Check out this video review of my SmirkAbout.com iPhone 4 skin featuring my Fire Monkey character. This guy really LOVES the Fire Monkey! Really fun to see something I've designed be reviewed like this. Thanks to Blunty3000!

To get a little more speed out of my Mac Pro from 2006, I decided to upgrade my system harddrive to a Corsair 128 GB SSD Performance disk. I had heard that SSD drives could boost system performance by quite a great deal, and wanted to try it out. At 500 USD, it was a bit pricey, but worth a shot. It's a lot cheaper than buying a new Mac Pro anyway.

Installation was super easy. The drive is 80 grams in weight, and pretty tiny. I just put it inside my Icy Dock 2.5 SSD to 3.5 SATA drive converter, flipped the cover down and swoop. It was connected. I screwed it onto the Mac Pro's hinge and it was ready to go. I initialized it in OS X, and just ran an OS X install directly to the drive. Easy.

Shut-down/Boot up time:
To get this 100% accurate, I decided to use the restart function to gauge boot times. Basically this also shows how much time the computer uses to shut down and then restart.

Standard harddrive: 1 minute 26.6 seconds
SSD harddrive: 26.7 seconds

Application start-up time:
I also did a test of how much different the application startup time was between the two harddrive types.
All running Snow Leopard, no plugins installed.

Adobe Photoshop CS5
Harddrive: 22.6 seconds
SSD: 4.4 seconds

Adobe Illustrator CS5
Harddrive: 21 seconds
SSD: 5 seconds

Adobe After Effects CS5
Harddrive: 35 seconds
SSD: 29.9 seconds

Autodesk Maya 2011 64 bits (1 plugin)
Harddrive: 30 seconds
SSD: 8.3 seconds

As you can see, some of these apps launch at incredible speed on an SSD drive compared to a standard SATA harddrive. Maya actually takes 22 seconds longer to start on that drive. So far, this is looking like a very good upgrade to my Mac.And it worked a lot better than the voodoo curse I tried putting on it last week.

So to sum up:
Superior SSD Technomonology 1 - Voodoo 0.

KARVT just released my artist series Macbook Skin. Laser etched onto authentic fine quality wood, ready to attach to your Mac for $50.KARVT is the product of my friend Kurt Barbee and his business partner/designer Sean Herman. Truly quality products, made with great finesse.

Buy one here:
http://karvt.com/store/bard-standal-ninja-pandas/

I am not entirely sure how my Pirate Pandas became "Ninja Pandas", but that's cool

Deinos is now ready and available for sale at
http://deinos.hellobard.com/

I've got a bunch of Spotify Invites up for grabs, so feel free to use one or give it to a friend:

New invites:
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eZHLEy8sPkN7Vt3u
ZXJdGwFHfJ7uy7YL
mumwJe6KTLzAz4LC
tjDqCsawcTnUatW4

GcgtHtqyeM54MP2j
3LWZ3Ak7Ug5EJLMt
fi9zV9yn3ZnjR38m
HYS3R2KXE3eViLC4
FfptxXc8qCgNRxRG
3CNDV8JBXFbRqqhy
dPhzNghhRZfuwjZ2
XGjEGUi2FEkBzDgN
Bkyu3kmB7DCaLSa2
XweaXNHNibzjjb8B
xSLh8iKu9d7BdnCX
PVYmSLgDRVnSUpMz
H2zbTVR6T8jqMqH4
muVJek7mWaBPThnj

Heeee's the doooonut maaaan and he likes to daaaance - daaaance - daaaaaaance!

See it here:

Donut Man Director's Cut from Bard Vandal on Vimeo.

'The Birth of Deinos' is my solo show in New York City, on the 15-19th July at Ouchi Gallery in collaboration with Shadow Plastic. The five first Deinos figures will be sold here along with a selection of giclèe canvases and prints. If you'd like to get ahold of a Deinos toy, this will be the only chance for the next two months.

 

Deinos Bros., originally uploaded by Bard Vandal.

The first complete casting of Deinos!
The project is going quite well so far, there are some problems with air bubbles in the resin and the first body cast did not get enough resin at the top of the feet, so it's come out somewhat hollow. I may have a solution for this and will be giving it a try again this weekend. Hopefully it will be fruitful... I'm coming to the conclusion that I simply cannot get 100% perfection in my figures, and that this is the nature of not having professional resources and doing everything at home. This is an art toy, so it will have imprints from the process and the artist on them. It's a unique toy in that regard, it's not factory perfect. And that's fine.

Deinos first cast, originally uploaded by Bard Vandal.

The first head cast came out pretty good, second cast was 97% perfect. Now on to the body...

OFFF09, originally uploaded by Bard Vandal.

We went to the OFFF09 conference in Lisbon, Portugal last week and had an exciting time listening to the speakers. Especially interesting was Kyle Cooper from Imaginary Forces, Stefan Sagmeister and Digital Kitchen. Very exciting work and methods.