FINALLY! And they’re pretty spot-on too. Like the map above, which I plugged in for cyclists coming from Greenpoint/Williamsburg up into Long Island City, the map actually recommends taking 23rd Street, which is also my preferred route. Of course there are nuances to the maps that I don’t agree with. Like how they recommend to ride out Jackson Avenue for a couple blocks until you get to 21st Street, then turn left onto 21st Street. If you know either of those streets, you know they’re riddled with fast-paced taxis, big buses and holes in the ground that gremlins live in. Not safe. I prefer to immediately head out 11th Street or even safer I cut over 49th Ave to Vernon Blvd then ride the Blvd BIKE ROUTE out to 44th or 43rd Avenue before cutting over to 23rd Street to head north. Also, once north of the Plaza I don’t like heading east on 41st Ave. It’s uphill, and crosses two major intersections that cabbies use to head towards the bridge. I prefer to head to 39th Ave and have to circle back a half-block, which I see as a fair trade in exchange for increased safety and visibility.
But it’s in beta and they’re taking recommendations. My Android phone is not yet updated with a bicycle icon, but soon enough – and this shows you why Google is so much more a pro-active company than Microsoft or Apple Mac (who make great hardware but never spend the capital to make socially positive apps like this for their user-base!).
JUST TO CLARIFY: The bicycle directions are available when you “Get Directions” – drop down the transportation menu and select “Bicycling”!
the first is this Hong Kong film Future X-Cops which should be released the first week of February, next month, and looks to have some wonderful effects. Personally I love my Asian sci-fi because they just have a different sensibility, where science is subtle and beautiful but also outlandish:
(As for guns for arms, does anybody else want a Major Lazer movie to happen now?)
Wednesday January 6 was the first Dorkbot of the second decade of the 21st millennium – it is otherwise abbreviated as the “1g6s-th” Dorkbot. Hosted at the marvelous Location One non-profit space in SoHo.
The man as he is, and the man as he should have been. Douglas Repetto is the founder of Dorkbot and wanted to show me this recent photo of him sporting a ’stache (mid-shower) not too different than the fur on my face right now.
Now for the dorks:
The first presentation was by NYCCNC.com, a milling workshop housed in an Upper East Side apartment! Quite impressive, and the presenter John Saunders had a working sample of this target-practice machine that was fabricated entirely by his milling machine.
Next up Natalie Campbell gave a presentation about SP Weather Station, which is a collaborative project between her and Heidi Neilson; the weather station sits on the rooftop of Flux Factory where I currently maintain long-term Residency. While the weather station’s main medium is digitally-collected data, they then turn that data over to artists who interpret the data visually through printing, book arts, photographs and silkscreens, among other artistic processes.
And the final presentation: co-presented by Victor Adán and Douglas Repetto, they demonstrated an antiquated pen plotter printer and how they’ve managed to continue using these mostly serial-driven devices with modern computers using drivers they compiled at chiplotle.org – now that’s a spicy plotter library! (the ebay screen above was because Douglas was showing his ebay search string to narrow results to find specific pen plotters at bargain basement prices!) The results of their pen plotter printing can be seen on the image at the top. Pretty exciting!
I’m a fan of most-things-map, but this one has me really sad. Final Fantasy XIII has was released in the last weeks of 2009 in Japan, and has already been heavily criticized for its extremely linear playtime and at times lack of actual user-control. Some have described the game like hitting buttons to watch a CG movie. But with regards to the linear comments and critiques, take a look at the following map, which is approximately the first 6 hours of gameplay, and you’ll understand why RPG-fans and non-linear gamers alike are upset, quite upset:
go here, get this, go there, do that, beat that boss, proceed to next room, cross bridge, keep going, don’t turn, just straight. booooooooooooring!
