Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Think of it as Sin City without the adult content, the gesture and audacity of Shoot'em up combined with the sharpness of Lucky number slevin and your somewhat very close to how good the spirit is. Go watch it… Two thumbs up from me.
Channel4's Cutting Edge documentary Rich Kid Poor Kid was quite something. I only heard about it from a comment someone made. Generally the idea of the show was to question two kids who live on the same street in South London, about there lives. One lives in a nice leafy area with 6 bedroom houses and goes to private school, the other lives in a council house and left school at 15. Then bring them together and see what happens.
It is a winning formula but there was something quite humbling about the fact these girls could get on, share experiences and find a certain amount of respect for each other. Its something I really believe in, once people come in contact with each other its really hard for them to hold there sometimes extreme views. So in this example the rich girls views on kids that don't go to private school starts to soften after meeting the poor girl. In the face of all the BNP stuff earlier in the week, its refreshing to think we can and will get along the more time we all spend together.
There's something very powerful about being able to remix the images, audio and media around us. This is a great example of remixing found via Miss Geeky blog
‘TorrentFreak TV’ is a biweekly recap of some of the best, most interesting or remarkable stories from the wonderful world of BitTorrent. Its quite a basic show but what got me blogging was the Torrent ratings vs TV Ratings. Its at the end of each episode and shows whats the most popular TV shows are based on torrents and the other based on Neilson's rating. There not even close, which shows once again the change of behaviour people have once they have access to anything and everything. I mean why would you settle for crap like Dancing with the Stars when you could watch Heroes or catch up on Dexter? I do wonder if any British shows will break into the chart? Subscribe to this feed for updates.
Instead a complete history of my sexual failures is a candid and slightly humorous look at a guy (Chris Waitt's) past and present attempts at a relationship. Some of it is cringe worth and some of it laugh out loud bad but overall its a film worth watching at some point in the future. He's a review I got from IMDB.
Meet Chris Waitt. He's a thirty-something auteur and amateur, who
embarks on a project to catalog his past girlfriends following in the
footsteps of Jim Jarmusch and “Broken Flowers” featuring the
middle-aged Bill Murray. The end result is funnier and different in
other aspects, too. Waitt comes off as a Kurt Cobain lookalike, whose
toilet floor is carpeted in pubic hair w/ used toilet paper rolls in
the corner unlike a furniture catalog by IKEA. He walks around carrying
his furry microphone and baggy-saggy pants like a leftover grunge-wars
survivor. His “Swedish” face is, however, only the surface, because
things are boiling beneath it. As the events that unfold testify, he's
got enough balls to visit a dominatrix, test his street-credibility vs.
women, serenade a psychotherapist citing “crack-whores” and “religious
virgins” and trip on Viagra like we've never seen it happen. The movie
suggests that in the lives of most/many GenXers, there are four
recurring factors apart from differences in personal hygiene and CV: a)
A lost loved one is a mental skeleton in the closet b) (S)he is
targeted at least once for reclamation c) Inevitable failure on this
front may lead to creation of wicked senses of humor (as a defense
mechanism) and d) other people and one's own projects claim the (wo)man
in the end. Lived life and history can not be changed. If our
relationships are like bridges, we almost always burn them after saying
cogently goodbye. Because of these strengths, I was mildly indignant
that the audience seemed to revel only in Waitt's failures and
shortcomings on the sexual front. I could think of many girls who
wouldn't be his match or worthy of him as a date
When I first saw the Sanyo Xacti HD1 I thought wow you could film a movie on this easily. Some people totally disagree but I felt the quality was good enough to pass for most things online and even offline. But to be fair the mpeg4 codec wasn't quite good enough and the lens wasn't big enough to get lots of light down it. So when I first saw the Sanyo Xacti HD1000, I started thinking hey this is the revision which could be the break through camcorder.
Well it seems I'm not the only one, thinking this way. I met a startup company doing interviews with people all over the place using simply a Sanyo Xacti HD1000 with a radio mic and large light. It was perfect, the presenter would move the medium hand mic back and forth between himself and the person being interviewed. While the camera man would hold the camera generally quite still and check the levels on his in the ear headphones.
I grabbed a few minutes with the camera man and asked him about his setup. He said he use to walk around with a Canon DV camera but its too big and heavy plus the “downtime” of encoding footage was costly. He said the camera is great but the light makes all the difference to the footage. He also said he'd considered the HD1010 but he's waiting for the 3CCD version before upgrading.
I have more photos of course…
Ah geez, like or not I was a child of the 80's and so I do kind of remember a lot of these pop songs. But I saw this on the Diggreel recently and couldn't help but share. Its Aha's Take on me but described as it plays in tune.
Dusto MCNeato seems to be the man behind the almost internet meme/trend which also includes a few pro-amatuer attempts such as the Rick roll one. I say almost because its very difficult to do and I can't imagine many people creating them. However there might be lots of bad copies to come… Till then enjoy.
While at Web 2.0 Expo, I learned about Soundcloud. It was during a pitch event, so I started off thinking so what but then was quickly turned around when hearing about how it works and what features it has. After the pitch event I grilled one of the guys ( Alexander Ljung of Soundcloud) behind it about data portability and you know what? Soundcloud comes out really well. Not only does it keep the origninal tune ala blip.tv but you can also assign licences, bookmark sections, comment on parts and syndicate tunes. They are considering the idea of using archive.org for permanent long term storage after I mentioned what Blip.tv promise in there end user licence agreement.
While talking to the soundcloud guy, I mentioned I've been looking for somewhere to upload my dj mixes because I now own a pacemaker device. Those were the magic words, as he explained that he knew the guys behind the pacemaker (yeah both Soundcloud and Pacemaker are swedish). He then explained how they tried to get the pacemaker guys to interop or replace there pacemaker.net dj mix section with soundcloud. For what ever reason they didn't and now pacemaker.net has become a little bit of dead community due to the limits on uploads and general lack of focus. The device is great but the site is poor to say the least. Using Soundcloud makes sense for many reason. Number one being the can just stick to making the pacemaker better via firmware updates and a range of related objects. Pacemaker.net reminds how the camera makers such as Kodak, Nikon, Canon, etc all setup there own photosharing/gallery sites for there customers. Now most of them lead you to Flickr or Photobucket instead. Makes sense for the Pacemaker to go the same way in the near future.
Till then I'll be recording my mixes and uploading them to soundcloud.com/cubicgarden, myself
Slotmusic is a collaboration between Universial music, Sony BMG, Warner music and EMI. Basiclly its DRM free music distrubuted on microSD cards. Yes microSD cards, why? I don't know, but it shows how out of touch the music industy really is. Not defending the iphone or ipod but like it or not there the most popular at the moment and they don't support microSD cards. Does the Zune? Don't think so either. I also have no idea whos going to pay for music on MicroSD? I bet the cards are locked to the drive, so that means swapping the · Online and P2P distrubtion is the way forward period. Hell I just bought 12 tunes from Audiojelly.com yesterday. Cost me about 16 pound in total.
Saw this on Rocketboom today (yes I still watch it). Its a guy who gives away copies of documentaries like Sicko on DVD in a Subway station in New York. It seems like all the films he's copying and giving away are rights cleared (except maybe Sicko). Anyway I thought it was a great way to educate and enlighten people. Also get people talking and debating. He describes at the end how people will stand around and start talking to each other about the films and there meaning.
Without going into much detail, one of the elements for the ARG a few of us are still working on, includes the mass distribution of information in a public area. This might be a really good solution.