Ok ok, I’m a reasonably good person, and a reasonably good son, although i really really suck at remembering birthdays and so on.
This has proven problematic since my moms 50th birthday is coming up… Which prompted me to create this homepage, which you should check out if you want to save me. Unless I get something nice together my only other options are either to
1) Stop smoking as a gift to my mom
2) Cut my hair as a sacrifice on the altar of ‘looking decent for once’
or
3) Get a tattoo of my mom
Truth be told, I don’t think number 3 is all that popular, since according to mom only convicts and bikers have tattoos. Anywho. Check it out, and help me the hell out…
Even though I don’t consider myself to be a stuff-junkie, I’ve found myself in a situation where I more or less everyday walk around with a bunch of gear. The stuff itself isn’t all that interesting; An external harddrive, a USB2-stick, compact digital camera, iPod & cellphone.
It struck me that I’m a walking storage facility. Let’s calculate a bit
iPod: 40gb
HD: 80gb
USB2-stick: 2gb
Digicam: 500mb
Cellphone: 80mb (Memory Stick + built in memory)
Not accounting for the formatting, that’s 122.580GB of storage that I carry around with me more or less all the time. (Which is why sewing a really nifty backpack is quite high on my to-do list.)
Ok, so the harddrive is usually nine tenths full, as is the iPod. camera, stick & cell are say one third full.
There’s no point to this post, just that it’s all rather cool. If I could only offset my lazy monkey-brain memory with some on the hd, I’d be set!
And of course, I took a look at my desk and there’s roughly 300 cds & dvds (50% of each), a harddrive from a bricket iPod, one 4GB and one 40GB hd that I used in my bondage-iMac & a DSLR with 512mb. A lot of space.
If all the empty and unused space in the world saved data in a forest and there was no-one there to use it, would it make a wooshing sound or would only the trees shudder because someone sooner or later would try to print all that data?
Yesterday, in spite of the hang-over, I could actually be seen whistling and even humming to myself. Not often that happens; I’m in a sweet spot – I’m not totally broke, I finished my two week stint at the store, the exhibition came together “well” (by “well” I mean “it’s over and no-one has hit me in the face”) and the allergies & accompanying asthma have left me for now.
Here’s the video I’m showing at monumental, followed by the text from the exhibition catalogue.
“The uncontested order of things: A slideshow curated by Google image search.” 2006
More a proof of concept than a finished work, The uncontested order of things was created by following a set of predefined rules applied to google image search.
The search query consisted of each letter of the Swedish alphabet (A-Z + Å, Ä, Ö), and the first forty resulting images were downloaded. Duplicate images were not downloaded, nor were gif animations, although they retained their position in the “top forty”, resulting in some queries resulting in less than forty downloaded images.
One random image per queried letter was then put into a slideshow in the order of the alphabet, and the resulting movie was adapted for the 90-second screen time.
The motivation for this process, of which the resulting slideshow is but one possible combination (let alone one possible way to present the combinations) is:
1) To see how many apparently random images we can fit into a narrative, and
2) Given the omnipresence of Google, how easily received/understood/accepted the images are when
3) A qualitative analysis of the images (and search results in general) shows an (apparently) unproportional US/EU presence, which in turn should
4) Kick us in the nuts for too easily accepting the perceived “freedom of the Internet”, and not reflecting enough on what our online behavior tells of ourselves, but also what actual and very manifest power we are supporting by our actions.
And of course, since Mark actually beat me in ping-pong this afternoon, T don’t command respenct around here anymore, and am thus reduced to making comments in poor taste about people who are dead:
Our Apropos 90 show opened yesterday, so now we only have another show at gallery 300m3 to worry about in two weeks time. The catalogue for the Valand spring show is here: www.valand.gu.se [2MB pdf link]
The ones finishing their MA this year showed at Konsthallen, but even though I made my best effort imbibing, nothing much was exciting (mind you, I rarely find anything exciting, so this is more of a rule than an exception), although some of the stuff shown by the un-masters was quite nice. (Problem is that as long as we’re in an institution, there’s a feeling of school assignment creeping in. It’s not necessarily a reflection on the work, but rather that we’re showing at the university with other people who are our class-mates)
The rest of the evening followed a by now familiar pattern of fine drink, fine people and some fine ping-pong.
And it’s always rewarding to look twice at images. For example, I hadn’t realised that the terminator was at the same party as I, standing behind me.
Found this on boingboing.net this morning, and it’s making it’s rounds on the Internets. An unknown cab driver was mistaken for the guy he was driving and was interviewed live on BBC in regards to the lawsuit Apple (the old Beatles record company) had brough against Apple (the computer company). The video isn’t fun unless you know this, and now you know this.
inspired by this, i used up all of five minutes of my employers time to do this:
*Update*
Ok ok, so the guy turned out not to be a cab driver but a guy looking for work at the BBC. Still a case of mistaken identity though, and his initial reaction is golden. Doesn’t matter really, he’ll be “that BBC cab driver guy” and people will argue in bars going “nuh-uh, he wasn’t a cabdriver” “was to”, etc.
I don’t know if I should be surprised, but here are the search strings that have guided people to the blog…
So, two people looking for kiddie porn light ended up on my site, and one whos brain must have been rotting in another way did as well. I Googled it, and the blog shows up as number 9 if you search for the term. The tracker that started it all was on top of the list. Oh dear, how we all leave our marks…
Ok ok, so I’ve just had a boring day, no need to deny that something fun might actually happen sooner or later, but today has been ugh.
From the top:
* Long distance shot of demons milling about an illegal party.
* Mark points in the direction of fun happening.
* Anna enjoys herself in Rasmus bike while he pokes the chain a bit.
* Anna enjoys herself in Rasmus bike, while rasmus yells something.
* Handbook for physical theraphists who like to snap peoples necks.
I got me some new shades
[da-dum, da-dum]
And I think I look quite cool
[da-dum, da-dum]
Even though my hair bahaves badly
[da-dum, da-dum]
Like a beaver on steroids
[da-dum, da-dum]
And my nose is full of tree semen
[da-da-dum, da-dum]
Which makes me sneeze all the time
[da-dum, da-dum]
Ooh yeah! (etc.)
I haven’t been listening to new music lately. Apart from browsing the rather slim IDM vaults of 15megsoffame.com, I’ve been dedicating myself to Terry Pratchett most of the time. That, or recorded lectures (the teaching company is a favourite) on topics I can’t even recall at the moment, although I’m sure I’ve become a better and more confused person as a result.
As it turns out, my hampstering has lead me to have more music on my computer & iPod than I’ve had time to listen to, cause I found thunder road by Tortoise, sung by Will Oldham (aka bonnie ‘prince’ billy), and I really liked it. like, I am almost certain that there was a hint of a tear poking it’s head out of one of my eyes at some point. And that’s quite a lot.
Today I looked for the lyrics to the song, and was only slightly pertubed when it turns out that the song was originally written by Bruce Springsteen of all people. (Wikipedia article on the song here, and the lyrics to it are on this here fan-page.) I’ve always branded myself as someone who doesn’t like Bruce Springsteen, but this sounds false when compared to another statement I tend to do, which is that it’s content, not form that’s important. Since the song was written thirty years ago, I must’ve heard it somewhere before. The only reason I don’t recall it must be cause it sucked.
Then will oldham sings it, and it makes perfect sense. Form over content, indeed.
[audio:Thunder_Road.mp3]
Another brilliant track from the same album is another cover: Love is love by Lungfish. That’s about it from the album though – just get those two. The rest is rather bleak, if not outright crappy (the album is The Brave and the Bold, btw)
