Reuters Doctoring Photos from Beirut?

A quick post before I sleep, there is a very interesting discussion here about the obvious photoshop work in this Reuters photograph of Beirut. It has clearly been doctored to make the damage more dramatic. The whole situation in Lebanon is terrible, but inaccurate reporting certainly won't help. lgf: Reuters Doctoring Photos from Beirut?:

Hot Cake House

After having been here for three months, living 2 blocks from the 24 hour hot cake house, I finally yielded to temptation and went there for breakfast/lunch/dinner.  I include all three meals because I went there at 1 in the afternoon and the portions were sufficient to cover my needs for the entire day and probably some more. The place itself is a piece of classisic americana. From the sulphur yellow exterior, to the glaring neon sign shouting to passing motorists the delights of the heart attack inducing special of the day.  Order at the counter, find a moulded formica table, with matching formica chair, in that particular shade of brown made popular in the 1970's before they discovered colour. When my food arrived, it took a moment or two to really appreciate what I had done by the simple act of ordering a meat lovers omelette, the task ahead of me was daunting. With a brief aside to plan an attack, I leaped in omelette first, then cakes. Half way through the omelette I realised that I wasn't going to make it. I started to panic and eat the hot cakes, I didn't want to have only one of the delights on the plate. The hot cakes covered in butter and syrup were the final straw filling every conceivable gap in my stomach like polyfilla, I conceeded defeat. There upon the table the victorious half omelettte and brutally savaged hot cakes, smirked their victory through a glaze of maple syrup.

Post #256

I just noticed that I have blown through the 250 post mark.  I had meant to mark it with a specific post, but must have gotten carreid away by all the other exciting things that have been going on, or not. I am faintly startled to realise I have been doing this for so long now and have actually a fair amount of history into this blog. It has never really been about other people reading it, as it has been somewhere for me to remind myself of stuff or simply get something off my chest. However, people do read this and I appreciate you taking the time to stop by and find out whats been happening. I am really looking forward to being back in London, and getting back to posting about my favourite city. 

Rich Mobile Presence

This is a concept I have been wanting for years, rich mobile presence. Jaiku is an application for series 60 phones that combines social networking with mobile presence.

Rich presence on Jaiku includes an IM-style away line, your phone profile (ring volume, vibrate), location (country, city/region, neigborhood), Bluetooth devices around, upcoming calendar events, and the duration how long your phone has been idle.

I have downloaded and once I get bck to a country with decent mobile networks - not the USA - I will be testing it out. Jaiku | Home: Via Om Malik's Broadband Blog

Heading Home

I am heading home to the UK on Thursday, eventually arriving back in the UK on Friday morning. I'm looking forward to catching up with everyone back home and getting some of that big city action. Also looking forward to riding my "fixie" bike around town, though one gear is going to make some of the hills very tough going. Well it will do wonders for my calf muscles.

Mary-Kate

The night Mary-Kate jumped me. Looking hot.

Faciliphonologicaltagnosticator?!!?

During my recovery period (hangover) at the weekend I ended up watching public access TV and happened to capture this guy. Can some one please explain what a Faciliphonologicaltagnosticator is? I didn't think so. He seemed to be talking about blood quite a lot if I remember correctly.

Photosynth - Interesting 3D photo analysis and compositing

This is a very interesting product beong developed by Microsoft Live Labs. It takes collections of photographs and calculates how they relate to each other to crete three dimensional worlds. The explanation in the video is not the most lucid but it is well worth a watch to get a glimpse of what next generation photo sharing and exploration might look like. http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video.html via Future Feeder

nipples

hello fellow readers...i don't know you but for whatever reason you have the time to read James's blog....this must mean you have a very boring and mindless job, or lots of free time, but we won't get into that for now.....I am taking this intoxicated opportunity to let you get a little more  information about the author of this site...did you know that he plucks his nipples?   I am aware of this fact because he is currently wearing a very provacate and low cut shirt and upon me mentioning above shirt he shared the information that he plucked his niples.....but he does not wax......ok I agree that is more information than any of us need....but the point is that he is leaving my fair city of Portland in a few short weeks and he will be sorely missed.....so for you readers that live in London take good care of him while he is home and send him back to us soon......

New Bravia Ad

I expect most people have seen the fantastic Bravia ad with the thousands of colourful super balls bouncing down a San Francisco street accomponaied by chill guitar music. Here is amateur video of the next Bravia ad being made. I am really interested to see what they do with this in post, will it have the same slow motion feel to it as the bouncing balls or something more energetic? You can check it out here via boingboing.net

Fixed gear foolishness

Today a judge in Oregon ruled that fixed gear bikes without brakes are against the law. The proceedings of the case are actually quite amusing. I particularly like the defense lawyer, Ginsberg, questioning of the arresting officer.

Ginsberg (to Officer Barnum): “When you approached the rider did she stop?” Officer Barnum: “Yes.” Ginsberg: “How’d she stop the bike?” Officer Barnum: “I don’t know.” Ginsberg: “The gear itself stopped the bike.” Officer Barnum: “But the gear is not a brake.”

The appropriate statue reads

A bicycle must be equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level, clean pavement. strong enough to skid tire.

Fixed gear riders can definitely do this so I can't see the legal argument for finding the defendant guilty as the judge did. Personally I think its pretty silly to ride without caliper brakes, but thats got nothing to do with the law. I am back to riding fixed now, which is really fun in a slightly scary learning to ride again way, but there is no way I am taking off my brakes. More on the court case here, and some lively debate in the comments section.

Leaving Party

I am not actually leaving for a couple of weeks, but its the last weekend that both Hayden and I are around so we will be partying as hard as we know how on Friday night. If anyone is in the neighborhood of SE Portland, drop by and have a drink or two. You can find us at 3213 SE 9th Ave.

Note to self

Don't play poker. You get bored far far too easily and consequently play recklessly. The betting buzz does not even nearly compensate.

Top 100 Music Videos of all time

This just gets better the more I look through it. Stylus magazine has compiled the top 100 music videos of all time and thanks to the wonders of the internet in general and youtube in particular you can watch them right there in the list. My personal favourites are anything by Johnathon Glazer and Chris Cunningham. Its amazing how often the same artists and directors turn up. Michel Gondry has some fantastic stuff in there to.

Here is Radiohead “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” - Directed by Jonathan Glazer, 1995, check out the way the people in the same scene are filmed at different speeds, the dog and kid are a great example of this. I actually saw this at a Jonathan Glazer retrospective in Singapore on the bigscreen and the effect was amazing.

Check it out at stylus magazine via my ever observant brother Ben

Site Design Update

I have changed the theme of the site to incorporate some new features of Wordpress. I will be fiddling with it over the next few days to bring back some of the cool stuff in the sidebar and update the images etc.

Visual Communication

This graphic on the front page of The Independent is an amazingly strong way of communicating the isolation of the UK, USA and Israel. It of course does nothing to reflect the complexities of the issues involved, nor does it say which is the right approach. As a commenter over at information aesthetics pointed out, "Where is Hezbollah's flag" They are after all the other combatant in this conflict. On a visual level I find it a very refreshing change from all the visceral images of bombed out buildings in Lebanon. Via Information Aesthetics, an excellent blog on how information can be best represented visually.

Too hot

lake 4.jpg
Originally uploaded by jkprime. Well its been over 100 deg F out here thats 38 of your much more sensible english celsius. With no airconditioning there are two choices when it gets this hot, hide in the basement or find some body of water to hurl yourself into. Yesterday we did the latter today I am blogging from the former.

Love Vs War

I have 108 tracks in my itunes music library that feature the word love vs 65 that feature the word war. Looks like love is the winner here. I can play 8 hours of love vs 6.4 hours of war. Here are some other comparisons Sex - 38 - 2.8 hours Hate - 19 - 1.1 hours Lonely - 22 - 1.2 hours Black 131 vs White 144 Good: 38 vs Evil: 39 and rather bizarrely 136 tracks featuring the word ninja. They truly are everywhere. Total Tracks: 5098 Total Artists: 723 Total Albums: 1100 Total time: 24.7 days

Blurb - book publishing made easy

For a while now my mum has been looking for an easy way top get all her old recipies into a nice book. At the moment they are on rapidly disentigrating pieces of paper, and represent the state of the art in Kellerman household cooking. The loss of this invaluable repository of knowledge would have incalculable culinary impact. So you can imagine my relief when I came across blurb.com. This print on demmand service, fashionably still in beta, offers well designed templates and msot importantly an easy to use book creation tool for both PC's and Mac's. Downlaod the BookSmart application and create your book click the button and have it printed in a nice hardcover book from $29.95. They currently have templates for cookbooks, photo books and the usual baby and animal stuff. I might one day be tempted to use their blog book, it rips all teh data from your blog and creates a book for you, mmmm paper blog backup possible the way of the future. technorati tags:publishing, blurb, software

Technorati Tags: blurb, publishing, software

This may be the definition of stream of conciousness

This was posted as a comment over on a blog called Phyrangula, its dedicated mostly to evolutionary biology, debunking creationism and Intelligent Design. I don't believe you are going to persuade a group of skeptical scientists with this kind of argument. Though to be honest I am not sure it is so much an argument as a kind of rhetorical suicide. This is the kind of thing that tends to wind me up, co-opting the language of science with none of its meaning or methodology to make something seem scientific when it is complete and utter rubbish.

OK -- PEOPLE -- all you have to do is read my blog entries. The information is all provided for you but YOU CHOOSE TO REMAIN IGNORANT. http://drewhempel.gnn.tv But since I'm a nice crank (shrink for scientists -- free online service available now!!) I'll spell it out for you. The problem with the West is that it lost teachings of "natural resonance" to transmute electrochemical hormones into electromagnetic fields and finally into nonlocal consciousness that bends spacetime. There I said it. Can you handle that? No? Well read "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" (trans. by Charles Luk) That will give you all the details of "the small universe" practice which is the key secret. There are 12 nodal points along the outside of the central channels of the body -- spine-heart. Dr. Albert-Fritz Popp recently confirmed this in his biophoton experiments. Just think of the body as a harmonic oscillator that transduces great heat (called N/um by the Koi San and Tumo by the Tibetans, etc.) into electromagnetic power (chi) and then into rainbow light (shen). OK I did the experiment to finish my graduate degree (2000) -- the topic: Nonwestern nondual philosophy. Again the reason this "small universe" practice is unknown is because it depends on sublimating the Jing (electrochemical hormones) as a nonlinear asymmetrical harmonic oscillator. Please see my past rants for explanation of math and philosophy (haha). Basically you feed off your own secretions to enable parthenogenesis. OOOH -- I said it! Taboo! Hey but real alchemy. Try reading John Bleitbreu's great underground ethology classic "Parable of the Beast" (1968 or so) -- lots of parthenogenesis stuff in there. Current version: Read biology professor Brian Goodwin -- he figured this stuff out. Anyway Mircea Eliade mentions the "small universe" as an ancient practice in India -- so it's not just some Chinese thing. OK the reason it works, once again, is because it's based on the philosophical assumption that there is no precise symbol for infinity (i.e. no square root of two as a logical axiom) and therefore asymmetrical nonlinear "evolution" can occur. Yes I can flex my pineal gland. Sorry but it's true and it's quite strange as well. I even emailed professor Nicholas Humphrey (the neuroscientist) because he claims in his book (an otherwise fun romp) that no one can flex their cerebral cortex). Just did it. Again -- the only reason I had some success was because I did the experiment full-time (only working 10 hours a week) and had funding for a really strict diet (no salt, for example). I had a relatively quiet and roomy space which helps alot. Silence is golden. Yes your brain can create water through reverse electrolysis. Sorry but I did it -- went 8 days with only a couple drops of water and not only that but only needed 5 hours of sleep with tons of extra energy (of course I had no food for these eight days). Then I healed my mom of a serious case of smoker's legs -- no more surgical stockings for her I tell you! No more need to sit down after an hour. No more need to keep her legs elevated all the time. Did she freak out that I hadn't had any food for 8 days? Sure she did -- worse than ever! But did I scarf down a bunch of food to make her happy? Sure I did. Did I heal her anyway? You betcha (Professor Myers can translate that one for you). She said it was "the difference between night and day." This is all called a "bigu" state -- energy feasting. I was never hungry the whole time. How? Because I practiced tai chi lots, then the small universe lots so that my endocrine glands all got real hot -- kidneys, thyroid, then the pituitary gland and then the pineal gland! Yes I'm a freak but I was curious. I thought here's the book: Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality. Did people have strange reactions around me without me communication any of this to them? yes. You see this practice creates strong electromagnetic fields that emanate from the center of the brain enabling telepathy and telekinesis. There I said it! Burn me at the stake! Through my in a lake while I'm tied to a huge rock! Here's the principles -- resonance of the Law of Pythagoras as infinite transduction. Read Dr. Peter Kingsley -- http://peterkingsley.com Here's the means: sublimating the electro-chemical hormones through innate harmonic nodes based on natural number geometry. And as far as the whole Voodoo thing -- well it's how Haiti is organized POLITICALLY so yes Voodoo WILL be the basis for any grassroots development in that country.

Ok I am going to take a long deep breath now and relax... The whole discussion can be found here about half way down the page.