Blogs

click here or on the image to play the quicktime movie

drives to woolongong, blue mountains, hartley, yamba. april 2006

click here or on the image to play the quicktime movie

the kids at penton mewsey, cow common and a train trip to salisbury. july 2006

when I first arrived at work here in Delhi the building we are working in was still pretty much a building site. ruubble everywhere. toilets not working except for one communal toilet in the other older building about 10 minutes walk away. workmen everywhere. people staring at us all the time. later we moved to a new hotel and the room I was given is next to another building site - this time a new corporate building next to the hotel. similar to the work site, the workpeople live onsite. I took some photos of the lazy sunday afternoon in saket whilst looking out the window at the building site, so here's the video / slideshow. the music is 'mad world' (from donny darko movie) - I thought it matched the mood I was in whilst watching out the window ...

also posted at http://blip.tv/file/57782 if the video doesn't work below

click here or on the image to play the quicktime movie

saket building site on a sunday afternoon

new delhi, india 06/08/2006

attached is an export of gps data - will add google earth exports soon

DSC01918, originally uploaded by AliaK.

drive from Delhi to Agra, July 16, 2006. these huts and other mud walled huts are scattered along the road on farmlands on the road to Agra. I'm not sure if they're houses/shelters, grain storage or animal houses??

100_4911.JPG, originally uploaded by AliaK.

it really is clean and white. my cameras had trouble taking photos as the sky was almost the same colour. the optical illusions are interesting - the width of the columns.

other photos @ http://flickr.com/photos/aliak_com/tags/tajmahal/

100_4878.JPG, originally uploaded by AliaK.

Chattapur Mandir (Temple), Delhi, 13/07/2006 - we had a blessing ceremony in front of Ganesh. we couldn't take photos inside the buildings but this is a postcard. the statues are finely carved, some seem to be made of silver or copper (not sure). we washed our hands, were given flowers as offerings to the statues, then poured water onto a centrepiece which had water flowing onto it, had spices and food (rice) offerings given to the centrepiece, then the red paste put on our forheads. we were given half coconuts and flowers.

more photos @ http://flickr.com/photos/aliak_com/tags/chattapurmandirtemple/

Watch the video

busy hands make light work

my http://wearethemedia.com/2006/07/03/watm-challenge-3-hands/ challenge #3 video

assembled in isadora

music by surgeon

I just received an email about Urban Stories website via the Sarai Reader list

[quote]
Urban Stories: A Collection of Graphic Essays on Mumbai Posting 6 Please view updates,pics and works in progress at http://mumbai-urbanstories.blogspot.com/

THE project is taking shape.. and so far, learnt a lot about the city, good and bad. Most of the last week or so, its been either the rain or the riots in Mumbai, so just been stuck at home. With regards to graphic design, its been satisfying to actually have the time to work and experiment.. To try and break cliches, playing with colours and forms.

Currently, each graphic essay is a stand alone piece.. covering a range of topics from sexuality to urban identities to architecture.. (stil workin on them..)What needs to be done is linking them up, making them part of a cohesive whole with text and classification (temporal aspect). That should take shape once all the pieces are ready.. Looking at about 18-20 pieces right now, some are very detailed, some not so detailed.. with the post modern view especially evident in the text/ typo on each piece.. I see the final presentation also as something that one can experiment with..work creatively with..

Though for a project like this, reseach has been very specific to each piece..nevertheless have learnt a lot about the city..mainly photography and print media reserach have been key.

Hope to upload finished pieces in the near future..and get feedback to further refine each graphic essay.
[/quote]

aliak_com_as_graph3, originally uploaded by AliaK.

aliak_com_as_graph3

aliak.com as a graph using Processing app from www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm - completed graph

everyone was making these a couple of weeks ago so I did too! drupal makes a nice image I think.. check out the websitesasgraphs flickr tag for other people's site images

Uploaded by AliaK on 11 Jun '06, 7.15pm NZST.

sl_vloggercon06-01, originally uploaded by AliaK.

I didn't make it to vloggercon06, but caught a couple of the saturday sessions online. second life was pretty quiet - they must have got the video working after I left

Uploaded by AliaK on 16 Jun '06, 3.32am NZST.

gps drawing - driving from work to home 25/02/2005

Originally uploaded by AliaK.

I'm trying out the 'blog this' feature from flickr to drupal. it's working well - I need to change the format a touch but that's hopefully just a bit of tweaking. posting some pics in random chronological order.

gps drawing - driving from work to home (chandlers ford to southampton) 25/02/2005. I have some gps data from NZ, Sydney, NSW - QLD drive, Brisbane, India to create images and upload also. I must have overwritten the Brussels data as I haven't seen the files in a while. I don't think I had the gps when I went to Seoul but I'll have a look for the data in case I've just mis-filed it. There's even the gps for artists workshop gps walk we did on the Isle of Wight.. so many things to catch up on...

Uploaded by AliaK on 9 Jul '06, 7.35am NZST

100_4724.JPG

Originally uploaded by AliaK.

blue sky in delhi, July 2006 - haven't seen blue sky in Delhi for a while so I just had to take a photo (any excuse). this is whilst driving to work. it's one of the main roads along which all the cooler shops are located. there was an article in the paper a couple of weeks ago talking about how AC (air conditioners) were gaining popularity in Delhi and that air/water cooolers would one day be outdated. perhaps this might take a while as the AC are still VERY expensive here for most Delhiites. the coolers are quite efficient and much cheaper to run.

Uploaded by AliaK on 11 Jul '06, 6.30am NZST.

100_4725.JPG

Originally uploaded by AliaK.

blue sky in delhi, July 2006 - haven't seen blue sky in Delhi for a while so I just had to take a photo (any excuse). this is taken at work. the dishes almost blend in as clouds. it's taken from within the building so a touch unclear. but there was hardly any pollution in the air as well which is a change for Delhi also!

ok, here's a reply to a question about recording skype audio. I got it working on the mac with the ecamm call recorder software. I'll try the pc software one day too.

the notes are a little incoherent but I'll know what I'm talking about at least even if nobody else does and this is just a reminder for me.. perhaps it's time to start doing short/casual interviews/chats again..have been thinking about it..

---

ok I tried it out and can't get it to work properly in skype. I think I'm confused with recordings as most of my recordings were with normal phone interviews and I used one of those dick smith phone condensors plugged into my along with my mic mixer which then was plugged into the line in on my laptop and recorded in soundforge or audacity. (I used to have soundforge years ago but then had to rebuild the pc and went to audacity as I lost the sf installer & audacity was free & worked well)

I did a search. on a mac, I came across ecamm call recorder which is about $20 but works for 7days trial to test with first. http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder

I just tried it now calling the Skype Echo / Sound Test Service
http://support.skype.com/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_...

this worked ok - my mic levels were really low but I think that's just this machine (still getting used to the audio on the mac - I seem to have one less input than I used to on a pc and don't have the wave mixer selection input). this app saves as a quicktime movie - there is also a conversion app to convert the QT file to mp3 (drag & drop) or u can do the normal export to wav/aiff in QT then open in itunes and save the file as mp3 to convert manually. it's actually handy to have it as a quicktime audio track as u can just paste in a video track / images over the top and the videoblog post is done for you (so u could have a videoblog post & podcast if u wanted to - though it's easy to do this manually also..)

http://www.echochamberproject.com/recordingskype has some instructions also - it was a fluke this page came up in the google results as I've helped out with transcribing one of Kent's interviews for his project so it's weird to see a google result for a generic search on a page u already use.

I tried it on the pc over the weekend but the audio stopped recording whenever I would speak so it was like only one worked at a time and they couldn't share the audio source. maybe skype did this on purpose so people wouldn't record calls/privacy issues. not sure.

these links might help - I haven't tried them but they sound like they will work:

http://www.skypejournal.com/blog/archives/2004/12/skype_podcast_r.php

http://www.henshall.com/docs/Skype%20Recording%20WinXp%2012202004.pdf

http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=12788&postdays=0&postorder=asc&st...

i-Sound WMA mp3 Recorder
http://www.mp3-wma-recorder.com/

if u had 2 pcs u could feed the one making the skype call's audio out into the second one's audio in and record on the second machine. if u don't have a second machine, use a minidisc or other external recorder, then re-encode/re-record it back in (if not already in mp3/wav) - it's a messy & time consuming method but should still work.

let me know if u find a more elegant solution. I'd pay the $20 I think for the ease of using the software - it'll cost more in time & hassle to do it the longer way round & u might find it's more trouble than it's worth and end up not doing it (if u're anything like me! go for the easy solution)

http://del.icio.us/AliaK/skype -> I'm collating links here also for urls & info