One hour documentary on data visualization as a storytelling medium.
A primer on electronics from conduction through to digital logic gates.
There’s a crowd-funded party tomorrow night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the movie Hackers.
“Have you ever dreamed of hacking the Gibson? Wearing rollerblades to a party? Playing a beta of Wipeout on a massive projection screen? Listening to Orbital’s Halcyon & On & On while spinning in a telephone booth wearing a virtual reality visor in Grand Central?
Now is your chance to embrace the ridiculousness and imagination of Hackers the movie — a film that inspired a generation of internet enthusiasts”
Malcolm Gladwell — The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.
“[Digital activism] shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo.”
Stretching Your Wrists
These Aikido wrist stretches are for anyone who types a lot.
Paraphrasing from Common Programmer Health Problems:
Perform these stretches prior to every typing session:
- To warm up, put your hands out in front of you and grab at the air as fast as you can 20 times. Then shake your hands, then rotate your wrists 10 times one direction and 10 times another.
- Start with the video exercise you’re best at and do 5-10 of them at a medium speed.
- Continue through each exercise. After each one shake your hands and arms and rotate your wrists to realign them. These exercises move the bones in your wrist, shaking them settles them back in to place.
Do just enough stretching to get your wrists feeling supple and relaxed. Don’t strain yourself, the motto “no pain no gain” will only damage you. Instead of forcing your joint to a certain position, bring it to that position and then think about relaxing it or “letting” it move a bit further.
I also like the ergocise wrist stretches.
A post on turning pirates into customers by the creator of Minecraft.
“Large parts of the culture these days exists in a world where copies are free. Copying a physical book costs money, but copying a digital movie is free. […] No resources are lost, nobody loses any money, and more people are having fun. […]
All of society and economics is based on an old outdated model where giving something to someone would rid the original owner of their copy. […] For example, for every wheel in the market, someone had to make that wheel. With digital copies, you only need to make the wheel once. […]
If someone pirates Minecraft instead of buying it, it means I’ve lost some ‘potential’ revenue. Not actual revenue, as I can never go into debt by people pirating the game too much.”
Radio Hi-Jack Vol. 1 - Tim Martell & DJ Noumenon (No longer available.)
Bump it, yo! Old Skool elements to make you bounce.
Cache Rules Everything Around Me
The Internet is a novelty aggregator. Nearly ten minutes of animated GIFs set to Girl Talk’s NightRipper.
[via]
“Enter the address of the home where you grew up.”
A Google Maps enhanced music video by Chris Milk for Arcade Fire, complete with beautiful boid swarming on the landing page.
Hypnagogia: “You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming?”
DIY Magic. via
Also: The Ganzfeld Technique
“A progressive lending library of electronic components. An internet meme in physical form halfway between P2P zip-archive sharing and a flea market.”
John, a previous student of mine, made this weather-aware application and entered it in the Apps 4 Climate Action contest.
Enter your (Canadian) address to see the average rainfall in your area over the last 7 days. John’s site uses data from Environment Canada’s 1079 weather stations. (See the Rain Caddy About page for a map of all these stations.)
Open Data for the win.
Simple, addictive helicopter game written with HTML5 complete with source code.