the klog

Two really cool photo sets from flickr:

50 People See averages 50 flickr totals of various tags. Above is "eye". I like the four seasons, too. And candle is pretty awesome.

Transparent Screens is sort of a modern-day La Condition Humaine. (Thanks to judevac for the link.)

In unrelated news, 80s Estonian TV commercials! (Kana kana kana.. HAAKLIHA!) (The first few video links on list page don't work, but some do.)

In even less related news, karate chops actually work. (The sad thing is that I bet he took it out on her after they left...)

Addendum: One of the cuter Star Wars fan films I've seen.

Paleotologists forced to break open a T-rex fossil for transport found soft tissue inside. !!!

(Of course, we got plenty of mastadon and mammoth soft tissue, and no one's managed to clone any of those yet, even.)

(Also, some random cyberhypercavicunicucunctatalinkus led me to find the user-interface used in Jurassik Park. You know when the girl says, "This is UNIX! I know this!" and proceeds to navigate through some 3-D space? She was actually using a real 3-dimensional file browser, not just a mock-up for the movie!)

Take a look at the UI for Netscape 8 Beta. Is that not the most hideous thing you've ever seen? Look at where the menu bar is!! (Linked from this Joe Hewitt blog post.)

In unrelated news: WTF?!

Update Mar-22: Cleggy points out that this UI is remarkably similar to the Weatherbug 6.0 UI.

Btw, if you are the one Lowell alum who has yet to see this, you've got to watch this video.

This is a couple of weeks old, but Mr. Rose was pointing it out to me, and I like how he said it looks like something from Star Wars.

It's Roger Federer and Andre Agassi playing tennis as a publicity stunt atop a helipad at Burj Al Arab, the superswanky hotel in Dubai. More pictures here and here.

My friend Steve Rose emailed me this:

I'm also sending you a picture for your blog. It's from a New York Times article on Feb 20. The picture shows four menacing-looking black guys in a classic gansta-rap album pose. Two have guns, and one has a cigarette dangling from his mouth. However, they're also wearing camouflage and full military body-armor because they turn out to be soldiers stationed in Iraq who also like to rap about their experiences. I thought it was interesting that in one context they would be viewed as dangerous thugs, but in this context they're heros (i.e. our dangerous thugs). Ahhh, the importance of context...

(These rapper-soldiers were also featured in Gunner Palace.)

I went to see a Clash tribute concert this weekend, where several different bands played a few songs each. It was more fun than I expected. I guess covers are an easier way to appeal to the audience than writing your own, but I couldn't deny the energy of the bands. It took a little longer for the audience to get into it, since there's always that "who the hell are you" feel, but people were swaying and making noise more and more as the night went on.

Folk music is all about playing songs that everyone knows, even when no one knows who wrote them.. Likewise, I think it's a good thing for bands to play covers of popular songs now and then, just because it's easier for the audience to get into. Artistic value aside, it was fun. And isn't that what concerts are about? :)

You can colorize videos just by scribbling some lines on every 10th frame. Awesome. (Found via this /. article.

What's extra cool about this movie is the cast! They actually got all those people to provide voices; they didn't just steal lines from existing material!

Btw, it may take some time to start loading. Leave the window open, and it should eventually start loading.

A student was sued by movie companies for downloading nearly 500 movies and occasionally watching them with friends. He argued that he already pays a tax on blank media for just such use, and two courts have now agreed with him. (That link's a commenter's translation of the French articled linked to in this /. article.)

Gunner Palace is a documentary about a field artillery unit stationed in Iraq. I've mentioned it before. Soldiers swear a lot. Because of this, the MPAA rated the film R. The filmmakers petitioned the MPAA, arguing that the military recruits kids, and so kids have every right to see what things are like if they join up. Amazingly enough, the MPAA actually agreed, and they changed the rating to PG-13.

Now here's a bit I find ironic in this Washington Post article about the affair:

"This is not about the number of times they use [a particular expletive], it's about soldiers," Tucker said. "The cultural landscape is shifting. You need to keep each film in context. There's nothing we should be ashamed of. These are important words. And this is how soldiers express themselves during war."

:)

Update Mar-11: I saw Gunner Palace last weekend, and it was very good. It's true to its advertised nature of being neither pro nor anti war. Here's Ebert's review of it.

Check out these color photos from World War I. Here's my favorite. :P Okay, so actually this one is my favorite, because the nurses look so ethereal, like they're not really in the photo or something. That effect is heightened by the colored uniforms of the soldiers; the nurses wouldn't have blended in the background as much if the photo were black and white.