March 31, 2007
Wi-fi buses drive rural web use
"Buses equipped with wi-fi are being used to deliver web content to remote rural villages in the developing world.
In rural India and parts of Rwanda, Cambodia and Paraguay, the vehicles offer web content to computers with no internet connection."
Mirror Mirror
More from the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival:
Mirror Mirror
This is really hard to review, partly because it's part of a PhD thesis and in some ways is quite a personal project, and partly because it's so London/Wotever-centric. It still feels like a work in progress. I think it must be very difficult to edit a film you've made with/about your friends, and within those constraints it's a good film; but without those constraints it might have been a better film. But I really liked it as an experimental or exploratory film, and I liked it as a showcase for Club Wotever. It had lots of interesting ideas and I could imagine some of them being made into more focussed short films.
(I abuse the word 'really' almost as much as I abuse the word 'lovely'. And Bar Wotever afterwards was lots of fun and I didn't even have a hangover the next day.)
The Bubble
I would review the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival shorts 'Trouble and Strife' but owing to a mix-up with daylight savings (i.e. I forgot) I missed the session. I had a lovely time catching up with people in the new back cafe at the NFT so I can't really complain.
I really, really recommend this film. It's set in Tel Aviv (and made me want to visit, except that the politics make it kinda complicated), and is basically a love story between an Israeli and a Palestinian guy. That's not all it is, obviously because of the religious, historical and political issues, but also because it's firmly grounded in the everyday lives of a group of friends who are figuring out who and what they want to be while enjoying the best and coolest life Tel Aviv has to offer. The 'bubble' refers to life in Tel Aviv compared to the rest of Israel, but I think it could also refer to that stage of life where you and everyone you know are young and beautiful and life is relatively uncomplicated.
To me, the depictions of Israeli/Palestinian relations seemed fair, but really I can't judge. It certainly gave me a more concrete understanding of what life might have been like for those 'mad Israeli kids' you meet backpacking when they've finished their military service, and the Palestinian issues with checkpoints were well portrayed.
(And the chick who plays Lulu is hot.)
Puccini for Beginners
Another LLGFF review:
Puccini for Beginners was quite slick, well played, well written and very New York but overall it was strangely unsatisfying. It might just be that I expect more radical content or film-making from festival films, because if I was to see it at my local cinema it would be a lovely date movie. On the other hand maybe I'm spoilt because for the people I know there's not much that's shocking about a lesbian falling for a man.
It's still nice to see a positive representation of queer life on the screen, and I particularly liked the scenes where passing characters broke out of role to engage with the main character's internal dialogue.
It felt weirdly transgressive watching heterosexual sex in a cinema full of queer at a Lesbian and Gay film festival.
March 29, 2007
"Computer giant Dell will start to sell PCs preinstalled with open source Linux operating systems, the firm has said.
...
Dell has not released details of which versions of Linux it will use or which computers it will run on, but promised an update in the coming weeks.
...
Big business and governments, particularly in the developing world, are also starting to exploit the flexibility of open source code.
The UK Cabinet Office recently evaluated the operating system and approved it as a viable alternative to proprietary systems." BBC
Point/Counterpoint: (RED) Raises $100 Million, Spends 82% On Advertising
"(RED), the global co-branding experiment that directs a percentage of (RED) product revenues towards fighting AIDS in Africa, has only directed $18 million out of $100 million spent. AdAge reports that this is raising eyebrows other than our own."
The disproportionate ratio between the marketing outlay and the money raised is drawing concern among nonprofit watchdogs, cause-marketing experts and even executives in the ad business. It threatens to spur a backlash, not just against the Red campaign -- which ambitiously set out to change the cause-marketing model by allowing partners to profit from charity -- but also for the brands involved.
Without knowing much about him I've always had a bit of an intellectual crush on Issey Miyake.
I was talking with a workmate about our first computers, and admittedly my experience was different because Dad brought home an old machine from work (a CP/M?) with a magazine of code that you typed in to make games, but generally it was just a conversation about computers... until she said, "wow! that sounds like the 80s" as if we were talking about the 1940s. It was the 80s but I've never before felt like it was so long ago.
Still, it's made me laugh for half an hour so it's not that bad.
"Prime Minister John Howard has clashed with Sir Nicholas Stern over climate change, saying the former World Bank chief economist's views should not be treated as "holy writ" and could do great damage to the Australian economy.
Sir Nicholas has called on Australia to be an international leader in the fight against climate change by slashing its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050, ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and being at the forefront of new technologies, such as clean coal.
But when asked by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd if he would commit to the 2050 target, Mr Howard declared he would put the national interest first." The Age
Is he really that short-sighted? Or does he think a political win justifies the environmental damage? From this distance it seems Australia is already suffering the effects of global warming, I don't understand why it's not the first country to respond.
March 27, 2007
Flickr sucks a bit now
A quick geek whinge about the Flickr/Yahoo! linked login thing. I use Flickr a lot less these days because of it, which is a shame.
Before, I would stay logged into Flickr all the time, which was lovely because I could see all my and my friends private photos and leave comments whenever the whim took me. Now I only log in to do specific things, and I log out again afterwards. It's partly because it's a pain being stuck with a particularly linked Yahoo! ID whenever I'm active in Flickr, and partly because I don't see why Yahoo should get my data for free when I paid for a Flickr Pro account.
And the login process is really annoying - there's a link saying 'Old skool members, please sign in here' but it doesn't work if you've linked your Yahoo! account already.
March 26, 2007
"Word-of-mouth marketing, the latest advertising boom in the US, is coming to Britain", says, the BBC.
March 23, 2007
That thing about the Portuguese discovering Australia is in the news again: "A 16th century maritime map in a Los Angeles library vault proves that Portuguese adventurers, not British or Dutch, were the first Europeans to discover Australia, says a new book which details the secret discovery of Australia." Map proves Portuguese discovered Australia: new book
March 22, 2007
After a week of sunshine it's back to being cold again and it snowed a bit on Monday and Tuesday. We've solved the problem of the lack of heating in the office with a new program of spontaneous Aboriginal Morris dancing.
Ok, quick film review. I'm trying out the hreview microformat at the same time.
Itty Bitty Titty Committee opened the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival last night. It was an entertaining start to the festival - cute cast, good production values and cinematography, great soundtrack. There was an occasional clunky "here's the politics" but it wasn't so bad that it pulled you out of the experience. It's definitely not a coming out film and I really enjoyed the way being a lesbian was normalised - it wasn't an issue in scenes set in a family or work environment.
March 17, 2007
Also from the BBC: "The woman who invented the modern incarnation of Mother's Day was so distressed by its commercialisation that she tried to copyright the date to protect her idea."
According to the BBC: "Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were written not only to entertain but to promote the idea that working for a unified public interest was a myth - as argued by Margaret Thatcher's favourite theorist, James Buchanan."
March 16, 2007
A quick catch-up on things around London:
A few Sundays ago I went on a trek to see Jake and Dinos Chapman's Two Legs Good, Four Legs Bad at
Paradise Row. Last Sunday I wandered around Shoreditch looking for open galleries. Not much luck at first, except scaffolding pillars outside the Foundary were decorated in different styles, no idea who by.
The final gallery was Flowers East, where I really liked 'The Person Who.......' by Jiro Osuga - mostly paintings but there was a room with a table of toys and small paintings that folded out to show a different side.
I also saw Tim Berners-Lee speak (leave a comment or email me for my notes) on Tuesday, and saw Orfeo at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, both of which were really rather fabulous.
BBC: Privacy bodies have welcomed Google's decision to anonymise personal data it receives from users' web searches.
"By anonymising our server logs after 18 to 24 months, we think we're striking the right balance between two goals: continuing to improve Google's services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices," a statement from the search giant said.
It added: "Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymise our server logs after a limited period of time."
March 13, 2007
March 9, 2007
Interesting... for some reason I'm fascinated by the idea of subliminal messages.
"The brain is open to what's around it. So if there is 'spare capacity', in terms of attention, the brain will allocate that resource to subliminal activity.
"These findings point to the sort of impact that subliminal advertising may have on the brain.
"What this study doesn't address is whether this would then influence you to go out and buy a product." BBC
March 7, 2007
I'm also enjoying garagepunk.com (but I wish their player had a volume control).
I came across rateyourmusic.com and Australian artists you may not know much about, but should and related lists when looking for the lyrics to 'Dogs Are The Best People'. I didn't find the lyrics but I found a live version on youtube. I [heart] the internet.
March 6, 2007
The server went down at work so I used my time usefully, laughing at more comics. It was that or PL/SQL, can you really blame me? Some of them remind me of various people but there's no chance I'm saying which or who.
http://xkcd.com/c205.html
http://xkcd.com/c203.html
http://xkcd.com/c197.html
http://xkcd.com/c193.html
http://xkcd.com/c178.html
March 5, 2007
Facts and fictions about climate change
"It has become fashionable in some parts of the UK media to portray the scientific evidence that has been collected about climate change and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities as an exaggeration. Some articles have claimed that scientists are ignoring uncertainties in our understanding of the climate and the factors that affect it. Some have questioned the motives of the scientists who have presented the most authoritative assessments of the science of climate change, claiming that they have a vested interest in ‘playing up’ the potential effects that climate change is likely to have.
This document examines twelve misleading arguments (presented in bold typeface) put forward by the opponents of urgent action on climate change and highlights the scientific evidence that exposes their flaws."
This PDF from the Royal Society, A guide to facts and fictions about climate change, goes through the evidence (or lack of) for claims like 'Many scientists do not think that climate change is a problem', 'There is little evidence that global warming is happening or, if it is happening, it is not very much', 'Even if climate change is occurring, it won’t be that dangerous' and 'There is no evidence that climate change will be bad for people. In fact, warmer weather will actually be good for those people who live in cold countries'.
So the next time someone says "there's no point doing anything about global warming because..." you can point them to that document.
"Thanks largely to the 'sixth-most famous man in Kazakhstan', Central Asia is attracting unprecedented attention from travellers. Films come and films go, but after the Borat hype has simmered down, the region's oomph will keep adventurers coming back for more. So which 'Stan has it? Lonely Planet's Central Asian specialists argue the case for their favourite." at the Lonely Planet.
March 2, 2007
Night owls are more creative
"Scientists can't yet fully explain why evening types appear to be more creative, but they suggest it could be an adaptation to living outside the norm.
"Being in a situation which diverges from conventional habit, nocturnal types often experience this situation, may encourage the development of a non-conventional spirit and of the ability to find alternative and original solutions""
Though I don't like the last sentence: "One could reasonably envision a link between the personality trait of extroversion and the finding of creativity," Van Dongen says.