Random Etc. Notes to self. Work, play, and the rest.
Uniqlock and Californian Quakes
In a recent post about Google's Authentic Voice Problem, Nat Torkington documented the "time-honored marketing blog post formula":
- Find something topical.
- Identify the shiznit you wish to pimp.
- Find a line (however tenuous) between the two and the post just writes itself!
Something Topical.
There was a small but significant earthquake just outside Oakland last week. Lots of people were woken up by it. Dentures and tea-cups rattled throughout the bay area. Amazingly, around 6,000 people had reported it on the USGS's site by 10am in the morning. Go people!
Some Shiznit to Pimp.
I've been looking for an excuse to post about Uniqlo's clock website, featuring Japanese dancers on a one second timer, it's completely hypnotic (and yes the dancers are cute, I know that too). Now you can get your own for your blog, and share it with the world. 6,000 people have shared it so far.
The Line.
At Stamen we make beautiful interactive maps, native to the web. Imagine if the production qualities of the Uniqlo clock were brought to data as important as people's accounts of how an earthquake felt to them. That's the kind of work I aspire to, and I think that's where we're heading. What other tenuous lines should I be drawing in order to articulate this, I wonder?
The curious voyeur in all of us.
The videos on this I-Witness Video Blog about NYPD video spying techniques are fascinating. Chest-mounted cameras on undercover cops, infra-red/heat cameras on the critical mass bike ride, and creepy, awesome, weirdly detached blimp camera footage:
"The first scene on the clip shows people from the antiwar group Not in Our Name lying on the grass in Central Park, spelling out a giant "NO" with their bodies. Every so often the camera operator focuses on some young women lounging nearby who do not seem to be part of the antiwar event. The hovering blimp cam seems almost to float above this tranquil scene. It might even be a pretty picture if it were not for the fact that we are viewing this all through what appears to be a military targeting scope superimposed on the frame."
These shots show highlights of the blimp footage, note just how much of New York can be seen as it zooms out:
What strikes me is the one phrase, "Every so often the camera operator focuses on some young women lounging nearby who do not seem to be part of the antiwar event," — as I'm sure you would too if you had a camera like that. When implementing surveillance technology, what use is it if nobody is watching? But then how detached can one be from what's being observed?
Watching this stuff second or third hand on the web is also quite jarring. As part of a daily diet of often highly personal clips, parodies and skits on YouTube (and superb post-modern twists combining everything), voyeurism is becoming ordinary.
The scope of this surveillance reminds me of a great Matt Webb story, The Mirrored Spheres of Patagonia, where the inhabitants of a city can see everything through a network of telescopes and reflective spheres. Matt's vision is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
Chance Encounters
Mikel Maron is writing up the fascinating things he's found out about a friend's new place in Weaver House in London's east end (see also parts 2, 3, 4 and 5). We were there on Thursday and it truly is a bizarre spot for a building. Today someone found my photo of it on Flickr, and it turns out he used to live there.
In related news, someone spotted her husband's car in my Youtube video of Sycamore Speedway in Illinois. The internet is amazing!
DARTZ! - St. Petersburg
My younger brother plays guitar in a band called DARTZ! (myspace.com/darts). They recorded an album in London this summer and the first single is out this time next month. There's now a rather swish video for it on youtube*, and local radio recently played it twice.
In other news, a fan of theirs put some of their lyrics on Newcastle's Secret Flickr Wall. If you obsess over Flickr for long enough, eventually Flickr will obsess over you.
* Not embedded because Wordpress is too damn opinionated to let me post invalid HTML dammit.
Ask Later #1 Video
For better or worse*, Toxi has the video.
He only caught the first half, but he got Steve's intro, Sean Varney on cyberscanning, me on stuff, Alex McLean on livecoding with Haskell, Rob McKinnon on Topic Maps, Steve on negative things, Matt Westcott on Sudoku hacking and most of Paul Hammond on product constraints. Hooray for partial documentation.
*Remember folks, the adrenalin kicks in pretty quickly at these talks so people get caught up in the heat of the moment. I seem to remember saying Schulze and Webb's metal phone was stupid, but I just meant that it's impractical and poisonous. Not the same thing at all...
Glastobury Barrel Walker
Some kids making the most of the 2006 Glastobury rain, balancing on some overturned bins, at youtube.
Dale McCready’s Experiments
Dale McCready is experimenting with arranging particle and attractor images in 3D using After Effects. The test movie looks really nice.
Toxi's idea space experiments are a pure Processing implementation of a similar concept.
Charles Forman aka SetPixel
Charles Forman aka SetPixel is posting a weekly paper on his art/programming experiments. So far he's tried setting himself on fire, and putting it out with snow. Simple ideas, playfully executed. I'll definitely be tuning in for the next installment.
Of course, he's using Processing for his experiments, though he notes he's not getting the speed he needs. When will there be a platform as expressive as Processing with reliable real-time video performance?
Update: it looks like setpixel.com has been relaunched as a collaborative site for video-based installations and interactive artwork, featuring contributions to date from Cristobal Mendoza, Glen Murphy, Ubi De Feo, Chris O'Shea, Josh Nimoy and Christian Giordano.
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