You may have read about the recent discovery of a bit of animation on an ancient Iranian goblet, said to be the first recorded example of man-made animation. The article that’s been making the rounds (I first saw it on Cartoon Brew, it was also on Boing Boing the other day) can be found here.
Here are the important bits for those too lazy to click through to the article:

     “An animated piece on an earthen goblet that belongs to 5000 years ago was found in Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchistan province, southeastern Iran.”

     “The earthenware found in Burnt City, one of the most developed civilizations dating back to 5000 years ago, show the images of goat and fish more than any other subject. It seems these animals were used more than any other by the people of this city.”

     “On this goblet, with a diameter of 8 cm and height of 10 cm, the images show movement in an intricate way that is an unprecedented discovery. Some earthenware found in Burnt City show repetitive images, but none of them implicate any movements.”

     “While excavating the grave in which the cream-colored goblet has been found, we came across a skeleton that probably belongs to the creator of this piece”, Mansour Sajjadi, the Iranian archaeologist responsible for excavations in Burnt City told CHN.

     At the end of the article, there’s a link to a short .avi that the archaeologists put together to show off the animation. You can view that file here. Unfortunately, they chose to keep each frame on-screen for three seconds, and then crossfade into the next frame. Anyone familiar with the principles of animation will see that this presentation completely defeats the purpose of the sequential images.

     I was pretty excited to see the first example of animation, so I was understandably disappointed with the video file offered with the article. I wanted to see the animation as it was intended, so I took the .avi and edited it down into the animated gif below. E-Archaeology.

     There aren’t any photos of the actual goblet itself in the article, so I assumed that the illustrations stretched around the sides of the goblet and were intended to be viewed by spinning the goblet, which implies looping. This is what I do with my free time.

     So, I finally got around to seeing Spider-Man 2. It was pretty fun, even if it did seem to hit the same notes as Spider-man 1, in roughly the same order. One thing about it has been bugging the CRAP out of me though.

     Ok, so Dr. Octopus wants a batch of Desirable Compound X, which only Harry Osbourne can afford. Osbourne wants Spider-Man dead because he killed his father, so he tells Dr. Octopus to kill Spider-Man. He is to accomplish this by finding Peter Parker, who has a reputation for being able to find Spider-man. Upon locating Parker, the first thing Dr. Octopus does is THROW A CAR AT HIS HEAD. He doesn’t know that he’s Spider-Man yet. If I was banking on an obscure piece of information that only one random guy had, I probably wouldn’t push my luck by seeing if he could whip his precious-information-containing noggin out of the way of a flying vehicle. Am I missing something? Perhaps this has been discussed elsewhere.

     I added two videos to my Zumpano page: “I Dig You” and “Behind the Beehive.” They appear to have been encoded using some archaic codec, so quicktime chokes on the sound. Until I find the time to re-encode them, you should be able to play them with VLC (Mac) or MPlayer (PC).

     If anyone stumbles upon a digital copy of Zumpano’s video for “The Party Rages On,” let me know.

     Apparently there exists a black and white video for Radiohead’s “We Suck Young Blood,” shot by director P.T. Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). Here are the details, from Thom Yorke:

     “Paul Thomas Anderson came into the studio and he brought this camera with him, it was exactly the same camera model that they shot the Nosferatu in, basically this camera is a box and you wind it, and you have to have a tempo to wind it to and if you wind it fast or slow you get this extraordinary movement, and we wanted to shoot this really over the top vaudeville b-movie thing with it, because that to me is partly where it was coming from, and also it was really sick and sexual in a really peverse way, very L.A. as far as I’m concerened. I think that was the reason why we went to L.A., because ‘we suck young blood’ was our take on Hollywood really. in fact, we went out to a party that night everyone was dressed as mad hatters, it just fit completely. we went to this place, it was just… [whispers] you people are so silly. and it was like that’s how they dressed every day to create an impression. it was brilliant. we felt like old people, maybe we’d missed something.”

     This quote comes from a relatively rare promo interview CD [cover], discussed in a thread in the P.T. Anderson forum at xixax.com, which I found via this posting on metafilter. Posters in the same thread appear to have determined that the clip does not appear on the latest Radiohead DVD, “The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of all Time“.

 Also of note is the bad blood that apparently exists between the band and director extraordinaire Michel Gondry:

     “I generally find a good way of communicating to prevent clash, but I had one terrible experience with Radiohead,” he says of his 2001 video for “Knives Out.” Gondry, going through a breakup at the time, transferred his despair to a character played by lead singer Thom Yorke, grieving anxiously in a crowded hospital room.

     “I showed him a storyboard and every single detail: he was completely excited and happy for it – and then, it turned out, they all criticize me for being selfish and putting my own views on it and my own introspection,” says a still peeved Gondry. (Yorke and Radiohead declined to comment for this story.) “And they didn’t let me use my video for my DVD!” he adds, his voice rising.

     “And I’m really mad at them for having done that to me, that they abuse their power! It did not go smooth, but if it went smooth, it would be mediocre.”