Art Of Noise

I think these are outstanding and seminal bits of music.

 




I was a bit slow to find AoN, I only found them a few years ago via an interview my pal Gail Worley did.

A Song of Games and Design

My old friend Italian artist Andrea was interviewed (PDF file) by BattleSpace magazine, about his successful one-man business (he is writer, artist, and publisher) of role-playing books.

By the way, readers of this blog and eReaderJoy will know him as commerter Ganesha Games.
I've also been a fan of his art since the nineties, I've bought watercolors for myself, and illustrations for my sites.

It seems that his gaming business, like my own biz, came about "accidentally", when something he made for fun became successful. I think that's a grand ol' way to get a business.

Ori: Popular Hawaiian/Polynesian Dance performance at Kauai

[Thanks to Dave T]

Bette thought

I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.

           -- Bette Davis

Bike-powered strip

[Thanks to Henry]

It's interesting, when men watch strip, we are absorbed, quietly drooling, when women watch male strip, they cheer and whistle. It must say a lot about the effect it has on the respective gender, I don't think anybody understands the sheer impact nude gals has on men, it's insane.

My last day?

"For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."
- Steve Jobs

It's an old philosophy, zen buddhist perhaps. And I do agree with it on some level.
But I wonder if it applies to all lives and situations. Many tasks worth doing takes a lot longer than 24 hours.  Say you just started a five-year education. And now you know you have only 24 hours left to live. Why go sit in stuffy classrooms that day, why not invite a nice girl or guy out for icecream and dancing? And yet surely that doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile to take an education?
Or say you'd be spending the day packing and preparing for a long travel the day after. Well, you're not going on the trip now, why spend the day packing?

Photoshop Image Deblurring sneak preview

[Thanks to Tommy]

It seems Adobe are about to blow our minds again. It looks very cool, but I just hope it works better in practice than their last mind-blower, the one which automatically remove unwanted objects in images, because I find that in four out of five photos, it just puts random bits of the environment into the place where the object was. It only works if there's a lot of sky or sea or such around the object.

What should we do about our naked neighbour?

[Thanks to Pascal]

What should we do about our naked neighbour?, article. 

This question tickled my funny bone because it was signed by both husband and wife, but was clearly written by the wife.

And I felt I could picture hubby's faux “indignation” in the kitchen (pounding on the table: “You're right, honey, we should do something!”).

Solar system graphic

This is a very impressive graphic showing the solar system. It's a big download for an image (20MB), and very, very long horizontally (30,000 pixels!), so it looks odd in the browser until you zoom in on it.
Here's a detail:

Wildlife photos

Wildlife photos.

(I wonder a little about this one actually, I think a striking snake moves like lightning on espresso, you'd think it would be blurred.)

Nightclub in day time

I took this is a street not far away. I liked the pattern, and I was interested that the blue outdoors lights not only were on, but that they could be seen even against a white-washed wall in bright sunlight.

"The Demo"

[Thanks to Stephen]

The Demo, article and video.
On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart [...] the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration  involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. 

Talk about being ahead of your time.