Archives of September 2004
Smooth finish
My girlfriend got a green iPod Mini and iTunes shows it's colour correctly in the icon appearing at the music source list. Things like these seem to be idiomatic to Apple and only to Apple. Although it admittedly is a totally unimportant detail, it's very distinctive. Could someone imagine that software from Microsoft or Creative had been detailed to have nuances like this? This kind of thoroughness emanating from hardware to software? It'd be more like "The colour of your music device is not defined. Would you like to launch the Music Device Configuration wizard?"
Categories: Gear
Posted by Matias at 02.09.2004 20:00 (3 years ago) | 1 comment | 0 trackbacks
Stealing fair use, another attempt
Here are three pastime activities:
- Stealing a car.
- Stealing a purse.
- Downloading movies from the Internet.
It seems that even in Finland the entertainment industry is sneakily trying to extend the general public's concept of stealing to non-material goods. The advertisements shown in movie theaters include one that places all these on the same level. It's probably produced by the righteous folks of Motion Picture Association of America. According to my memory, the advertisement shows a bloke trying to brake into a car, then "You wouldn't steal a car" is displayed on the screen. Then a similar scene with a purse. After that a man is in a rental outlet or a store, nicking a dvd. Finally, someone is downloading a movie.
Continue reading "Stealing fair use, another attempt"... (526 words)
Categories: Advocacy
Posted by Matias at 05.09.2004 10:26 (3 years ago) | 5 comments | 0 trackbacks
Doomed information
While listening to Subconscious Dissolution into the Continuum by Esoteric, it occurred to me the musical information in their productions can be found from a different place than usually is the case. This is probably quite obvious to scholars of musical theory, but anyway, I try to explain my perceptions.
Continue reading "Doomed information"... (371 words)
Categories: Information, Music
Posted by Matias at 05.09.2004 18:41 (3 years ago) | 2 comments | 0 trackbacks
Top 20 records
I happened to stumble upon this page that claims to list the best 100 record in the world and was alarmed that I have only two common records (Faust: The Faust Tapes and Comus: First Utterance). Hence, the author is mostly wrong.
Here is the correct list. However, top 100 is a bit too arduous for me right now, so I'll settle to top 20. The list is not definitive and is subject to change at any arbitrary moment. Only one record from each band or artist is allowed.
Continue reading "Top 20 records"... (218 words)
Categories: Music
Posted by Matias at 08.09.2004 19:24 (3 years ago) | 2 comments | 0 trackbacks
Mind's eye
Virtual Hallucinations appears to be quite an interesting and eerie project. Nash Baldwin, a medical doctor who also has a decree on computer science, created a virtual reality application that mimics the sensory experiments of actual schizophrenia patients. According to the article, cheerful, repeating voices and intrusive environment are haunting. I think the fact that the visitors know it's an actual perception of a mental patient may have a multiplying effect on the world. Although this may seem a bit callous, I thought this kind of knowledge could be useful in creating a very interesting computer game.
Continue reading "Mind's eye"... (141 words)
Categories: Games
Posted by Matias at 11.09.2004 00:02 (3 years ago) | 3 comments | 0 trackbacks
Christian Apocalyptic Fiction
Until yesterday, I was completely unaware that an entire subgenre of science fiction called Christian Apocalyptic Fiction exists. It sounds just too good to pass! I read about it from The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling - one of the characters of the book read CAF novels - and I searched the Internet for it with results aplenty. CAF seems to be quite a thriving subculture, the biggest publisher has allegedly sold 40 million copies!
Continue reading "Christian Apocalyptic Fiction"... (196 words)
Categories: Literature
Posted by Matias at 12.09.2004 10:11 (3 years ago) | 4 comments | 0 trackbacks
Browsers of our lives
The browser soap opera got quite more interesting. Google is apparently building a browser based on Mozilla. This might well have the effect on getting rid of the inscrutable IE, which has become a similar technical burden Netscape 4 was.
The best statistics available to me, first-hand, are from homokaasu.org and according to them, during the last year, usage of IE has diminished from 82.6% (Oct 2003) to 64.1% (Sep 2004, days 1-20). These figures are based on 2,7 million visits from 1,9 million unique visitors so there must be statistical significance. The logs have been analyzed with software par excellent, Awstats.
Continue reading "Browsers of our lives"... (261 words)
Categories: Web
Posted by Matias at 21.09.2004 21:46 (3 years ago) | 0 comments | 0 trackbacks
ProximityMapper
Introduction
ProximityMapper is a visualization utility which combines data from image files and gps output (gpx file format). By combining the timestamps of the image metadata and gps coordinate entries, the proximities of different images can be found out.
ProximityMapper is the one of the outcomes of the Iceland Inside and Out workshop of the Trans-Cultural Mapping series organized by RIXC.
Continue reading "ProximityMapper"... (369 words)
Categories: Art, Creations, Information, Programming
Posted by Matias at 30.09.2004 11:47 (3 years ago) | 3 comments | 0 trackbacks
Art+Communication 2004 festival: Trans-Cultural Mapping
I'll be in Riga, Latvia, participating to the Art+Communication: Trans Cultural Mapping festival from September 30th to October 3rd. I'll be giving a presentation about my Iceland Inside and Out project, ProximityMapper, tentatively scheduled to Saturday from 16 to 18 (not entire 2 hours, others will be doing presentations in the same slot, too). The festival is organized by the very active Riga Centre for New Media Culture, RICX.
Continue reading "Art+Communication 2004 festival: Trans-Cultural Mapping"... (120 words)