I don’t know if it’s the same in other Dorkbots, but Cardiff’s skews heavily towards projects where technology meets art. These can often leave me a bit cold, feeling that I understand how the artist has done something, but not really why.
I did rather enjoy this documentary about Paul Granjon’s Oriel Factory robot exhibit however.
Perhaps it helps me that the messages about recycling and using clean energy seem clear and important in this exhibition. Plus, it looks like a lot of fun!
Volume 0
Master Sorran, is obsessed by his search for an ancient civilization which, according to legend, holds the secret of immortality. After many years he lights upon the wreck of the civilisation’s most powerful starship: the Resurrection.
Sorran ignores the dangers and orders his crew to dock. The explorers and Sorran himself will face the mysteries of the Resurrection and the secret of the origins of the dark side.
Dark Resurrection Volume 0 by Angelo Licata
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The folks at WordPress.com were inspired by Boing Boing’s use of the Retro Mac, and have now made it available to all WordPress.com users. Very cool.
So long Steve, and thanks for all the things.
Every year I toy with the idea of participating in NaNoWriMo. I don’t consider myself a good writer, but I have lots of ideas for stories and characters. I think I would enjoy the cathartic aspect of just trying to churn out a novel NaNoWriMo style:
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Maybe. Maybe.
This coming Wednesday I’ll be at my third social media surgery in Chapter Arts, helping to orient those new to social media.
If you have questions about the hows (and whys) of social media, these surgeries are an excellent opportunity. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well attended these events have been, and it has been satisfying to help – even in a small way – some non-profits trying to make better use of social media and the web in general. So long as I have the time to donate, I’ll be happy to continue to come along and help others.
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Conspiracy theorist says he’s stuck in the Matrix – walesonline.co.uk
IT WAS after the birth of his daughter that Ben Emlyn-Jones started believing the world was not what it seemed.
Sixteen years on, he has created his own professional organisation dedicated to peddling his ideas – Hospital Porters Against the New World Order.
The conspiracy theorist is convinced the world is run by secret powers, the moon landings never happened, Al Qaeda was not behind 9/11 and that we live in a matrix.
“I feel a bit like Neo in The Matrix,” said Aberystwyth-born Ben.
I think my last dregs of respect for Wales Online have gone now.
PressPausePlay, an award-winning documentary about our new digital culture, premiered at SXSW earlier this year. It is playing at film festivals and you can buy it on iTunes, Amazon, and other digital pay sites. If you don’t want to pay for it, you can now download it via a torrent for free. This free option was essential to the filmmakers. As Seth Godin says in the film, ideas that are free spread faster.
(via Buy This Movie Or Legally Download It For Free: Your Call – techcrunch.com)
I haven’t seen this yet, but I expect this will be something that all aspiring content creators will need to watch.
The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.
I finally around to watching this, and found it to be very lightweight. It was inspirational to see so many people working in cool workspaces on personal projects though.
I had a hard time taking these two seriously though:
I watched Terra Nova last night, and I noticed plenty of similarities with the BBC show Outcasts that was on earlier this year:
It is the distant future, and Earth has become inhospitable, forcing humanity to send a small number of humans to a distant world/our distant past in a last-ditch attempt to preserve our species.
Jim/Cass is a man with a complicated past who wasn’t even supposed to be a part of the colony, but he earns the trust of the stern and experienced base commander and is given a position of responsibility as a part of the security team.
He quickly learns that although this world is beautiful, it is also deadly and holds many secrets. Some of the colonists have already split from the main group and formed a dangerous faction with an unknown agenda.
There are more similarities and differences between Outcasts and Terra Nova, but I doubt either show was influenced by the other directly, instead drawing their inspiration from the same old tropes. Both shows have an angsty teenage character who feels abandoned by their parent, for example. The Terra Nova producers don’t seem to have any shame either, hiring the canonical Colonel Badass.
Terra Nova isn’t exactly terrible, just it’s a very expensive re-tread of the usual.
Tonight I recieved an email from 500px telling me that they will be removing their photo stores because their partner, Fotomoto ‘does not quite satisfy our high demands for quality of the user experience’. An hour later, Fotomoto sent an email of their own, countering that ‘500px didn’t meet their business and technical commitments’, and it was their call to terminate the contract with 500px.
I like the 500px service, but sizing up these two emails (published below) it does seem like they may not be trustworthy. Which is a shame, as it’s a service I decided to pay for.
In February of 2010, Rob Gorski (NYC) and Andrew Ranville (UK) purchased a 90 acre island on Craigslist (seriously), 3 miles off the coast of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. They recently ran a Kickstarter which was funded to facilitate their plan to build an Artist Residency on the island. This island is virtually untouched as it stands. Rob and Andrew are breaking ground this summer to build a single small cabin which will house resident visual artists, musicians, and writers. Best Made Co. threw ‘em some gear too.
(via coldsplinters.com)
I fantasise about projects like this.
The key thing to understand is that the rules of SEO aren’t magic or arbitrary. They’re based on the goals of a search engine, which is to find relevant results. Relevance implies genuineness, and genuineness implies trust. So, shockingly, you should try to make your site’s content trustworthy, genuine and relevant. All of the rules have come about due to their utility in detecting those three positive metrics. Good SEO is a by-product of not being a dick on the internet.
(SEO for Non-dicks – mattgemmell.com)
File under things that are very true.
Got frustrated with AWS, so I made a new mob! :D http://imgur.com/ADYrx?full
It will be craftable, is friendly, and throws snowballs at enemies. Also melts in hot biomes.
Also, they spread snow by walking around. Nice.
One of the best things about Minecraft is how publicly the game is being developed.
Off Book, Typography by PBS Arts.
In episode 2 of Off Book, typeface designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones outline the importance of selecting the right font to convey a particular feeling. Graphic designer Paula Scher talks about building identity in messaging, while Eddie Opara uses texture to create reaction. Infographic designers Julia Vakser and Deroy Peraza map complicated data sets into digestible imagery, mixing color, graphics and type.
I’m always sending myself notes via email – in fact I have a special Gmail account just for to-do and to-read items. This cc:to me bookmarklet will make it loads easier to send myself links to websites I want to check out later. I can even include text and images just by dragging it off the page and into the bookmarklet. It’s very slick.
The only flaw I can see is that it doesn’t use the subject line. Ideally, it should at least put the page title in there for quick reference.
(via The Next Web)
Quarterly Co. is a subscription service that lets you receive awesome things in the mail. You can subscribe to people you find interesting and, once every three months, they will send you a package right to your doorstep.
If you do a Google search for ‘cartoon penguin‘, one of the top results will be an old Inkscape design of mine:
He’s pretty popular too, bringing a steady stream of traffic to the site. I licensed him as Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, meaning that it’s fine to use the image for forum avatars and stuff, but not for anything commercial.
Of course, people do. Last year someone pointed out some guy selling t-shirts with a slightly modified version of the penguin.
Today, out of curiosity, I did a reverse image search and found two other clipart criminals…
It’s been a week since I switched this blog from Posterous to WordPress.com. I’m very happy with the change, but it is clear to me that Posterous offer very compelling features for a free service.
What follows isn’t a complete comparison of the two services, it just highlights what I consider the most important differences between the two services for a typical blogger.
| WordPress.com | Posterous | Big library of free themes (100+). Premium themes. No custom themes. | Decent library of free themes (46). No premium themes. Custom themes. |
|---|---|
| Custom domain mapping ($12 per year). | Free custom domain mapping. |
| Regular users may see ads on your blog. Signed in WordPress.com users won’t. ($29.97 to remove.) | No on-site advertising. |
| No direct HTML editing. CSS access paid upgrade ($30 per year). | Full free access to HTML and CSS. |
| Image-heavy posts are a pain to manage. | Excellent, intuitive image galleries. |
| Excellent, but expensive HD video support (VideoPress: $60 per year). | Free video uploads (100MB per video limit). |
| A basic stats tool in the dashboard. No export functionality. No Google Analytics support. | Support for Google Analytics. |
| Threaded comments. | No threaded comments. |
| Fantastic commenting and comment moderation features. | Comments can be a bit buggy for users. Poor moderation features. |
| Both services offer great customer support and have good iPhone and Android apps. | |
| Neither service permits the use of JavaScript. | |
Note that I stopped using Posterous just before it transformed into Posterous Spaces. Their blogging service remains basically unchanged, so these points are still valid, but there is now a whole social aspect you may want to consider.
halfblog.net 