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Here's an interesting read: the currency of Iceland is basically worthless. The artificial currency of a computer game created in Iceland, however, still has value. In fact, it has more value then the "real" currency.
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I propose holding anyone that describes themselves as an "e-marketer" (or anything remotely similar) down and beating them with sticks until they agree to tell all future prospective clients this simple truth from th above article: "instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products"
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You! Yes, you! Visit this link, and buy a copy of Matt Jones' "Get Excited And Make Things" poster. Then hang it some place where you will see it often. It will be morally uplifting for you, and the proceeds from the sale will benefit Creative Commons, which is a tremendously excellent thing to do.
Links For Monday 6th April 2009
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I've been saying that using URL shorteners is a bad idea for for a while, so I thought I'd link to Joshua Schachter's more cogent and better put together argument that details a more specific list of the reasons why.
Links For Saturday 4th April 2009
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British art stalwart D'Israeli take a look at the architectual and design history of one of the greatest of all the future cities: Mega City One.
Between Art and Architecture
I finally achieved a personal ambition – a shot St Paul’s across the Millennium Bridge without people in it. The composition is a long way from perfect, and I really wish that sodding seagul hadn’t been there, but I had about five seconds to snap this, as there was a bloke coming up behind me. but still, I got the damn thing. One of London’s best views, unspoiled by humans. I’ll try again at some point in the summer, I think.
You wait for ages…
This is not intended to badger people, and I apologise for spaming the friends pages of uninterested parties, but I’m aware that the poll I posted yesterday was posted late at night, and may have gotten lost/buried down people’s friends pages today.
It’s a poll about who might be interested in coming to my place in Tooting to get your picture taken in an unusual outfit that you might happen to own. So obviously, if that’s not you, then you can skip this, but it’s just that when I mooted the project a while back I got a reasonably enthusiastic response from a decent number of people, but when it comes to actually to arrange something to happen, the response has dropped off markedly.
So: if you in the course of your life, dress up in funny outfits, for goth/fetish/steampunk/LARP/furry/steampunk/other reasons, and want a pair of photos of you taken, please, pop back and fill the poll in…
Links For Friday 3rd April 2009
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He starts out spelling how we're fucked on an economic and environmental level. And then he gets in to what we're doing about it. Some of this shit is fascinating – a set of tools for a completely new system of economics.
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By the end of the 21st century, there are predicted to be 19 cities with a population of over 20 million. London is one of them, currently has a population of around 7-8 million, and large parts of it's infrastructure are creaking at the seams. We urgently need more thinking on how we will cope with the supercities of the near future, and I'll watch this project with interest.
Photography: At The Bus Stop
Bet you all thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?
I hadn’t. But a couple of days after I first posted about it, they started digging up the road. They finished digging it up a couple of weeks back, but I was busy with stuff at work, and other randoms stuff, and didn’t really have time to think about it. And anyway: the weather’s improving a bit. And while I do want some shots in the rain, my general preference is likely to be for sunlight. Of some kind.
Those of you wondering what the fuck I’m talking about, by the way, should go here, but the brief version is that I have a number of friends who belong to one or more subcultures that involve dressing up, and I want to do a series of photos with willing people of two shots each – one in normal clothes, the other dressed up in their finery, in identical poses at the bus stop.
I’m planning to get groups of 3-6 people in at a time – that should give me enough time to get decent photos of each person, and mean that we’ve enough space about the place for people to get changed, apply make-up, and so on.
So, for those of you interested (and if you didn’t say you were interested last time, you can always say so now), please indicate dates that you would be willing/able to lug a costume to my place in Tooting, and have a few shots taken of you, in exchange for all the tea and biscuits you can consume, and hi-res digital copies of the two resulting images.
I’ll then drop people emails trying to sort out specific dates/times/groups. I’ll probably want a range of daytime/evening/night shots.
NB: like I said last time – this is a moderately busy bus stop, on a main road. You won’t be out there in your costume very long, and it is literaly outside my front door, but still: it will be pretty public. That’s the appeal of the project – the very ordinary context. So if you’re nervous about being seen in public in the outfit you want to use, do say – we can always try and arrange a night shoot, when the street is emptier, but I would like *some* day shoots if I can…
Everyone follow that? Good. Please to be ticking the boxes.
Shadowplay
I was round an art exhibition the other week with some friends. Some of it was unmitigated toss, some of it was OK, and mostly it was the building that was the star. But here’s a shot of one of the better works. Still if I’m honest, my photo of this piece appeals to me far more than the piece itself did. This is another shot where I knew exactly what effect I’d be post-processing for, removing detail, and replacing it with heavy shadow, before I even took the shot.
Links For Thursday 2nd April 2009
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100 quid. For the kind of computer you can shove in a corner, hook to a network, and hack to do lots and lots of different things. And it'll do it silently, and without eating power. This may be handy at some point in the near-ish future.
Links For Wednesday 1st April 2009
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Steve Albini's breakdown of exactly how much a band can expect now to earn in a normal record industry contact. Figures would need to be adjusted for inflation, but I bet they're still proportionally the same. I've seen this a few times over the years, I just wanted to log it in case I need to refer to it again.
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Some notes about the practicalities of nanomachinery in the body – both the propulsion/navigation, and the means by which they might operate on us.
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Good to know that my future cybernetic implants aren't likely to need batteries.
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After the links the other week, here's a talk about how they newspapers might yet be kept alive: by making them beautiful objects.
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A fascinating talk on the some of the possible neuroscientific explanations for some of the more remarkable and ill-understood operations of the brain.
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I shall be sending these in future. Well, maybe not, but there are a few things in here that made me laugh.)
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This could be a really useful little learning tool.