Nina Simone

Losing My Edge

Diablo Rojo

An MIT Education

“Getting an education from MIT is like taking a drink from a fire hose.” -- Jerome B. Weisner

Pina Bausch Passes

Free Stuff on Your Birthday

Apparently there's a ton of stuff you can get for free on your birthday here in Vancouver. Here's my list, courtesy of womanundone.com:

Blenz on Robson – free drink
 
Mondo gelato – free scoop
 
Boston Pizza, Swiss Chalet, Odoul’s, Sammy J’s, White Spot, and Las Margaritas do the free dessert thing.
 
Forgot that Old Spaghetti Factory will give you a free meal on your birthday as well. – SIGN UP BEFOREHAND?
 
Mr. Sub apparently gives you a free birthday sub
 
Red Burrito will give you a free burrito.
 
Watermark on Kits Beach, you can get a complimentary dessert.
 
Free movie at Famous Players, Cineplex Odeon, or Galaxy, Theatres
 

Human-Robot Interaction

Kacie Kinzer's project for her degree at ITP considers an element of intelligence that most robotics engineers don't: social altruism.



I wonder if a robot could work like this, but across a country rather than a park...

Bruce Lee Playing Ping Pong

This has nothing to do with art, technology or politics, but is so awesome I had to share it -- an advert for Nokia China of Bruce Lee playing ping pong with nunchucks... and kicking butt, of course.

The History of Ugliness

This is a fun lecture by Umberto Eco on The History of Ugliness.

Swine Flu

All you ever wanted to know about Swine Flu is available at the New England Journal of Medicine's website.

They have maps as well as a log of major news articles about the spread of this virus.

Hussein Chalayan

Air Bear

Steve Tong posted this first...

Daito Manabe

Maté

I'm learning all about this MVC framework for Flex applications. It looks pretty good:

Ingenious Graffiti

A few years back, the city started covering ugly phone exchange boxes with historical prints depicting Vancouver in earlier days. Inevitably, these images started getting tagged ruthlessly. Today I passed one of those boxes and saw how someone had pasted a recursive photograph onto the box. An otherwise unremarkable collection of tags becomes a representation of looking back in time, of gazing into a portal to a far off universe.

It reminds me of Apple's Time Machine interface.

Ada Lovelace Day

I missed it by almost a month, but there's always next year:

Ada Lovelace Day

Cool Headphones

The fashion potential of headphones simply hasn't been fully explored. It's nice to see Nokia doing something about that.

McCain's Concession Speech

I'm not sure why I was thinking about this today, but McCain's concession speech was definitely the best speech of the election. Powerful, heartfelt, intelligent and thoroughly patronizing in the very best sense of that word.

Graduate School

I've been accepted to three grad schools:

Flash Oracle

After much hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth, I have finally ported The Oracle of Elsewhere from Java3D to Flash using the Papervision3D API.

Saul Griffith on Climate Change

This is a great lecture on the energy consumption and carbon emission numbers of various lifestyles.

Smart Grid

This ad makes use of Papervision3D and the FLARToolKit to create this augmented reality moment. Looks like a lot of fun.

Tim Knowles

Artforum has posted a note about Tim Knowles' new exhibition at Bitforms in New York. He's still being blown about by the wind.

Microsoft Songsmith

Microsoft Songsmith will automatically compose musical accompaniment to any vocal track:



Awesome.

Getting Her Tenori-On

Hywel passed me this great video of a young lady playing and singing along with a new kind of musical instrument called the Tenori-On. The MIT Media Lab hosted the inventor of this instrument in 2006, where he gave an entertaining lecture.