New discoveries
This was posted on reddit today. I agree entirely with the poster’s sentiment: interesting links on reddit are, more often than not, not links to the gateway of a whole website of interesting stuff. When they are links to a website’s front page, it’s generally a very narrow, single-purpose website that is quickly forgotten about. Hopefully, the poster’s subreddit — apparently yet to be made — will be a success.
In any event, having gone through the blog-post he had linked I decided to share some of my new discoveries here myself:
- Building Maker: A Google app I was unaware of, which lets you add the 3D element to Google Maps. For all bored architects out there (since this is just what they want to be doing in their time off.)
- Ikea Hacker: Neat stuff done with bog-standard Ikea furniture.
- Strange Maps: A blog of, well, old and interesting maps. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say strange…
- Newseum: The front pages of newspapers from 78 countries around the world.
- Cooking For Engineers: This one reminded me of my father, a pragmatist who insists on weighing pasta before cooking it, in order to make sure he’ll be doling out the correct amount. Nothing wrong with approaching cooking as a science, as opposed to an art!
- GetHuman.com: An excellent idea for a website. This one tells you which keys you need to press in order to get an actual human operator on the line when calling a large company, saving you the time of listening to and trying to interact with a computerised system.
- PDFGeni.com: Another great idea — a repository of PDF documents such as old technical manuals, academic texts, and so on.
I feel I must write a disclaimer, saying I haven’t used or read these sites extensively, having just discovered them a few hours ago, but from first impressions they do look like they deserve a bookmark.
Detroit and other examples of urban decline
The photo above is from a short photoseries in Time magazine, the title of which is “Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline.” Below are a few photos from another, much longer series by 7 different photographers who state:
Detroit is one of the most visually interesting cities in the world however it is also one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented cities. This group of photographs illustrates what contemporary Detroit artists have been doing in regards to developing an understanding and appreciation for this complex and diverse city from street portraits of the “survivors” to the landscapes of wild new growth to the industrial leftovers.
You can view the full series here.
I also came across a German blogpost entitled, “The beauty of a city’s downfall,” which features photos from all over the world of derelict buildings and cities decaying.
Clearing the backlog
Some of these links have been sitting in my Gmail Notes a year now, and I’ve become sick of looking at them. A few of them I’d planned on leaving for when I had time to adequately address their theme and topic in a proper blog-post, but I’ve realised that’s not going to happen any time soon. So: Read the rest of this entry »
Goodbye Electronica
Came across a link to a song, “Goodbye Electronica” by Dave Graham, on the electronic music board xltronic tonight. Really, really enjoyed it – lovely guitar work, atmosphere and lyrics. He’s allowed me to share it with you here, saying it’s a “freebie”, so give it a listen and pass it on to anyone you think might enjoy it!
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You can download it locally here:
http://ventolin.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/GoodbyeElectronica.mp3
Rette deine Freiheit
At the moment in Germany, there is fierce opposition growing against plans by the CDU to implement internet censorship under the guise of attacking the spread of child pornography. A movement championed by the German Piratenpartei has dubbed ex-minister for family affairs Ursula von der Leyen “Zensursula”, a portmandeau of Zensur (Censor) and Ursula, and is referring to the CDU’s plans as Stasi 2.0, a nod to the brutal secret police which operated in former East Germany.
Not only is there to be a secret list of blocked websites, such as exists in Australia, but the government is pushing for more data to be collected from citizens and retained for a long period of time.
A video which caught my attention a while back was entitled Du bist Terrorist (You are a terrorist). With soft ambient music playing, and deceptively pleasantly designed imagery, the two-minute video parodies the Du bist Deutschland ad-campaign with a soft, reassuring voice informing you of what the German government has in store for you, in terms of heavier and more invasive surveillance — because You are a terrorist.
Earlier this week I found that the same people had created a new video in the same vein, entitled Rette deine Freiheit (Save your freedom). The video focuses much more on the coming internet censorship in Germany than just data retention and physical surveillance.
Since there was no English translation available, I decided to translate it and re-upload to Youtube. The result is below:
The translation is by no means perfect, but at least it’s something. There were a few tricky problems with it:
- Einfach wegschauen: Literally “simply look away”, the video describes this as the method tried-and-tested by members of families with a history of domestic abuse. I was going to translate it as “simply look the other way” in its first instance, since this is the closest phrase in English that pertains to such a situation. However, this doesn’t exactly capture the double-meaning employed in the video, since it implies wilful ignorance which isn’t quite applicable to what the government is doing, so I decided to settle on “simply block it out”. I’m not sure I’m happy with this, however. Suggestions?
- In the sentence, “In Prävention, Therapie und Personal investiert hätte dies vielen Opfern helfen können: Reinste Verschwendung”, the meaning that is sarcastically implied is that the money that could be invested in preventative measures, therapy and personelle is much better spent on building an internet block. I don’t think I captured this very well.
In any event, there’s likely to be an official translation soon (I just saw an “Englisch (bald verfügbar)” notice at the top of the official page now — perhaps my emailing asking for a transcript of the video got them in a rush) and these issues will cease to be.
One last thing — if you are interested in learning more about the situation in Germany regarding internet freedom and the child pornography scare, I’d not only urge you to visit the links above, but also this shocking, but morbidly fascinating account of one techie’s work in the murkiest of subcultures. Thankfully, he doesn’t go into detail about actual child abuse, but instead details exactly how child pornography rings work, using the internet and computers.
Put simply, it proves what anyone with a clue already knows: current proposals for internet censorship will have absolutely no impact whatsoever on paedophiles and child pornographers and will only serve to infringe the rights of normal, law-abiding internet users.
Thanks to Áine and Patricia for help with one or two minor parts of the translation.
Live mix from Red Box Recorder
A friend who goes under the name Red Box Recorder did a live mix last Friday and I’ve decided to host it here for your enjoyment. It’s 22 minutes long and contains music from him, most of which I didn’t recognise. Give it a listen!
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You can stream it using the player above, or download it in its entirity here: http://ventolin.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/redboxrecorder-live.mp3
He’s currently on the Irish net-label Acroplane, where you can get his most recent album, Colour Codes, which comes with a PDF booklet of art by Max McLaughlin.
More tricks with projectors
One of my earliest blog posts was a video of a building in San Francisco being “painted” by projectors. It seems the technology of 3D modelling is advancing by leaps and bounds — here is a video of a paper church being modelled with just a webcam and some advanced software — and I just came across another video of more buildings being played with by projectors.
Some really impressive 3D effects in this one: spheres of light passing in and out of the buildings; flags being unfurled and waving in the wind, casting their shadows on the building; water gushing down from above.
A must-see.
Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Digital Media on Vimeo.
Don’t hold your breath for tolerance.
In the past week, Stephen Gately, former member of Irish boy-band Boyzone, died. Jan Moir of the Daily Mail wrote an incredibly repulsive article on the subject and Charlie Brooker responded indignantly.
Meanwhile, a Ugandan minister of parliament has proposed legislation to enforce a penalty of death for the “offence of aggravated homosexuality.”
Well then.
Fleet Foxes: Un concert a emporter
The Fleet Foxes play Sun Giant and Blue Ridge Mountains in an abandoned wing of the Grand Palais, Paris. Recorded in May 2008.
Slightly dodgy camera-work (did the cameraman really need to stand so close to them?) made up for by the music itself.
Die Stimme des Klaviers
Peter Ablinger, an Austrian composer currently residing in Berlin, has done something rather interesting: he made a recording of a child reading the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court, then invented a mechanical piano player capable of reading notes in a very high time resolution from a computer.
The computer performs a frequency analysis of the sound spectrum, aided by Ablinger himself, which is then fed into the piano player and out comes the child’s voice.
(Video in German with English subtitles)
While I wouldn’t have much hope for people trying to work out what the piano is “saying” without the aid of seeing the words as they’re heard, I think it’s a pretty interesting experiment. The auto-player in itself is something to be marvelled at. Neat!
