Category: Found

Pretty man, pretty man, show me the pretty things!

I have a weak spot for stuff that looks pretty, and my work at the museum of architecture gives me an opportunity to browse architecture and design sites without feeling too guilty about it. I thought I’d share a few pretty things I’ve stumbled upon.

Letman has a lot of typographic work up on display at his website: www.letman.com

If you have three hours idle time and wish to browse slightly pretentious but very neat graphic design: catalogtree.net

Cheap-o hosting and HDV cameras allows you, yes you, to be the host of your own show. I’ve found that this everyday cinema is a good way to look at architecture and street-life; much like as Ian commented a while back, that my videos often are of a verité quality, there’s something inspiring about a guy who walks around with a video camera shooting landmarks in London.

Trucker Tom is taking his HDV camera on the road to show you the parts of north America that he’s travelling: hdv.mevio.com

[flv:Truckertom.flv 400 200]

—update—

And here’s a list of inspirational images of robots: psdtuts.com

Iraq troopers

I recently finished reading Starship Troopers, a rather boring book full of military and pseudo-psychological jingoism, and then I stumbled upon the article below.

The things that carried him
The Air Force honor guard moved only one case at a time and, as is their protocol, whenever a case was moved, no matter the distance, it was given a three-second salute, present arms. The airmen carried each case onto the Red Carpet, placing them carefully in neat rows of three. When the last case was in place in front of the cargo door, the general-officer party stood at attention before it, and Sparks said a prayer.

Besides being a gripping article, well written and researched, it’s also an exceptional tale of transformation. The body of a dead soldier takes on so much meaning; It is saluted, posthumously promoted, polished, presented, wept over by strangers. The death of the soldier is portrayed exactly as the harrowing loss for the family as it is, but it is the metamorphosis of a living soldier into someone whom we respect for dying, for having eschewed his life and risen out of the body bag a martyr, that makes the text a particularly interesting read.

It’s worth your time just for the description of the ritual.

Online dating? Good idea.

A link from mac.feber.se told about a new app for the ipod that manages your dating profile from DatingDNA.com, a site that only allows people that match your profile to actually view your profile.

It’s mostly people in the states, but since it’s always fun to fill out questioners and see statistics of yourself I spent ten minutes filling the profile out. My dating DNA is 903-869-182 it turns out. I’m unfamiliar with the whole “dating” thing – it’s something I know mostly via Seinfeldt reruns – but I’m interested in tests and mechanics of personal traits.

The site seems to be a combination of We Neither, and Personal DNA. Go do the test and see if I show up as a match.

Intelligent drain music

A tale of two things I saw yesterday:
Drainpipe from bath makes IDM rhytms
It’s snowing just when I’m getting used to the whole global warming thing.

Now use up a bit more of that precious energy by watching the result:
Update 2012: Revver.com has folded and so has all the videos I hosted there

At the moment I’m reading ayn rands’ Atlas shrugged. I’m one fifth into this epic tome, and the main reason I’m going through it is because it’s one of those bestselling “classics”, and is widely hailed by those on the slightly right-ish scale of politics.

It reads like shit, honestly. All the characters that have appeared so far are either strong-willed, skilled and focused people or weaklings that simper about public good but have no balls to do anything. It reads like the rantings of a 13-year old that’s stumbled upon an op-ed by friedman for the first time and seen a quote of nietzsche in the bathroom stall, trying to sound like an adult.

I know I sounded like that. I wrote a flaming condemnation of Saddam Hussein at the time of the whole Kuwait intermezzo, comparing him to Hitler. I was 12 years old and was paraphrasing one newspaper or another – I would like to hope that I’ve matured somewhat since.

Then again, Ayn did state that she was writing a book to put flesh on her theories on objectivism. Basically, she’s an über-capitalist (there’s this retarded notion that the term “anarcho-capitalism” has any validity and should be used on objectivism. “Bah” I say), and this might be one of the redeeming qualities of the book – science fiction as a political manifesto. (Doesn’t come close to Ursula Le Guin, obviously)

As it goes: “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

The audio-book version is available at thepiratebay.org in case you feel like it.

Comparative babyism

Gotta touch up on the essay today, after a weekend drunk/sleep.

Let’s start with my baby is smaller than your baby. World tiniest born (alive) baby is leaving the hospital, and the doctor (or someone) who just had to take a picture so that we can go all ooh and aah didn’t have anything medical looking to compare it to and used a pen:

And I’ve always had a weak spot for political cartoons:


Click image for more

And here’s some grainy footage from the fundraising party that the label copy/past threw last weekend:

The sound of fame:

I’ve been trying to find a good group to do stuff with. y’know, stuff. Like pat each other on the back and give feedback on bat-shit crazy ideas of better ways to distribute hazelnuts. Or whatever.

Enter cambrianhouse.com which tries to use the power of crowds. I.e. you submit an outline for an idea or software or whatever that can be made and distributed via computers, and others get to vote on the project and sign up to help out with it. If it goes into production you get at up to 10% of the generated revenue. (minimum 5% I think)

It’s one possible way of generating income by contributing on something that you might not be able to manage yourself, and I’ve been looking for these things for a while. I’m ahead of my time when it comes to “survival of the fittest”. Basically, I need to be put in a dark room, fed twice a day, and have a group of other monkeys doing the same, cooperating on realising ideas.

It’s either that, or find a pimp that’s impressed with that special trick that I do and keeps me on retainer. Check out the site, join up and at least vote on the different projects. The site is nowhere near a large enough audience to be functioning properly, and most people write shit ideas (“make an online id-card that works” wtf?) that really need to be slapped down proper and good. And stay down until they learn to behave and do some research.

Here’s the link again: cambrianhouse.com

In the mean time, here’s a video for your enjoyment: