9:38 AM, March 28, 2009—Last night, I discovered that CGToolkit is selling The Art of Rigging, Vol. 1 for $18 (vol. 2 is the same price, vol. 3 is $25), which is a third of the original price. The catch is they are no longer printing the book: it, and the companion DVD, are a download. You get a .rar file with the videos and a PDF.

 There are drawbacks to this. The art is gorgeous and you're not getting it printed to ogle on your coffee table. Believe me, anybody who likes CGI is going to want to ogle this book A bigger disadvantage, though, comes from the curious decision to make the PDF as a folio (2-page spreads). With the text in a 2 column layout (i.e., 4 column in the folio layout), that makes online reading difficult and printing impossible if you can't print tabloid (which most home printers can't).

Nonetheless, with rigging being the thing I'm going to tackle after I get the hair done, I'm thrilled. When it originally came out, 3D World—who are very judicious in their ratings—gave it a glowing review and one of the only "10" ratings I've ever seen there.

The Hawk is Howling—Mogwai. This album keeps growing on me, which, considering I liked it a lot when I first got it, is an accomplishment.  

Talking with the Taxman About Poetry—Billy Bragg. I recently reacquired one of my favorite albums from the ’80s. I wasn't sure that  it would stand the test of time especially well, but not only is "Levi Stubbs Tears" a classic, but the entire album is highly compelling. Nobody makes music like Billy Bragg, even when he's using more conventional forms like on Taxman.