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Seafaring sheep

Seafaring sheep, originally uploaded by xt1.

Some sheep walk to the summer grazing fields, some are driven in trucks, and a lucky few get to take a boat-trip.

These sheep spend the summer on an island called Tromlingene.

Add comment May 26th, 2006

New cabin roof

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New cabin roof, originally uploaded by xt1.

The sun is shining - the rain is going to stay outside the cabin.

Add comment May 25th, 2006

Springsteen

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Springsteen, originally uploaded by xt1.

Big queue for a big concert with the Boss. Not my cup of tea though.

Add comment May 21st, 2006

Stephen Takes His Camera Everywhere

Even when paddling all the way from the southern tip to the northern tip of Norway, he dragged his digital camera and lenses along, all so that we could enjoy the scenic pictures. The amazing scenery of coastal norway as seen from a tiny kayak.

Add comment May 19th, 2006

Upcoming Animated Movies

There are a whole bunch of animated movies coming up - all of the computer animated:

• Happy Feet - tap-dancing emperor penguins
• Flushed Away - posh pet rat meets the sewer
• Monster House - scary house eats passers by
• Cars - Pixar’s talking cars race
• Open Season - talking animals fight the hunters
• Over the Hedge - talking animals discover the sub-urbs
• Ant Bully - human bully learns lesson by being shrunk to ant size
• Barnyard - the secret lives of cows gone nuts!
• The Wild - Zoo animals escape into the New York jungle

If we add the rotoscoped animation films, we get a couple of more:

• Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick’s nightmare vision
• 300 - Frank Miller’s spartans fight the persions

And of course

• Simpsons Movie - 2d animation! Hand drawn!

2 comments May 19th, 2006

Spartans ho!

Frank Miller’s 300 is coming to the big screen, in a similar way to the way Sin City was put together.

Lots of blue screen, digital effects, stylized look inspired by the comic art. It looks like great fun.

Add comment May 16th, 2006

PCs in the Jungle

I’ve been keeping track of the Jhai project for a couple of years now. Lee Felsenstein (one of the original 60s hackers) worked on designing and building a computer that could help Laotian and Viet-namese villagers communicate with each other. The design problems that came up during the field tests are quite different from the usual design problems. Intermittent network access is one thing. Intermittent power is tougher. Humidity and damp. Portability. Robustness. Cost. Lots of tough constraints to work within.
This week the project announced a project success. They’ve deployed and run for months out in the bush, running on local power sources without crashing. The latest update makes for interesting reading.

You can see a steady progression from Felsenstein’s Community Memory project in 60s Berkeley to this - essentially a bigger, distributed version of the same thing. The key is computer as commincation and community device.

The other point of interest is the Jhai project’s focus on economics. Economic principles function on all levels of society (as Grameen micro-banking illustrates). Economies require a free flow of information to function well. A networked computer enables the farmers - it gives them access to market information, and to education and learning.
The idea of putting cheap computers into dirt poor villages seems absurd. Surely a water-pump or plumbing are more important? But the idea seems to be working - the computer makes it possible for the farmers to earn enough to buy their own pump/generator/whatever.

The old dream of the personal computer as a possibility magnifier still lives, and that makes me happy.

Add comment May 7th, 2006

Neil Young - Living With War

The new album Living With War is excellent. Go listen to it.

A couple of interesting things I found while reading up on the site:

• Journalists must take care when re-writing or clarifying their interviews, otherwise they might end up with the original quotes matched up against their re-write, like this. Blogging on the internet is changing the balance of power between authors, subjects and readers. These are interesting times.
• Young kept waiting for a younger songwriter to do the big anti-Bush protest album, but nothing was happening. It looks like the Idol and manufactured pop-star phenomenon has taken over so completely that nothing controversial is said for fear of offending a consumer.

  Pearl Jam are releasing an album next week, we can hope it matches Young’s (which is really really good).

1 comment May 1st, 2006