blog entry

blog entry

sounds from dead sea at zohar & after the jazz festival

I'm testing recording audio along with the photos - the files are smaller than recording video as well, and sometimes a picture and sound is all you need to trigger a memory. plus you can still use some of your imagination to fill in the missing pictures that movies provide. plus I want to sample some of the audio for general soundscapes from different places.

this is after the jazz performance at yemin moshe 11/08/2007 in jerusalem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R6_Z3ZWjy0

photos and audio recordings from my drive to the Dead Sea at Zohar today. this is a public beach, but it's so much quieter than the Tel Aviv beaches - both in numbers of people and sounds!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_fbTojBWcw

another drive to the Dead Sea today. this time I had a dip! or rather a float! it is a strange sensation. you float then try to push down but you're popped back up. it's like bobbing in the sea. I went to the public beach at Zohar which is where most of the photos are from

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why would someone pay you to make video / media if you're not getting lots of hits ...

there was a discussion about why would somebody pay you to videoblog if you're not getting huge amounts of traffic (amongst other questions / points). the thread started talking about online advertising. I didn't read all the replies, but here's what I'm thinking..

read the original thread

my reply # 1 and # 2 (below)

I think one day people will be shooting / making video / media as stringers and sell that to people who need video / media, likely businesses who can afford to pay. another layer to news program's stringers/freelancers but on any topic, not just news. ala Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. so people will be taking videos for themselves and to upload and be paid if someone uses/downloads it. when archive.org started I was reminded of this also - "The Library" - a collection of clips from creative minds & people uploading as they will. so the utubes and googles et al will become clip libraries. most will be noise, but some will be useful for others. it happens in a small way now, how many of you have had people see a clip or video and ask if they can use it? similar with photos. eg I've had people see a photo and remember a place or a personal memory and ask if they can use it. after a while of people posting videos / photos / media - patterns will develop and certain topics / styles / genres will be sought after. anything is possible - the niches, the popularist content, the everyday life, the world around us. in the future when the world is different people will want to see how it was. I wonder also if it'll affect our memories & the way our brains connect thoughts & images as the ease of storing photos/videos to trigger memories is different now to even say 30 years ago, but that's probably another thread. I wonder then if it'll lead to obsession ala until the end of the world when Claire became obsessed with watching her recorded dreams on her portable video player. I think the two ideas (book/movie) will merge & expand.

I think this has all been mentioned here before - a while ago.. so a refresher. but, I think it's getting closer. especially with google etc & their searching capabilities and tagging / metadata so common place these days. if I were a big business this is the way I'd be going anyway.

oh, also, which is why I think ads on videos is an old media way of thinking. like ads on tv. (which will phase into product placements soon enough). people will still use them now whilst they make money from them but I don't think they'll be necessary or used in future as they'll be regarded as spam. similar to what was mentioned earlier, people ignore spam on the net now, so in the future when the generations change, they'll lose their power. the information / message will be the currency. & hopefully the creative mind! :)

--

extract from Snow Crash (by Neal Stephenson) about the library..

"The business is a simple one. Hiro gets information. It may be gossip, videotape, audiotape, a fragment of a computer disk, a xerox of a document. It can even be a joke based on the latest highly publicized disaster."

"He uploads it to the CIC database -- the Library, formerly the Library of Congress, but no one calls it that anymore. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means."

"And even the word "library" is getting hazy. It used to be a place full of books, mostly old ones. Then they began to include videotapes, records, and magazines. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form, which is to say, ones and zeroes. And as the number of media grew, the material became more up to date, and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated, it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering."

"Millions of other CIC stringers are uploading millions of other fragments at the same time. CIC's clients, mostly large corporations and Sovereigns, rifle through the Library looking for useful information, and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it, Hiro gets paid."

"A year ago, he uploaded an entire first-draft film script that he stole from an agent's wastebasket in Burbank. Half a dozen studios wanted to see it. He ate and vacationed off of that one for six months."

"Since then, times have been leaner. He has been learning the hard way that 99 percent of the information in the Library never gets used at all."

---

just out of interest, there's also some interesting papers about this book.. google 'neal stephenson video library' and there's even some interesting discussions

http://www.utpjournals.com/simile/issue16/blackmorefulltext.html

http://library20.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=515108%3ATopic%3A5678

Tel Aviv beach

a few quick clips taken at the beach at Tel Aviv, 27/07/2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cM-X05Rpa4

Dome of Rock, Western Wall, Jerusalem (video clip)

short clip showing Dome of Rock and Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel. 13/07/2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywkcriVMsVY

the view of the Western Wall in Jerusalem Old City, from the rooftop of the Armenian Quarter. 13/07/2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCkMPpf2-JU

photo memories

photo memories - I take way too many photos and have been uploading them to my flickr page. since I've been travelling over the last few years, I've been trying to upload the photos to the net so I'll have an online backup and be able to access them when I get a bit homesick. they also help me remember things. some might say this is taking the lazy way out and I should train my memory better to remember things. but the photos act as little triggers, or index pointers into the rhizhomes in my brain connected to remembering. I can remember some things from my early childhood, from probably around age 4. other people can remember earlier - I've always wondered how they do this. there's a couple of photos of me back then and I can remember the photo being taken and a few minutes around this time. but I'm not sure if this is just because there is a photo to trigger the recollection - I suspect it is. when I was growing up, Mum took photos but not as many as are taken these days. it was more expensive to have the pictures developed and you couldn't afford (well we couldn't!) to waste too many shots so the pictures were taken with more care (than I tend to use when happy snapping). I wonder if kids these days, who have thousands of photos taken of them at all stages of their life, will remember their earlier life better because of the photos and videos? perhaps they won't even notice or care.

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Tasmanian Devil doing laps at Australia Zoo

this little fellow and his friend were doing laps of their enclosures at Australia Zoo when we went on 03/07/2007. it was about 3:30 - 4pm. I'd never seen a live one before, only photos. I thought they were nocturnal. we watched them for about 15 mins. so cute! they'd run around, stop at certain points and sniff the air. I guess they were looking for food? or could smell something in particular. or maybe the onlookers were too noisy for them (though most people were pretty quiet)

http://www.australiazoo.com.au/our-animals/amazing-animals/mammals/?mamm... has some info about them. they're an endangered species, only found in Tasmania now. they had been common on the Australian mainland at one stage (~5000 years ago) but not these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enbe6HymM_E

queensland sugar cane (video clip)

sugar cane fields as seen from the Sunlander on a train ride from Bowen to Brisbane, June 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsP2-gC8gHI

drupal features and development links & info

some links for drupal features and module development.

CVS
http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/ has an example/browsable view of the drupal code & contributor code CVS system.

themes

http://themegarden.org/drupal50/ has some drupal 5 themes, though it seems the themegarden has recently been closed.

http://drupal.org/project/Themes has some screen shots of themes.

artists sites & groups

http://groups.drupal.org/art-music - this replaces the http://www.drupalart.org/ site.

CCK - Content Construction Kit

http://groups.drupal.org/content-construction-kit-cck - group for Content Construction Kit (CCK). this is the new system to replace flexinodes and allows you to create different fields.

http://drupal.org/node/101723 = Content Construction Kit handbook

http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/88 - lists the different field types for CCK

Views

http://drupal.org/project/views - there's also a system called Views which are like database user views and allow different collections of information to be collected and then displayed once integrated into the theme. from this page:
"This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It has four modes, plus a special mode, and provides an impressive amount of functionality from these modes."

http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/views

theming CCK fields

theming individual CCK fields - http://drupal.org/node/62466

theming CCK & views to create a scheduling grid (good examples of how to customise which could be applied to other CCK node types) : http://groups.drupal.org/node/2647

http://oif.eafarris.com/cck_theming_in_drupal_4_7 - this is the site of the creator of freelinks module. he's using CCK on his site and shows an example of how he made and themed a custom version of weblinks module in CCK

tutorials & documentation

http://groups.drupal.org - for general info on different sections of drupal project

drupal video tutorials and screencasts -
http://drupal.org/node/124318

support @ bryght.com - http://support.bryght.com/

http://drupal.org/handbooks

writing your own drupal modules

http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo = a group for writing your own drupal modules with some lessons/tutorials

http://drupal.org/contribute/development has some ways people can help with drupal development

http://docs.drupaldojo.org/getting-started-with-drupal-development - there's a coding lesson coming up on 11th march. & they're working on a "Getting Started with Drupal Development" handbook

http://drupaldojo.com/lessons/ - has some of the lessons

http://drupal.org/node/508 - module developers guide

http://drupal.org/node/17914 - how to build drupal 4.7 modules

http://drupal.org/node/82920 - building drupal 5 modules

http://drupal.org/node/318 - drupal coding standards

http://api.drupal.org/ - drupal api's

http://drupal.org/node/49768 - drupal object reference

http://api.drupal.org/api/HEAD - examples from drupal head

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mathematical knitting

knitting patterns have a certain mathematical quality to them. knitting is basically a binary system - knit & purl stitches. so it's possible to knit binary sequences, letters eg convert the letters to ascii hex, then binary - some people knit their names as signatures in their work.

people knit in fibonacci sequences and end up with patterns and colours / stripes that somehow seem natural, just as the fibonacci sequences showing up so much in nature.

so I'm keeping a list of some patterns and urls for sites on logical / mathematical knitting.

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there's also the crocheting - such as the hyperbolic plane crocheted recently by Daina Taimina as a way to describe it physically. I need to practice crocheting though, so will stick to knitting for a while

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Drupal needs your help!

The popular CMS Drupal is revamping their module management system for the next version. Future features include upgrade notifications for modules and better issue tracking through a versioning system. They need 3500$ to support developers involved in the process and they're asking for donations. Support Open Source today!read more | digg story

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testing google maps - gps track posting

testing google maps map posting


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1000 lights of Dignity - protest to support the dalits

There's so many crazy things in the papers here in Delhi, and then there's so many that don't make the papers or are buried so deeply that people probably don't find them. Luckily I came across the independent paper Tehelka whilst staying in the other hotel on my last trip. The articles in this paper were heart wrenching. Most of the time I kept thinking, what year is this? how can these things be happening in this day and age. Here's an example - this notice arrived via the sarai reader list (www.sarai.net)

[quote]
National Association For Social Action (NASAindia) in collaboration with National Conference of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR) is organising a protest programme and will pay tribute by lighiting 1000 lights of Dignity to demand justice for the Bhotmange Family and for entire dalit community. i am inviting you in the said programme. please be there to raise the voice of justice and light a candle in favor of justice. there will be more than 5000 activists from all over india will be there.

10th Nov 2006 at 7:00 pm in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi.
[/quote]

For more details on Khairlanji issue please go through following web site.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main22.asp?filename=Ne111106Dalits_like.asp

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