About | RSS

Stung Eye

The eye of the bee holder.

Indiana Jones in Pixels.

One row per film. Good guys on the left. Baddies on the right. Key artifact in the middle.

What if we could touch our music again?

c60 Redux

Also: SoundCards, music trading-cards that link you to music in the cloud.

  • Many people have a physical connection with their music. These people like to organize, display and interact with their music via the containers (album covers, cd cases).
  • Music is a highly social medium. People enjoy sharing music with others. People learn about new music from others in their social circle.
  • The location where music is stored will likely switch from devices managed by the listener to devices managed by a music service. In the future, a music purchaser will purchase the right to listen to a particular song, while the actual music data will remain managed by the music service.

Finally: Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibash built a lighting sequencer that uses RFID-enabled cards to control lighting and sounds.

Somewhere in Griffin, Georgia.

Winnipeg city planners take notice. We need signs like this.

There’s a similar sign in Sealy, Texas.

#heythat’smybike

via : via

Mr. Dressup.

‎”Maybe it’s time we get out of the broadcasting business…”
Dean Del Mastro, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

Them there are fight’n words. Sign the petition, or better yet, send a hand-written letter of support for the CBC to our Heritage Minister:

The Honourable James Moore
Minister of Canadian Heritage
and Official Languages
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Extracts of local distance.

Countless fragments of existing architectural photography are merged into multilayered shapes. The original pictures are analysed and categorised according to their vanishing-points and shapes. The resulting collages introduce a third abstract point of view next to the original ones of architect and photographer.

The process.

@redlibrarian: “From the Wiki page on Jan Tschichold, a book designer who looked specifically at page ratios.”

Cross Post!

One Hundred and Eight’ is an interactive, wall-mounted installation by Berlin-based media artist Nils Völker.

Via dad via the pop-up city.

In November 2003 I recorded myself playing John Lennon’s Imagine and mcenroe’s Billy’s Visionat the same time!

There is a printmaking and jewellery open studio this weekend at the Artspace building, (Winnipeg).

We are please to present a variety of custom jewellery, limited edition prints, water colours and photographs.

Open Studios:

We are located in the Artspace building (100 Arthur St @ Bannatyne).

The studios will be open from noon until 6pm on Saturday and Sunday (November 27th and 28th).

Sand dunes inside the Proctor crater on Mars. [via apod]

Girl Talk makes illegal art.

All Day is intended to be listened to as a whole.

This album is a free download. [torrent]

Girl Talk thanks all artists sampled.

Perils of Internet Voting

The following is an expanded version of my letter to the editor featured in the November 12th edition of the Winnipeg Free Press.

In their editorial Modern times, ancient system, the Winnipeg Free Press recommends internet voting as a means of increasing voter turnout. Senior city hall elections official Marc Lemoine has also expressed an interest in online voting. As a computer engineer who teaches web programming courses I would urge them to reconsider.

Internet voting would be much less secure than our current system and would mean the loss of a physical record of votes for auditing purposes. We would also lose the ability to verify that each vote was cast by a unique voter. For example, a parent might be tempted to ask their 18-year-old children if they could vote on their behalf, or vice versa.

Recently, election officials in Washington D.C. invited security experts to test an internet voting system designed for overseas voters. Within 36 hours a team of computer scientists from the University of Michigan had compromised the system, allowing them to read and change recorded votes. One member of the team, J. Alex Halderman, had this to say:

“Major web sites like Facebook and Twitter regularly suffer from vulnerabilities. These high-profile sites have greater resources and far more security experience than the municipalities that run elections. It may someday be possible to build a secure method for voting over the Internet, but in the meantime, such systems should be presumed to be vulnerable based on the limitations of today’s security technology.”

Implementing internet voting in Winnipeg would require a change in provincial legislation.

More Information:

Electronic voting machines are equally troubling:

“Sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication. But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world.”

from: If We Don’t, Remember Me.

Replicants scare me. How long before robots like this Actroid F learn to pass the Voight-Kampff empathy test?

And if you thought that was freaky, meet Telenoid R1.

Paper Mario is for reals!

I cut my dog’s hair.

Stretching Your Wrists

These Aikido wrist stretches are for anyone who types a lot.

Paraphrasing from Common Programmer Health Problems:

Perform these stretches prior to every typing session:

  1. To warm up, put your hands out in front of you and grab at the air as fast as you can 20 times. Then shake your hands, then rotate your wrists 10 times one direction and 10 times another.
  2. Start with the video exercise you’re best at and do 5-10 of them at a medium speed.
  3. Continue through each exercise. After each one shake your hands and arms and rotate your wrists to realign them. These exercises move the bones in your wrist, shaking them settles them back in to place.

Do just enough stretching to get your wrists feeling supple and relaxed. Don’t strain yourself, the motto “no pain no gain” will only damage you. Instead of forcing your joint to a certain position, bring it to that position and then think about relaxing it or “letting” it move a bit further.

I also like the ergocise wrist stretches.

Radio Hi-Jack Vol. 1 - Tim Martell & DJ Noumenon (No longer available.)

Bump it, yo! Old Skool elements to make you bounce.

Cache Rules Everything Around Me

The Internet is a novelty aggregator. Nearly ten minutes of animated GIFs set to Girl Talk’s NightRipper.

[via]

Awareness

via bk

Pennies. Seriously. And Truth. [via]

Request for Feedback: WinnipegElection.ca

Hi folks,

On October 27 of this year the citizens of Winnipeg go to the polls to elect their Mayor, their City Councillors and their School Trustees.

Making an informed vote requires that you know the candidates, their platforms and the issues they discuss.

This is why we’ve created WinnipegElection.ca, a citizen driven website for the upcoming Winnipeg general election.

Our public launch is later this month, but we’d love you to take a sneak peak.

We’ll use your feedback to determine how to proceed with the site.

Currently you’ll find:

Lightning Over Athens. [via]

42 “stacked shots” taken during a lighting storm. I looked up the term “stacked shots”. It’s like it sounds, a process of superimposing multiple images.

“Stacking was developed for astronomy. The purpose then was to reduce digital noise. When using film, astronomers would sometimes expose for hours at a time (occasionally, exposing the same piece of film several nights in a row, making the exposure equivalent to several days).

Trying to do the same with digital would result in 100% noise, 0% image.

By stacking many images of shorter duration, [digital photographers] can get the equivalent of a very long exposure, each of which has the noise of a shorter exposure. The signals combine in a complementary fashion, while the noise combines in ways that mostly cancels itself out. There are more advanced statistical techniques uszed that can reduce random sensor noise to virtually zero.” —AustinMN @ Panoramio

Denis Prieur’s Rural Graffiti near Rock Lake, Manitoba.

Video from SuperMe a multi-player resilience and happiness game from Channel 4’s education department.

It’s interesting to see these types of “life-hacking” games trend upwards. Related: EpicWin, RibbonHero, Future of Games, Jane McGonigal.

[via]

Velosynth is an open-source bicycle interaction synthesizer.

It’s a small, hackable computer that augments the cycling experience by interpreting speed, acceleration, and other sensor data into useful audio and wireless feedback. [Related: video]

[via]

Cross The Road - [via]

Vanishing Point - A generative kinetic music video. [via]

Doodle from class today.

pieces of relationship - mixed media on wood, 10 x 12”

via

The maps of the Geotaggers’ World Atlas have been enhanced to show tourists in red, locals in blue. (Yellow could be either.)

via

Object-Oriented Modeling, when discussed separate from computer-programming, becomes very philosophical.

Objects as Platonic forms.

Canadian Copyright - Bill C32

On Thursday the Canadian government introduced the Copyright Modernization Act (or Bill C-32).

The CBC does a good job of outlining the proposed changes to Canadian copyright law.

The bill is an attempt to strike a fair balance between:

  1. Our ability to monetize creativity. -vs- Our ability to re-purpose culture.
  2. A creator’s right to control their works. -vs- A consumer’s rights to experience purchased media flexibly and in perpetuity.

There are things to like in this bill. The format-shifting, time-shifting and backup provisions are long-overdue, as is the expansion of fair-dealings1. The non-commercial “mash-up/youtube” provisions are indeed progressive.

However, any and all use-rights provided by the bill are revoked if the work in questions is protected by a digital lock. This immediately makes backing up DVDs illegal. It also makes viewing DVDs using the Linux operating-system illegal2. Copying a quote from a DRM-locked e-book for a book report or a news story would be illegal too.

The supremacy of digital-locks promoted by this bill must not be allowed to pass into law. If you value free-speech, your ability to re-purpose culture, and your right to use your purchased media as you see fit, I ask that you write your Member of Parliament to express your displeasure over the DRM provisions in Bill C32. (If anything, a bill that includes DRM provisions should mandate explicit labeling of all digitally-locked media.)

You can find your MP by searching for your postal code on openparliament.ca.

I recommend following these tips on discussing bill C32 with your MP. For the most impact, voice your displeasure using hand-written snail-mail.

Footnotes

  1. Fair dealing for the purpose of research, private study, education, parody or satire would not infringe copyright. Parody and satire were not previously considered fair dealings in Canada.

  2. In order to view legally purchased DVDs using the Linux OS one must break the digital locks on the DVDs. The reason for this is that the DVD industry has not provided any other way to view DVDs when using open-source software. Since I use Linux for all my DVD viewing, C32 would make watching movies a criminal activity for me.

The Secret Powers of Time by Philip Zimbardo.

It’s worth your time to watch this video. :)

Related: The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory a TED talk by Daniel Kahneman

P.S. Zimbardo was the led researcher behind the famous Standford Prison Experiment.

Lessons from fashion’s free culture a TED talk by Johanna Blakely of Ready to Share.

These are interesting ideas to ponder considering that our Canadian government is about to propose a major (and perhaps heavy-handed) restructuring of our copyright laws.

Related: Terms & Conditions - A short video on Digital Rights Management.

A dark solar filament seen across the surface of the sun.

Related: Video of Large Eruptive Solar Prominence.

Web 3.0 - A short documentary on the semantic web.

Glutton LastFM

Two days ago I released my first Ruby gem. In coding parlance gems are software libraries created to enhance the Ruby programming language.

My gem is call glutton_lastfm. It’s a wrapper library for version 2.0 of the last.fm API. The source code and documentation is available on my github account.

This gem allows you to query last.fm for:

  • artist information by name
  • top albums by artist
  • top tracks by artist
  • top user-submitted tags by artist
  • upcoming events by artist
  • album information by name

For example, here’s a program that searches for tags and images related to Buck 65: artist_tags_and_images.rb

I wrote this library to:

  • Learn the gem creation process. (Facilitated by the jeweler gem.)
  • Better understand the mechanics of web-based APIs. (Facilitated by the httparty gem.)
  • Brush up on my unit-testing skills. (Facilitated by the fakeweb gem.)
  • Distance myself from years of return-code function creation in favour of exceptions.

I also wrote it as part of a larger data-mining project I’m working on. (Which reminds me that I’ve been meaning to write a post on datasets and the soon to explode dataset market.)

The glutton_lastfm source-code is released unlicensed into the public domain.

Hitler can’t get a Folk Fest campground pass.

Update: (2010-05-01) The above video was part of a video remixing meme based on the movie Der Untergang. Was it taken down by the film’s production company? Was it a fair use parody?

Algorithmically generated Russian Dolls. (Open with a browser that supports html5 canvas, in other words, not Internet Explorer.)

via

This is a pole covered in bubble gum. We visited friends in San Diego over the weekend. This is one of many photos of our trip.

Nature by Numbers - A short movie inspired by numbers, geometry and nature.

I recommend watching in high-def and full-screen via the above link.

See the theory page for more information on the math that inspired this video.

A search for meaning within a game within a game. This 20 minute film by David Kaplan and Eric Zimmerman gets meta faster than you can say eXistenZ. ;)

Industrial Precision - How Ball Bearings Are Made

via

Pomplamoose VideoSongs have two rules:

  1. What you see is what you hear, and
  2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

Some nice songs:

[via]

Mobile Development

This weekend I’ll be exploring:

  • PhoneGap - Cross-platform mobile app-dev using html / css / javascript.
  • JQTouch - A mobile plugin for my fav Javascript framework, JQuery.
  • iProcessing - The API from processing.js extended for mobile use.
  • MobiOne - Windows mobile emulator for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Pre.

Step one: Install Eclipse, PhoneGap and the Android SDK along with JQTouch, iProcessing and MobiOne.

Step two: Play around. Create a few sample apps.

Step Three: Tomorrow Andrew and I will deploy these apps to his Android phone.

You Know Who "Gets it"?

The Hypemachine, Groveshark and SoundCloud understand that the future will be streamed.

You can listen to (in their entirety) every album of the Hypem top 50 of 2009. The top 50 was crowd-sourced from the top 10 lists of over 500 bloggers. The albums are hosted by Groveshark.

Yes, the Hypem leaderboard gets gamed now and then, and it sometimes get clogged with meme-ooze, but the web’s messy like that.

SoundCloud is a mix-hunters paradise. I’m listening to Dj Czech’s “Bucket Of Grease” mix right now.

The future of games, a talk by Jesse Schell. [28 minutes]

Even if you’re not a gamer this is a must-watch video, especially the second half on the implications of “games that break through the reality barrier” and the attention economy. I’m not sure I welcome the “gameification” of life, but it does feel like the inevitable progression of the capitalist spectacle. “A world where points are distributed for paying attention — to ads, activities, or other people.”

Adding to the conversation:

One human, three machines, rhythm. Also: How it works.

Forget crop circles, Sierpinski snow-triangles are the new hotness.

iProcessing is an open programming framework for native iPhone applications using the Processing language. It is an integration of the Processing.js library and a Javascript application framework for the iPhone.

This video shows two AI players battling it out for Tron supremacy as part of the Google AI Challenge.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn about game-AI programming you might want to look into this challenge. Bots can be written in C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, Haskell, C#, Javascript, Go, Scheme, Lua and Clojure.

If you don’t know where to begin, you can try your hand at learning game-AI by playing Ruby Warrior, a roguelike that you play by implementing a Ruby class containing your player’s control logic.

Climb Aboard

Media: Photoshop / Custom Processing sketch.

I cannot remember the source of the ladybug. It was part of a free sprite library created by an indie-game developer.

The Evolution of Remix Culture - How Remix is becoming a platform for collective expression by, and conversations between, social groups.

Although I essentially agree with the ideas presented in this video, there is something about expressing ourselves in terms of pop culture that brings to mind Baudrillard’s Simulacrum. But really, I should learn to stop worrying and the love spectacle. :P

Oh, and bonus points for the Glass Bead Game analogy.

Pete Drake - Forever

Analogue AutoTune using a steel guitar.

Quick! My first animated gif remix. :P

[Source image from Lauren Nassef’s A Drawing A Day : via]

Here are the slides from my presentation today at the RRC Directions business conference.

Click the “full” button to view in full-screen mode.