On Web Culture

Via Dooce.

It could be somewhere in the US of A but it’s not. It is right here in New Zealand. Watch for our famous red rubbish bins & blue recycling bins making a guest appearance.

Comes with full commentary including:
“Wo-ohh, that’s a machete!?”
“Awh you’ve just noticed?”
“Ohmigosh I thought that was just a bat!”
(said matter-of-factly) “It’s a machete”

Introducing ‘dude next door vs guy from around the corner’:

Source: YouTube

Download: http://webculture.co.nz/video/20090824/dude-next-door-vs-guy-from-around-the-corner.flv (Download VLC media player to play .flv files)

If you’re time-poor, skip to 5:55 & watch through to 6:40 for one of the most amazing parts of Brand’s talk.

Source: TED.com

Source: YouTube (delayed cookies enabled)

I am currently reading David Foster Wallace’s collection of essays ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again‘, a gift from a friend. It is so good, and so sad he is no longer alive. Reading his work I am struck by the same feeling I got reading about John Lennon’s life. A rare talent gone too soon.

This link will not be for everyone, David Foster Wallace writing about tennis is a select audience. But I do recommend it:

The String Theory [esquire.com] (even better with Readability)

BONUS

• Federer Reawakens My Inner Sportswriter [salon.com]
• Can Rafael Nadal Survive His Own Grueling Style of Tennis? [NYTimes.com]

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.