enjoys cleaning out litter trays. That’s kind of odd.

• CatAttack! – see what it’s like to be the cat fud.
• Treo 650 running Linux – damn, now I want one of those.
• Art not displayed. Stand put on show instead. – an excellent story via Boing Boing, in which the artist submitted a laughing head, using a small piece of wood to keep it upright. The gallery have rejected the sculpture, but put the small bit of wood on display on the original stand.
• Hiroshima Models, including before (city) and after (flat) versions.
• Night of the Living Ants – Scott Adams confesses his love of vacuuming ants and cleaning out cat litter trays. “It’s like panning for gold, except the gold is cat poop.”

Latest Update: Made my first Tea Sketch, and added it to the group – see the pics further down…

Flickr is mainly a photo-sharing site, but they don’t mind too much if you share drawings and paintings too. They do say that if most of your pics are drawings and paintings, though, they may mark your account to stop showing up in public areas – like groups. So, it’s not the ideal place if you just want to share drawings, but if you mainly post photos, a few drawings won’t hurt…

The Drawing Club

We write a weekly column for The Drawing Club, but along with the blog, there’s a Yahoo! Group, and a Flickr group where you can share your drawings with the other members…

• The Drawing Club on Flickr.

Everyday Matters

Danny Gregory has a lot of fans, as much for his encouragement of everyone else to draw as for his own drawings. He also created the Flickr group where lots of people share their art. EDM is one of the most popular art-related groups, with (at the time of writing) 298 members and 1,542 pictures posted.

Like The Drawing Club, there is also a Yahoo! Group, and EDM also have weekly drawing challenges to keep you inspired.

• Everyday Matters on Flickr.

Tea Sketches

Drop a tea bag on an index card, and let it make a stain. Then, turn the stain into a drawing. I love this idea, and I think I’ll be having a go at it with my next cup of tea. Maybe even put a stock of index cards next to the tea bags. Tea seems to be preferred, but if you don’t drink tea, they’ll let you use an alternative. Coffee, wine and mustard are all suggested, just as long as it’s a natural stain, not set up for a specific drawing idea.

My first attempt at a Tea Sketch…

• Tea Sketches on Flickr.
• (Found via an excellent post on Paper Bits, which actually inspired me to write this page.)

Pencil Revolution

They’re mainly about the pencils themselves, but the group incudes quite a lot of drawings done with pencils.

• Pencil Revolution on Flickr.

Others

• Moleskinerie – the Flickr group of the blog of the same name, contains lots of drawings, as long as they’re done in a Moleskine notebook.

Diablo Cody, former stripper, excellent writer, blogger and one of the people about whom I always think OMGIwishIwasgorgeousandstrongandsexylikewotsheis, has posted recently boasting about her man…

I decided it was time to do the same.

Because some may think from reading my blog that all of my devotional soppy fangirl energies are channelled in the direction of a certain curly haired guitarist fella, I feel an urge to tell you what I adore about a man I adore even more than “Teh Lovely”. Forget about The Lovely Mr Hudson, let’s talk about The Lovely Mr Randall.

• The eyes the eyes the eyes the eyes…. – My Husband Teh Lovely Mr Randall possesses the most intensely beautiful dark delicious eyes ever seen on anything with eyes. I swear. Not since that bit in The Blues Brothers has so much squee been squee’d over a man staring over the top of his glasses. We’ve been together 10 years and that look can still make me melt.

• It’s his fault I’m blogging – Yep, blame him. He is singularly responsible for getting me hooked on this here intarweb thing, and on computers in general. Geekiness is sometimes infectious.

• He is a Man With Guitar – He is! And he’s getting into it again, which means I’m getting squee all over the house.

• He’s also The Househusband – Since liberating himself from the world of work last October, he’s taken responsibility for almost all the domestic stuff. I might be the one that goes out to work, but he’s the one who does the cooking, deals with the cat litter and cleans the toilet.

• The butt the butt the butt the butt…. – Phwoar. squidge

• He’s responsible for my taste in music now. – I think he regrets getting me into Metallica and Guns N’ Roses though.

• He’s the best person in my world. – 100% of fact. Nobody has had as positive impact on my life as Michael has. Even though we’re married now, I still can’t believe how lucky I am to have him in my life. He’s my soulmate and my best friend. It can’t get better than that.

So yeah, all things considered, I’m a damn lucky gal.

Latest Update: Adding a link to the colour theory page at the University of Hong Kong.

Colour Theory

• See the excellent Color FAQ for information about how colours work, and a template for a colour wheel you can print out and fill in yourself.
• For a more theoretical and historical look at colour theory, see theory of colour in science and art from Terry Boyce at the University of Hong Kong. (Via Moleskinerie.)

Recipe of Colors

Now to become the genius mixer. Looking at my 8-crayon watercolor set, I pull out “Rot-red-rouge” and “gelb-yellow-jaune”. Just having watercolor crayons with fancy european names on them makes me feel more paintery.

• A Recipe of Colors from Innowen at D*I*Y Planner.