Saturday, April 26, 2008

Terraforming Suburbia

A romantic and glamorous name for the activity of shoveling dirt and debris into wheelbarrows, nudging them 50 meters away, just to empty them again.

My garden needs a lot of extra earth on one side to become level to the property boundary - and time is running out because people are coming to plant the hedge. I reckon I must have moved at least 60 loads at about 50 kilos a piece today. That's 3 tonnes worth of crap-moving. I'm completely broken...limp and almost drooling...and just a little bit proud.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Busdriver, go vote!

So it's Pennsylvania today - I hope youngsters do their duty...Obama will likely need it.
Saw an interview with HC today - and while she says many smart things and seems sincere, I also sense a undercurrent of camouflage. She is very smart at turning critical questions in her favour...usually ending any answer with a minute of predictably formal political speechiness. That just does not go down well with me. In comparison, Obama actually seems to dig into the question, not dig into getting away from it.

My new favourite gave a show here this past Wednesday - 30 people showed up, yet he gave 120%. My friends and I (and most of the crowd) were thoroughly impressed. I bought 3 of his CDs and stated that one of my best memories of LA (his hometown) was in fact riding a public bus, drunk. He must have figured me completely insane. But then again, he cannot really complain...listen to the man.

[EDIT]
I found this image of the venue, courtesy of Jint.dk:

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Way cool

This is way cool.
And I am wondering how the Hell they did it. Of course, they have the angle of the photo material...and they have some offset factor compared to the regular 2D maps - but I would assume that height infomation is needed to determine which buildings shadow what and how much. Looking at some of those buildings, there is a near-perfect correlation between overlaps and stitching. Que es possible?

Redirected from there, I discovered Swivel, a magnificent concept for data geeks. I'm not heavy on statistical data - but my escapades into 3D and visualisation make me naturally curious about all this. There are magical mashups just waiting to be uncovered in this realm...

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Monday, April 07, 2008

D-E-L

One of my old favourites is back after a long hiatus. Well, only concerning solo albums - he's been in tonnes of projects...not least Gorillaz, of course.
The new album is good - I am not quite sure if it's great. Musically, you get something completely unique...but I feel the critics are right when they say most of his topics are too shallow for his calibre.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Barcelona express

Back this week from a "long" weekend in Barcelona. What a bloody great city.

I was there by leisure albeit with my company department - a bonus trip earned through good results the past year. A really nice trip but much too short and much too socially anti-social.
By this I mean the general problem in moving in large tourist packs of foreigners. It will never be my thing. I saw my chances to get away on my own a few times but at the end of the trip I had only spoken 2-3 times to any native Barcelonian, not related to trade.
It was not much I got to train my beginner's Spanish - although I suspect I would not have anyway, since everyone was very keen to speak English :)

Best site was by far the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família which everyone must see before they die. I have seen many impressive buildings in my life but this takes the prize - not in grandeur, though it certainly is huge, but in sheer uncompromising creativity.
Gaudí was apparently a mathematical genius which I can certainly see the importance of, since those spacy ideas would have never been possible to build, had he not himself figured out the foundational engineering behind it. The scale of his projects are simply enormous, considering how many details they contain - looking at the amount of modern building project fuck-ups that seem to come in abundance, Gaudí's achievements are really blinding.