normalblog

YES! Google bicycling maps!

nick — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 06:59:37 +0000

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”!

I never did like the Managment

nick — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:47:48 +0000

bossing me around… who do they think they are anyhow!?

(just to clarify, I found this in storage. circa 1998-1999, when I worked at SAIC – probably a joke but knowing that institution maybe not. and yes, I keep things for long time.)

A Proper (retroactive) Heating System

nick — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:30:23 +0000

This is a little late, but not really. Flux Factory finally started its first Kickstarter campaign with a drive to purchase and install a new heating system (unit, ducting, labor) for our remodeled facility in Long Island City’s Dutch Kills neighborhood.

We’re only two weeks shy of the arrival of Spring, so we’re definitely through the thick of Winter, but this campaign is still as valid as ever. Oddly enough on the day we made this film it was also warm outside, but there were definitely days where everybody was wearing 3, 4, 5 layers in order to stay toasty. Plenty of times my sock-layer scene was lived out. Or hot water became super-chilled in minutes. It wasn’t always very pleasant. We survived – clearly – but the building still needs work, adjustments and improvements. So help us raise the money we need by pledging. With Kickstarter, your money is only pledged if we meet our target goal of $5000 – and our thinking is that if everybody we know gave us $1 we should be good (yes, we know mad numbers of peoples!).

CLICK HERE TO PLEDGE $ WITH KICKSTARTER

scroll down to watch the incredibly awesome and hilarious video made by Gregg Conde and Jaime Iglehart – big ups to them for their hard work on this project.

CLICK HERE TO PLEDGE $ WITH KICKSTARTER

tonight, We Are Swimming Cities

nick — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:33:48 +0000

The Ocean of Blood, a sub-project of the Swimming Cities, are having a silent auction tonight to raise funds to sail 5 boats down the Ganges River in India. Here’s a snippet from the event listing:

The SWIMMING CITIES art collective is holding our first art auction fundraiser for our upcoming sculptural boat and performance project on the Ganges River, in India, 2010. The event will include the unveiling of the first finished boat prototype, an 18′x8′ hand-crafted stainless steel catamaran, powered by a motorcycle driven paddle wheel.

My “Thought Island: Active” will be available in the auction (I’m not in the artist list but it’ll be there, so will I after 9). Here are the event deets and map:
7:00 – 11:00 p.m. – art auction
11:00 – 1:00 a.m. – after (dance) party
$10 door
@ 56 Walker Street, NYC
(facebook event link with more info)

images from the Brucennial

nick — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:00:32 +0000

UPDATE: full photo set on my Flickr

Some complications on my blog server meant I didn’t get around to posting these images until now, but the moment is still valid as the Brucennial is on view until the 12th of April. Hell between now and then I plan to travel a couple thousand miles and telecommute around the globe many times over, all while plenty of art lives in a storefront on West Broadway – point is go see it if you’re near, it’ll be there. I wouldn’t say it’s worth going out of your way to go see, but then I don’t say that about much these days. Most art, especially these smorgasbord-style showcases to me are a dime a dozen. There’s a lot of artists and a lot more art out there than one person can ever know or see. That’s not to downplay the importance of the event or the art, because there are some really smart pieces in the show, and chances are in the next six weeks you’ll be near Canal and W. Broadway anyways, so just keep it on your radar and go see it! But these pictures are from the opening night.

Of course the other main reason to go to these events is the crowd. I go for my people, and to meet or see new people, and to experience the vibe. It’s less to me about the art (you never get to see it all anyways), and more about the sea of personalities and joy of us taking over a (temporary) space for a limited duration of time. So meet Man Bartlett, Marin Tockman and Ian Montgomery (our hearts are fluttering, btw):

Eventually it got so packed that those who arrived fashionably late got stuck out in the impending Snowicane blizzard-storm. And yeah, all the Miller High Life was gone by the time they did get in (about a 1 hour 30 minute line!).

Oh yeah, there were outdoor plen-air porta-potties. Brilliant! Here’s a view from inside one of the stalls (I can multi-task, as I was pissing at the same time):

the 4th moon cosmonaut gif

nick — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:10:02 +0000

who wants to watch The Mosquito Coast tonight!?!?!

nick — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:29:08 +0000

With Snowmageddon aka Snowicane aka Snownami outside, and every other bloody facebook-event driven happening tonight cancelled, it seems appropriate to watch… THE MOSQUITO COAST!

Who’s with me!?

TONIGHT: Best Exhibition Ever

nick — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:30:37 +0000

If you can make it out tonight, in just less than 11 hours from now, will be Flux Factory’s inaugural exhibition, HOUSE BROKEN. We’ve been working since last April converting a former greeting card warehouse into a workable arts centre. We’re opening with over 80 artists’ installed works and performances. It’s going to be a mad house! These pictures don’t begin to show the half of it. The place is chock full of art almost to the point that you don’t know what is art and what is part of the building! Artists have designed our doorbell, tiled a bathroom, built chandeliers, installed NO SMOKING signs, and laser-etched kitchenware, designed table cloths, painted pipes! SO MUCH ART!

And yes, we have birds! In an aviary!

thank you NASA – awesome photo of Snowmageddon surrounding NYC

nick — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:10:37 +0000

Great photo from yesterday’s Snowmageddon moving up the eastern seaboard and surrounding my home, NYC. the near-solid white line on the southern edge of the storm is particularly impressive. You can visit the MODIS web to see a larger version.

recent delicious bookmarks, December 31 through February 9

nick — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:01:25 +0000

These are my bookmarks for December 31 through February 9:

500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
artists human types – not sure what to make of this actually
Top 100 Horror Movies: 2000-2010 (2000li Yılların En İyi 100 Korku … – pretty good list right here…
Install and configure Microsoft® Xbox™ and Xbox 360™ controllers under … – ubuntu on xbox – controllers guide
eth0: 2 days of high-tech geekfest – nerds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
batch processing – good tutorial
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
My Suit NY – custom-tailored suits
inspirational eggs " Kate in the Kitchen – good eats
CONSOLLECTION – finally someone did it.
Google Person Finder: Haiti Earthquake – kind of genius
Culture Pundits – while browsing on the train
hdmi to dvi-d – this would work
Can You Run It? Powered by System Requirements Lab – can your laptop run that game? clever, safe, analysis.
gateway ec14 – my new netbook, should probably keep this link online
5 minutes of garbage to biogas generated electricity in the Zabaleen … – electricity made from biogas (used tea bags!)
Monoslideshow — The ultra customizable Flash® image and video viewer … – Image Rotator is pretty good, but this one has some nice options too
The Linear RPG by =GirlFlash on deviantART – pretty genius!

ZEF SIDE makes me happy to be alive

nick — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:35:28 +0000

You heard it here first folks. Today is a good day to be alive, thanks to ZEF SIDE!

Whisky at Heathers (Maker’s Mark, Neat)

nick — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:59:30 +0000

I know I should be posting my “art” online more often. I often gloss over the process of scanning and resizing and uploading and tagging because there’s only so much time. But this drawing is especially meaningful to me if for no other reason than I think it’s a really good drawing! I also had a really nice discussion at Heathers with some Turkish bird whose name I can’t remember right now – has a C and an O in it – about the accessibility and immediacy of drawing. Which was nice because the conversation emerged after I made this drawing, in a sketchbook in my pocket, and my mind was already buzzing around these very ideas: about how an artist can be anywhere at anytime and drawing is always at their dispose. Including sitting at the bar by one’s lonesome, surrounded by young hip people – all it takes is pen and paper. I plan on donating this drawing to Heathers the next time I’m in the East Village, so if you happen to be there (everybody goes there at least once I reckon) give it an ogle, and salivate as I did over this Whisky at Heathers (Maker’s Mark, Neat), pen on paper, 2010.

today’s secret word: DISAPPOINTMENT

nick — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:01:01 +0000

Ahhh good times. Never thought Pee Wee would return, or be so culturally hip once he did come back. But thankfully he did, because this is priceless:

for a marvelous victory

nick — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:09:04 +0000

What I always liked about Howard Zinn was I never really thought of him as an Anarchist, but he simply was one. He rarely needed to use the word, instead he framed thoughts in an anarchistic manner, with particular attention to our comprehension and understanding of history via power structures – not your typical anarchist dogma-fare either.

read an interview here where Zinn uses the a-word probably more than all his other texts combined

NO SMOKING

nick — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:53:01 +0000

“NO SMOKING”, 2010, approximately 6″x14″, 3-color silkscreen on sheetmetal

Last summer when I was assisting with the renovation and remodeling of the current Flux Factory arts & residency centre, I removed a couple artifacts from the building that might have otherwise got built over, taken down or trashed without consideration. One of those artifacts was a “NO SMOKING” sign absolutely covered with white splatter paint, and aged to a yellow like a 35-year smoker’s teeth. I was attracted to the comical font, and the remnants of wear and tear on the surface of the sign. For Flux Factory’s upcoming inaugural show, my piece will be to replicate this NO SMOKING sign in silkscreen on sheet metal and install them throughout the building. As well as being a site-specific piece, the signs double as legal signage, since the organization is an office with commercial zoning the signs are a must. I plan on selling the works as limited edition (number yet to be determined), so if you’re interested in NO SMOKING your establishment, house or office, I reckon $10-$20/each once I price my materials and labor (3 color on sheet metal, with holes drilled for hanging).

the first Holoscape video

nick — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:38:57 +0000

back in September I did a collaborative one-day installation with Martina Mrongovius. She’s in Germany now working on the first printing of the Holoscape in holographic format, but in the meantime she sent me this video, a time lapse of our construction (and de-construction of sorts at the end) of the Holoscape landscape. Pretty coooool!

The Holoscape was a real-time installation made during the 2009 Conflux festival by artists Martina Mrongovius and Nick Normal. The installation used social media services like Twitter and Flickr to generate a collective collage of experiences.

visit holoscape.net for more documentation

two trailers to watch over and over

nick — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:31:13 +0000

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?)

Oh yeah, and MacGruber has a movie coming out!

if you were looking for me last Friday night (Double Dirty Thirty)

nick — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:24:22 +0000

I was having my double-fetus cake and eating it too!

Congratulations to JP and JP for making it to 30, they wasn’t supposed to make it past 25 but now the joke is on us because they’re still alive. And they know how to throw down! And a big thanks to Jack and Westrich for use of their space, that was really wonderful and was a perfect fit for the occasion. Thanks to Jeff for the Cubans, the Mad Titans for their near-2-hour solid set, everyone for their booze-n-food potluck, and of course Brenda for making this possible, after all these boys came out of her womb 30 years ago!

(complete set on my Flickr)

if you’re looking for me this Friday night (calling ALL st. louisans)

nick — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:05:07 +0000

9pm. turn into St. Cyr Industrial Park. look for Westrich Trucking. if you don’t find us it’s because we cut you and left you on the riverbank.

Here’s the facebook invite – all are free to attend.

BK Pirates Mugshots

nick — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:06:46 +0000

Wanted posters. Two-part portraits. Detective files. Booking photographs.

The mugshot is a pretty interesting phenomenon of photography. Most-interesting to me is that the notion of the modern mugshot we know today was conceived by Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton’s National Defense Agency – during the latter part of the 19th century they were two-faced, on the one face they were the first organized detective agency in the United States, and on the other face they doubled as thugs-for-hire to suppress workers’ unions or other semi-organized groups, through use of overwhelming force. They were interested in criminal justice, yes, but they were also very intimidating motherfuckers at heart, and the mugshot was merely a means to an end.

Anyhow! I was called up about 5 hours before the Thunder Gumbo III and asked if I had my camera available to take mugshots. A little ill-prepared but the results are wonderful. The lighting is a little off-mark, but works. I’m actually fond of the blue background but next time I plan on using this faux cinder block pattern I have, and some lettering or numbering to sequence the CRIMINALS!

If you recognize any of the faces, be sure to tag them on the Facebook album.

Dorkbot 2010 January

nick — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:07:42 +0000

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!

FF XIII projected to be the biggest flop of 2010

nick — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:44:03 +0000

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!

recent delicious bookmarks, November 26 through December 31

nick — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:01:03 +0000

These are my bookmarks for November 26 through December 31:

James Grashow – Sculptor, Woodcutter, Mixed-Media Artist – another hot shit artist
Main : pwilliamsart – hot shit artist
Daily Drop Cap – daily fonts
geekmap.png (image) – it's like someone did a psych eval on me
c-jump: computer programming board game – if you ever wanted to understand programming logic, for NERDS!
Template Tags/get posts " WordPress Codex – another template tag
WordPress " Get Custom Field Values " WordPress Plugins – smarts
The Book Cover Archive – nice. for designers but still nice.
Big Text – ASCII generator
WordPress " GD Star Rating " WordPress Plugins – best ratings plugin i've seen
Newrock – nice boots!
Issuu – You Publish – web magazine viewer
Blank line before XML declaration (WordPress) – lame.
machinarium – PLAY THE DEMO! no software download, all flash based. so nice.
OOMouse: The Multi-Button Application Mouse – pretty funny… it's not real, is it?
web development timeline –
Design Fetish: The Real Simpsons House – The Siiiiimpsons
E M P T Y L A – NOT possible in NYC
spiders = awesome –
democracy now video about WTO and 1999 Battle in Seattle anniversary –
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error

it’s like they did a psych eval on me

nick — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:12:51 +0000

click for larger map:

found via some random blog pointing to a random blogspot blog with a random link to a random image… geekmap!

Oi to the Punks, Oi to the Skins (belated Xmas carol)

nick — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:21:32 +0000

back from when being punk rock wasn’t a total fucking commodity (of course leave it up to No Doubt of all bands to be the culprit of this christmas carol):

sorry I’m a couple days late with this one. it’s the thought that counts.

the Internet is at version 10.0.0.4

nick — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:13:21 +0000

Whew! That’s good to know!

how they make Buildings these days

nick — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 06:57:31 +0000

On May 31st I took the above shot of some prefab “brick” walls sitting in some yard. I stumbled upon the lot during a walking tour of Long Island City south of the Plaza. Next door to the prefab pieces was the beginnings of some steel-structured building that I either didn’t get a photo of or didn’t upload to my Flickr. Regardless, during another walking tour today I stumbled upon the result:

the panels are seamless because they’re mounted from the inside, probably via some bolt and nut or rivet-esque system. Who the fuck knows. It’s ugly as hell and probably not even real clay to begin with. The glass top is nice and those two corner windows are kind of interesting, but the gridded smaller windows are too prison-y for my tastes, and again those faux brick panels are a complete put-off, and that’s coming from a guy who has a bricks tag in his cloud.

These images and more from my ongoing views around LIC/Astoria set

thinking ahead

nick — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:01:09 +0000

I posted this back in April over on my Flickr, but it deserves some additional coverage today.

How far ahead do you plan? I remember seeing a Brownline brand day planner once that spanned two years. Yeah, 365 x 2 = 730 pages, minimum. Throw in those extra pages for currency conversions (that become outdated by the minute), distances between cities matrixes, and the accompanying non-adequate “black book” and the thing was well around 800 pages. A brick of a planner. Not the kind of thing I’d want to be carrying our when the End of the World is nigh.

this should keep you busy for a while

nick — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:58:51 +0000

The top 100 viral videos of 2009 in under 3 minutes – with a list to the original FULL videos, courtesy of Gawker media:

The Top 100 Broken Down One-by-One:

MOM! this one’s for you!

nick — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:55:19 +0000

FOLLOW ME! loL!

pretty cookies… pretty delicious!

nick — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:34:21 +0000

I decorated some cookies for Sarah-n-Annie-n-Francois-n-other-girl’s party this past weekend. Can you guess which ones I decorated?

(click for larger image)

TONIGHT: art in a box fundraiser

nick — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:47:36 +0000

Tonight is Flux Factory’s end-of-year fundraiser featuring a wonderful collector’s edition box set of multiples by some hot shit artists including yours truly. The entire list of artists is impressive: Brandstifter, Bread & Butter Collective, Andrea Dezso, Kerry Downey, Heather Jones, Aya Kakeda, Miwa Koizumi, Simone Meltesen, Nick Normal, Ward Shelley, and Swoon. That’s not all! There will also be goody bags available with edition works from: Parfyme, Paula Castro, and Georgia Muenster. ALSO! There will be audible entertainments and visual screenings by the following: April March, Adira Amram and Nick Jones, Marie Losier, Nick Yulman, and Sxip Shirey! OH YEAH! And AVE BFF DJs laurendarling and soh luvlee will be spinning throughout the night!

…

AND! there’s an Open Bar and cocktails served all night, care of Campari, Vine wines, and local food distributors (big ups to all of them!).

It’s a $20 suggested donation but with that line-up and hot art available for sale, it’ll definitely be the hottest thing going on between now and tomorrow! See you there, I hope!

Here are some sneak preview shots of our installation currently in progress:

my working prototype for the box set – a facsimile box of JT21/T27 Arrow brand staples

preparing the art for the boxes (seen on floor, right and drawers in back-right area)

Nick Yulman’s computer interface for his solenoid musical devices!

the stage!

the box set to-be! nice install.

anyone care to explain this one?

nick — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:21:19 +0000

from this year’s Fluxgiving event (full Flickr set here)

ALSO! BEWARE this man. He could be a WEREWOLF!

recent delicious bookmarks, September 25 through November 15

nick — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:01:29 +0000

These are my bookmarks for September 25 through November 15:

GreenStuff Sculpting Tips from a Master – last one, promise. green stuff!
Gene Van Horne pictures by LostInTheWarp – Photobucket – some photos of green stuff in action
how to work with green stuff – nerd alert!
www.kozyndan.com/_qt/Nakano in Spring_lg.mov – hot shit net art
ArtStars* – great toronto arts vlog
Bubbles Girl | Know Your Meme – effing brilliant!
Transient global amnesia – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – I was diagnosed with this once, when I was a teenager… maybe 12 or 13. I lost about 3-6 hours of memory.
InstallationGuide < Open2300 < Foswiki – install guide for SPWS
Batman Details — Fight – sort of genius.
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
Separating Pings from Comments in WordPress 2.7 | Sivel.net – straightforward guide to separate comments from trackbacks/pings
Sripraphai Thai Restaurant – Woodside – Woodside, NY – maybe the best Thai food, ever
DJ Red Alert – Official Web Site – http://www.kooldjredalert.com – YES!
Dylan’s Candy Bar – supposed to be a hot-shit candy shop
Cherry Tavern – East Village – New York, NY – supposedly an OK bar in the east village, whenever I'll be there next who knows
9 Ways to Make Your WordPress Blog "Smart" " Weblog Tools Collection – six months old and still relevant
Flash components and Flash files at FlashMint – flash components. mostly XML, WP configurable
Строим домик из спичек – what a weird interpretation of "collapsing new buildings"
Klingons For Christ Jesus – KLINGONS FOR CHRIST JESUS! YESSSS!!
PdaNet — Use your Android as a USB Modem – genius! I'm posting this bookmark from this service!
CapedWonder.com. Superman-The Movie. Christopher Reeve Superman Images … – AWESOME!!

WordCamp NYC 2009 – day 1 ( #wordcamp #nyc #wordpress )

nick — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:56:04 +0000

Yesterday was day 1 (of 2) for WordCamp NYC 2009. Wow. What a brilliant and wonderful event!

I missed the opening remarks and first few series of workshops, which I ultimately regret but had no control over given my recent workload and absolutely need the night before to get at least 5.5 hours of sleep (yes, when I need sleep I sleep more than 4… I wound up waking at the 5 hour mark but staying in bed until the 6 hour mark – but I digress!).

I wound up arriving at around 11:48am, and as soon as I registered and received my kick-ass tee-shirt and badge, I was standing in the middle of the room glancing over the post-lunch programme when I turned around and suddenly there were over 500 hungry participants standing behind me! FTW! I was the first in line for the vegetarian sandwiches – sweet!

I had a great conversation with Jim of zemanta.com, and met a couple other really wonderful people before the afternoon sessions even began. Which is one thing I’ve always really liked about geek and tech meet-ups and gatherings like this, is generally people are very approachable and friendly. Not to say people in the art world aren’t, but it’s a completely different set of standards, and, well actually people in the art world aren’t as approachable! There, I said it. Yes it is difficult to explain how as an artist I work with WordPress – usually the response is, “so you’re a Designer?” , “no, I make installations” (like holoscape, which is built on WP) – or how I work with NYC-area non-profits and always recommend WordPress as a tool for their projects and missions. But whereas in the art world people usually just don’t care about “code” (or the political ramifications of blog culture and terms or language like Creative Commons, GPL, XML, etc.), at least at these events people are always willing to listen to what you do, or in this case why you do it with WordPress!

I first went to the WP in Education round table. I forget all of the presenters’ names, but that’s Matt Mullenweg on the far left, and two of the other blokes (middle and far right) were from Virginia of all states, which was interesting – and they both had very strong ideas and opinions about how WordPress has pro-actively been used to advance pedagogy and educational enlightenment! A wonderful topic indeed! It’s a shame there was just not enough time for Qs & As because this one in particular could have gone on for another hour.

While I noticed as the day went on that most people went to one room and stayed there all day, I bounced around, probably walking a whole mile inside the building from class to class.

I nipped over to the WordPress for Non-Profits seminar:

This lady Amanda was a hoot, and she had one really great message in particular:

(I only wish I could convince more non-profits of the why!)

Don’t be fooled by this image! The WordCamp was packed, over 700 people were in attendance! These big rooms were definitely a bit intimidating, but I guess better this than a room for 30 and have 80 people show up!

A random encounter in the hallways – Matt Mullenweg must get stopped all the time to be asked a simple question, and the question turns into an informal discussion and seminar! He’s so pleasant and positive about people, and code, and discussing real issues, in this case the topic was canonical plugins and language localizations.

Are they sharing notes? LOL!

My laptop went kaputz less than 48 hours before WordCamp (anybody want to donate to help me get a netbook?), else I totally would be one of these people, and probably would have been drafting this post then.

One of the most interesting seminars I went to, because it’s a hot topic I’m developing for my own intents and purposes right now for another project, this notion of “hyperlocal” and community building with WordPress. This speaker was talking on behalf of InJersey.com which runs on WPMU and BP.

All in all a wonderful day! I wish there were more events like this, which is why I’ll have to follow through on my plans for some hyperlocal-wordpress-for-artists-meet-up-tech-exchange-and-talk thing to do on my own soon!

what’s not to like about Gotham? ( #gotham #nyc #gif )

nick — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:36:27 +0000

No matter how crazy this city gets, it’s never worth leaving else you’ll miss scenes like this! I didn’t notice until I dumped these photos onto my computer that the two sets of window lights went on in the second frame while they were off in the first (I normally take at least two or three shots of the same photo to get one that is most-steady and framed the way I like, but in this case they make a wonderful GIF) – which also makes one realize that behind each of those windows, in every building, someone lives or works there.

Gotham is FULL of lives.

your KIMCHI-ology degree has arrived

nick — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:24:53 +0000

The KIMCHI-ology (or how to make your own kimchi) workshop was a smashing success (they always are it would seem)!

We started with a smorgasbord of available veggies. These included red onions, carrots, garlic, ginger, radishes, red cabbage, green cabbage and some peppers and spices. Oh yeah and some apples!

Before the students arrived we laid out all the food and necessary kitchen tools. As it would turn out this wasn’t the wisest idea. We wound up inadvertently using the cuttings boards as plates and then had to wash everything again before the cutting boards could be used for their intended purposes: chopping veggies on! Anyways, I learned my mistakes when leading a FOOD workshop.

After 20+ minutes of talking about the history of kimchi, the differences between kimchi and sauerkraut, and the health benefits of “good bacteria” as told by ex-Fluxer and ceramic artists and food guru Ellen, we had a tasting session:

YUMS!

We talked about what went into each different kimchi, and it was generally regarded that the dill kimchi (either bottom-middle or bottom-left) was the bees knees. Then each student took into account how they wanted to flavor their own kimchi, and we proceeded to cut, dice, chop, mince and then pack our jars:

Here’s a kimchi student hard at work packing their jar:

We made a total (good) mess. We used every single vegetable! We packed 10 jars in total!

48 hours later, and this is what some of the jars are starting to look like:

Of course the real way to judge a kimchi is by its smell, so believe me when I say these stink! The short squatty jar on the right has apples in it, so it has a sweet and spicy smell to it. The one on the far left contains an equal volume of onion and cabbage! It also has a fair amount of garlic and ginger in it. And the middle one was basically all the leftovers packed into another jar (along with some unknown spices to produce a surprise meal).

It’ll take another 7-10 days for these to totally ferment. And then Colonic Justice!

worst Twitter Twitterer ever

nick — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:19:30 +0000

their account won’t last long, if “they” are even real.

Kimchi-ology – how to make your own kimchi!

nick — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:07:44 +0000

Later this week at Flux Factory, then again later this month, I’ll be facilitating another workshop as part of my on-going education platform Open Pedagogy Programming. The workshop this month is called Kimchi-ology, a how-to on chopping, making and eating your own kimchi! We teach you everything!

The EventBrite links are below if you want to purchase a ticket; they’re $20 and will include a tasting session and each person will walk away with a “starter jar” to enjoy later!

Thursday – 12 November – 7-9pm – http://www.eventbrite.com/event/474510273
Monday – 23 November – 7:30-9:30pm – http://www.eventbrite.com/event/481698774

a secret conversation with Meng (not so secret)

nick — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:52:14 +0000

Meng is a fellow artist and friend of mine. She lives in a box:

Thanks to the advancement of modern technologies, she has WiFi inside the box. She recently sent me an email from inside the box, regarding some ducks I keep on my window sill:

Subject: A SECRET DUCKY THROWING MISSION

Holahola Norbot,

This is bot talking from Mengbot…bbbb….01110001……i am going to go on a secrete robotic mission for the LED Pro Julius throwing one of his duck to some secret water place.So …i am going to steal one of your duckies from your window…..would you please let me know the great time for me to be the ducky- thief?? probably somepoint this week when you are THERE or maybe when you are NOT THERE(since it will make more sense for a thief to steal somthing)….and also giving you somtime to say goodbye to your ducky friend by the window…haha

TIME FOR WINTER DUCKY MIGRATION

Mengbot talking…OVER…

Well I couldn’t let her get away with that, now could I? So I replied,

qu Ack, QuackquaC k quACK quackq Uack. Quack!

QUack QUackquackquack quack qua ck qu a cKQuaC k. QuaC Kq uAc Kquack. QuacK Quackq uaCKQuac K q u aC kqua CK.
QuAC k Q u AC k.

Quack quack,
Nick Normal

That’ll make the Mengbot think twice before stealing my duckies! She has been warned!

not a political critique

nick — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:57:33 +0000

I want to be clear that this isn’t some “clever” statement, it’s simply something I noticed while clicking around on m-w.com – it’s very fortuitous also that the elections are tomorrow. I took this snap a couple days ago and the search string still produces an ad for Bloomberg. Funny.

Windows 7 Whopper – she ate the whole thing!

nick — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:17:12 +0000

Soooooo ridiculous. Ridiculous operating system. Ridiculous promotion. Ridiculous diet. RIDICULOUS!

via CNN blogs

LEDs4N00Bs (evil flamingoes, blue robots, obama chia, aftermath)

nick — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:45:29 +0000

The LEDs4N00Bs workshop was a real success, and thanks everyone who attended, built toy-boxes, and to Julius for giving a really wonderful first workshop at our new space in Long Island City.

I introduced the workshop and then Julius gave a 30-odd minute presentation about his art, and a little history and science of LEDs. We followed with the art/toy making session, which lasted for around 1.5 hours!

We weren’t able to acquire some .5W solar panels like in the image above, so we were relegated to 9V batteries which can be easily replaced, and combined with a switch are able to extend the longevity of both the battery and the LEDs. Our kits required: 9V battery, a pre-fabricated clip to draw power from the battery, a switch, LED and a resistor. From this people made some pretty interesting toys!

Visitors to Flux Factory were greeted by an evil flamingo! A working example of some found objects, scrap wood and simple LED hacking.

The lecture and presentation, Julius talking about his art.

A small sample of a complete circuit powered by a AA battery.

Then the hacking begins! Bit boxes, batteries, LEDs, soldering station!

Blue ‘bots! I like the switch hack: a hole drilled into the case so no need to open/close the lid.

Another hack in the works, a modded Obama chia-pet!

If only turning on democracy was this easy!

The circuit: you can see the negative wire (red) goes to the right eye, and the wire from the switch continues to the left eye and sequences like an eyeglass bridge.

And one of my favorite aspects of any workshop or classroom environment, the mess! The aftermath is always chaotic, but evidences the activity of life:

more work by Julius can be found at his website: http://www.urgu.de/

KALE! drawing

nick — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:48:30 +0000

spotted outside Nurture Art in Brooklyn. spotted because I put it there!

Kale is delish. Drawn food unfortunately doesn’t have as many nutrients as real food. But if kale grows this well in a bucket in this weather I’m thinking I might try and grow some in this hydroponic plastic bottle system I have designs for sometime this winter.

Major League Frustrations

nick — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:16:34 +0000

FANS BEWARE!

If you’re a baseball fan like me you might have signed up – impulse buy – for MLB’s Postseason.tv package. Frankly I would rather have flushed a $10 bill down the toilet for the novelty of the moment, rather than endure the frustrations of launching this service.

The image above shows you what you get, more or less. And when you’re thinking about buying the service you probably see splashy windows or slick features designed to empty your wallet. But then you notice things. And pretty quickly, because they’re important to the function of watching baseball. Like there’s no HUD. No balls-strikes count, no inning, no mini box score, no nothing. There’s no information to assist you as a watcher.

Of course you could also launch their “gameday” feature, which will give you all of that information. But then you’d require a second monitor if you wanted to watch the game proper fullscreen! Or there are these other buttons for “highlights”, “summary” etc that show you the information you want, but it overlays over the actual game! So you miss the game if you’re trying to look for information to help you with watching the game!

Now they try and sell you with the “create your own experience” angle. With each stadium there are around 6-12 cameras to choose from that you can pump to your screen. Of course, they don’t tell you sometimes your screen will be flooded with tech garble:

Fuck the what!?

And no matter how many times I hit that flipping “SYNC” button it never works:

note Clayton Kershaw in his delivery in the bottom-left, but with Martin already approaching the mound in the top right.

Furthermore they’re pumping you the TBS audio, but the video is not the TBS national television broadcast. So sometimes the announcers are talking about things that are being shown for a television audience, but as a web-user you’re clueless.

And oh yeah, that yellow bounding box around the selected video – scroll back up to the header image to see what I’m talking about – there’s no way to get that yellow box to disappear!

This thread over at mlbsupport shows the frustrations that so many users have had with purchasing this postseason package.

Fans beware!

I wore some of my best socks to Somerville

nick — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:41:34 +0000

Because I Wanted to Fucking Dance!

HONK! 2009 took place this past weekend in Somerville outside of Boston, MA. But a big thanks is due to my friend Alita for giving me the heads up on the event that I honestly did not know about – but she read my body language and excitement for recently seeing Mucca Pazza and clued me in. I glanced at the list of bands travelling to Boston to play and it read like an international smorgasbord of brass & drum skins. And I wanted to get my step on!

I got in touch with one of my Boston chums, “mulcad01″, and described the event’s affairs and location. He too wanted to enjoy the festivities, and declared that everything – everything! – was “about 2 blocks away” from where he lived. Somerville and Davis Square, here I come!

from NYC to Boston. I took the Bolt Bus, which comes highly recommended. They have 110V AC power outlets and a pretty good WiFi connection, and their crowd are generally advantageous of these amenities. So there are lots of laptops and movie-watchers. Yes, this means you’re more-or-less isolated from the person next to you, but it’s also a means of discussion & conversation if you’re so inclined, and I am!

It took nearly an hour and a half just to get out of Manhattan! So I arrived to Boston late, but it worked out perfectly that my matey mulcad01 got off work as I was arriving. mulcad01 and I went to a bar and watched the unfortunate conclusion to game 2 of Boston’s ALDS – no better than my Cardinals. And in true Boston style the bar was jam packed with revelers and fans. And in true Boston style they spent as much time yelling at the television as they did drinking – that is, LOTS!

mulcad01 was afraid I’d peek under the covers, so he wore his jeans to bed. Otherwise he said he always sleeps completely naked and chained to his bed (some alarm system “releases” him every morning).

After some driving around and looking at quaint streets and public art, we went to a NERF WAR GAMES event. No shit. See for yourself:

Everybody was really dorky and lovely and the donuts were only a quarter if you were participating in the war, but we wanted to HONK!-stomp!

(Please keep in mind we didn’t have a choice in attending the NERF event. Seriously! It’s not like… a geek like me would ever, I mean ever, be interested in anything like that!)

We proceeded back to Somerville where mulcad01 lived about 2 blocks from everything. And sure enough within minutes from his doorstep you could hear and then see the processions of bands converging on the town and then occupying their respective “stages”: squares, parking lots, plazas, bank steps. Whatever and wherever that could hold a couple hundred people was, for one day, converted into a great outdoor music spectacle! And the weather couldn’t have been better: warm in the sun, cool in the shade; you wanted a sweater otherwise but were fine to take it off and stay warm as long as you danced danced danced!

All the bands were, simply, amazing! Each band had two slots and played in two different places, so the opportunity was there to see every band and site. I did not. Mainly because I wanted to see two bands in particular, and a couple other bands if time allowed. The two bands in particular were Hungry March Band (who have graced these pages before) and the What Cheer? Brigade whom I first saw open the Swoon show at Deitch in Long Island City last year and they blew my mind then, and this time around they completely disemboweled me! mulcad01 and I danced so hard we woke up the next morning stiff and sore!

Oh yeah, here are those bands I was talking about:

What Cheer? Brigade from Providence, RI

Hungry March Band from Brooklyn, NY

Rude Mechanical Orchestra

I didn’t get nearly enough photos of What Cheer? Brigade. That’s because I was dancing so hard! Their second set was after sundown and the pavement nearly cracked from the collective stomping of the crowd! Especially that one song… you know it when you hear it. With that silent break-beat that transitions from horns to drums, breaks again and everybody starts whaling! Oh man I’ve had that stuck in my head for days!

Just do a Flickr search for HONK! 2009, you’ll find plenty more images already flooding online.

After the final sets the evening quickly died down. Everyone was pretty exhausted from approximately 10 hours of dancing and walking the streets, and believe it or not people needed rest… for the street parade the next day! Yay!

But before we get there I went on a nightly walking tour as I often do in new cities/towns, and mulcad01 showed me this round building that I would totally love to call my own. It’s been uninhabited for some years, and is only recently being “developed”. How properties like this ever fell by the wayside is beyond me. If it were mine, I’d paint it in such a way to make it appear like a giant cake! Yummy home!

And now, for the street parade:

What Cheer?, this time marching.

I didn’t get to see them the day before, but I guess this is Orkestar Zirkonium. . . oh yeah, THEY ROCK! Their songs were perfect for marching, as mulcad01 and I kept pace with them for many blocks!

We departed the parade however and took a walking tour and headed to Boston’s ICA where there’s currently some wonderful work by Damián Ortega installed. We took about the longest possible circuitous foot-path route there, and along the way saw a stairway full of slinky, a GIANT ship on the horizon, and mulcad01 pointed out what would be the best possible sniper positions (spillover from his service in the Watching Too Many Movies forces).

look at the size of that boat. seriously. it’s taller and longer than those buildings!

the identity of mulcad01 will forever remain a mystery.

We had some dinner, headed home and I packed my bags for departure. The festival was moving to Providence the next day for PRONK but unfortunately I had already booked my return ticket and didn’t have a place lined up. So I jumped the first available WiFi-enabled bus back to NYC and there I was at 2am.

And well, you know you’re home when:

and just to remind you, SOCKS!:

Bottom line is, if you have the opportunity, GO to HONK! You won’t regret it. What a joyous celebration of dancing in the streets and freedom of movement in an otherwise striated space. Express yourself through dancing!

[full set of images on my Flickr]

bad Google! BAD!

nick — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:43:26 +0000

This image was not snapshotted by me, but is exactly what I get on my screen annoyingly often now, since the 1.6 “Donut” update for Android phones. Google clearly didn’t test this release across the board, I’ve already had to remove one app (Handscent SMS) that was clearly conflicted for unknown reasons (would force close but continue operating, about every 6 seconds).

And I’m not the only having troubles:

Android: android.process.acore has stopped

The process android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly

Did Google fumble the Android 1.6 launch?

DONUT! Android 1.6 OTA Update Begins! – (search android.process.acore and you’ll find people with problems)

Sometimes, the acore process will force close when I exit from the calendar to the home screen. And it always takes two force closes for it to finally settle down. Someone has recommended a soft reboot, but a reinstall of all apps would be necessary if you do this, and that shouldn’t be necessary.

Bad Google! BAD!

the real reason the Redbirds lost Game 1 of the NLDS?

nick — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:59:55 +0000

Because LA fans tweeted more.

This is an interesting use of Twitter-tracking (called “Pulse”) that I found integrated into the boxscore/wrap review of Game 1 of the NLDS between the St. Louis Cardinals and the LA Dodgers. The Redbirds unfortunately lost, and this timeline-graph shows a correlation between game highlights and spikes in activity on Twitter tracking the game; the other spikes were probably due to non-highlight pressures like loaded bases, pitcher-hitter matchups, defensive plays, etc.

Does the team that Twitters the most, win? It’s an interesting thought.

so many youtubes, so little time

nick — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:49:58 +0000

there are so many youtubes out there, you couldn’t see them all if you were born today and lived 100 years, and that doesn’t even count what would be created, produced and delivered in the next 100 years.

well, here’s a few I did watch:

this one reminds me of two movies I haven’t seen yet that I need to, Forbidden Planet (1956) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

“Bear sighting re-enactment” – this is Real News, thank you FOX!

that craaaaazy intersection in Tokyo, you all know it, have you seen it crossed though?

fans of Brooklyn, Dead Prez and the color yellow should appreciate this summertime (R.I.P.) jam:

The Onion news reports on Facebook, Twitter – how parents can stalk their own children!

cat mosh pit:

a goal of mine:

photos from the B.Boat – OUTER SPACE – 9/26

nick — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:26:37 +0000

Thanks to everyone who came out to the OUTER SPACE party on the Boat. Where the hell did they get those Tyvek suits from anyhow? And kudos to whoever took their time to decorate them, hundreds upon hundreds of them. And that silver tape was a nice touch.

I was officially on board this time as the documentarian. I was shooting simultaneously on my G7 as well as on a Nikon D200 loaner. I’m torn. The D200 is an excellent DSLR, but simply did not respond the way it should have at times. But it took all the excellent portrait shots of the night, but the G7 – fits in my pocket, is cheaper, also 10MP, etc. – took comparable (at times better) crowd shots. Maybe it would just take time to learn the D200, the way it took me time to learn the G7… wait, no, the G7 was intuitive, took about an hour to learn. Sometimes you just vibe with a piece of hardware. Regardless, thanks to Elizabeth for the loaner, enjoy the shots (full set on my Flickr):

some art openings around NYC (Socrates, EFA, Central Booking)

nick — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:52:46 +0000

EAF09 @ Socrates Sculpture Park

EAF (Emerging Artist Fellowship), not to be confused with EFA below, is Socrates Sculpture Park’s program that provides artists with short-term residencies at the city’s only outdoor sculpture park with this group show opportunity. It’s always a blast, there’s always good art to see, and when the weather is nice the public come out in full force and really make a day of it!

The thing to note this year is there’s a lot of replication going on in sculpture @ Socrates. The replicated suggestive construction site and the to-standard MTA subway stop staircase are prime examples. Even the giant foam whale and red-resin city use pre-existing models or forms to build their art upon. Just a mention that many of the artists at EAF are thinking alike.

Arctic Book Club @ Flux Factory/EFA

Arctic Book Club was a collaboration between Flux Factory and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts – the show took place at EFA’s space on 39th street in Manhattan, and the inspiring author behind this show, Tété Michel Kpomassie, was even in attendance!

Central Booking

Central Booking is a new book arts gallery located in DUMBO on Front Street. Great place, lots of paper and book arts to look at. This was their grand opening, and it was packed! I really recommend making a trip to see this show, this space, lots of art to look at!

Mucca Pazza in NYC

nick — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:27:55 +0000

this is for John, so he knows it happened (and thanks for the tip, bro!).

If you missed this show – and I know many of you did, but I’m not rubbing it in – you missed one of the best shows in NYC this year (I know I wasn’t here the first two months of 09, but I still think I can make that claim because Mucca Pazza fucking rocked, okay!).

I had heard of this Mucca Pazza before you see, because their guitarist, Jeff Thomas, grew up in the STL area so there are many mutual friends between us (not many freaks like us get out you see!) so I was warned, but still didn’t know what to expect. For brass bands, in NYC there’s the Hungry March Band and you’ll often encounter What Cheer? (from Providence) on the streets or at shows, but Mucca Pazza might have stolen the brass band crown that night, and hustled it all the way back to Chicago – thanks to their outfits, their songs, their cheerleaders, their total ensemble… WOW!

Embedded audio on their website (powered by WordPress I might add!) or even the video I’ll post below simply do NOT do this band justice. the Energy live is SO captivating, so infectious, those in the crowd who had never heard Mucca Pazza before, not even a song, were dancing, going crazy, from the first tune.

show was on 13 September 2009 @ Mercury Lounge, East Houston Street, NYC

PS – Mucca Pazza unfortunately won’t be playing, but if anybody is headed to HONK! this year, see you there!

recent delicious bookmarks, August 28 through September 13

nick — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:04:22 +0000

These are my bookmarks for August 28 through September 13:

How to Shave with a Double-Edge Razor | eHow.com – razor shaving for n00bs like me
GreatBrewers.com | UNITING THE BEER COMMUNITY. – beer
HpAllInOne – Community Ubuntu Documentation – useful for allinones
batch upload to google docs – clever
photo tilt shifts – lots of photo tilts out there, these are some pretty good ones though
T E X T F I L E S – text. files.
flavor of conky – best – conky
conky flavors – conky
Ubuntu – Embed a Terminal into Your Desktop using Compiz [Howto] ~ Web Upd8 – embed terminal on desktop – need compiz
map of Gotham City –
Dear Republicans: FUCK YOU – from Bartcop
LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph – art festival, running on wordpress
safe.tumblr.com/theme/preview/1432 – another smart theme. can't see notes though.
PROTO.JP BLOG " GreasemonkeyなしでtumblrをAutoPagerizeさせる! – tumblr autopager script. one line of code. nice.
Secret Lab’s Tumblelog – smart theme. keep in mind
Typedia: Learn: Anatomy of a Typeface – hotness
New cool list of Linux must-have programs – useful linux warez
JW Image Rotator Slideshow for Picasa – fucking genius. automated Picasa XML export for JW imagerotator.swf! SAVE ME SO MUCH TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!
XSPF: XML Shareable Playlist Format: Home – <3 XML
The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent. – grazy good book blog. so much to read about reading. whoah.

I Was On A Boat (and so could you have been)

nick — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:56:36 +0000

The boat party was a smashing success.

Thanks to me.

Nah I’m kidding y’all were great, everybody who performed or had some act were great. The crowd was great (except for the few who never tipped – I will remember you!). The Bushwick B.oat crew were great (always are). It was great.

Below is a quick slideshow of images from the evening. Unfortunately contrary to my usual mass-snapping of images, I wasn’t able to actually document the event’s spectacle because I was busy working…

And best of all the event was a success for Flux Factory and will help us sustain and survive for a couple more months in this dire economy as we are still learning to tie our metaphorical shoes (i.e. new building: install plumbing, get electricity working, put doors on rooms, buy food, etc.). Life is good:

[RSS READERS SEE POST FOR VIDEO]

this Friday – I’m On A Boat (And So Can You)

nick — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:02:41 +0000

because we never forget (how to party), this Friday, 11 September, Flux Factory will be throwing a FundRager on a 140-foot 3-deck boat in Brooklyn. Click here for details on how to RSVP.

I’ll be bartending, so bring tips and stimulate my personal economy!

(also this weekend be on the lookout for Mucca Pazza who will be playing at the Knitting Factory (Brooklyn) and the Mercury Lounge (Manhattan))

my latest project is live – Holoscape for #confluxfestival

nick — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:52:29 +0000

I’m participating in this year’s Conflux Festival. I’m collaborating with friend and fellow artist Martina Mrongovius. We’ll be fabricating the Holoscape, a 3-dimensional real-time user-generated diorama, constructed from images of the festival itself which particpants of the festival will be uploading and tagging to social media services such as Flickr or Twitter.

I don’t want to put too much information on my blog here, because there’s an entire website I’ve coded just for the project: http://holoscape.net/

But just in case, here are the directions:

recent delicious bookmarks, August 8 through August 27

nick — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:01:30 +0000

These are my bookmarks for August 8 through August 27:

WordPress " Dynamic Headers " WordPress Plugins – MVPOTD: most valuable plugin of the day!
software wars – microsoft vs.
The Cloud Appreciation Society " The Morning Glory Cloud 1 – cloud appreciation society… genius!
APOD: 2006 January 17 – A Roll Cloud Over Missouri – a roll cloud… wow! natural phenomenons!
Roboturner – nice tumblr theme – need a new approach for "what is normal?"
Free-Codecs.com :: Download latest audio codecs, video codecs, codec … – necessary
memepool.com – I keep forgetting and remembering this site.
Hardee’s serves up 1,420-calorie burger – from 2004, but still funny as fuck.
Krop – Design Jobs: Creative & Tech – for jobs.
reprap – gnu 3d printer
twtBizCard :: your twitter business card – twitter business cards… neat!
Spymaster — An action game for Twitter and Facebook – play games using twitter? seriously? kinda… awesome?
* : feast – Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics
Screw Key Key Ring Screwdriver – kewl. for hardware nerds.
Download Every Single BBC Radio1 Essential Mix From 1993 To 2007 | – anybody recommend some essential mixes to listen to? SHEESH! they have it all…
The Mu-Museum – unknown
htaccess techniques – useful guide, all about htaccess
Download Twitter Message Archive – Tweet Scan – scan and download an archive of your tweets, because Twitter naturally deletes them.
DIVINE official website – convert PSD files direct to WordPress themes, via a Photoshop plugin
Torrage – Torrent Storage Cache – just what it says: torrent storage cache

I’m a Marvel, and he’s a DC… BOOYAH!

nick — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:36:02 +0000

Great stuff forthcoming here. This guy is getting a lot of views and reviews lately, but this particular video is smashing for his depiction of Deadpool, whom, if you know him, you know he’s crrraaaaaaazy!

anybody know how to read this table? (#English #Premiership)

nick — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:26:47 +0000

I can actually figure out what it all stands for: Played, Wins, Draws, Losses, Goals scored (F), Goals conceded (A), Goal difference and Points (with 3 points for a Win, 1 for a Draw, 0 for a Loss).

However, what do F and A stand for? I had to look at some match statistics to deduce that F meant Goals Scored (their 6-1 and 4-1 wins add up). And how is GD a useful stat in determining the validity or potency of a team? i.e. Stoke City is 1-1-1 but they have a -2 GD, while Birmingham is also 1-1-1 but has a GD of 0. How would their identical W-D-L score be offset by their different GD numbers? I’m trying to better understand this ranking system. Thanks!

Oh yeah, Go Gunners!

who wants to die tonight?

nick — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 03:50:51 +0000

THIS KIND OF STUFF MAKES ME lol!!!!11LK!1!

Growing up in the Midwest meant being surrounded by a lot of craptastic fast food, which sure I had my guilty pleasures and indulged in, but this is beyond belief:

And yes, it does exist:

(image via food geekery)

this sammich is so elusive it’s only available in Rhode Island and Nebraska, FOX News reports:

oh yeah, and This Is Why You’re Fat.

Jay-Z steals from Contemporary Art

nick — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:26:21 +0000

Jay-Z’s forthcoming Blueprint 3 album (due respectively I’m sure on the 11th of September), and more specifically his album cover and track listing have been getting a fair amount of attention lately. To meme the analysis even further, his track listing even received it’s own “news” article, and searching “track listing” in google returns a thumbnail of Jay-Z first and foremost (above).

How meta!

While his track listing design is okay, it’s not very original or interesting really, I’ve seen much better designs of information handling than this. But I’d really like to focus your attention on his album cover:

At first, one goes, “Wow!” One should. It’s an interesting image.

An ensemble of sound instruments and equipment, we see everything from boards and mixers to old-world and new-world phonograph players, as well as enough speakers and amplification to crack the foundation in my building’s basement, all topped off with an accordion, how quaint. Everything is painted white except for the keyboard keys, the drum cushions, the record on the crank-style phonograph, the electric-style phonograph arm, and those rubber feet on the speaker head. The 3 bars in the middle are like roman numerals turned sideways, and are oriented like a “stack” – this is the final album of his trilogy after all, so it’s only appropriate that one think of each album as building upon the previous release, with this thankfully being the final Blueprint.

The composition is intriguing, all the objects arranged into a towering mish-mash. And the three bars are a unique way of expressing the third installment. However neither are original or even creative, and in my opinion they’re outright stolen!

Okay okay maybe all the instruments pictured were the instruments necessary to produce the album, but I seriously doubt that Jay-Z is that conceptual in the execution of his album covers. And maybe he thought himself novel in the adaptation of three bars to signify his almost-architectural record-naming scheme. But as I’m about to point out both practices are quite deeply rooted in contemporary art.

For starters there are the three bars: transparent & equal (although not equidistant). Overlayed, they show the world behind while masking it (I just noticed the violin! That’s what I mean by mask!). And they quite clearly resemble the work of Donald Judd, a minimalist artist who while he worked with wood, steel and concrete is usually known for his transparent, at times reflective, Plexiglas boxes that were arranged in stacks and mounted on walls:

Their stack creates a type of tower, and their verticality makes you wish yourself taller, shooting into the sky! As noted, the one difference between Judd’s work and Jay-Z’s cover design is that Judd’s work is equidistant, that is the distance between the boxes is exactly equal to the height of the boxes themselves, creating a type of democracy between the objects and the wall or background they reside upon.

A few more examples to show you Judd’s rigour of line and his creation of boxes, spanning several decades:

Then there’s the white towering ensemble, or assemblage rather. It’s a direct reference (and poor execution I might add) to a truly pioneering artist: Louise Nevelson, a female born in Russia in 1899 whose family emigrated to the US in 1905. Someone whom to this day is still undervalued and under-acknowledged (see how short her wikipedia article is, especially compared with Judd’s). She eventually moved to NYC in 1920 where she would live until her death in 1988, and during her time made assemblages, or physical collages, from discarded objects that she found on the streets of this magnificent city. Truly: trash art! And while her work was made from trash, and was simple in its execution (everything – EVERYTHING – painted white or black), her work contained an inherent complexity and depth that few of her time could rival or generally even muster the courage to put out there:

And this is why I look at contemporary art. It’s so far ahead of the curve. And this is why I’m so uninformed by pop culture. I mean, I’m sure Jay-Z’s album will be good. He has some mega producers backing him up, and has all the right (some would say too many) “featuring” artists by his side. But the real testament will be in 20, 30 years, if Jay-Z’s album cover will still hold as much ooompf, ooopla or ahhhhh as it does today. Probably not. Whereas already the work of Judd and Nevelson, 20, 30, even 40 years after its making in some instances, is still as strong as ever and will in another 20 years still be as vital, necessary and important to understanding culture.

where can I get me one of these?

nick — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:50:37 +0000

someone, TELL ME!

[via Peanut Butter Jelly Time]

some youtubes you best like

nick — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:29:49 +0000

all in a day’s work… fffffound these on the intertubes.

love the overlays:

great song, even greater animation (and action toys!):

this, this is the one that really has me stumped:

because every youtube post deserves a bad dancer FAIL:

this next one actually made me laugh. Like an honest laugh. And it’s about art, which is sorta why I laughed. I wish more art places came up with adverts like this, and put them on youtube.

okay this last one I actually know a lot about. A lot about the Venture Brothers that is, not Season 4 trailers in particular. Oh forget, just enjoy:

Recession Proof – because you asked for it, more evidence this Economy is Awesome!

nick — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:50:19 +0000

While I squabble over whether to pay a $10 movie ticket tonight or not, this little gem of an apartment can be yours for the mere chump change of $25 million, or around 550 lbs. in $100 bills, whichever is easiest for your mind to comprehend (and don’t ask me how I’d know the weight of a suitcase full of $100 bills). Yes, it’s Awesome. And yes, it’s in Brooklyn.

I originally caught word of this via a Russian blog, but here’s a NYTimes article, and an Apartment Therapy link, among others

iPREDator launches, and someone has an invite!

nick — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:15:37 +0000

Here’s what the front page looks like, for all curious oglers. I think I might give it a go, just for the novelty of it, and to test some PPTP on Linux. Rumors are the encryption can be broken, maybe even easily, but as co-founder Peter Sunde was quoted as saying, “We’re not here to protect criminals; we’re here to protect private citizens against undemocratic laws”. Respect.

Andre the Giant was a massive man

nick — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:49:18 +0000

I never stood a chance against him:

ants sailing the seven seas

nick — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:46:51 +0000

another YouTube video, ants are just… weird. their hierarchies, their strengths, their hive-minds. Just weird. and now they know how to sail? WTF!

I will NEVER be as good as this guy at playing the bass (also I don’t drink glasses of milk)

nick — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:24:42 +0000

DUDE. For REAL. Check this out:

I’ll spare you your life: watch to get an idea of how good he is, then for the WTF-moments fast-forward to 1:16 and 2:50 or just watch it all the way through (the music is shite but he’s actually really good). Point of interest: this guy racks his bass guitars the way I rack my socks!

it ain’t over ’til it’s over

nick — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:19:18 +0000

One thing I’ve always loved about baseball is that it lasts 9 innings. It’s not about time, it’s about innings. It’s not 4 15-minute quarters. It’s not 2 45-minute halves. It’s innings. There’s no way to lock baseball in to a time frame. I’ve watched games last just over 3 hours, and watched a regular nine-inning game last for over 5 hours. There’s no telling at the first pitch how long it will last, and it’s only with the last out that you can say, “let’s go home”. Otherwise, it ain’t over ’til it’s over.

I’ve never left a baseball game before the last out. Even when things are desperate (like last week when I saw my Cardinals get obliterated by the Mets, 9-0 at New Shea Stadium in Queens), you still see remarkable baseball in those twilight hours, the type of thing you’ll hear about later and wish you would have stayed to see it. These screencaps from a game yesterday with the Florida Marlins (my pick for the NL East this year) in Philly show that Philadelphia fans clearly don’t feel the same, even though they’re defending World Series champions and currently atop the NL East (before the series with the Marlins they were ahead by 7.0 games, now only 4.0 games, which shows how fast one series can turn the tides!). Their fans, upset by the Ejectorino incident, multiple Ryan Howard hits into double-plays, Werth’s glove blunder, and general Philly ‘tude lead to an abandonment of the park by their supporters.

Look at their crowd, their support, in the bottom of the first inning:

now look at their crowd in the 9th, more blue seats than red shirts:

10-3 is not a lost cause I might add. I’ve seen Boston rally from down 6-1 to 6-5 in the ninth, ending with a bases loaded play, against and at the cathedral of their arch rival Yankees. The night before my Cardinals got obliterated even, they rallied from down 7-4 at one point to tie it at 7 by the ninth, then blow it out of the water in the 10th to win, 12-7 (game results here). It can happen. You can see it happen. But you have to stay. Until the final out.

Oh yeah, who the HELL is Chris Coghlin? He’s already set a multihit streak for Florida, but his bio is empty and he has no stats. Where does Florida get these guys from!?

proof this recession is Awesome

nick — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:00:34 +0000

Jeff Koons sculpture Green Diamond (2004) was bought for a reported $12 million recently, and now it adorns the penthouse terrace of an Upper East Side building:

(via Curbed)

Meanwhile, below the streets, the MTA plans on cutting 360 maintenance and managerial jobs by 2010 including subway car cleaners and station cleaners.

(NYPost article)

and lastly, no recession is complete without a diamond-encrusted remote-controlled lamborghini neck chain piece. POW:

recent delicious bookmarks, July 10 through August 6

nick — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:01:54 +0000

These are my bookmarks for July 10 through August 6:

Supermarket Sarah – that's one way to sell stuff
How to: Install a LAMP server – install LAMP, soooooo simple
Strange Maps – dude! great fucking blog! MAPS!
Daring Fireball: Ninjawords: iPhone Dictionary, Censored by Apple – Apple rejects dictionary app for including words it finds "objectionable"
The Hardware Aisle: Add a chicken coop to your yard – all about chickens
Installation/FromUSBStick – Community Ubuntu Documentation – simple.
D-9.com – dude. WHAT the? ?!!/
Meeting Ticker – a web app to calculate how much a meeting costs. brilliant.
Branislav Kropilak – hot shit photos of billboards
Play Chess on Twitter – exactly what it says: chess, on twitter
hid.im – converts torrents into png files
abc no rio article – ABC No Rio gets money from the man
Sophie T Lvoff – hot shit artist
2009 INTERNATIONAL INCHEON WOMEN ARTISTS’ BIENNALE – should be a wonderful biennale, i know some artists with works in this one too
Welcome To Goliath Casket – for freaky fatties
New York City Homicides Map – The New York Times – breezy point is saaaaaaafe
100 Essential Skills for Geeks | GeekDad | Wired.com – l33t!
usb powered chainsaw – worlds first, not always a good thing
YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. – BLADOW!
NYCityMap • DoITT • City-Wide GIS – GIS NYC map

cookie memery (and other laughs)

nick — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:04:51 +0000

I don’t know why… I just don’t know why, but shit like this is sooooooo funny to me. It’s so ludicrous, so ridiculous, and downright geek. It hurts:

Anyhow, now that that’s over with, here are some other visual web-laughs that have been stirring about:

Conspiracy of the school and paper conglomerates! LOL!:

Leave it up to Fenway:

the FIRST jpeg published on the internet:

click for larger version, this chart is AWESOME:

I love the “learn to speak European”:

forthcoming from Google/Android/HTC

nick — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:54:15 +0000

Coming out this fall is a new phone from HTC. What’s most-remarkable about this phone isn’t actually the design, which is slick! It’s the UI. This is actually a flavor of Android, Google’s mobile OS. But it’s been re-designed by HTC and is running on top of Cupcake (v1.5 of the mobile OS), which shows the extreme versatility and capabilities of the Android OS, and thus why it is likely to surpass the iPhone in the coming 10 months (my personal prediction). Again, it’s not the hardware, it’s the soooooftware (see video below). Along with blunders like removing GV-related apps from the iTunes store, or the fact that Android users don’t need to install iTunes to sync media or apps; or a bloated marketplace; or confusing apps organization (I have docklets running to sub-organize my apps on my home screens, you know, like how we put similar files in folders and have for decades); or, or, well see for yourself:

the Most Terrifyingly Cute Pussy Cat Ever

nick — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 20:17:19 +0000

Futurama cast just inked new deal!

nick — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:50:01 +0000

LOS ANGELES–The Star has learned exclusively that the voice cast of Futurama has just signed a new contract with Fox after weeks of intense salary negotiations.

As late as last week, the network was threatening to replace the original voices of Matt Groening’s cult-hit cartoon, to the point of actually announcing a casting call for voice actors to replace them.

The compromise agreement, with the studio paying more and the actors accepting less, comes after the announcement of a 26-episode pick-up here by Comedy Central. Futurama also airs internationally in syndication, has produced four bestselling straight-to-DVD movies (later cut into episodes) and an upcoming feature film.

A Fox spokesman, reacting to this story, insisted that only three of the cast have so far signed the deal, but later added that they expect to have the matter resolved by the end of the day.

via The Toronto Star, less than 30 minutes ago. 26 more episodes! I’m elated!

what are you doing on August 14th?

nick — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:28:58 +0000

wanna see a movie?

with a brilliant viral website to boot:

X-Men universe relationship map

nick — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:16:00 +0000

(click image for full-size, or right-click to open in new tab)

Kissy kissy. This map, care of uncannyxmen.net, graphically shows the relationships that have taken place in the X-Men Marvel universe. Man there are some names here I haven’t heard in some time, and plenty of names I don’t know at all. Storm has had her fair share of slutty encounters; Nightcrawler ain’t doing too bad either for being the blue-skinned freak he is (probably is a foot fetishist too); what’s this between “Cody” and Rogue? or Rogue and Magneto for that matter?!; Colossus got his steel-dong in the mix; but it’s clear who’s the mack daddy of them all: Wolverine, You a Pimp!

daaaaaaamn! Hustler!

friends’ art this weekend

nick — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:45:50 +0000

ahhh to be back in NYC. now I know why. never a weekend (or weekday for that matter) goes by without something going on. Tomorrow: a movie outdoors at Socrates Sculpture Park. Thursday I’m going to pick up the most awesomest bitchenist cowabunganist piece of furniture this side of Northern Boulevard. and Friday and Saturday will open shows by my mates Sarah Glidden and Zach Bruder (respectively). Sarah’s show is less an exhibition proper and more an annual celebratory gathering of Brooklyn cartoonists, but her work is hot shit so you should still stop by if you’re around. Incentive: oh yeah, both events with have free COLD brewskies, or so I’m told.

FRIDAY:

pretty straightforward that. nice flyer. I think I know this Ryan too. Sarah says it’s one of her friends and I know a number of her Ryan friends, so I reckon I have an 88% chance of previous encounter. Which makes it all the more exciting for me, putting art-to-face.

SATURDAY:

Bedford Avenue Gallery is pleased to announce the Zach Bruder’s first solo show , opening August 1st.

Zach Bruder will show his Forecast series with several other works on paper. Working in the gap between history and figuration, Bruder appropriates both text and imagery ranging from Civil War generals to auction catalogs. These images, disembodied and stunted, join to make a strangely poignant body of work exploring mankind’s urge to commemorate itself.

Zach Bruder, born in 1984, lives and works in New York.

BEDFORD AVE. GALLERY
SAT. AUG 1ST (7PM – 9PM) and SUN. AUG 2ND (12PM – 7PM)
177 NORTH 10TH ST. SUITE G (BTWN BEDFORD AND DRIGGS)
BROOKLYN, NTY 11211
(917) 364-3809

flight out of STL, into NYC

nick — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:27:35 +0000

While I always love my time in St. Louis, my people there, and having a deep familiarity with a city that is no longer mine, these shots from my return flight from St. Louis’s Lambert to New York’s LaGuardia help illuminate why I am so in love with the grandeur of New York City, a city of unimaginable size and scale:

For starters there was the actual takeoff out of St. Louis. Now, first thing to note is that the airport is in the County, not the City (limits). Still, it’s all part of the St. Louis “region”. However it’s a distinguishing fact to keep in mind that when you land at LaGuardia you’re landing in Queens County, one of the five counties that constitute the boroughs of New York City. Also, look at how green this place is:

So here’s a shot flying east over the Mississippi. That’s downtown St. Louis in the background, the most-distinguishing building being the TWA Dome/Edward Jones Dome, the white hump of a building that the Rams play in:

We dropped below the clouds just in time to catch the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn to the north with Staten Island in the corner:

One thing you’ll recognize immediately is how much closer you feel. And what I really love is having a relational proximity to this city that I’ve really only experienced elsewhere in London. You live here for so long and you really start to develop a memory-map of the city based on prior experiences, in ways that I never could in St. Louis. Like the week before I was underneath the same bridge I was now 3,000 feet above:

(Staten Island in the background)

Or take the Rockaways, here pictured in the background behind Coney Island/Brighton Beach, I was at a beach on the left top-middle edge also just a week prior:

And to give you a sense of scale, it took an hour to travel from Lower Manhattan to said beach by ferry – that’s how huge and expansive this city is!

A shot of Brooklyn, this time a view of that building at the intersection of 4th Avenue, Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue (which I’ve got a shot of from below as well!):

Here’s a view of Governor’s Island in the lower-right seen over the right wing. I was at Governor’s Island just a couple weeks prior for the Tangent public art festival!

Continuing on.

Here’s a great shot of the AT&T building near Canal and Broadway, which can be seen just above the AT&T building (see detail):

it ain’t called Empire State for nothing

Madison Square Garden, the round building in the lower-right, much more impressive than the Edward Jones Dome highlighted near the top of this post.

Yankee Stadiums new and old (left and right, respectively) – I have yet to visit the new stadium.

A view of Co-Op City in the Bronx, the largest cooperative housing development in the United States.

And then suddenly you’ve landed.

This flight was incredibly short for some reason. We departed about 30 minutes late it seemed, so they must have made up for it in the skies because we landed 2-3 minutes early! Nice.

Oh yeah, this was an American Airlines flight, and given their flight path if you want these remarkable views from St. Louis get a window seat on the right side of the plane! I sat in 18F, so a few numbers less (17, 16, 15, etc.) would probably remove the wing from your view. Yippee!

(these photos from my full set found on my Flickr account)

(419) NOR-MALS

nick — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:48:51 +0000

my new Google Voice number yessssssss!!

recent delicious bookmarks, May 15 through July 9

nick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:00:50 +0000

These are my bookmarks for May 15 through July 9:

Battlefield Heroes – I have been told I should play this
map for hong kong,map of hong kong city,e map of hong kong,3D map for … – pixelmap of hong kong
Evolution Fucked Your Shit Up: The World’s 50 Freakiest Animals | James … –
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
YouTube – Giant Ant Colony – crazy. jump to 2:50 for the get-crazy parts!
Apple – MobileMe – Your iPhone, Mac, and PC. In perfect sync. – why Apple is just a little ridiculous: $99 for a year of PUSH? push contacts? Free with my G1. push calendar? Built in! No app, it's a WIDGET. FREE. Did I mention it's FREE.
PUSH THIS: F. U.!
i miss you conan –
OASIS Map – tick on. tick off. what lot do you live on?
hillmancurtis :: film and video :: Artist Series: Lawrence Weiner … – Water Made It Wet – Lawrence Weiner – lovely shortumentary
Manhattanhenge | Hayden Planetarium – an awesome phenom of the city
Meme Scenery – Waxy.org – smart. do you know your memes?
The Oklahoma City Coworking Collaborative – a coworking office, seems kewl.
PC LOAD LETTER – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – the best wikipedia article ever
nasty nets " Monster – youtube face monster
tpvsw – this place has stuff dirt cheap. from china. is it legit?
30 dumb inventions – geekathon to the max
T2 or T3 – T1 and T2 will forever remain two of my favorite movies. Even looking at these screenshots I admit I can't even remember T3. Totally worthless movie.
Sci-Fi-O-Rama – hot shit blog
but does it float – hot shit blog
great gif – giffage!

while I was away

nick — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:15:53 +0000

so I’ve been busy for some time now, and haven’t posted anything here in ages.

Long story short the new Flux Factory building is officially open for business, and once again I can look at the project and say one of the reasons why it is a success is ME. I made it happen. It ate two months of my life so hopefully it’ll pay off, otherwise I’m not sure I’ll ever invest that much time and energy in anything again without some sort of guarantee (or lots and lots of moola).

Anyways, while I’m parsing through literally thousands of feeds and emails in an attempt to catch up, here’s a selection of visual memes and intrigues that I missed while away:

I soooooo want this!

this puts things into perspective:

a building in Shanghai fell over. more images and articles here.

a K9 glory hole:

I dare you. I triple-DOG dare you!

I lived in Hong Kong for 3 weeks in 2000, and was always intrigued by its duality of East and West. A crazy city even by my standards, but I’ve always been a little nostalgic for it, and of course I love pixelmaps:

I lived somewhere to the left (north) of this area:

see the entire pixelmap here.

some politicians are taller than others:

it’s the fine print that matters:

Tomoshirinkata
what is your Ninja Name?

A- ka
B- zu
C- mi
D- te
E- ku
F- lu
G- ji
H- ri
I- ki
J- zu
K- me
L- ta
M- rin
N- to
O- mo
P- no
Q- ke
R- shi
S- ari
T- chi
U- do
V- ru
W- mei
X- na
Y- fu
Z- zi

why not to fall asleep at parties:

they’re actually constructing a giant robot in Tokyo:

Japandoned

nick — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:27:50 +0000

Japan has some abandoned places. Anybody know how to get in touch with Japan? I’d love to do a residency at any of these structures.

My favs,

the pink chair warehouse:

where green thrives:

the snow factory:

prefab shantytown:

and lastly the mostamazingawesomemodernism:

the secret behind what’s in Red Matter

nick — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:50:47 +0000

for all their lack of emotion those Vulcans sure are a pervy bunch!

re: red matter

Google Apps – Calendar for Flux Factory (and other non-profits)

nick — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:45:40 +0000

I’m going to put up this little how-to guide for our friends and admins at the Flux Factory to assist their staff with setting up google’s Calendar for internal use (free to educational non-profits!). Should be applicable to any other non-profits or organizations who are trying to wrap their heads around google’s ’sharing’ structure in particular. It’s obtuse, but actually makes a ton of sense once you understand it. Here we go!

For starters, one must first understand that when you “register” your domain with Google Apps, you are not actually transferring any of your ICANN data or nameserver pointing to google, you are only creating an account, in Flux Factory’s case “@fluxfactory.org” with google, which will allow said domain users to access their services. I’ll be focusing on Calendar for this post. Of course to do this you must actually OWN the domain you are registering with google, and be able to create one primary email address for google to contact, as well as be able to setup subdomain redirects or create CNAME records. Assuming you’ve already registered:

the organization’s admin needs to create all the accounts. This is done via the main Google Apps login and is located at your primary dashboard, where it says “Create new users“:

When you create a new user, google will generate a random password, and you’ll see a link to “Email instructions” which will popup a window to send instructions to the user whose account you just created.

At this point, depending on where you’ve setup subdomain remaps, the user will eventually log into Google Apps and use Calendar via the login window:

It’s important from an organizational standpoint to recognize that each user maintains their own calendar and account. To access each others calendars sharing needs to be enabled and implemented by each user; i.e. every staff member needs to manually input all the calendars they want to embed inside THEIR calendar. This might seem like a hassle, but it makes sense, because it allows a tiered approach to staffing (not applicable to Flux Factory’s paltry staff of less than one dozen).

As each user logs in for the first time, I recommend you immediately change your temporary password. Google may prompt you upon your first login to change your password; if not, you can do this via the top-right of your browser (assuming you’re already in the Calendar), click Settings:

Then follow the arrow:

After creating your new password I recommend logging out and back in, to clear your cache and make sure the rest runs smoothly. Then again click on Settings, and on the Calendars tab:

The above image is incorrect. At first you will only see YOUR calendar, because you haven’t added “FLUX FACTORY” yet. So click on YOUR calendar (in my case, highlighted red). You will get settings relevant to YOUR calendar. Click the ‘Share this calendar‘ tab:

Make sure the above settings are ticked and the drop-down menu options in place. Click ‘Save’ button.

You will be taken back to the main calendar. Now we will add our organization’s staff calendars to YOUR calendar.

Under the Other calendars box, click ‘Add’ then ‘Add a friend’s calendar’:

You will get the following window. Now, by ‘Contact Email’ google does NOT mean the users personal email. It is referring to their Apps-email, in this case something like user@fluxfactory.org which is maintained as a user within Google Apps. Does that make sense? Yup! Start typing in the input box and google will predict who you are trying to add:

There’s really only one thing left to do, Create Events!

This will take you to a window like this:

This is the most important step yet. Note the “Calendar” drop down menu. Currently there are two options, MY personal calendar and the ORGANIZATION’S admin calendar. This is very useful for differentiating between events relevant to your position (your calendar) and an event you are posting for all staffers. KEEP IN MIND as we are advancing an ethic of transparency, all other staffers will still have access to your personal organizational calendar. So it’s not a “private” calendar (that’s what your PERSONAL gmail account calendar is for).

As you have ability to post events to the organizations calendar, please DO NOT SPAM that calendar. Don’t post non-relevant events. For myself in particular I’ve pushed the organizations calendar to my phone. So my personal calendar is doubled-up with everything the organization does. If you spam the organization’s main calendar with non-relevent events, you spam me, personally. So be sure to distinct between events relevant to ALL (organization) and yourself (remember everybody else can still see your calendar, and choose to untick it under My Calendars).

Back at the actual calendar, you will start to see fields like this:

For this instance, the blue fields are the FLUX FACTORY events, and the red field is my personal organizational event.

NOW IT GETS INTERESTING!

FLUX FACTORY STAFF:

Our organization’s login for our and your calendar can be found here:

http://calendar.fluxfactory.org/

That shouldn’t be hard to remember.

The organizations main calendar FEED is PUBLIC ACCESSIBLE (another reason to not spam it with non-relevant events) and can be found at the following XML link:

http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/admin%40fluxfactory.org/public/basic

You can ADD this link to the device or software of your choice (I’ve added it to my personal gmail account calendar – via Other Calendars -> Add -> Add by URL – and pushed this to my mobile phone).

As for phones, Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users should follow these instructions on how to sync your device with Flux Factory’s Google Apps account. For G1 (Android) users it should be straightforward, but to clarify add the above XML link to your PERSONAL google calendar via your desktop/laptop, then it will automatically push to your Android phone. You can tick on/off the organization’s calendar under Calendar -> Menu -> My Calendars. I’ll show G1 users if they’re confused; iPhone/iPod Touch users are on your own.

Any ?s?

recent delicious bookmarks, May 3 through May 15

nick — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:00:09 +0000

These are my bookmarks for May 3 through May 15:

pictures of boomboxes – yes!
WiiSpray.com – genius
retro NES gaming device – does it have video output? LOL!
Art-O-Mat closing – LIC arts space closing at the end of May
Magic Eight Ball CGI – All signs point to ME!
Queens Art Express – art around, through, in, Queens
London Shop Fronts – it is what it is
Apple Bans BitTorrent Software | TorrentFreak – Next, Apple plans to ban computers from being used, for anything.
top-10-vintage-batman-toys-for-your-inner-boy-wonder – yes. yes they are.
plus minus gif – is there a purpose to this gif? Paypal uses it, now CNN, and other big sites. what does it MEAN?
What is in the Diseases Database? Diseases Database – disease database. not lots of information here, more links than anything.
Welcome | MagCloud – another POD, maybe better than lulu
Fffvvound’s Blog – hot shit blog. shame it stopped. what happen?
not < 1 – selling everything she owns
awesome gif – gif
AJ Fosik – hot shit artist
Afghanistan’s only pig quarantined in flu fear | Lifestyle | Reuters – where'd he go? noboooooody knows!
Time Warner Cable Business Class | Internet Access – time warner business service plans
American Kennel Club – Breeds – dog breeds as broken down by the American Kennel Club
New York City’s Five Boro Bike Tour Map from NYC Bike Maps – bike tour is making it difficult for my house-move today. here's the map.

this week in geek – superimpersonators

nick — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:37:40 +0000

These are a few of my faaaavorite people.

this week in geek – animals part 2

nick — Thu, 07 May 2009 03:54:55 +0000

Nghhhhhhhh na na na nah!

this week in geek – Animals, part 1

nick — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:56:15 +0000

mostly dogs and cats, they’re the best! They make my friend Lucy go “Nghhhhhh, na na na nah”!

this week in geek – NES

nick — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:36:57 +0000

Legendary fucking platform:

this week in geek – Hack the Planet!

nick — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:21:35 +0000

You’ll figure it out:

recent delicious bookmarks, April 28 through May 2

nick — Sun, 03 May 2009 00:02:05 +0000

These are my bookmarks for April 28 through May 2:

NYFA Current – Art News for artists and all those who support them – sorry I missed this.
Make: Online : Amazing miniature midtown Manhattan – manhattan in miniature
play him off, keyboard cat – another.
cowboys collapse – i love how the players keep their helmets on. instinct!
Play him off, keyboard cat – internet. so weird.
Cow-Ard Kenobi – http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/55741/1218725891/coward.jpg
FREE "DANGER" SIGNS – INDUSTRIAL SIGNAGE – good find
Pentagon uses Facebook, Twitter to spread message – Army brass are on the tip
CSS Tools: Reset CSS – I guess this is one of the more popular reset codes (I still like the Yahoo one)
hipster blog – it's only getting better and better
NYTimes art review by Holland Cotter – I should try and go see this, or rather, I missed this!
internet balls – break it down!
Flickr: The Official White House Photostream’s Photostream – official Bo Obama flickr stream
YouTube – The best break up. Ever! – on Aussie tv?
cloaking device – I think it's a Romulan space ship
Babies – good. maybe too good!
Metric versus Imperial – what what!?
Tiled backgrounds designer – another pattern generator. smart!
Stripe Generator – ajax diagonal stripes background designer – stripey ajax!
Blogs Home – Wired Blogs – Wired blogs recently (like, just now) migrated to WordPress from Typepad. nice.
Rapidshare Shares Uploader Info with Rights Holders | TorrentFreak – Rapidshare in alliance with German government, turning over user private data for authoritarian purposes
YouTube – Superstar Rajini Kanth Fight Part 2 – Bollywood at its Best

the best team in baseball

nick — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:22:03 +0000

A good lookin’ bunch of boys they are (boys? Heck. They could sire me! I can’t believe I’m older than most of these youngins!)

And it’s true, we currently are the Best team in baseball. Boston could tie us with another win but we’re better than everybody else by at least one win or one loss. That’s good enough for me. I really do like our chances. I’ve liked Greene since before they acquired him (he just needs to hit a little better, and commit fewer errors); the Ludwick/Pujols combo is a force to be reckoned with, both are power hitters who can small ball when the situation calls for it; Duncan seems to be improving his patience at the plate; Molina, nuff said!; I’d like to see some control improvement from Wellemeyer and when we get Carpenter back in mid-May watch out! And will someone just give Franklin the closer-ball already! He’s been my Fantasy closer for four bloody months now.

Go Redbirds! (stupid cubbies)

Google tracking Swine

nick — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:35:51 +0000

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

give it 15 seconds to load entirely.

modern real-time map-tracking, Incredible.

maps tag for more maps, terrains, topographies and graphic terrestrial representations.

business card idea

nick — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:07:42 +0000

mouseover for full effect:

they arrive early next week. I need to start making these more often, in short bursts, constantly giving them away. Lots of networking and contacts to be made in life still.

this week in geek – gerwiiatrics

nick — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:24:12 +0000

(Okay that post title pun was bad, I admit)

So tonight a guy on the streets actually challenged me to a game of Wii Bowling. Inside his ground-level apartment (visible, and clearly safe) was a large HDtv and Wii running, ready and waiting for a challenger. I would have taken him up on it except I already had a date with the pub. I guess his offer stuck with me, made me think of these images. Pretty wonderful how enthusiastic senior citizens are with the Wii. An uncle of mine, I saw him over Christmas, and he’s by no means aged but aging, still he was kicking the kids off the Wii so he could have a go at bowling and golf and whatnot. It’s crazy how much good that platform has done for the world. And older people seem particularly adept with the Wii compared to the other latest generation consoles.

(Quick note I think next week will be This Week In Geek Week, as in all geek all week, I have so much stuff I absolutely have to clear some of it out. Plus I’m moving house this weekend and will be out of commission for a couple days so I’ll schedule content while I’m away. So look forward to that! Dorks!)

swine flu viral virus video

nick — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:50:12 +0000

Man I’m too fast for that to catch me!

recent delicious bookmarks, April 24 through April 28

nick — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:00:45 +0000

These are my bookmarks for April 24 through April 28:

Michael Jackson’s auctioned items – the Auction that Never was.
Inside Steve Jobs’ tear-down mansion – Apple 2.0 – he let it decay, then claims it's cheaper to build anew than restore.
Lifehacker – Top 10 Ubuntu Downloads – Ubuntu – top ubuntu downloads and apps
he-man wallpaper – for dorks, geeks and nerds, you know who you are
hedgehog bread on Flickr – Photo Sharing! – great looking food and culinary art in this photostream
one word. so little time. – 60 second net art, not really art but good.
Flickr: bare blog’s Photostream – lots of toy photos here
NES Games – PDF list of all NES games. wowza.
bio-bak.nl – now featured in 1000 megapixels! – WTF?
zombie jobs – apply now for a position in a post-Z-day world
私信 – best cat blog ever
Otaku bedrooms – fandom at its best
Naked Wizard Tasered [NSFW] [VIDEO] – cops at Coachella taser this guy, he's got the smallest chode ever. But the real lesson is in Europe these cops would have got assaulted by the crowd; in California people are too cozy.
Bakon Vodka :: Home – I feel like it's not for real. But it is for real. But I feel like it's a gimmick.
pictures of legendary CBGB – in spanish, but delicious images
17 cool magnet tricks – Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – magnet tricks, also cool geek blog
Ubuntu pocket guide – for quick reference of all things Ubuntu
Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery | Wired Science … – bam!
Typographica – relaunched on WordPress, shows what is capable with flexible code
Light Switch Ring by Jessica De Lotz, Designer Jewellery at Kabiri London – switch ring, for the Nerd who says, "w00tw00t!"

I want to win beat box battle

nick — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:11:20 +0000

this kid is Amazing:

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-26

nick — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:01:00 +0000

“Heraclitus would have had a f***ing Twitter feed.” – In Defense of Twitter: http://cli.gs/QBYuBt #
crappiest crap crap NYTimes article ever: http://cli.gs/E4TMbS author fails entirely to recognize the software’s potential. #
the body as processing plant: in 24 hours, 2 pints (stout), 2 cups PG Tips tea, 1 cup coffee, 1 litre water, 1 giant glass of OJ. #