randomwalks/dj

a sketch idea for a business card which helps people identify and characterise those they are associated with. the proposed card uses bluetooth to track a person's movement & spoken activity during a meeting, which is then recorded and displayed.
[ideo.com]

Originally posted by fofoda from information aesthetics, on January 31, 2006 11:43 PM

About tarimporter
A Spotlight plug-in. Its primary purpose is to allow fast searches in UNIX tar files. For performance reasons, tarimporter searches only for file names inside tar files. Actually it recognizes tar, tgz, tar.gz, tbz, and tar.bz2 files. Source code is available.

Originally from Mac OS X Downloads - Spotlight Plugins, on January 31, 2006 11:43 PM

OMG shirt
Originally uploaded by Mike Monteiro.

I recommend the purchase of this shirt, with apologies to my more sensitive readers.

Originally from hello, typepad, on January 31, 2006 11:31 PM

A poem by 19th c. African American poet H. Cordelia Ray

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on January 31, 2006 10:52 PM

I usually never do these things, but this has caught my eye on various favorite sites of mine. Plus, Mena tagged me :)

Four Things

Four jobs I've had:

Waitress at Skylark, a Japanese "family restaurant"
English Instructor at various language schools in Tokyo
Teaching Assistant in History at UCSD
Program Officer at the International Monetary Fund
(I won't count my current job since I still have it)

Four movies I can watch over and over:

BladeRunner
Baraka
Miyazaki Hayao animations
Matrix (I'm over it now, but back in the day...)

Four places I've lived:

Essex, Conneticut
Tokyo, Japan
Portland, Oregon
San Diego, California

Four TV shows I love:

Frontline
Firefly (if only it continued!!)
60 minutes
Cook's Tour (don't "love" it, but don't have any other shows to list)

Four places I've vacationed:

Black Rock City, Nevada
Garopaba & Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Pai & Koh Samui, Thailand
Paris, France

Four of my favorite dishes:

sushi
kaiseki (if I'm lucky enough to have that pleasure)
rice with natto, raw egg and soy sauce (comfort food when I'm sick)
duck with port sauce
(I also love stinky cheese)

Four sites I visit daily:

bloglines
gmail
craigslist (looking for a place to move now)
flickr

Four places I would rather be right now:

Ebisu, Omotesando, or Shibuya, Tokyo
streets of the 4th arrondisement, Paris (even in the cold)
on a safari in Kenya
lounging anywhere in the Maldives

Tag Four Other Bloggers:

Dav
Sean
Ele
Helen

Originally posted by Mie from Kokochi, on January 31, 2006 10:51 PM

The Missouri Botanical Garden is tagging the illustrations in their collection using volunteers and a shared del.icio.us account. They call this approach TagSwarming. Here is their tag cloud, and here is the blog entry from the digital library guy who created this project. They are always looking for helpers, if this sort of project idea intrigues you.

Originally from librarian.net, on January 31, 2006 10:51 PM

The symbol of snowman is ☃ (Unicode: 0x2603). (thanks, Null)

I'm Feeling Lucky in Bengali: "Bhagyoban Money Korchhi" (thanks, Finn)

Wasps aren't animals. (thanks, YSA)

Originally from hello, typepad, on January 31, 2006 10:31 PM

Mark Rothko's Seagram murals were to hang in the then-new Four Seasons restaurant in NYC. How did they come to hang instead in the Tate Modern in London?

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on January 31, 2006 09:53 PM

david posted a photo:

Tue 01/31/2006 15:10 Image108

Originally from david's Photos, on January 31, 2006 09:53 PM

A big dog on the subway with a fur-coated owner and a brick in its mouth. And I believe it's a "pit bull-type" dog.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on January 31, 2006 09:53 PM

Similar to using a mouse to click on a computer screen to access information, users can now "Click on the Real World" using their mobile phone. With Mapion Local Search, users can walk down virtually any street in Japan and point at over 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks, or historical sites to instantly retrieve information on what they are looking at, or find what they are looking for just by pointing their phone.

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on January 31, 2006 09:52 PM

An article in The Register says: "Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business - desktop software. A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as 'Goobuntu'." It seems such a thing does exist, but for internal use only, and Google has no plans to release it, at least before its moon teleporter is finished....

I\'ve been screaming about a Google/Ubuntu partnership at everyone unfortunate enough to be near me. It\'s *such* an obvious fit!

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog, on January 31, 2006 09:49 PM

(Via Mobile Audience)

Location awareness, narrative, and documentary come together in this project. What else are people going to map?

For their 2005 Golden Nica-winning MILK project, the artists gave GPS devices to people involved in the dairy trade between Latvia and the Netherlands, representing their movements as animated maps, photos, and textual memories on the web. A kind of geog! raphic documentary, MILK conflates the objectivity of mapping with the subjective experiences of economics, politics and, of course, other people. And this MILK is perfectly safe for lactose-intolerant viewers.

Originally posted by Howard from Smart Mobs, on January 31, 2006 09:48 PM

wmmna has a new sponsor until the end of May: the Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. A couple of cool projects by students include: Jee Hyun Oh' GORI Node Garden, Farmer Brown's Journal, Browse del.icio.us, etc.

GORI.Node Garden

This morning i'm going to Geneva to attend a workshop organised by two guys i like a lot, Nicolas and Julian. It's called blogjects and it's about objects that blog and this exemplify the Internet of Things, i.e. a network of tangible, mobile, chatty things enabled by the miniaturization, the ubiquity of consumer electronics and a pervasive Internet.

On Thursday i'll be speaking at LIFT06.

Then i'm off to Berlin for Transmediale. Oh! and i'll be flat hunting. So if you've heard of a free house/apartment for two person and two dogs in an area with parcs and gardens, drop me a line, i really need help.

Last hours to vote at the Bloggies.

Originally from we make money not art, on January 31, 2006 09:48 PM

An earnings increase that fell shy of Wall Street's targets sent Google's shares plummeting.

Originally from NYT > Technology, on January 31, 2006 09:47 PM

Toshi Hoo writes:

Nam June Paik has died at the age of 74:
If you are video artist and don't know Paik's work, you should. He introduced the world to video art in the 1960's and collaborated with the Fluxus art movement with folks like John Cage and Charlotte Moorman.

From the Mercury News:

MIAMI - Nam June Paik, the avant-garde artist credited with inventing video art in the 1960s by combining multiple TV screens with sculpture, music and live performers, has died. He was 74.
The Korean-born Mr. Paik, who also coined the term ``Electronic Super Highway'' years before the information superhighway was invented, died Sunday night of natural causes at his Miami apartment, according to his Web site.

MercuryNews.com | 01/31/2006 | Nam June Paik, electronic artist

Originally from News of the dead, on January 31, 2006 02:11 PM

I could lose my blogging privileges for this, but I felt like someone had to point out TED's Headquarters brightening up the pages of this week's New York Magazine. Being that the one-year mark has long since past, it seems our "global new-media migrant" has finally found a home in NYC...

Originally posted by Amy Novogratz from TED Blog, on January 31, 2006 02:10 PM

Ever wonder how the WALK - NO WALK "Walker" characters are made?

Our friends over at Thundercut have produced a short little film that walks you through the entire process. Very cool indeed.

(click above to watch)

Originally from Wooster Collective, on January 31, 2006 02:10 PM

"This past summer I read about the amazing resilience of the Jerusalem Date Palm, a plant with legendary medical powers that was thought extinct. I have been searching for news and updates about this little guy since then, but I haven't had much luck."

Originally posted by djacobs from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on January 31, 2006 01:47 PM

Many of you have no doubt read Godel Escher Bach, the brilliant and entertaining treatise by Douglas Hofstadter, drawing connections between the work of the legendary mathematician, artist and musician. In today's New York Times, a compelling — though admittedly less sweeping — essay by Arthur I. Miller explores the connections between Einstein and Mozart.

Einstein, Miller explains, was deeply inspired by Mozart's music, and sensed an affinity between their work. Mozart's music "was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master," Einstein once said. And he held similar views of his own work in physics, which revealed the "pre-established harmony" of the cosmos.

The link between physics and music may seem abstract at first. But TED has always been about making — and encouraging — such non-obvious connections. With any luck, Lisa Randall will draw such inspiration from the extraordinary musicians in Monterey next month ...

Originally posted by June Cohen from TED Blog, on January 31, 2006 01:46 PM

---

Supreme Court Update

You can follow the efforts to derail the "inevitable" appointment of Samuel Alito, the religious right's man, on this Kos thread. [Update: more recent developments here, but the first link has phone numbers, etc.] Please take a minute to look at the list and see where your Senators stand on this and who might be wavering and in need of a supportive call (the key words are "vote no on cloture"). Clinton and Schumer will vote "no"--meaning they want the nomination to stay open to debate. Menendez is wavering. His staff got an earful from me this morning. 202-224-4744. Keep hitting redial and you'll get through.

Update: A Kos commenter counts 67 for cloture and 22 against. Estimates on the ultimate vote (Alito's appointment as opposed to closing the debate) are 59 for Alito to 41 against, and since a simple majority carries it, that means we get an angry God Squadder on the Supreme Court. I think it's worth expressing your opinion right up until last minute, but that's just me, obviously.

Final tally on the cloture vote.

Just saw the Senate confirmed that pig. Knew it was coming but my stomach flipped over, slightly, at the news. Does anyone reading this blog give a shit? I know a lot of my progressive friends went all soft and cynical after the 2004 election.

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on January 31, 2006 01:46 PM

You could almost add this to the annals of great moments in televised lipsynching, but no, this is a video clip of Kurt Cobain doing what can only be described as karaoke (download video, 28 meg, mpeg file). The only catch is that he's doing karaoke to one of his own songs, Smells Like Teen Spirit. This is from Nirvana's Top of the Pops appearance from November of 1991. For reasons still unclear to me, the BBC asked the band to perform the song with a live vocal, using the instrumental backing track from Nevermind. Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic make no effort to appear to be playing, and Cobain turns in a magnificent performance, swallowing the microphone, singing lyrics like "load up on drugs, kill your friends" with a sarcastic lounge-like baritone. A little more info here. And if you enjoyed this, you're sure to enjoy Public Image, Ltd. or Prince on American Bandstand. via fulminatia

Originally from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, on January 31, 2006 01:46 PM

With size counting less than serious intent, Oscar nominations went to small films with deep political and social themes.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on January 31, 2006 12:23 PM

gwen suggested i make a quilt expressing my feelings about the social work profession over time.

i responded that i didn't like quilts that express feelings. they tend to be metallic with beads and then, somehow, transmute into "ethnic kimonos" (fiber people, you know what i am talking about).

but gwen was right. here was our exchange:

(me)> sewing + feelings about the children = crap art : discuss

(gwen) i envisioned more something along these lines: sarah w/out table or
phone, standing underneath a huge cross, while ol' dirty bastard revs
up outside smoking crack cigars and a choir sets fire to things.
border of cookies and textbooks and numbers.

people, this quilt needs to be made, does it not?

Originally from serenalarogers, on January 31, 2006 12:23 PM

She's From Away

"I'm Hope Larson, an American cartoonist living in Canada. In December 2004 I became a permanent resident, and in April 2005 my husband and I moved to Nova Scotia, a fairly isolated province east of Maine. It's so far east that it's in the Atlantic time zone, which we didn't know existed! The locals call people like us 'come from aways.' It's not exactly a term of endearment...In October Mal and I moved into our first house, in a rural area north of Halifax. SFA is a chronicle of our lives as we continue to adjust to life in the Maritimes. Look for a new strip every Thursday."

Just look at how great that final frame is! (via)

Originally posted by Anne from Space and Culture, on January 31, 2006 12:23 PM

Queer Music Heritage is a radio show and a website. The goal of both is to preserve and share the music of G&L culture. With sections dedicated to Gay musicals, gay marriage songs, mp3 of Camp Record the most outrageous (and queerest) record label of the 60s, an impressive collection of photos of female impersonation and drag artists, etc.

Via Digitaler Lumpensammler.

Originally from we make money not art, on January 31, 2006 12:22 PM

The nominees for this year's Academy Awards are out today, and most of the categories include the same movies we've been seeing win all the other awards for the past month--Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Walk the Line, Crash. Overall there...

Originally posted by Amy from Amy's Robot, on January 31, 2006 12:22 PM

Newsweek did a great article with all of the directors nominated. A roundtable with George Clooney, Steven Spielberg, Ang Lee, Bennett Miller & Paul Haggis.

I do not have a lot to say about the nominees. Pretty predictible. I am glad that A History of Violence was able to squeeze in a few. William Hurt was really, really funny and sick in it!

My only criticism is in the Best Original Song nominations. They are:

"In the Deep" - CRASH (I LOVE this song. I just gave Bird York a shout out yesterday!)

"It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" - HUSTLE & FLOW (OK, I sing this song all the time. It makes me laugh a lot. But nominating it for an Academy Award! This is kind of upsetting and I for one do not want to see Terrence Howard in his suit performing this song on Awards night. I have a big problem with this one and I think I can not watch them do this. Yikes! Friends kept yelling at me for singing this song because it was so insanely offensive but I am a sarcastic gal and cannot help myself. I somehow feel that this nomination is some strange punishment.)

"Travelin' Thru" - TRANSAMERICA (This is the WORST song ever. TERRIBLE!!!! So so so bad. When the credits were going up after Transamerica, Beebs and I looked at one another when this song came on. We thought, "What the heck is this?!" We kept singing it to each other again as a JOKE! Can't Hollywood take a joke? These songs are bad and not bad in a slang way, in a real way.)

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on January 31, 2006 12:22 PM

tomorrow is our permanent address...

…McLuhan claimed some decades ago but nowadays we are simply already immersed and embedded …Arthur C. Kroker (editor of ctheory) states that we live in the electronic culture that he (McLuhan) prophesied. And since he wrote about it, technology has become more pervasive, but silent. It’s invisible. An elder article (written 2005 to remind McLuhan’s actuality 25 year after his death) gives..(an) overview on McLuhan’s opinions and as well both the enthusiasm and critique his thoughts evoked.

"For the first time, the central nervous system has been 'exteriorized," says Kroker, U Vic's Canada Research Chair in technology, culture and theory. "It is our plight to be processed through the technological simulacrum…in a "technostructure" which is nothing but a vast simulation and amplification of the bodily senses." McLuhan’s early (1960s) wake-up call about the extent to which people’s very identities are determined by the tools that they themselves invent can be listened to via these two links of the old recordings.

The Medium is the Massage; with Marshall McLuhan.
Long-Playing Record 1968.
Produced by John Simon.
Conceived and co-ordinated by Jerome Agel. Written by Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel.
Columbia CS 9501, CL2701.

[posted on mind the_GAP*]

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, on January 31, 2006 11:27 AM

ok, this is smart, cheap, fun and fast, the way i like it---[dp]

Originally from My reFeed feed, on January 31, 2006 11:26 AM

This memorial is painted on the side of Mamma’s Food Shop on 6th street and Avenue C. Click the image above for a larger version. The mural is signed by Taboo!, an East Village drag queen. I couldn’t find much about her online except mention (and a photo) in this old Wigstock release.

The piece commemorates a mix of stars, artists, drag queens, and others. Some died of AIDS, others were East Village locals. Some names I recognize, others I do not. Members of a family quietly fading.

Originally from Social Design Notes, on January 31, 2006 10:32 AM

Supreme Court Update

You can follow the efforts to derail the "inevitable" appointment of Samuel Alito, the religious right's man, on this Kos thread. [Update: more recent developments here, but the first link has phone numbers, etc.] Please take a minute to look at the list and see where your Senators stand on this and who might be wavering and in need of a supportive call (the key words are "vote no on cloture"). Clinton and Schumer will vote "no"--meaning they want the nomination to stay open to debate. Menendez is wavering. His staff got an earful from me this morning. 202-224-4744. Keep hitting redial and you'll get through.

Update: A Kos commenter counts 67 for cloture and 22 against. Estimates on the ultimate vote (Alito's appointment as opposed to closing the debate) are 59 for Alito to 41 against, and since a simple majority carries it, that means we get an angry God Squadder on the Supreme Court. I think it's worth expressing your opinion right up until last minute, but that's just me, obviously.

Final tally on the cloture vote.

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on January 31, 2006 10:26 AM

Artist: Spekter

Originally from Wooster Collective, on January 31, 2006 10:24 AM

Crazy, but there appears to be a biplane, complete with runway, on the roof of 77 Water Street, NY.

So what’s it doing there? NYC Architecture says that it’s a a full-size model of a WWI Sopwith Camel, designed by Rudolph de Harak and built in 1969 - primarily to amuse the inhabitants of surrounding scyscrapers, notably the World Trade Center.

You can rotate around the plane on Windows Live Local, but bear in mind that sometimes the other buildings will obstruct your view. For the ultimate in close-ups, here’s a fantastic photo from a neighbouring building.

Thanks to Chris and Maté Tamasko.

Originally posted by Alex from Google Sightseeing, on January 31, 2006 10:24 AM

Paik, Pioneer of Video Art, Dead at 74

"Nam June Paik, the Korean-born artist and composer regarded as the inventor of video art, died Sunday of natural causes at his Miami home. He was 74. Paik is thought to have coined the terms "information superhighway" and "the future is now," as well as having global influence with his work.

Paik's art combined the use of music, video images and sculptures in a way that set the style for future video artists. "Paik's work would have a profound and sustained impact on the media culture of the late 20th century; his remarkable career witnessed and influenced the redefinition of broadcast television and transformation of video into an artist's medium," John Hanhardt, media arts curator at New York's Guggenheim Museum of Art, said in a statement.

"Through a vast array of installations, videotapes, global television productions, films, and performances, Paik has reshaped our perceptions of the temporal image in contemporary art," Hanhardt added." From Paik, pioneer of video art, dead at 74 CBC.CA.

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, on January 31, 2006 10:21 AM

Former Doctor Who actor Tom Baker is to be the voice of a talking text message service for three months, reports the BBC.

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on January 31, 2006 10:21 AM

Matt Webb's blog is full of great entries, but today's really struck me because it's about Animal Crossing, and because I spent much of the summer and fall of 2004 playing Animal Crossing on our Game Cube. I think I was processing the end of Game Neverending.

We don't have a TV any longer, so we don't play, and I'm quite glad about that, but it was a truly beautiful game, so cute, and Japanese. I can't describe it better than Matt, so go read his post.

Originally from Caterina.net, on January 31, 2006 12:29 AM

I've got a new favorite development technique, "pirate testing". I've used it on 3 recent projects, and it rocks.

And while Sam might have meant it literally, I've found it perfectly describes the practice of shanghaiing another tool's test suite to given your own TDD a jump start.

(n.b.: May be harder in languages which don't allow reopening of classes. aka monkey patching)

Originally from Laughing Meme, on January 31, 2006 12:29 AM

I made a Mac OS X Dashboard widget that displays the current playlist from RadioParadise.com, a great internet radio station. It's my first ever widget, so it's not very fancy, but it gets the job done.

The widget shows a scrollable list of the last 6 hours worth of music played, and if you click a song title, it opens the web page on RP's site dedicated to that song. Clicking the main logo takes you to RP's site. It refreshes when you show the Dashboard and you can manually refresh it by clicking the "refresh" link. I may add automatic refreshing in some future release.

• Download the Radio Paradise playlist widget
• View source code/source files

Once you've downloaded the widget, unzip it by double-clicking it, then double-click the widget file. For older versions of Mac OS X, you might need to move the files into your home folder's /Library/Widgets folder first.

Apple doesn't seem to publicize this fact, but practically anyone can make a widget. Simple widgets are really just small web pages, and can be made using only HTML, JavaScript, and a couple of images. You should give it a try. I just read Apple's excellent tutorial, looked at the source code for one of their RSS-reading sample widgets, and went from there.

This widget uses JavaScript to extract data from an XML version of RP's playlist. I believe it is technically an AJAX-based widget, albeit a very simple one. A few weeks ago, I wrote a PHP script that generates an RSS feed from that XML.

I'm guessing it's trivial to convert Mac OS X widgets to Konfabulator/Yahoo! Widgets, so I will do that when I get a minute.

Originally from Thousand Robots, on January 31, 2006 12:28 AM

Turmeric, a spice that is a key ingredient in Indian curry dishes, contains a potent cancer-fighting agent, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday.

A study published in the upcoming issue of Cancer magazine related that curcumin, a chemical pigment in turmeric, helped stop the spread of breast cancer tumor cells to the lungs of mice.

Now doctors have launched clinical tests to see if it works on humans, said Bharat Aggarwal of the Department of Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who led the study.

Earlier studies suggest that people who eat diets rich in turmeric have lower rates of breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and colon cancer, Aggarwal said. He noted that many cancers are 10 times rarer on the Indian subcontinent than in the West.

The breakthrough came as no surprise to the owner of an Indian restaurant in downtown Manhattan. Abu Syed told the Daily News: "We already knew that Indian food tastes good. But it is good to hear it can help with cancer, too. It is one more reason to eat plenty of it." [ more ]

Originally from turbanhead, on January 31, 2006 12:28 AM