Jun 23
lindsayrgwattRandom cars, environment, la, photography
Wen and I are chilling out in our apartment tonight in the interregnum between going on holiday and moving into a new place. To celebrate, we decided to watch Edward Burtynsky‘s Manufactured Landscapes. It’s one of those films you can put on in the background and have a conversation and not miss a beat. That’s not because it’s a bad movie, rather the opposite: Burtynsky’s a photographer whose work is on such a massive scale that you need to talk about it to digest it.
I’ve seen the movie a few times and one of my favourite scenes are shots of California Freeways. I find them fascinating because Los Angeles was once (and potentially again) a city that was car friendly. LA is where America’s love affair with the car – and all the drama that comes along with a fantastic lover – can best be seen. In fact, perhaps no more than on Interstate 405. For those of you who have no idea why Interstate 405 is so fascinating (after all, it’s just a strip of road between San Diego and LA, right?), here are some shots of the on- and offramps. They’re both beautiful (as works of engineering) and disgusting (as symbols of technology run wild) at the same time.
Jun 22
lindsayrgwattRandom, Technology lenovo, privacy
On Friday afternoon I was typing away on my work computer when the most obnoxious message ever popped up:
The computer manufacturer had popped an ad up on my screen asking me if I wanted to buy some accessories. This is a horrific experience and I will personally make sure that I recommend to every person I meet that they never buy a Lenovo computer.
Why is this offensive? Well, there’s an implicit agreement between the computer manufacturer and the end user that the desktop is the ‘property’ of the end user. I would never buy a table if it randomly popped open and offered me a 10% off coupon for Ikea; why would Lenovo think the computer desktop is anything else?
The more nefarious underpinning is that why did Lenovo send me this message on Friday, June 19th at 2:30 pm? Have they been monitoring everything I’ve been doing and decided that this is the optimal time to suggest to me to buy? Should I be unsurprised if my computer starts to catastrophically fail over the next few weeks unless I buy a few accessories? The cynic in me thinks that some government of China security program misfired and instead of sending my data to Beijing, it offered me a discount instead.
This is the most egregious advertising invasion of privacy I’ve ever seen. Do not ever buy a Lenovo PC.
Jun 21
lindsayrgwattRandom japanese culture, kawaii, notepad
The Japanese have a great word, kawaii, to refer to their prediliction for “precious”, “adorable” and “cute” characters in their culture (click the link to read how mechanical pencils started an underground revolution – that’s an unanticipated consequence if every there was one). A few years back Wendy went to Japan and brought me back a ridiculously kawaii notepad. It’s cute to the point of being useless and absolutely fascinating at the same time.
Today I found the pad as I was cleaning some stuff up, so I’ve scanned each of the types of pages here for you. Click the thumbnails for the cuteness:
Jun 21
lindsayrgwattTechnology internet of things, trends, Web
One of the most interesting technological trends right now is watching the Internet appear everywhere. I’m not talking about moving from your laptop to your cellphone, but places where you didn’t even think of it.
Today I went to the gym and it turns out they’ve bought a few Expresso Fitness bikes. These are exercise bikes that blow away your traditional exercise bikes. First, they’ve attached a screen and you race different routes (e.g., up mountains, through a forest) in a virtual world. You get a pacer and there are constantly others to chase. It’s addictingly competitive – and you don’t really notice that you’re exercising (it’s what the Wii Fit aspires to be). Here’s a (poorly resized) shot:
In addition, it tracks all your metrics: heart rate, power, speed, calories burned, rpm, etc. – and plots many of them against the profile of the terrain you’ve been riding.
What’s really cool about the system though is that it’s web-enabled. You can create an account and track your training regimen over time and compete against other folks. Think of it as Nike+, but for biking.
I love this trend and can’t wait to see where it goes over the next few years.
Jun 18
lindsayrgwattBusiness ecommerce, retailing, selling
A few weeks ago, the Alley Insider ran this chart:
This is what total economic victory looks like: Amazon is becoming the platform for buying anything. There are a lot of reasons why, but one has to be the attention to detail that Amazon pays in making it easy for you to buy. I was reminded of this recently when my Prime subscription came close to expiring. When I logged in, every single page placed the following banner at the top:
You literally cannot make it easier to buy than this. They have interrupted me right at the point where I’m making a decision and reduced by decision to “click or don’t click” – there’s nothing else to think. Sheer genius and I can’t imagine more than about 10 companies on earth being able to deliver this sort of clean, crisp experience. Attention retailers: do what Amazon does…
Jun 16
lindsayrgwattHistory crisis, Literature, politics
If you know me, you might know that I spent my last year of college in Germany. I’ve always had a curious fascination with the place: it’s a nation that didn’t exist until the late 19th century and then spent the first half of the 20th century trying to take over the world-and committing moral suicide along the way. It was then torn in two and rebounded to become (at least the Western part) one of the most successful countries in the world.
I’ve always wondered how the nation spun into the moral decay that led to World War II and the Holocaust. The world was in a bad time in the 1930s (sound familiar?) but the Germans responded in their own uniquely offensive (both militarily and morally) way. Recently I’ve been reading Christopher Isherwood‘s The Berlin Stories, which gives a sense of what the atmosphere was like in the early 1930s before the Nazis came to power. He chronicles the time and it offers a bit of insight into what life was like in a nation humbled and bankrupted by the Versailles Treaty, wracked by hyperinflation and desperately searching for strong leadership – be it from the Right or the Left.
Here’s a striking passage:
Berlin was in a state of civil war [Isherwood is returning to it in late 1932]. Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere; at street corners, in restaurants, cinemas, dance halls, swimming-baths; at midnight, after breakfast, in the middle of the afternoon. Knives were whipped out, blows were dealt with spiked rings, beer-mugs, chair-legs or leaded clubs; bullets slashed the advertisements on the poster-columns, rebounded from the iron roofs of latrines. In the middle of a crowded street a young man would be attacked, stripped, thrashed and left bleeding on the pavement; in fifteen seconds it was all over and the assilants had disappeared. Otto got a gash over the eye with a razor in a battle on a fair-ground near the Copernickerstrasse. The doctor put in three stitches and he was in hospital for a week. The newspapers were full of death-bed photographs of rival martyrs, Nazi, Reichsbanner and Communist. My pupils [he was a teacher] looked at them and shook their heads, apologizing for the state of Germany. “Dear, dear!” they said, “it’s terrible. It can’t go on.”
The murder reporters and the jazz-writers had inflated the German language beyond recall. The vocabulary of newspaper invective (traitor, Versailles-lackey, murder-swine, Marx-crook, Hitler-swamp, Red-pest) had come to resemble, through excessive use, the formal phraseology of politeness employed by the Chinese. The word Liebe, soaring from the Goethe standard, was no longer worth a whore’s kiss. Spring, moonlight, youth, rose, girl, darling, heart, May: such was the miserably devaluated currency dealt in by authors of all those tangoes, waltzes and fox-trots which advocated the private escape. Find a dear little sweetheart, they advised, and forget the slump, ignore the unemployed. Fly, they urged us, to Hawaii, to Naples, to the Never-Never-Vienna. Hugenberg, behind the Ufa [a film production company], was serving up nationalism to suit all tastes. He produced battlefield epics, farces of barrack-room life, operattas in whch the jinks of a pre-war military aristocracy were reclothed in the fashions of 1932. his brilliant directors and camera-men had to concentrate their talents on cyncially beautiful shots of the bubbles in champagne and the sheen of lamplight on silk.
And morning after morning, all over the immense, damp, dreary town and the packing-case colonies of huts in the suburb allotments, young men were waking up to another workless empty day to be spent as they could best contrive; selling bootlaces, begging, playing draughts in the hall of the Labour Exchange, hanging about urinals, opening the doors of cars, helping with crates in the marekts, gossiping, lounging, stealing, overhearing racing tips, sharing stumps of cigarette-ends picked up in the gutter, singing folk-songs for groschen in courtyards and between stations in the carriages of the Undergorund Railway. After the New Year, the snow fell, but did not lie; there was no money to be earned by sweeping it away. The shopkeepers rang all coins on the counter for fear of the counterfeiters. Frl. Schroeder’s astrologer foretold the end of the world. “Listen,” said Fritz Wendel, between sips of a cocktail in the bar of the Eden Hotel, “I give a damn if this country goes communist. What I mean, we’d have to alter our ideas a bit. Hell, who cares?”
As an aside, this is almost certainly what life was like in Sarajevo in 1992. When I was in Germany I knew a girl who had been to Croatia for a holiday in 1990. She remembered that every night there were fistfights between men in the street; the next year, the war began.
It was a similar situation in Rwanda in the years leading up to the genocide in 1994. The UN was reporting that there was violence in the streets attributable to many parties – the military, politicized youth mobs and various ethnic groups.
Someone is going to write a fascinating paper one day talking about how nations respond to crises: the U.S. in the 1930′s peacefully overcame the displacement brought on by economic disaster and became strong; the Germans projected their issues outward onto the rest of the world whereas Yugoslavia/Rwanda collapsed into horrific civil wars. I’d love to know why each responded in its own way.
Jun 08
lindsayrgwattNYC high line, photos
After 10 years of work and over two years of construction, the High Line finally opened today. I’ve been waiting for this for years – literally: check out this blog post from two years ago. I went to see it today – twice.
I went once during the day (it’s my new place for reading technical docs) and the once this evening with Wen. I realized two things:
- This part is going to be a scorcher during the day. There’s almost no shade from the relentless NYC sun
- This is actually many different parks: I’ve never been to a place that changes character as much with the sun. Seeing it at 2pm vs. 8pm was completely different
If you’re in New York, add this to your repertoire of places to see. It’s a thrilling way to see the different city (you’re only 20 feet up, but the city is completely different). It’s also balanced on the knife edge of urban and rural (and feels a bit like the physical embodiment of the term ‘post-modern’).
Enough hot air; here are some photos (more on Facebook):
Jun 07
lindsayrgwattNYC, Random maps, Panorama, Technology
Today I went out to Flushing with my buddy Rich to get some great dumplings/Szechuan food (that’s another post). On the way back, I made him stop at the Queens Museum of Art to see the Panorama of New York. For those who have no idea, the Panorama is a life-size, 100% accurate replica of every single building in the five boroughs as of 1992 (It was originally built for the 1964 World’s Fair).
It was really cool to see, but I couldn’t help but think of how archaic it is and how every single thing it does is now available on my phone or computer.
Here’s a shot of the lower Manhattan portion:
Here’s how the same scene renders in Google Earth:
It’s almost identical-except that the Google edition is constantly up to date, lets me zoom and has info added to highlight places of potential interest.
Similarly, here’s a photo of both the panorama and the same location in Google Maps on my iPhone:
I’ve now got the Panorama to go.
In fact, I can now do things on my phone that the Panorama will never be able to do: UpNext allows me to see individual building across Manhattan in 3D. The Old Map App actually lets me watch the same point evolve through time (whereas the Panorama has only been updated twice: 1964 and 1992).
Interestingly, the Museum is now trying to make the Panorama a little more interactive: they’ve placed pink triangles on all locations (outside Manhattan) where 3 or more foreclosures have happened. Note the swath from Bed-Stuy to Jamaica via East New York:
Of course, this is also a totally outmoded way to do this. The New York Times’ foreclosure map makes in a lot easier to visualize.
The Panorama is well worth seeing if you ever come to NYC – and seeing the model is a million times more impressive that looking at an image on a screen. It’s just incredible to think that you can now take it with you everywhere you go.
Jun 05
lindsayrgwattRandom, Travel Books, Music
I just finished reading The Tawqacores (taqwa = piety) by Michael Muhammed Knight. The book is referred to The Catcher in the Rye for muslims. It was fascinating to read an ex-Catholic Muslim convert try and lay out his view of what Islam could be and use punk as a metaphor to do so. (The book is only 256 pages so rather than my discussing it further, just go read a copy)
The book is also notable for it’s extensive name-checking of punk bands with a little bit of hip-hop and ska/reggae thrown in. Here, thanks to my Kindle (which makes this sort of note-taking trivial), is a list of all the mentioned songs. Feel free to use it as a way to determine if it’s worth reading:
Agnostic Front – Skate Rock
Billy Bragg – California Stars
Billy Bragg – Joe DiMaggio’s Done it Again
Blanks 77 – I Wanna be a Punk
Crass – Fuck All Government
Dead Kennedys – Kill the Poor
Descendents – Suburban Home
Dropkick Murphys – Boys on the Docks
Duane Peters and the Hunns – Blood on the Sun
Feederz – Jesus Entering from the Rear
GBH – Sick Boy
Germs – Fuck You
Iggy Pop and the Stooges – I Wanna by Your Dog
Jim Carroll Band – People Who Died
Minor Threat – Salad Days
Minor Threat – Out of Step
Propagandhi – Fuck Religion
Ramones – Rock and Roll High School
Rancid – The War’s End
Roger Miter and the Disasters – New York Belongs to Me
Rolling Scabs - We’re the Scabs
Sex Pistols – Who Killed Bambi
Sham 69 – Hey Little Rich Boy
Sid Vicious – My Way
Specials – Rudy Ska
Swingin’ Utters – Next in Line
The Slits – I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Transplants – California Babylon
U.S. Bombs – Ballad of Sid
UK Subs – I Live in a Car
Uncool – Finale
Weasel – Anthem for a New Tomorrow
Youth of Today – Disengage
Brand Nubian – Allah U Akbar
Method Man – PLO Style
Desmond Dekker – It’s a Shame
Prince Buster – Judge Dread
Jun 02
lindsayrgwattBusiness Music
I couldn’t help but notice two very different sides of the music industry this weekend. One side is run by sclerotic corporations who are completely removed from the realities of their business. Their latest move, according to the New York Times: petitioning governments to increase the license fees paid by bars/restaurants/night clubs to play music on their premises. Apparently Australia is at the forefront of pliant governments and the music industry is hoping to export this globally.
These are massive, monolithic corporations in their final death throes. Failing at being able to create either great music or an innovative way to deliver it to their consumers, they’re basically using the courts to try and maintain cash flow.
The opposite side of this was on display this weekend at the Brooklyn’s Yard. Mr Scruff was dj-ing there as part of their Sunday Best program. $10 cover, a couple of hundred people, sunshine, beer, tacos – and an incredibly accessible musician. Here’s a shot of Mr Scruff spinning – how many dj’s let you actually stand behind them and watch them work?
Plus, every attendee got a download code for a one hour mix of the show:
It’s stunning to think of the contrasts here: a musician offering you a memento of the great time you had at his show (and consequently getting free press like this blog entry) vs. a company essentially suing to try and get more cash. Old music companies RIP.
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