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May 12, 2007
ambient devices keynote talk
(infosthetics @ Ambient Information Systems Workshop) some conceptual ambient displays from David Rose's keynote talk this morning: a Sailing Zone display using multiple needles to display the ideal situation to go out sailing (they then all point towards the middle), a thin electronic display built inside a wallet, & several new electronic display designs based on the Weather Watcher, but more geared towards different user profiles, such as bloggers or sailers.more notes about these applications & his interesting talk in general after the break.
[link:ambientclock.com & experiencecurve.com]
Nikon 18-200mm Drop Test
That's a lot of people dropping a $700 lens
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by djacobs to photography dj-reblog - more about this bookmark...
NYPD Recruits Scrape By in an Expensive Metropolis
The recent $10,000 bump in rookie firefighters' pay is probably a hot topic of conversation at Cosmo's Diner on 23rd St. That's where police recruits often gather before and after their days at the police academy in Gramercy. The new contract between the FDNY and the City leaves new members of the NYPD in the dust, earning only an annual salary of $25,100 during their first six months of duty. Once officers graduate from the academy, their pay rises to $32, 700. The attractiveness of a career that offers a full pension after 20 years on the job, however, quickly pales when one has to contemplate getting by in New York on close to minimum wage. The New York Times looked at a few new recruits and their difficulties getting through lean times:
Mr. Gonell, Mr. Ferrari, Ms. O’Connor and Mr. Torres, along with several other recruits, said that they knew being a police officer would never make them rich, but that their desire to join the force outweighed the financial hardship. But now, four months into their training at the Police Academy, and with graduation less than two months away, several recruits said that they had greatly underestimated just how difficult it would be to make ends meet. Student loans have gone unpaid. Credit card debts have mushroomed. Parents have been tapped, repeatedly and exhaustively, for emergency funds, extra bedrooms and leftovers. “After my mom cooks for me, I spread it out,” said Mr. Gonell, 25, who lives in the Bronx. “Rice and chicken, rice and chicken. I’m going to fly out of here eventually, that’s how much chicken I eat.”O'Connor, who attended law school at Notre Dame and was a paramedic in Queens, is gutting it out with the help of her roommate. Torres was making much more money working as a police officer in Burbank, CA, but the Brooklynite knew that Burbank is not NYC and came home. There are other stories in the Times' article detailing penny-pinching habits that recruits have resorted to and the lengths that NYPD trainees have to go––even as single parents and holding masters degrees––to graduate to the lowest rung of the department's ladder. (NYPD Times Square, by lachance at flickr)
Edwards Campaigns To Make Memorial Day An Antiwar Statement
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is calling on his supporters to turn this year's Memorial Day into a day of antiwar activism, saying that the best way to honor the troops is to demand an end to the Iraq war.
Air Baron
You got Kirilenkoed!
High Cost of Free Tools
"Adobe and Microsoft have always had better tools, ... in large part because their platforms require tools - that's a big part of their business model. ... If you choose a platform that needs tools, if you give up the viral soft collaboration of View Source and copy-and-paste mashups and being able to jam jQuery in the hole that used to have Prototype in it, you lose what gave the web its distributed evolution and incrementalism."
When Splitting the Check Gives You a Splitting Headache
How I missed the NYT piece about splitting the check at celebratory restaurant meals I'll never know. Serious Eats friend Megnut was all over it, but somehow we missed it. Well, there's no use crying over spilled wine.
Why I am so chagrined is that piece spoke to me in so many ways. As a nondrinker I have been burned so many times it has probably cost me enough money over the years to pay for my son's college tuition for a year. A few years ago at a dinner for a colleague retiring from a trade committee, I remember being asked to pony up $200 for a dinner featuring many expensive bottles of wine, of which I had nary a drop. What was especially galling was that many of the people at the gathering were just going to expense the dinner, while I, as a freelancer, was going to have to reach into my own pocket to pay for a lot of wine I didn't drink and couldn't afford.
I don't have much of a poker face, and I'm sure I looked positively stricken as I reached into my pocket to fetch a credit card. I just felt too embarrassed to say anything, though everyone at the table knew both that I don't drink and that I had no entity to hand in an expense report to be reimbursed. And the fact is I regard all of the people assembled at the gathering to be caring, sensitive, kindly people. This was just a blind spot for all of them.
Just as I was about to place my credit card in the check folder, a famous food writer who worked for a very large media company came to my rescue. "This is ridiculous, Ed. This is an expensive dinner, and you don't even drink. I'm buying your dinner." I assumed she was going to expense my dinner and her own, but I was just so relieved and thankful I didn't even bother to ask if that was going to be the case.
But from that moment on I vowed to overcome my embarrassment and discomfort and speak up at these occasions. And my friends, family, and colleagues, who are a generously spirited lot, have all responded with understanding words and gestures of support. I still have to bring up the subject myself, but it's a small price to pay to avoid feeling taken advantage of.
The alcohol?no alcohol situation is easy to understand and do something about. When one person orders foie gras and caviar while another orders a cheeseburger and french fries, that is a more difficult issue to grapple with. I almost feel in that case that the fancy-pants orderer must step up and volunteer to pay extra for the luxury items. But if it's a matter of one person ordering the $20 pork chop and another ordering the $28 rack of lamb, that is a check I will comfortably split. It's all a matter of degrees. There are no absolutes here, are there? Are there other nuanced tactics for dealing with this situation?
Billions Of Dollars In Oil Money Missing In Iraq
Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq's declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.
Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.
May 11, 2007
Video: Kosbees, episode 1
"is that legal?" "it's satire."
Rumor: uprgaded Mac laptops now, LED subnotebook later
The MacBook Pro gets new chipset, while the elusive MacBook Pro Thin will debut with a backlit-LED display later this year.
Majority At World Bank Want Wolfowitz Out
A majority of countries on the World Bank board believe Paul Wolfowitz should resign as President of the World Bank, bank board sources from rich and developing nations said on Friday.
"It is now very clear that a majority of members think Mr. Wolfowitz must resign," said one board source from a developing country, which received instructions from its capital this week not to support Wolfowitz's continued leadership.
number one smokers
az élet azért jó, mert újra lehet kezdeni Latinovits Zoltán, Emlékszem a röpülés boldogságára, Budapest, Magvet?, 1985, p. 36.
New Baghdad Journal
Steve Mumford is back from Iraq (thankfully) and has posted a new installment of his Baghdad Journal on artnet.com.
The new piece describes getting back to Iraq via Kuwait and introduces us to some of the interesting characters (journalists and bloggers) that he meets along the way. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the very black humor of Caleb Schaber:
[…] a very tattooed blogger, artist, musician and bartender who once ran for mayor of Seattle and writes for something called the Northern Nevada Newswire. He shows off his latest tattoo: a dotted line around his neck, with the inscription “cut here” (also in Arabic, helpfully, on the back) […]
I saw Steve a few weeks ago at Postmasters and he told me he had been embedded at the 86th Combat Support Hospital (AKA the Baghdad ER). I’m assuming in his future installments we’ll read and see more of that.
Foie gras ducks don't wear shoes so neither should we
Regina Schrambling over at Gastropoda:
Probably the most idiotic letter I have ever read in a newspaper came from the soft-headed woman whimpering about foie gras who said she would not want a feeding chute jammed down her throat, therefore ducks should be spared. By that logic, the fact that ducks would not want shoes rammed onto their webs means humans have to give up footwear. Aren’t there online forums where this kind of nincompoopery can go hide?
She has no permalinks so I've quoted the whole thing here. Of all the anti foie gras arguments, I too find the anthropomorphological one the least compelling.
35% of Ground Zero Is Zero
I may no longer be New York’s number one public servant—as I was on the day our city was attacked in the most disgusting act of mass murder our country has ever known—but I’ll always be the number one fan of the greatest baseball team in the history of the world, the New York Yankees.
I’ve loved the Yankees since I was a little boy. I hoarded every Joe DiMaggio bubblegum card I could find. My friends and I took the subway up to the Bronx every chance we could. Nobody cheered harder for Mickey and Whitey and Yogi, and if a kid wearing a Dodgers cap happened to wander into our neighborhood, you better believe we jumped him. You had to be a tough little SOB to be a kid in those days. I remember one boy who I went to school with, a Brooklyn fan, loved to go on and on about Mantle, calling him “Mick the Hick,” and all that. Just so happens, his family’s liquor store burned down one night, and he and his Mom and his Dad had to live on the street ‘til the social workers came and took him away. Hey, they weren’t called the Bums for nothing!
All of which is why it’s so hurtful to me to hear these vicious rumors swirling around about the four World Series rings I own, one for each of the Yankees’ four World Championships during my term as Mayor.
The “controversy” apparently stems from the fact that I haven’t paid taxes on these rings, which are collectively worth roughly $200,000. And in the “technical sense,” that’s true. I haven’t paid taxes on them. But for very, very good reasons.
In 1996, the Yankees won their first World Series in almost twenty years. For all of us who grew up in the 1940s and 50s, the idea of going twenty years without a World Championship was literally like a vision of Hell. So when Charlie Hayes squeezed that pop-up for the final out, I guarantee you, no one in that stadium was thinking about the taxes they had to pay on their World Series rings, except possibly Darryl Strawberry. Even next season, when George Steinbrenner and Joe Torre themselves handed me my ring as a show of gratitude for all I had done for the city, the incredible warmth generated by that fantastic comeback victory over the Braves was still palpable in the streets of New York, and I wasn’t about to sully that magical moment for our city by putting a price tag on transcendence.
In 1998, the Yankees won 114 games, then steamrolled the Rangers, Indians and Padres to win the Championship in the most dominant fashion since Babe Ruth wore pinstripes. This was the greatest team that any of us have seen in our lifetimes, the gold standard of modern baseball. And when you’re that dominant, some rules just don’t apply. Tax rules, for instance. I admit it: I personally told every member of that team that they didn’t have to pay taxes on their World Series rings. Now this may not be, strictly speaking, “legal,” but when you win more baseball games in a single year than any team ever, you get to write your own ticket in some respects. So when I received my souvenir ring from the ’98 team, I wasn’t about to show them up by paying taxes on it myself.
In 1999, the Yankees again dominated the post-season, going 11-1 on the way to another World Championship over the Braves. God as my witness, I literally did not realize that I had a World Series ring from this season. I have no memory of receiving one, and if George and Joe and Brian had offered me one as a gift, I would have turned it down multiple times before accepting in order to spare them any embarrassment. But according to our inventory, I apparently have one. The only conclusion I can reach is that the ring was included in a suitcase of memorabilia that Bernie Kerik dropped off at Gracie Mansion one night, asking me to “just hold onto it for a little while,” which of course I did. And of course, less than two years later, our city was struck by the terrible events of September 11th. And after that day, all New Yorkers learned that there were far, far more important things than who might have asked whom to hold onto what, for whatever reason.
In 2000, the Yankees prevailed over the Mets in the first “Subway Series” the city had seen since my boyhood, and it did not disappoint, with the Yankees prevailing in five closely-fought games. When George and Joe presented me with my 2000 ring—that one I remember, because I tell you, it’s really a beauty, with a diamond the size of my son Andrew—I carefully weighed the pros and cons of declaring it on my tax returns. And while reporting the gift might have been the “by-the-book” option, I had other things to consider, namely, the fact of the Subway Series.
As Mayor, I always had to walk a delicate line. While I was and am an unabashed Yankee fan, in my public capacity, I’m also the Mayor of the Mets, as well. And while I may have suspected that Bobby Valentine was a deeply amoral and despicable human being, and that Turk Wendell was a goddamn ferret-loving freak, they were still my citizens. And so while I can delight in the Yankees’ victory and ride in their victory parades as a fan, I have to be more circumspect as Mayor. Had I declared that 2000 ring on my taxes, wouldn’t it have been a slap in the face to the Mets, who already had suffered the misfortune of encountering an incomparably better team in the World Series? I wasn’t about to put it down in black and white that “New York is a Yankees city! Screw you, Mets!” Because we’re all New Yorkers. And that’s a fact that was never driven home so fully as on that horrible morning when we watched those burning bodies plummeting from our raped and wounded—but still beloved!—Twin Towers.
So no, I haven’t paid taxes on those rings. And I’m not going to. Because the Yankee pride they represent belongs to all of us. As a city, we’ve paid enough already, in blood and tears and misery and medical costs from all the lung cancer. (I swear, the best knowledge we had said that the air around the site was safe; Bernie Kerik oversaw the study himself.) I’m not going to let the Village Voice and Al Qaeda win this round.
So let’s go Yankees in 2007. And God help us should we ever be attacked again, particularly at a time when we’re vulnerable and exposed by my absence from public office. Because who knows how great the devastation might be, besides me?
Rudy Giuliani dresses like a total slut, and is running for President.
The Raw Story | Former Powell aide says Bush, Cheney guilty of 'high crimes'
A former top State Department aide to Colin Powell said today that President Bush and Vice President Cheney are more deserving of impeachment than was Bill Clinton.
Giuliani Tries to Clarify Abortion Stance
Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday sought to quell a growing controversy over abortion that has disrupted his presidential campaign. Restating his support for abortion rights, he asked Republican voters to look beyond that issue to the totality of his platform and record.
Street artist Banksy gets the New Yorker treatment with a...
Street artist Banksy gets the New Yorker treatment with a profile in this week's issue. "The graffitist's impulse is akin to a blogger's: write some stuff, quickly, which people may or may not read. Both mediums demand wit and nimbleness. They arouse many of the same fears about the lowering of the public discourse and the taking of undeserved liberties." Complex tracked down the alleged photos of Banksy mentioned in the article. Print magazine recently wrote a piece on Banksy as well. (link)
The Onion interviews Acceptable.tv
American Idol for YouTube shows is a pretty decent summary of the concept
Evening Post: Stressing over Banksy
via GrammarPolice, April 29, 2007:
Cue Alanis
Courtesy of Crooked Timber. There's also news of a hilarious attempted theft. I believe that one of Banksy's collectors (or someone who's considering buying?) reads this blog; hope this news isn't too stressful to read.
Posted by Kriston | Link | Art | Comments (1)
The accidental ingestion of a $62 burger
After my friend had finished her meal, she was then presented with a $75 check. A mix-up at New York's BLT Burger results in the accidental ingestion of the $62 Japanese Kobe Burger rather than the $16 American Kobe Burger. Yikes!
? Twitter vs. Blogger redux
Regarding the Twitter vs. Blogger thing from earlier in the week, I took another stab at the faulty Twitter data. Using some educated guesses and fitting some curves, I'm 80-90% sure that this is what the Twitter message growth looks like:
These graphs cover the following time periods: 8/23/1999 - 3/7/2002 for Blogger and 3/21/2006 - 5/7/2007 for Twitter. It's important to note that the Twitter trend is not comprised of actual data points but is rather a best-guess line, an estimate based on the data. Take it as fact at your own risk. (More specifically, I'm more sure of the general shape of the curve than with the steepness. My gut tells me that the curve is probably a little flatter than depicted rather than steeper.)
That said, most of what I wrote in the original post still holds, as do the comments in subsequent thread. Twitter did not grow as fast as the faulty data indicated, but it did get to ~6,000,000 messages in about half the time of Blogger. Here are the reasons I offered for the difference in growth:
1. Twitter is easier to use than Blogger was and had a lower barrier to entry.
2. Twitter has more ways to update (web, phone, IM, Twitterific) than did Blogger.
3. Blogger's growth was limited by a lack of funding.
4. Twitter had a larger pool of potential users to draw on.
5. Twitter has a built-in social aspect that Blogger did not.And commenters in the thread noted that:
6. Twitter's 140-character limit encourages more messages.
7. More people are using Twitter for conversations than was the case with Blogger.What's interesting is that these seeming advantages (in terms of message growth potential) for Twitter didn't result in higher message growth than Blogger over the first 9-10 months. But then the social and network effects (#5 and #7 above) kicked in and Twitter took off.
Quick Hits: Only One Remains; No High Five
Photo of shaved Mets players in San Francisco by AP/Ben Margot
- It looks like only one player hasn't agreed to have their head shaved in the shave-fest for the Mets. Almost everyone in the Mets clubhouse is in on the head shaving. Even Mets GM Omar Minaya got into the act. While Aaron Sele won't be shaving his head until tomorrow (he's taking family photos today), Jose Reyes is undecided on the fate of his hair. At least Willie Randolph is a little forgiving on Reyes' desire to keep his hair, "He doesn’t have a regular ’do, he’s got a little style to it. It’s more of a decision to make." Who's doing all the clipping for the team? Centerfielder Carlos Beltran. Bald heads - perfect for playing baseball in the summer.
- If you're going to run onto the field at Yankee Stadium, don't expect Hideki Matsui to give you a high five. Last night in the 9th inning, two fans ran onto the field at the stadium. One fan ran towards the Yankee leftfielder with his hand up, apparently looking for a high five. Matsui just nudged him aside and the fan was later tackled and arrested. The other fan was arrested near home plate. Both were charged with disorderly conduct, interfering with a sporting event and criminal trespass.
<My Own Private Reality> exhibition of new media art at Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg
The exhibition includes the work of: # Angie Waller # Annina Rüst # Cory Arcangel # Exonemo # Human Beans # Jillian Mcdonald # Jonah Brucker-Cohen / Mike Bennett # Les Liens Invisibles # Marisa Olson # Miranda July / Harrell Fletcher # Nick Cro
Junk food should look like junk food
I wish we could go back to the good old days when junk food looked like junk food, healthy food looked like healthy food, and there wasn't a whole lot of confusion. Coke is now offering Diet Coke Plus, fortified with vitamins and minerals, and further bluring the line between junk food and "healthy" food. [via The Ethicurian]
Would the Real Tom Colicchio Please Stand Up?
One of these men played in a Major League record 2,632 consecutive baseball games. The other is Tom Colicchio. Sean from Midtown writes: "Which is which?! Or would that be, “which is ‘Wich?!?”
What To Eat This Weekend In New York
This weekend abounds with serious eatin' opportunities for local New Yorkers. Saturday's double header line-up starts with the Brooklyn Pig Fest from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Tobacco Warehouse at Brooklyn Bridge Park. The all-you-can-eat menu will include 3 whole hogs, BBQ ribs and chicken, sausage, slaw, beans, rolls, and of course, beer.
Still hungry? Chase your pig with some crawfish at Crawfish in the Cove, a full on crawfish boil with all the fixins, beer and hurricanes. Proceeds go to the Common Ground Relief Collective dedicated to aiding and rebuilding New Orleans.
After you've celebrated Mother's Day with Sunday brunch, stroll through a street fare with Buddha Drinks Fanta's visual field guide to New York City street fair fare.Oy. I'm full just thinking about it.
All the details after the jump.
THE DETAILS
Brooklyn Pig Fest
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn
1:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Advance tickets: $75
Tickets at the door: $85
Tickets available at: www.brooklynbrewery.comCrawfish in the Cove
Saturday, May 12, 2007
2420 FDR Drive Service Road East (@22nd Street), Manhattan
5:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Advance tickets only: $50
Tickets available at: crawfishny.org
Gastropoda Pulls No Punches
Regina Schrambling's blog Gastropoda is a viciously entertaining read. Here's the least vitriolic (but still pointed) item from today's line-up:
At least once a day a news item makes me think of that old saying, "Figures lie and liars figure." The latest was the "study" correlating the incidence of obesity in different cities with the recipes run in local newspapers. I admit I have a dachshund in this fight, but really, can this actually be true at a time when everything you read says newspapers are going the way of the Walkman? Somehow I suspect fast junk, microwavable garbage and the obsolescence of walking have had more of an iPod impact than the most calorific concoction ever printed under my byline. Besides, everybody knows reading is good exercise. So, for that matter, is cooking.
Interactive Tax Graphic
How much money are you putting in to the Iraq War and national debt interest payments? I'm in for more than I'd prefer.
Eating Organic On A Food Stamp Budget
My friend, Rebecca Blood, is 2 weeks into her month long project of eating on a food stamp budget while maintaining her and her husband's normal standard of eating - organic food and one alcoholic drink with every dinner. Her budget: $74.00/week or $320.80/month, the USDA "Thrifty" standard for a family of 2 adults, aged 20-50 years.So far, so good! She came in under budget in week 1, and based on her photos documenting the project, it certainly looks like they are enjoying some tasty and filling meals.
Backing up is hard to do
Smart folders, encrypted disk images, and importing keychains can help if you lose the data on your Mac... and your regular backups.
'Life Cycle'
Rhizome Terms: Animation, art world, Audio, community, digital, exhibition, Flash, Generative, interact, Internet, net.art, network, public space, Shockwave, social space, Software, space, Virtual, virtual reality
Artist Terms: art, belgian, blog, digital, european, flash, flash greetings, image, interactive, internet art, Laure-Anne Jacobs, life cycle, mixed media, news, photography, pixel, software, sound design
On Friday May 4th at 8 p.m., the Antwerp International Press Centre Flanders shows the virtual exhibition 'Life Cycle' by the artists Laure-Anne Jacobs (imaging) and Missfit (sound design). 'Life Cycle' is the fourth edition of a virtual exhibition series of the online art project Anina.be. The new exhibition presents the life cycle of people in digital imaging and sounds. The exhibition 'Life Cycle' contains two parts. The first part – In the City – shows the visitor the confrontation between the daily live in the city with contemporary or recent world events. All these images are digitally mastered. The second part – Flash Greetings – shows the life cycle of the human being with ten portraits, also digitally mastered. The models who are showed in Flash Greetings get also the possibility to spread their portraits as virtual greeting-cards into their online communities and the internet. Flash Greetings has an obvious interactive undertone, with online visitors getting the opportunity to pick up images from a moving screen, puzzling together a portrait and explore the virtual installation, following his own route. As a result, the exhibition becomes a personal experience for each visitor. Anina.be is an initiative of Laure-Anne Jacobs. For the first time, she shows her own work on the virtual platform. Anina.be wants to create an interaction between artists from different disciplines, but also an interaction between the art and the public. For this edition, Laure-Anne Jacobs created a cooperation with sound artist Missfit (pseudonym for Aernoudt Jacobs), who created sound-effects for the images.
A brief history of the tshirt, specifically the ironic tee....
A brief history of the tshirt, specifically the ironic tee. "Whether you choose to admit it or not, chances are a critical reserve of self-esteem rests somewhere near the middle of your T-shirt drawer. For within this darkened, hidden quarter lies dormant a secret weapon so witty, so elusively allusive, or just so damn hip it finds itself swathing your chest on only the most important occasions." (link)
McCartney says "Beatles coming online soon"
Paul McCartney sure is making the rounds in the news lately, but this time he talks about the Beatles and when they're going to be bringing their music online.
It's a jungle (of Apple predictions) out there
UBS analyst Ben Reitzes has some predictions about Mac, Apple TV, and iPhone sales numbers, in addition to being fascinated by "ecosystems."
Brooklyn Blogfest notes
Went to the Old Stone House this evening to attend Brooklyn Blogfest. I had forgotten to RSVP, in fact I didn't know you had to RSVP from the postings about it, so after a few minutes of stand by I was let upstairs into the packed room. The event was created last year by Louise Crawford, of Only The Blog Knows Brooklyn, and she invited a great selection of local bloggers among them Brownstoner, No Land Grab, Gowanus Lounge, Atlantic Yards Report, CreativeTimes, and Steven Johnson from Outside.in. I've just made a "blidget" of Outside.in's coverage of my zip code.Many of the bloggers mentioned should be represented in the headline flow. Themes covered were the opportunities created by the failure of mainstream media to cover local issues,the importance of blogs covering the Ratner development, blogging in areas that are gentrifying, and Brownstoner's somewhat cautionary account of trying to make a go of it his site as a full time gig. I introudced myself to Flatbush Gardener whom I very pleased is listed on GardenVoices.
May 10, 2007
Museum-piece Gameboy shoes
Mmm ... no.
These were created strictly as a museum exhibit, and are on display in museums across the UK.
I think I either dreamed these in a nightmare, or they've been around for ever, and I've posted them before. Either way, please don't let me see them again, k gg thx?
