Raiders of the Lost Archives, and a Kitbashed Update

Even if it’s cheating, it’s still a great look at the roots of the particular strain of adventure film Indy came from, down to the individual traps and gags.

Related to that, to those few of you wondering what’s going on with Kitbashed, my Star Wars project, it’s doing well. It’s comprehensive, and it’s coming next year, having taken a backseat to my work on Squarespace 6 for now. Which is good news; because it in turn will allow me to do things with it that would otherwise have been neigh impossible.

Behind the Scenes on Dune

For all its flaws as a film, it’s still a magnificent visual spectacle; even if the compositing at times leaves something to be desired. This video was filmed back in 1983 and put online by Sean Young, quite admirably. To think of all the similar gems like this, hiding in private collections in the hills of Hollywood. It’s enough to make my eyes water.

Skywalker Ranch on Video

A couple of years ago two guys from Io went to visit Skywalker Ranch as guests of Matthew Wood. I convinced them to let me post this video of theirs, from the visit:

Which of course goes hand in hand with our visit last year.

Update: As fate would have it, Philip Bloom just posted a new video from the countryside around the ranch:

Habari Design

Early this year, I spent some time with a bunch of other people setting up a direction for Habari’s administration interface. It was mostly blue-skying, but loving interface design as I do, it felt like time well-spent.

In fact, it felt good.

It was a little early to start implementing stuff like that, when the platform itself hardly even existed at the time. So I went off and spent most of my time on K2 instead. But now that K2 is nearly done, I’ve started working on Habari designs again, and just submitted my first major patch (with no assurance it will be accepted of course).

Habari is like the promised land in terms of the kind of interaction design I’ve wanted to see in WordPress for years. It’s like a digital catharsis to finally apply these thoughts and frustrations.

It’s based on, and comes pretty damn close to these reference mockups, and looks like this in motion (Full resolution):

Whether all of this will work in practice, no one knows, but it sure feels good.