500 / 200.

From a collective of people including the man behind King Lud’s Revenge.

The script makes use of pyexiv2 – the 0.2 branch – for metadata editing, mechanize for grabbing pages and submitting error reports, the very handy unaccented_map() class (included) for unicode trickery and of course the wonderful XML parser, BeautifulSoup.

Naturally, it’s available from the Big Picture Cataloguer’s page in the Code section of this site.

Given how much The Big Picture galleries’ HTML format has subtly changed over time, and the fact I wrote this in a rush, it’s quite messy, but it does the job.

Today’s update is of version 0.3, which has an optional “quiet mode” to enable users to schedule the program to run frequently. Enjoy!

Now, I’m happy that the application is stable enough to release to the world in the Code section of my website.

Since I don’t want people to be hammering The Boston Globe’s servers, I’ve made the script wait a fraction of a second between each request, and since I don’t want people to be able to disable this functionality, unfortunately only binaries will be available for the time being. Windows binaries are available already, OS X and Linux binaries to come in a few days.

Indeed, if those at The Boston Globe have a problem with how the program operates, they need simply contact me and we can come to an agreement, but I’ve worked hard to make sure that the program contacts their servers as little as possible.

Bug reports will be automatically submitted through this website too, but if you have any unforeseen problems (e.g. a crash or a hang), email me with as much information as possible (text describing the “Traceback” printed before the crash, what album/photo the program was working on, etc).

What can you do once you’ve got the entire 2GB collection of photos downloaded? Well, you can simply look through them at your own pace and comfort, or indeed choose to create a montage screensaver from them (although be warned – a screensaver that fades from a beautiful Antarctic landscape to a bloody photo of a victim of the war in Afghanistan might not be exactly what you had in mind.)

But in any event, hopefully it’ll be of some use. Enjoy!

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.

An excellent article by Kurt Kleiner explores why people often act completely irrationally and how intelligence by itself doesn’t make you rational:

Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

Yes  /  No  /  Cannot be determined

The Fix Your Mix blog ran a series of articles studying the composition of pop music. Here are two: A Compositional Analysis of Kids by MGMT, Single Ladies by Beyonce. Another interesting post was entitled 5 Pop Songs With No Music. They run a good blog there — it’s worthwhile keeping an eye on it.

G.M.B. Akash was featured as the first guest photojournalist on Zoriah’s blog last April in a post concerned with child workers in Bangladesh:

My intention is not only to show the children at work as victims of bad bosses exploiting them, but I want to show the complexity of the situation: The parents who send their little boy to work in a factory because they are poor; the child who has to work to earn a living for the family; the boss of the factory who is being pushed by big garment companies to produce for less money; and the Western consumers as clients who buy cheap clothes.

Zoriah took some incredible photos recently of the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. Here is the second set of three. Naturally, some of the photos are quite disturbing.

On to lighter things, and Vincent Bousserez created a series of macro photographs which are quite amusing:

You can view the full set here and the artist’s website here, however be warned: for some reason, the artist decided it’d be a good idea to have music play automatically when you visit his website. As the Americans say, “go figure.”

Village of Joy had a blog post with photos of 50 strange buildings. Some are very well known, but a few I’d not come across before, such as this “Kettle House” in Texas:

This house sculpted out of a megalith in Guimarães, Portugal:

And this bizarre house again in Texas:

When you check the rest out, it’s worth keeping in mind that many of the pictures are links to more information and photos.

And here are mock-ups from Front Architects of one recycling possibility for billboards: compact housing.

More photos here.

Lastly, a quite lengthy series of hilariously bizarre photos from a Juggalo gathering. Quality stuff.

HOME is a 2009 documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The film is entirely composed of aerial shots of various places around the Earth. It shows the diversity of life on the Earth and how humanity is threatening the ecological balance of the planet. The movie was released on June 5th 2009, simultaneously in cinemas all over the world, on DVD and on YouTube. Its release on the same date in 50 countries is a world record for any film release in history.

The film is 100% free and no profits will be made from its release or future showings. What is more, it’s copyright-free, which means it can be freely copied, distributed, broadcast etc. – as a whole and in parts.

Haven’t watched it yet, but one or two of the shots I saw looked promising. However, according to padraiq:

it seems more like propaganda than documentary

if you want to show people the earth, you dont fucking talk over it

some amazing shots ruined by narration :(((

In any event, click here to watch in high quality.

This also happens to tie in with Wikipedia’s featured picture of the day: Mane St [sic] of Pioneertown, “an unincorporated and inhabited town built in 1946 as a TV and film set by, among others, Roy Rogers. The town was designed to provide a place for the actors to live while simultaneously having their homes used as part of the set.”

This is a dangerous page to visit, as it’ll inevitably lead to a list of ghost towns, such as Bodie, California:

And Kayaköy, Turkey:

And by the time you’ve read about them all, the day is spent. Good work!

If not, then here are some extra, related wiki rabbit-holes for you to bound down:

Urban Exploration [and some extra photo galleries at undercity]

Urban Decay

Squatting

So, indeed, this will probably be my last post for a week or two at least. Until then, I’ll leave you — yes, You, if you’re so special as to be one of the 3 or 4 people who actually read this thing on a semi-regular basis — with a sweet piece of film shot by some fella at 1000 FPS of people at a recent rubgy competition in the Stade de France, Paris. It’s all rather beautiful; a series of clips of people cheerleading, playing rugby and hockey, and some materials being dropped to the ground.. All to a slightly odd rendition of Frank Zappa’s Chunga’s Revenge. :)
As he writes himself, make sure to download the actual video from the vimeo page if you want to experience it fully. Enjoy!

I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.

Classy stuff. You don’t find a great night like this on the continent, I tell ye.

More of the same here.