Monday Morning “Impediment to Productivity” – 20080929

Hi,
As a wise bear once said “Bother”, we didn’t get to see Kavisha (she is playing out at Harmony Row in November) so I will have to give Cliff a heads up and book a couple of tickets.

Life continues it’s usual “avalanche down the mountain” pace, not really a complaint just an observation. The upside is I am listening to some fabulous music (if you are awake longer you obviously get more time to listen). So the current state of play with the iPod Touch is that the actual unit is amazing. Being able to access both the RSS feeds and YouTube is pretty damn useful in finding stuff to add to the duggup list.

If I was buying it now I would probably get the 16M or 32M version but it would just mean that I would carry more stuff in the “permanent” list. Now for the downside, iTunes is the most appallingly bad piece of software I have run into for ages. I know I have complained about my frustrations with it before but I installed the Version 8 upgrade and it actually got worse.

There is a very cool program called Media Monkey and with one exception it covers all the major things I need to have happen. I am hoping that someone will write a plugin to handle the podcasts the way I need.

With the crop circle season (what a dud this year) coming to an end, I am going to include a Ted Talk each week, they really are an amazing collection of ideas.

The MFI stuff will be along in another week or so.

So on with the sillies…
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I stumbled on a great site called “For Arts Sake” its part of On networks “new media” operation.
http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/for-arts-sake

The show is a series of interviews with current American artists in a variety of fields. This is the sort of stuff that the ABC used to do on a Sunday. Here is an example .
“Marc Trujillo is an American painter. His paintings depict gas stations, shopping malls, big chain stores and restaurants that are present in American urban and suburban landscapes.

Trujillo’s studio practice follows Old Master techniques. Before beginning the final oil painting, Trujillo completes a grisaille, a monochromatic under-painting that allows him to prepare and layout the composition and perspective of each work. ”
http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/for-arts-sake/marc-trujillo—painter

This is a great impediment to productivity. (It looks good on the iPod too)
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TED Talk of the week: This week have a look at Louise Leakey as she asks, “Who are we?” The question takes her to the Rift Valley in Eastern Africa, where she digs for the evolutionary origins of humankind and suggests a stunning new vision of our competing ancestors.

Louise Leakey is the third generation of her family to dig for humanity’s past in East Africa. In 2001, Leakey and her mother, Meave, found a previously unknown hominid, the 3.5-million-year-old Kenyanthropus platyops, at Lake Turkana — the same region where her father, Richard, discovered the “Turkana Boy” fossil, and near Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, where her grandparents, Louise and Mary Leakey, discovered the bones of Homo habilis.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/louise_leakey_digs_for_humanity_s_origins.html

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Some odd bits of “Blame”.
ChrisF sent this one in.

“I’m not sure if this is universally funny or if it’s just me 🙂
Chris
http://www.snotr.com/video/1630

Well I found it funny, slightly disturbing but funny.

KaleneC sent in a Lego piece (no not a little blue block a link)

“Um, this got sent to Andy- his friend is a Springsteen tragic- and I thought that you’d like it.
Nothing to do with me!
Kalene

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq2zQhkGnMw ”

Well despite the vigorous hand washing, it’s a ripper. But then I would probably fit into the description of Springsteen tragic as well.

Jools spotted this and despite the million of drummer jokes that went through my brain (the good taste chip kicked in just in time) basically I want one.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=wjZNzn-zzhc

Jools also spotted this (and we haven’t done cats for a bit)
“This cracked me up. I’m sure it will at least raise a smile as an MMI.
Love, Jools ”

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I love the idea behind the Sorted Books project. The deal is you pick books out of your collection whose spines, when placed in a sequence, make a story or a sentence. This really is such a cool idea. Think of it as a variation on “found object’ art or maybe non destructive cutups. I am sure that’s an oxymoron.
http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/languagetranslation/sortedbooks-sharkjournal.php

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I spotted this at Boing Boing. I have always suspected that MacDonalds is dangerous. I’ll preserve myself with Single Malts thank you very much. Here is Cory’s intro

“Karen Hanrahan has been using the same McDonald’s hamburger as a prop in her “Healthy Choices for Children” class since 1996 — 12 years! — and it’s hardly aged a day in all that time. McDonald’s should add “immortality” to its list of Unique Selling Propositions for its burgers (unless Karen has an ornate oil painting of the burger in her living room in which it slowly ages, grows mouldy, and decomposes).”

http://bestwellnessconsultant.com/2008/09/23/1996-mcdonalds-hamburger-karen-hanrahan-best-of-mother-earth.aspx

This is possibly the scariest thing you are likely to see this week.
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Here are two sites playing with the same idea. they “paint with light”.
First up Ryan Cashman describes Light-Paint Piano Player –
“Animated light paintings of a little piano player performing. Filmed at night with the lovely I-5 and San Diego skyline in the background. I would like to thank everyone for the fantastic feedback I have received lately. To answer a few questions, I wrote the music and recorded it first. The frames were photographed with a Canon Rebel using 20-30 second exposure time. I used a small green LED keychain light to draw each frame. Once all the positions were photographed they were strung together and synchronized to the music in After Effects.”

and Second, Jools spotted this collection

“A MMI for the delection of your readers.
Love, Jools
http://www.lapp-pro.de/ ”

Damn this stuff is pretty.

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It’s time for our “Duggup was a lot of fun this week” bit. Jools found a group called “Jewellers Eye”, a very cool English folkband and I spent the week bouncing all over the place.

My favourite this week is “Chairlift”, yep the dudes in the new apple ad. Have a look at Red Car Wire as well. Insidious pop at it’s best. Head over to http://duggup.com.au/ have a listen and let me know what you think.

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Flash Game Dept: Impediments to Productivity is a the name at the top and it’s Monday so lets bring capitalism to it’s knees (unless you happen to be one of my clients in which case this one is blocked at the firewall.. Just kidding).

I missed “Talk Like A Pirate Day” yet again so to make up for it here is a game where you can sail around in a pirate ship, snuff the odd sea monster and generally have a lot of fun.

SeaFight is this weeks game. Once you get the hang of it and acquire some decent ammunition, the fun really kicks in. Move up a few levels and you can take on other pirates, very silly.

Once you are all logged in click Take Me to the Battle and start harpooning sea monsters and attacking ships. When you run out of ammo back to the main screen. bid on ammunition in the bazaar, upgrade weapons (no you CANT have a nuke) in the weapons tab, pick up quests in the pub or upgrade your ship in the shipyard. Join a crew, or a guild. Play for free or there is an upgrade for a premium account. The free stuff will keep you busy until next week when we all find something new to blow off the day.
http://us1.seafight.com/

Well that’s enough for this week.

Have a good one.

thatch

{Currently listening to Suzanne Vega and Bela Fleck}
{Currently reading: Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat }
{Quick Status Check: Video codecs are Hell}
{Crop Circle Status: The total for September is now 6 and in a fab, last minute splurge, the aliens seem to have noticed that the fields are being cropped so they had better extract the digit. Can’t last much longer I’m afraid
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2008/2008.html }

Published
Categorized as Mondays

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