On Web Culture

Source: NZ On Screen

LINKS
SJD – Beautiful Haze [YouTube.com]

At different times in my life I have done jobs that have been hard to do. Thinking back now the hardest thing was having to do something I hated & being told that it wasn’t that bad and I would get used to it.

In retrospect those experiences were valuable. You learn a lot from that stuff. And I do think sometimes things are hard for a reason. But I remember then thinking that it would drive me mad if the rest of my life was going to be like that. It seemed to me then that work, what we do with our days work, would need to be meaningful. It would have to matter otherwise I would struggle with it.

I have my suspicions where that idea originates. It is interesting to me that from pretty young I was interested in what people did for a job, what they did with their lives & I hoped that I would do something fulfilling.

For me, the hardest times at the worst jobs are touchstones of sorts. When I see people losing it in the supermarket car park after work on Friday I wonder if their jobs are like those I suffered through. But they’ve been doing it for years & years. How much is it reasonable for a person to go through?

It seems to me that things shouldn’t have to be like that. That kind of awfulness is not fated or destined. It is like when they say on TV “…and the markets bounced back today after consumers embraced the long weekend”. That’s not consumers, that’s me, that’s you, that’s us! And when we buy stuff we make decisions, choices.

Recently I read something about how we can agonise & preach and be very vocal about the merits of a certain type of cellphone or mp3 player but we go strangely silent on the bigger topics. Well, that makes sense, how do you talk about those topics in everyday conversation? But I wish we would. Somehow I think if we were better connected to people around us, and talked to them, we would find it harder to shaft the people we don’t know or haven’t met.

Well you should. Because this Sunday on UPFM nsu & Disha are interviewing Mike from Pitch Black – NZT 3pm – 6pm.

Tune in via:
http://www.upfm.dj (online worldwide stream – send us a message on air for free!)
107.5 FM Akl
88.1 FM Wgtn

Details from nsu:

“Joining nsu & Disha in the studio will be Mike, one half of the legendary duo making up Pitch Black – considered by many to be the Godfathers of live electronic music in New Zealand. We will be featuring some new numbers off the recently released remix LP “Rhythm, Sound & Movement” and throwing in the usual questions. The second half of the feature will have Mike spinning and talking about some of the more influential tracks.

As a giveaway, we have a copy of Pitch Black’s new Rude Mechanicals Remixes CD up for grabs.

Sunday 4pm NZST = 2pm AEST = 6am CET (D.S.) = 5am GMT (D.S.) = 12am EDT = Saturday 9pm PDT”

Flatmate David & I were talking today about his university paper & through that discussion the Petals Around the Rose game came up. I thought I’d link to it here as I famously never found out the answer to this game but refused to look it up online. As a test of lateral thinking, I wanted to see whether in time I could crack it on my own.

Well, I actually had forgotten about it until I was reminded today. But unfortunately when googling the game to find the URL to send to David a very strong clue to how to unlock the answer to the game was in the search results. So armed with that I gave the game another try & found I now knew the key to it. Oh well! Have a go & see if you can work it out. If you’re feeling charitable leave a comment here letting me know how many total rolls it took before you were confident you had cracked it.

URL: http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-j.htm

There is actually a famous story about the time Bill Gates was first introduced to the Petals Around the Rose game. It is a fascinating story but I link to it with this caution, it does have the ability to send you down the wrong track when trying to figure out the game. Ok, that said, Bill Gates and
Petals Around the Rose.

Auckland HDR Timelapse from Diego on Vimeo.
Via Mandamonium.

David Foster Wallace on seven days in the life of the late, great John McCain:

Outside the Riverfront’s side doors off the parking lot, where it’s so cold and windy you have to smoke with mittens on, an OTS with Jim C. and his longtime friend and partner Frank C. means getting to bitch about the 12 Monkeys, and here Jim and Frank discourse with no small sympathy on the brutality of these campaign reporters’ existence — subsisting on the Campaign Diet, which is basically sugar and caffeine (diabetes is apparently the Black Lung of political journalism), always on the road in some sort of box for weeks at a time, very alone, connected to loved ones only by cellphone and 1-800 answering service. Rolling Stone mentions being in hotels every night, which a CBS sound guy on BS2 had said was probably the McCain media’s number-one stressor. The Shrub apparently stays in five-star places with putting greens and spurting-nymph fountains and a speed-dial number for the in-house masseur. Not McCain2000, which favors Marriott, Courtyard by Marriott, Hampton Inn, Hilton, Signature Inn, Radisson, Holiday Inn, Embassy Suites, etc. Rolling Stone, who is in no way cut out to be a road journalist, invokes the soul-killing anonymity of chain hotels, the rooms’ terrible transient sameness: the ubiquitous floral design of the bedspreads, the multiple low-watt lamps, the pallid art-work bolted to the wall, the whisper of ventilation, the sad shag carpet, the smell of alien cleansers, the Kleenex dispensed from the wall, the automated wakeup call, the lightproof curtains, the windows that do not open-ever. RS asks whether it could possibly be coincidence that over half of all indoor suicides take place in chain hotels. Jim and Frank say they get the idea. RS references the terrible oxymoron of “hotel guest.” Hell could easily be a chain hotel. Is it any accident that McCain’s POW prison was known as the Hanoi Hilton? Jim shrugs; Frank says you get used to it, that it’s better not to dwell.

Source: Rolling Stone

BONUS

• David Foster Wallace – Consider The Lobster [gourmet.com]
• David Foster Wallace – Shipping Out (.pdf)
• David Foster Wallace – Ticket To The Fair (.pdf)

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Occasionally I join my mate Ivan on his radio show on UPFM on Sunday afternoons. It’s always good fun and I normally come away with a few new tunes to put on the iPod.

The latest of these is nsu – Sixteen 786 feat. Lost in Japan [Romantech Remix]. (I should point out nsu is Ivan’s musical pseudonym & currently stands for “Naughty Sex Unit”). The Romantech remix of Sixteen 786 is an ambient number that reminds me of flying back from a holiday, relaxed & refreshed.

The good news for you (& me!) is that the remix is available as a free download along with the rest of the tracks on the Sonic Debris Remixes EP. These are all currently available at e-lusive.net.

I have been a rapacious user of Ted.com, AtGoogleTalks & This American Life for a while now & I’ve wanted to share some of the talks I’ve enjoyed the most. Unfortunately the feed for This American Life only makes the download available until the new one is ready – which is every week, so I can’t link to any of those. But I will embed my favourites from the other two sites below. These come highly recommended & are in no particular order.

TED.COM
Benjamin Zander: Classical music with shining eyes
“Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it — and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.”

Source: Ted.com

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
“Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one.”

Source: Ted.com

Bill Strickland: Rebuilding America, one slide show at a time
“Bill Strickland tells a quiet and astonishing tale of redemption through arts, music, and unlikely partnerships.”

Source: Ted.com

James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia (contains strong language)
“In James Howard Kunstler’s view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about.”

Source: Ted.com

ATGOOGLETALKS
Authors@Google: Michael Krasny
“KQED Radio’s Michael Krasny is one of the country’s leading interviewers of literary luminaries, a maestro for educated listeners who prefer their discourse high and civil. In Off Mike, Krasny talks of his strong desire to become a novelist in the footsteps of Bellow and Philip Roth, and then discovering his real talent as a communicator—a deft ability to draw others out as an interlocutor. In a mix of memoir and reportage, Krasny takes readers inside his world—his coming of age during the heady times of the 1960s with their blend of the civil rights movement and political activism, to the vivid description of his journey from a student of literature to a struggling novelist to an educator and—somewhat accidentally—a radio host.”

Source: YouTube.com

Authors@Google: Lawrence Wright
“Wright, a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer for The New Yorker, brings exhaustive research and delightful prose to one of the best books yet on the history of terrorism, The Looming Tower. He begins with the observation that, despite an impressive record of terror and assassination, post–WWII, Islamic militants failed to establish theocracies in any Arab country. Many helped Afghanistan resist the Russian invasion of 1979 before their unemployed warriors stepped up efforts at home. Al-Qaeda, formed in Afghanistan in 1988 and led by Osama bin Laden, pursued a different agenda, blaming America for Islam’s problems. Less wealthy than believed, bin Laden’s talents lay in organization and PR, Wright asserts.”

Source: YouTube.com

@Google: Benjamin Maron
“Ben Maron lives a dual life as computer scientist and fashion designer. Since graduating from MIT in 2004, Ben has worked on a number of developments at the forefront of high-performance computation, most recently at IBM where he is a lead architect on the Cyclops (Blue Gene/C) supercomputer team. On the design side, Ben is completing his final year on the BA Fashion Design course at London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins, and has worked for notable designers such as Donna Karan and Jonathan Saunders. His goal is to fuse the two disparate fields by creating thought-provoking, technically charged garments, which highlight the striking similarities between the artistry of a complex circuit and of a fabric’s interaction with the human form.”

Source: YouTube.com

BONUS
I Met The Walrus
“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”

Source: YouTube.com

Heartbreaking. Beautiful. Hilarious. Fragile. Poigant. Powerful. Precious.

PostSecret.

Let’s just say all you need is this link. Pure. Gold.

Via Caoine.