Every year, my brother does an amazing Christmas card from his family. He takes a beautiful SLR camera photo of them and uses image editing software to put in “Merry Christmas” somewhere so that it looks like it’s actually part of the background.

I don’t know how he does it. I barely have the energy to snap a vaguely Christmas themed shot of my kid. But I did find this neat website that takes that hastily taken photo and turn it into an interactive holiday card. It starts with a circle and then you swipe or drag across it to split it into smaller circles. Continue until you reveal the picture. You can click on any of the images below to try it out yourself:

You can do the same thing with any image on the web by typing in “http://koalastothemax.com/?<YOUR_URL_HERE>” into a web browser. For example, here’s what I used to get the link above for this source image.

https://youtu.be/jytdF55FUrE

Wow, has it really been over 3 months since I’ve posted anything here? I guess things have been pretty busy at work. Thankfully, things are almost under control.

I actually got an iPhone 6s through work in the first week they were released. So I thought, hey, I’ll do one of those “unboxing” videos and put it out there before they’re more readily available. But then there was a big crunch at work (on top of commuting up to 6 hours a day) and I just kept on not having enough time to edit the whole thing. Thankfully, things are getting a little more sane at work so I’m starting to get through a backlog of stuff I’ve been meaning to do, including this video.

Things I learned this time:

• If you’re going to do an “unboxing” video, you should probably show the act of taking it out of the box.
• What’s up with the bathrobe? I mean, come on! It takes, like, 5 minutes to put on a shirt. Show some professionalism, man. Well, at least the kid is cute.
• Making videos with a 5-year-old is very challenging.