Inspirational video. "What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship," says bestselling author Seth Godin, arguing that we must quiet our fearful "lizard brains" to avoid sabotaging projects just before we finally finish them.

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

As you may have noticed, I'm fascinated with multi-touch interfaces. I just saw an interesting concept that proposes a desktop-based multi-touch system that avoids the need for touching a screen directly (which has issues of fingerprints, muscle strain, and obscuring the view), plus an interesting desktop usage metaphor.

I'm not entirely sold on it, but it definitely has some potential. I'm really not sure how well the proposed windowing system would scale — I currently have 23 windows open between all my apps, and often have more; their system of scrolling through them could be cumbersome, though the zooming out overview might be okay.

They also seem to reserve most multi-touch gestures for managing the windows, which could limit what apps can do with them.

Anyway, check it out; it's a fascinating concept, and a good description of some potential issues with more conventional approaches:

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

My wife and I moved from New Zealand to Portland, Oregon back in 2001. It's a great city, with a nice friendly "small town" feel but the amenities of a big city. This brief video show a lot of the great things to see and do around Portland:

My wife and I are big fans of the Portland Japanese Garden, five distinct Japanese garden styles over 5.5 acres in the hills overlooking downtown Portland, Oregon. My wife even volunteers there once a week as a gardener.

Here's a short piece from the Travel Channel describing the garden:

If you're in Portland or visit, the Japanese Garden is a must-see.

Very well done; this choral ensemble (Perpetuum Jazzile) performs the Toto song "Africa", a cappella, complete with human-produced rain and thunder sound effects:

(via @tamarcita)

"Augmented reality" is a technique where a 3D model appears on-screen connected to something you're holding in reality. GE has a nifty example, where one of two models appear to pop out of a piece of paper you hold. You can move the page around to move the model.

You can try it yourself if your computer has a webcam. You may need to upgrade the Flash plugin.

A fascinating animated video on the history of the internet:

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Fascinating, in a mind-bending kinda way:

Watch Imagining the ten dimensions in How to Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Portland only gets a few snow days per year (sometimes none at all), so when it does snow, drivers aren't always prepared. A couple of years ago I posted an amusing/scary video from downtown Portland, and today I encountered another one, from the current snowy weather we're having. This time, it's a small hill in the Southwest Waterfront district. The amazing difference: not one accident!

(Via OregonLive.com)

A spiffy ad for the Discovery Channel; a catchy tune, interesting visuals, and wonderful sentiment:

A clip show! Here are three fun videos I saw in the last week or two. You may have already seen them, but they're enjoyable to watch again if so.

Firstly, Internet People, a fun song featuring lots of popular names in the blogosphere. I think I recognize most of these, though there are a few I don't. (Via WebbAlert - see that link for a list of everyone mentioned in the video.)

Next, a hilarious video on what a business meeting would be like in the style of web commenters... less well behaved ones than on Dejal, anyway! Warning: not suitable for work (NSFW):

Don't miss the followup from the same people, which is perhaps even funnier (and also NSFW).

Finally, an impressive video that starts out with an aerial view of a picnicking couple, then slowly zooms all the way out to 100 million light years from them... then back in again down to a microscopic level. Along the way, it includes an indication of the scale in powers of ten. Very impressive. (Via Dark Roasted Blend, a great site of interesting images and videos.)

And here's a similar scale-of-things site, as a clickable animation.

Enjoy!

Portland had a big (for here) snowstorm on Tuesday. This is video footage of cars sliding around on an icy Portland street: