A week ago I posted the video for Radiohead’s House Of Cards. A few people asked me if there was a high quality version available. There wasn’t but there is now! The video can be downloaded as a zipped folder containing a Quicktime file.
Download it here: High Quality House Of Cards Video (right click, save as). The original low quality version is below if you haven’t seen it yet.
It has become the norm for us to digitize our lives and this is having a profound effect on our lifestyles. Those of us who grew up during the transitional period and more aware of this than most. I actually remember a time before mobile phones, digital cameras/music storage and the Internet. For the next generation this may be unthinkable but we were there and we saw phones the size of bricks and dial-up connections.
Previously photographs, videos and racks of CDs where found cluttering up living rooms around the country but digital storage is now taking over. Some hard drive companies are referring to “terabyte lifestyles” in an attempt to define the need for storage (You can just picture the look on the little Marketing types face’s when they came up with that one can’t you?).
All this constant collecting and documenting is The Fear. Anyone who has lost a year’s worth of photos or a great collection of obscure hard to find albums will understand that moment of panic when your computer will not turn on (hint: plug). The Fear leads us to backup, backup our backups and use online file storage and backup software.
The result of all this technological development is that physical copies are becoming less popular. This is affecting record companies in a big way as we know. Netflix has recently said that they only expect their mail-order DVD rental service to be needed for the next 5 years after which time downloads will take over. Does this mean that Ikea will have to sell digital storage rather then CD racks? Will archaeologists in the distant future be able to learn all about us by digging up a USB stick, or will they not have the necessary drivers?
Jack Schofield wrote an article about ‘Lifecaching’ in 2004 which seems to become more relevant as the years pass. He described the four ways in which recording our lives were (and are) becoming easier and easier.
First, new devices such as camera phones and digital recorders have made it much easier to record your life. Second, the use of digital media has allowed all the different types of record to be combined instead of stored separately. Third, the cost of disk storage has fallen to the point where many PC users can afford the terabyte or two of storage needed to keep everything. Finally, the internet has made it easy to share the results.
The advances in technology which Scholfield noted have lead to ‘Lifecaching’ or ‘Lifecasting’ becoming a real phenomena. Internet celebrities/attention seekers such as IJustine record their lives via blogs, live video streams and services such as Flickr and Twitter. These same advances have lead to the rest of us become more likely to record our everyday lives via photography and video.
New blogging platforms have sprung up which attempt to accommodate those who wish to keep a record of what they are doing whilst they are doing it. This is quite a small but significant difference. Once waited to post to our blogs perhaps at the end of the day like a traditional diary but now updates can be constant. When a bomb went off in my home town it was discussed online long before the traditional media arrived. People where able to communicate with each other and gather information directly. Twitter (as discused previously), limits users to update using 140 characters leading to a blog which is like a collection of sms messages. Tumblr and BrightKite all allow their users to update quickly using different media such as photographs or video. Brightkite in particular allows users to tag their location to keep in touch with others in real time, online whilst away from their computers.
The increased ease of blogging allows us to become more comfortable with sharing our offline life with our online ‘friends’. All the information we release is stored for posterity, to be viewed by whoever wishes (in the case of public blogs at least). Imagine if you could read your parents blog from when they were young, would you want to? Do your opinions on pastys need to be fixed in digital form?
There has been a bit of confusing lately about what a Pastie or Pasty actually is. A writer from the New York Times had never had a pasty and attempted to correct The Economist when they referred to them. He thought that ‘Cornish Pasties’ was a misspelling of ‘Cornish Pastries’ and didn’t think to check his facts before ridiculing them on his blog. In an attempt to highlight his foolishness The Economist sent him an American approximation of a pasty which quite frankly looks disgusting.
Luckily I am not an American, I’m from Devon (not far from the home of the pasty, Cornwall) so I know a good pasty when I see one. Originally pasties were eaten by Coal Miners and were half savoury, half sweet. The pastry crust was originally meant to be thrown away (think of it as an early type of Tupperware). A true Cornish Pasty should be made from steak, potato, swede and anything else lying around.
According to a comment thread on Reddit some areas of American where Cornish immigrants settled still eat traditional pasties. Wikipedia suggests “Parts of Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the Iron Range of northern Minnesota” are all keen on this food of the gods.
A Google image search for ‘Pasties’ suggests that Americans (always ready to lower the tone) use the word to refer to nipple coverings. Perhaps somebody should inform Pasty Muncher about this. A quick search of a few job sites shows no vacancies for either Pasty tasters or Pastie appliers which is unfortunate. Either way, I know what I’m having for lunch today!
In Honolulu, Hawaii an invasive algae called Gracilaria salicornia is threatening the survival of coral reefs. The unwanted underwater weeds are thriving due to pollution from fertilisers. The result is that the Reef is smothered to death by the bushy seaweed which is so tough even algae-grazing fish avoid it.
Eric Conklin, a marine science adviser for the Nature Conservancy in Honolulu, has been working hard to remove the problem. The solution which he discovered has been dubbed the ’super sucker’, a giant underwater vacuum cleaner used to suck up the algae. The system is a modified version of one which is used for gold dregging whatever that might be.
As only 90% of the weed could be removed the researchers thought that it would need regular hoovering but the local fish seem to have finished the job of for them. I contacted Dyson to see if they had any plans to sell underwater vacuum cleaners or waterproof vacuum cleaner parts. They have yet to reply.
There has been a lot of anticipation about Radiohead’s video for House Of Cards ever since details about it’s creation were released. The video was shot using lasers rather than traditional camera technology. The effects seen below are representations of data collected using 3d plotting technology AKA laser Magic (at least thats what I’m calling it.)
The official description states: “Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.” As I said, Laser Magic.
You can interact with the video and learn more about it at Google Codes here. Click for more information about Radiohead House Of Cards Video.
According to Not A Whole Lot BT is planning to spend £1.5bn on improving broadband speeds available in the UK.
The money will be spent on replacing old copper phone wires with fibre optic cables. Current broadband speeds may well go the way of dial-up by 2012 when speeds of up to 50 mb p/s are available.
See Also:
Test your current speed with BT’s Speed Test
Imagine a 40gbps connection!
Westminster City Council plans to put an end to advertising via sandwich Boards in an effort to “improve the ambiance” of it’s busiest shopping areas. Fines of up to £2,500 will be leveled at those who employ people to hold the signs. Mobile advertisers have been a typical sight in areas such as Covent Garden and Oxford Street since the early 19th century. They are sometimes paid only £4 per hour.
Standing around for 8 hours a day holding a sign must be one of the least fulfilling jobs available. Many of those employed to do so have few qualifications or skills meaning they must suffer the indignity of acting as a mobile billboard. I wonder if those who will now find themselves unemployed will receive any support to find other work? Looking at the massive selection of job titles on various job sites there must be other opportunities available to them. Perhaps there will be vacancies which are suitable for those with very few skills.
Trailer for the new movie Donkey Punch staring Jamie Winstone “”After meeting at a nightclub in a Mediterranean resort, seven young adults decide to continue partying aboard a luxury yacht in the middle of the ocean. But when one of them dies in a freak sex accident the others argue about what to do, leading to a ruthless fight for survival.” What is the world coming to?
Karōshi which can be translated quite literally from Japanese as “death from overwork”. Please note there is no English word for this phenomenon.
Video footage taken by a person who was struck by lightning “Because you insisted, here’s the unedited screaming version.”
Lockcup. A cup which must be plugged up using a special key before it can be used. A novel way of preventing work mates from using your mug without having to pretend to have rabies.
