listsanddiagrams

Lists and Diagrams 2.0

2005-03-19T11:28:00.000+08:00

Lists and Diagrams has moved! Head on over to www.listsanddiagrams.com for version 2.0. This site will no longer be updated. Cheers!

apple vs. blogs

2005-03-18T12:27:00.000+08:00

The EFF needs your help! I don't know whether y'all have been keeping up with the Apple vs. Blogs suits recently, here's a quick brief for the uninitiated:

An apple rumour site called Think Secret somehow found out that Apple was developing a new product, an external firewire audio interface (so you can plug your guitar, keyboard etc into your computer and record in Garageband) codenamed "Asteroid". Think Secret published this news, and Apple sued them. The intricities of the trial are quite complex, but essentially the San Jose judge ruled that the First Amendment's journalistic protection rights do not apply to bloggers. The argument was not over how damaging the leak was to Apple, whether the story was for the public good (as in the Watergate scandal), or even whether Think Secret had obtained the information legally, but whether a blog is a work of journalism. Journalists (for newspapers etc., at least) aren't required to reveal their sources.

Anyway, Think Secret lost the case. Their lawyers are now launching an appeal. As reported on BoingBoing today, the legal team is looking for instances where a story has been broken on a blog. I remember half the news from the ground in Iraq during the first (recent) strikes coming from a blogger, and a popular Sri Lankan moblog after the Dec. 26 Tsunami. There has to be heaps more. If you're interested in reading about the case, why Think Secret and the other Mac rumour sites should be free to publish information without having to reveal their sources, or can help out with proving that blogging is another form of journalism (hell, lists and diagrams is better than A Current Affair nowdays), head to the EFF's page on the whole affair here.

sunlight in a tube

2005-03-16T15:31:00.000+08:00

this is such an obvious idea, i can't believe no-one has come up with it yet. solar collectors on the roofs of office buidings condense sunlight and transport it through fiber-optic cables down to floors below, to be piped into the light fittings. during the day, they could supplement or completely replace fluorescent tubes, the main energy use in office buildings. as long as no-one gets sunburnt sitting at their desk, this is going to be fucking brilliant. my advice: buy stocks in this company, and glass-producers now. sell stocks in energy companies.

it's blair witch meets Lost

2005-03-16T15:23:00.000+08:00

picture this: you're out hiking in the back country, maybe with a couple of friends, you might be going for a dayhike or picnic or something. you aren't following any trails, so you may have accidentally wandered onto private property. in the distance, you hear a stomping and growling sound... and occasionally the falling of trees. you cautiously head towards it to check it out, but you can't see anything. suddenly, you hear its horrible scream, and it comes stomping towards you. you turn and run, frightened for your life, but its deft manouvering over the rugged terrain outpaces you. it's almost on top of you, and you throw yourself to the ground near a tree, cowering in terror... as you peek out from behind the tree, you are confronted with this.

more info on the beast here

ch-ch-ch-changes

2005-03-15T18:06:00.000+08:00

don't adjust your browser, over the next few weeks i'm going to be playing with the template for the blog. there may be some fuckups. feedback appreciated.

relog: relationship blog

2005-03-15T14:09:00.000+08:00

Shortly after a scathing report on Friz's reunion, the couple could not deal with the attention and broke it off immediately, in a last-ditch effort to return to monotony. This seems to have sparked a series of events that are anything but monotonous.

Matt allegedly made an effort to console Liz over dinner, and things got more complicated than they both expected. listsanddiagrams is led to believe one of Nigella's recipes and some low-pitched Spanish was involved.

Unfortunately for Matt, Piers has held a promise he had made previously and killed him as soon as they had announced their togetherness. He was reported by eye-witnesses to have come charging into the room waving a gun and screaming "All I have in this world is my balls, and my word, and I don't break 'em for no one, jou understand?"

James was quick to act on this opportunity, and made a pass at Liz.

Once Liz had regained consciousness she called it off.

Liz is now missing, with rumours that she has gone to Melbourne to take advantage of Emma's recent breakup with Campbell.

In Liz's absence, James has gone after Fred, but has become infuriated with his apathy.

He has now given up on Fred and resumed his usual attempts to fuck anything that moves, with one eyebrow cocked.

In breaking news, Liz is reported to be "impregnezzio", with doubts as to who the father is. Fred is currently in negotiations with her to make her an honest woman, with the proviso that the child will be called Fred, whether it is a boy or a girl.

Stay tuned to listsanddiagrams for more updates as they arrive.

campblog

2005-03-15T01:38:00.000+08:00

campbell has a blog.

We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday

2005-03-14T01:18:00.000+08:00

wiggas: heads up

flickr ransom note generator

2005-03-14T00:43:00.000+08:00

this page is a web app that takes images of letters from flickr and uses them to spell whatever you put in. to change the word, replace "listsanddiagrams" with whatever you want in the address bar.

ipod battery hooray!

2005-03-13T12:26:00.000+08:00

my ipod battery's gone to shit recently, i haven't been getting more than six hours playtime. but that's ok, it's still under warranty. so i decided i should test it myself properly before sending it in, because i don't want to have to go two weeks without an ipod for nothing. i've formatted it, installed the latest firmware (it was running the latest before i formatted it) and copied all my music. i thought i'd have to fully charge, drain and charge the battery so it could calibrate, then i'd test it and see how long it plays for. well, i charged it, then left it playing at 3am last night to drain the battery, and now it's 12.30, and not dead. two pixels of battery strength. i'm pretty excited, i don't know why i'm now getting 9.5+ hours, but i don't care either. my ipod is the best!

helvetica

2005-03-13T02:43:00.000+08:00

if anyone feels like buying me a present, this is the coolest pencilcase ever.

baggage

2005-03-12T16:15:00.000+08:00

there are two flickr albums, one called whatsinyourbag and a similar one called whatsinmybag. i'd expect to see all kinds of different things, and while the bag contents all differ, there are more similarities than differences. if there's a computer pictured, it's usually a powerbook or ibook. everyone has an ipod. moleskines are very popular, some people carry 2, 3, 4 or 5 (i carry two). everyone has a pen, usually some mints, the girls' bags will almost always have some makeup accessory. at first i thought there weren't many cameras, but most people would be using them to take the photo. they're fun albums to flick through. the bag above contains a 15" powerbook, 20gb ipod, a moleskine notebook and dayplanner, sidekick, nintendo ds, retractable ethernet cable and some other stuff. pretty geeky. here's my typical bag:

new zelda vid

2005-03-12T15:52:00.000+08:00

i have no idea about the game (release date, name other than "zelda", platform etc) but there's a new HD video online for the latest legend of zelda game. i wasn't blown away by the character detail, but the atmospherics are amazing. the anatomical gestures and movements of the characters are also pretty convincing.

amature cog video

2005-03-12T15:39:00.000+08:00

homebrew version of the honda cog commercial, not quite as flashy but quite inventive and just as fun.

screw toby

2005-03-12T13:03:00.000+08:00

as excited as we all were that a cute rabbit was going to be eaten, it's a hoax.

i got thinking about it last night, when i saw one of the guys at my work had a "save toby" badge on. i knew about the site but hadn't previously thought about the legality of it. after some consideration i decided that it is a hoax, or the guy is being prosecuted at the moment. it's extortion and could be argued that it's also inhumane to toby. snopes.com confirms this. oh well. i thought it was a kickass idea, i was already looking forward to toby being eaten. but the guy is still very clever in my opinion, i bet he's made a packet from the donations, merchandise and advertising on his website. the dotcom boom/bust rears it's ugly head again: getting people to pay money for something that essentially doesn't exist.

sewdorky

2005-03-12T03:14:00.000+08:00

hand-sewn felt donuts. perfect.

misprintedtype

2005-03-11T00:16:00.001+08:00

misprintedtype is an artist's website with some awesome shit on there, as well as crazy-cool fonts you can download for free! pc and mac, some photoshop brushes there as well.

spike jonze adidas commerical

2005-03-10T23:23:00.000+08:00

spike jonze has dreamed up a beautiful new ad for adidas, it really captures the way some dreams feel.

props

2005-03-10T14:12:00.000+08:00

a few cool sites have flashed up on my radar recently. here's a roundup:

a new multi-author blog called drawn, about illustration, art, cartooning and drawing, with some really good links, resources and inspiration.

design is kinky, pretty much what's going on in design right now. i think it's australian-based, or at least their hosting is.

subtraction, a blog by a photographer in new york called khoi vinh, he writes some interesting stuff but what i really like about his site is the layout. i could describe it, but you could just look. very well set out. when i get a proper blog, i'll consider something like this. it's moveable-type generated.

buck: the meaning of maximalist. that gothic font that everyone's using now, pencil illustration, flash animation of pre-osx navbar buttons, arcade-style sound effects, it's totally in your face. i think the website has something to do with film. refresh it to see new background images and animations.

need some copyright-free photos? look to wikipedia's public domain image resources department. there's heaps of stuff here, all free to use.

back when people had attention spans...

2005-03-10T14:00:00.000+08:00

here's a vintage rice krispies advertisement from 1929, in which two kids are sitting at a breakfast table, and one ("bobby") complains that the cereal is too mushy. he whistles for snap, crackle and pop, and they come and beat up the mushy gang representing the competing cereal. they then dish out the krispy kereal to the kids. it's fun to look at the animation and plot and laugh a bit, but what really surprised me was how long it was. this thing went for 1:20. can you imagine some kid sitting at home (actually, i think it was a movie commercial, but regardless) in front of the tv and concentrating on a cereal ad for almost a minute and a half? hell, i got bored half way through.

it's funny how our attention spans have been shortened. i've recently been getting into a mashup dj who goes by "osymyso", i really like the way he beatmixes and mashes at the same time, creating totally new beats from very recognizable non-beat parts of songs. but i also like the speed, there's a new beat every 5-10 seconds. download "intro - inspection" or "intro - expansion" from your favourite p2p network, and you'll see what i mean. "osymyso's puckish mix" is a bit slower, beats can go for as long as a minute or so. but with plenty of samples.

get educated

2005-03-09T13:11:00.000+08:00

designboom is a website concerned with (mostly industrial) design. i know it from a competition they ran for designing kitchen-related things, with categories on several scales, from appliances to fittings to whole kitchens. i thought of an idea i liked, worked on it for a while but didn't end up entering, because i was happy with what i had learnt through the design process. my idea was a whole kitchen based around one island, so when several people are cooking or hanging around in the kitchen, they are facing each other, not the walls. it's also quite space-efficient. the project that won had pretty much the same concept as mine, but the finished product was more refined and much better presented, obviously by someone with more experience than me. they won $5000 and an opportunity to present the idea at the cologne furniture fair. i was actually pretty chuffed that my idea was so similar to the winning entry, it was a nice validation for the work i had done, as well as prompting me to improve my own skills.

anyway, i just checked their site, they're now offering distance-education courses called design-aerobics where you get emailed work, do homework and present a final design at the end, and receive feedback.

there are two "cycles" that are about to start, with three courses each. the first is "things", with courses on cutlery, toys and jewellery, the second is "furniture", with courses on furniture in a box, do-it-yourself and "table". you can do a whole cycle for US$140, or just one course for US$59. the site is quite well-regarded, so just to get your final design published on there would be worth the money. the person who runs it is also quite well respected, judging by the company she keeps and the collaborations she does.

if you're in the design field, it'd be quite worthwhile. i'd like to do one of the furniture courses. i don't have anything to do this semester anyway...

milton glaser - 10 things i have learned

2005-03-09T09:45:00.000+08:00

i like the way this guy thinks.

Number 8
DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.
Everyone always talks about confidence and believing in what you do. I remember once going to a class in Kundalini yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a more practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins.

(boingboing)

and it was like... and i was like...

2005-03-07T03:22:00.000+08:00

ellen feiss did a couple of switch commercials, one for macs in general and one for the powerbook g4. i'm not quite sure whether i like her or not. she seems pretty whacked.

on the mac switch commercial, right before it cuts to the image of the apple logo and "apple.com/switch", she looks like she's either going to yak or fall over. i think in the filming, she probably did, so they cut to the title and just had audio after that.

chicken harvester

2005-03-05T11:05:00.000+08:00

speaking of shredding machines, this thing is heaps scarier. it catches chickens with rotating rubber prongs and shoots them through on a conveyor belt into containers.

butz-o-rama

2005-03-05T10:54:00.000+08:00

here's a collection of videos of an industrial shredder doin' it's thang on cardboard, scrap wood, tyres, a steel drum filled with concrete, a refrigerator, washing machine, couch, all kinds of shit. my favourite is the computers, it feels very satisfying. but this machine is totally crazy. you could send a video of a mannequin going through it to someone and they would never bother you ever again.

powerbooks: hothothot

2005-03-04T23:41:00.000+08:00

this story is so geek-nerdtron cream dream that i doubt it's authenticity. but it's a cool story nonetheless.

man, the 15-inch is HOT, the 17-inch is HOT, they're HOT...

iP mini

2005-03-04T13:41:00.000+08:00

Welcome to the italian food revolution.

homemade iPod mini advertisement

2005-03-04T13:24:00.000+08:00

this ad for the ipod mini made by schoolteacher george masters absolutely blew my mind. he should get the hell out of schools and go work for apple. or teach design and digital media students how to make awesome shit like this.

it's a TSUNAMI!!!

2005-03-03T17:26:00.000+08:00

is it old enough that i can joke about it now? what's it been, like 2 months?

t.d.

2005-03-03T14:17:00.000+08:00

this link has been removed for security reasons. but uh, props to you know who.

flickr comments

2005-03-03T10:17:00.000+08:00

when someone leaves a comment on my blog, it gets emailed to me. but when someone leaves a comment on one of my flickr photos, i don't hear about it. today i went through and sorted my photos by "most viewed", "most favourited" and "most commented". i emailed a few people about their comments, even though some of them were months old. i just find it interesting how people become connected.

The Soup Nazi says:

Ah! That's such a great plate :P Adding it to teh fav's.

990000 says:

hot hot hot

briok says:

Wow, how disconcerting! Another Briony having a significant birthday party in January. I too am Briony but have the unfortunate disadvantage of having just turned 30!I came across these by accident when I was having a look at my friends' photos of my birthday party. Happy Birthday!

joy of tech on lanyard fashion

2005-03-03T09:25:00.000+08:00

it's so true!

drog - drug blog

2005-03-03T01:39:00.000+08:00

this guy is pretty seriously into his psychotropics. i don't even know what most of these are.

Breakfast Drugs

15:48

2x500 mg Depakine
1x300 mg Neurotop
0,05 mg Thyrex
250 microgram Seretide
6 shots Nasivine

2 Eggs, 4 Pieces of Bread, 7 cups of coffee, Butter & Jello

(via monochrom)

gangsta toys

2005-03-03T01:32:00.000+08:00

from we make money not art:

plush horse head - to get the message across without having to kill any horses

talking tony montana - your favourite cuban gangsta saying all his best lines

This Place Sucks

2005-03-03T01:10:00.000+08:00

this'd have to be the best video mashup i've seen. it's the video from superfriends with the audio from office space, which is funny enough just as a concept, but it's done really well, the lip-synching is excellent.

mac mini ipod dock?

2005-03-02T11:14:00.000+08:00

breaking story, register article.

well, duh. everyone knows that ipod docks built into compact macintosh computers are the coolest. btw, stay tuned - updates soon.

spider-man's greatest bible stories!

2005-03-02T11:07:00.000+08:00

have you ever stopped to think how lucky god was to have the help of spider-man?

IRARK special report

2005-03-02T10:59:00.000+08:00

monochrom have produced a video-mashup with scenes from cnn coverage of the war in iraq and audio from rambo. pretty fucking funny.

hip-hop posters

2005-03-01T09:46:00.000+08:00

totally cool archive of vintage hip-hop posters, like this gem. but they're all on the one page, with no thumbnails or anything, and it'll take a very long time to load. took me about 3 minutes on a 1.5mb connection. if you don't want to do that, type the address in directly: the url for this image is

http://toledohiphop.org/images/old_school_source_code/index_files/scan0047.jpg

just replace the 0047.jpg with some other number. i think they're all in that sequence.

the site also explains who phase-2 is, at the top of the page.

Yeastie Boys - Licensed to Swill

2005-03-01T01:57:00.000+08:00

fred brewing
Originally uploaded by listsanddiagrams.

fred's got something brewing over at his house. his dad thinks we're going to fuck up. i'm looking forward to all the different flavours...

ipod photo camera connector

2005-02-28T17:18:00.000+08:00

there was a press conference in japan recently, and apple officially announced what they mentioned earlier: a usb camera connector for the ipod photo so you can upload your pictures to your ipod directly, and view them straight away, unlike the previous 3rd-party photo uploading devices. this is pretty cool, but what it might mean, and is much bigger news, is that the ipod photo has usb on-the-go capability. usb otg is a protocol whereby a portable device can be a usb host, like a computer can, so other usb devices (like cameras, printers, storage devices, etc etc) can connect to it. what is interesting about this is, if hackers can unlock the usb otg capability of the ipod photo, it opens it up for a shitload of cool applications. many of these are legit, like storing documents or photos on your ipod and distributing them to other people's usb memory sticks or other ipods; or perhaps printing them to a usb printer; or maybe using a usb keyboard to type notes into your ipod, along with other non-legit uses, like swapping songs directly between two ipods. we shall have to wait and see...

chichu art museum

2005-02-28T11:58:00.000+08:00

there's an art gallery in japan designed by tadao ando, one of my top 5 favourite architects, that's almost entirely underground so as not to alter the natural look of the island it's built on (or in, rather). it holds five of monet's waterlillies, which are some of the most amazing paintings i have ever had the pleasure of seeing, when they came to perth. but i'd like to go to see the building as much as i would to see the art. it's not easy to get to from tokyo, or cheap: plane in 80 mins for $200, shinkansen (bullet train) in 4.5 hours for about $210, bus overnight in 9.5 hours for $120, or a 19-hour ferry trip in the lowest class and then a 1.5 hour bus trip for about $120. those are all one-way, and unless you're on the plane or shinkansen, you'd need accomodation as well. i'm torn. but just going on the shinkansen or ferry or even bus would be a cool journey.

(via cool hunting)

new switchers

2005-02-28T11:18:00.000+08:00

ok all you proud new mac owners, you're on your way to becoming fanatics. don't say "it'll never happen to me", because it will, it's simply a matter of time. and once you've lost your mind like the rest of us have, you'll wish you did this. apple is taking calls for stories from people who've switched from pc's to macs. realise and fulfil your dream, before you have it and it's too late. they don't want the crazy nutters on their website, they want the people teetering between the stupidity of owning a pc and the irrationality of mac fanaticism.

podbrix

2005-02-28T11:12:00.000+08:00

a guy called tomi is making apple-themed lego action figures and selling them in limited editions. he just released a steve jobs figure presenting a keynote, in a run of 300 and they sold in 36 minutes. the previous figure was one of the ipod-commercial figures, complete with green background. this shit is so awesome. i want to paint my own and make stop-go animations of them.

voodoo knife block

2005-02-28T11:05:00.000+08:00

i have no self-indulgent preamble to go along with this post, i just think this is fucking cool:

(via cool hunting)

product design

2005-02-28T10:55:00.000+08:00

there's something about appliances and other purchasable products, i don't know what it is, but i'm always interested by them. perhaps it's because there's probably 10,000 different toasters you could buy, and the difference between 95% of them would be two slots or four, or white or chrome. when something new comes out, i don't care whether it's good or bad design in terms of functionality, i just love new ideas for designs that seem to have been exhausted and have reached their logical conclusion. i think it's because i've become a bit jaded by the mastabatorial side to architecture, that i appreciate aesthetics over design just to be rebellious, or because i'm sick of hearing about reasons for choices that should not be rational, but rather intuitive.

it is with this preamble in mind that i blog a new toaster by sternform, the website is laid out so i can't link directly to the toaster, but on the scroll-bar, go all the way to the right and find this icon:

best phone headset ever

2005-02-25T10:40:00.000+08:00

it's even better than a bluetooth pokia.

i'm going to add building one to my long lists of "projects to do". ripping apart a bluetooth headset couldn't be that hard. you could wear the rest of the tranceiver like a fat-ass crack ring on the middle finger, and have wires running to the thumb and pinkie. or you could have it strapped to the back of your hand, that would probably be less intrusive.

rich people are bored

2005-02-25T10:19:00.000+08:00

i think when you have a certain amount of money, when your cash reserves reach some kind of tipping point or critical mass, a combination of boredom and the effects of being totally removed from normal everyday life, just fuck with your mind, and you start thinking crazy shit like "i want to balloon around the world" or "let's get the most expensive tennis players in the world to play in the least appropriate place". i love it though, it's cool.

super mario post-it building window art

2005-02-25T10:15:00.000+08:00

3800 post-its arranged in the best way i can think of.

ipods w00t

2005-02-25T09:56:00.000+08:00

i don't even want to talk about it.

wifi! hooray! (again)

2005-02-23T07:04:00.000+08:00

i've found a nice place in sydney for internet access, it's not actually wifi, it's ethernet but that's no problemo. $2/hour and there's a gloria jeans downstairs. if any of the proud new powerbook owners are over this way, it's at the corner of castlereagh and liverpool, in the cbd. good internet cafes are hard to find because they're so heavily advertised on the net and most of them are a total ripoff. i saw one place that tried to charge $13 per half hour. i pity the fools who shell out that kind of cash.

i saw this guy in the city yesterday, and had to snap a pic. i would like to think he was going to a costume party or something, but unfortunately i don't think he was. the photo's not that great, you can see his shitty "i'm not from califonia but i wish i wuz" tshirt, nightie on underneath, and even though you couldn't see how low his shorts actually were, he was doing the retarded walk with his legs splayed so they wouldn't fall completely off, but even if they did, i don't know how he could be any more embarassing to himself than he already was. what the photo doesn't show is his crap tattoos, big-ass earings (the kind that stretch the hole, presumably so someone can fuck it, that's the only reason i can think you'd do that), chequered vans with no socks, trucker hat angled just so, chain hanging from his wallet to the superfluous belt loop so if someone tries to steal the $10 he's got in there, he'll be dragged two blocks along the pavement, and more jewellery than liberace. haha, he made my day.

i saw these monks in the mall, another fumble-for-the-camera-gotta-get-this-shot but didn't quite make it, the one on the right was taking a photo of the other one with a digital camera with the mall in the backdrop. i presume they were buddhist, there's a strange irony there. unfortunately i was too slow for a good shot.

sound of silence

this guy has taken the gaps and pauses in songs and made a remix/mashup of them, totally silent. just postmodern enough.

mdma for soldiers

boy, they must be having a hell of a time finding recruits. at least it shows america is getting more drug-friendly.

japan is so cool. this is a poster saying that you shouldn't cross the yellow line, because you might become "shinkansen food", portrayed in lego by a few schoolgirls in sailor uniforms and a drunk japanese businessman. i'll do anything a lego-poster tells me to.

katamari doh-macy

i think i will have to buy a ps2 just for this game. anyway, someone has made a play-doh model of the Prince and his rubbish-ball picking up stuff.

no expanation. just props. (via boingboing)

10% of europeans are conceived in an ikea bed
the ikea catalogue is also the second most widely distributed publication ever, only out-distributed by the bible. regardless of what you think of their furniture design, you have to marvel at their sheer greatness.

whew! longest post ever! i'm going to go look at the museum of contemporary art.

double cocker power

2005-02-20T14:32:00.000+08:00

double cocker power
Originally uploaded by listsanddiagrams.

i've been down at my uncle's property on the hawkesbury the past couple of days (no internet, no mobile reception, aagh!). he's got some classic records down there, and this one. i didn't listen to it, i was worried about what it might do to me.

sydneytown

2005-02-17T14:35:00.000+08:00

i'm staying with my uncle rod in sydney, he's got a big house in longueville, pretty close to the water. it's got a great view.

rod and flash down on the edge of the harbour near his house

the view from his balcony

i had a wander around sydney cbd today, it's a shithole but the surrounding suburbs are very nice. sydney girls are pretty hot, not quite as hot as melbourne girls. but perth's got the most fatties, and the biggest, that's a pretty good drawing card. come to sunny perth for the lovely weather, if it's too hot, you can stand behind some huge bitch!

i am a penis

2005-02-16T07:53:00.001+08:00

such a tard, went an missed my flight to sydney. getting on the next one an hour later, $50 down the drain. note to self: do not think you can get from fitzroy to the airport in 30 mins. i hate people that miss flights. catching a plane is not hard, you just get up early if you need to and you leave yourself ENOUGH TIME. i now hate myself. bah, i'm over it.

3-photo post

2005-02-15T09:04:00.000+08:00

another photo from the eureka tower. taking this was so scary! i get vertigo.

graffiti near the place i'm staying, not sure whether this is a question or a statement.

the apple background in the windows is photoshopped, the barcode is not. pretty cool. i wish the apple industrial design team made buildings, they would so rock. imagine a 30-storey g5 tower. awesome!

underground tokyo guidebook

2005-02-15T08:38:00.000+08:00

2006, it's on, baby.

ice pirate ship

2005-02-14T15:31:00.000+08:00

for ice pirates, i guess.

the biggest ipod ever

2005-02-12T15:04:00.000+08:00

ipod shuffle ad
Originally uploaded by listsanddiagrams.

view from eureka tower

2005-02-12T13:22:00.000+08:00

eureka merged 1
Originally uploaded by listsanddiagrams.

last day of the conference today, we went on tours. i went up the eureka tower, soon to be the tallest building in melbourne and the tallest residential building in australia, at 88 storeys, or 300 meters. i went up to the 51st floor which was pretty damn high, and took this series of photos which i joined together. the apartment i took it from was 2 bedrooms, looked pretty shit and cost 2.2 million. nice view, but everything else about the building was crap.

wifi! hooray!

2005-02-11T14:16:00.000+08:00

i've finally found some free wifi, there's a place on elizabeth st called "food inc." that gives free, unlimited wifi. you don't, theoretically, have to buy anything, but that'd be rude. so i have a chance to upload a few photos without increasing my mobile bill by an order of magnatude.

first, the conference has been going really well. when i decided to go, i really only wanted to see shigeru ban speak, and was prepared to pay the $175 or so just to see him. when he cancelled because of illness, i was pretty disappointed, and thought the rest of it would be really boring, after all, it's a conference on sustainability in building. usually either very dry figures and graphs and talk about standards and products, or crazy environmentalists saying we have to make love to the earth and have babies with trees or whatever. i've been entirely surprised by the speeches, presentations and debates. at the opening, which was open to the public, there were four speakers and a chair, and they took questions from the audience. i arrived late so i don't know whether they gave a presentation first or just introduced themselves and started fielding questions. but that was really interesting, and at the end, the chair, an american guy, sang a song he wrote himself called "gdp is rising" about how gross national product may be going up but gross national happiness is going down. very funny.

the guy second from the left is the former mayor of bogota in columbia, and it's really amazing to hear someone talk about urban planning in a country that is so desperately poor and has a million and one problems that plenty of people think are more pressing than planting trees. what he spoke about, that night and the next day at the conference, was dealing with the country's problems by changing the way the population thought about the country, and thought about themselves. the stuff he was doing was changing the perception of bogota from a lost cause to something that was worth fighting for, he spoke a lot about increasing the pride of the citizens. basic things like, when building a new drainage canal through a poor area, spending an extra 2% and putting a 7m-wide footpath next to it. in a neighbourhood so poor that they don't have paving or sealed roads, this was invaluable, and you could see by the before and after photos. in as little as 3 or 4 years, this pavement (or boulevard) visibly improved the quality of life of the citizens. he even forcibly accquired land that a national soccer team used for training, which was previously fenced off, and converted it into a public park. the applause he got at the end was phenomenal.

there were some other really cool urban planning ideas that were suggested, a guy working in new york proposed planting trees in the middle of intersections in areas where the roads are underused (not manhattan, obviously) to convert them and the nearby streets from unusable dead zones to public spaces for meeting and recreating. a guy from copenhagen, where they have one of the world's best car policies (or rather anti-car policies) spoke about the return of the flaneur, the person who walks not to get anywhere, but just to see and be seen.

today was not as interesting. it was more concerned with the technology of green building and a lot of it seemed like advertising or useless diatribe. one south african woman gave a very good speech which was verging on the "have babies with trees" thing, but in a much more practical and intelligent manner.

i've taken a few photos and uploaded them so check out my flickr photostream.

going to meet my cousin for dinner, better be off

vice party

2005-02-11T10:50:00.000+08:00

the vice party last night was pretty crazy. i arrived late so i missed the book launch, but i ran into aga and her sister and friends, which was very surprising as i didn't know she was going to be there and i thought she was actually still in perth.

the first band i saw play were totally weird, like beats that my old casio keyboard could make, crazy distorted guitar and synth that sounded like a cross between an organ and a harpsichord but coming from down a well, and you're listening to it on acid. the vocalist had the range of about half an octave and looked like he'd been hitting the special K pretty hard.

the second band were pretty good, the guitarist looked like art garfunkle but 20 years younger, and the singer looked like the guy in acdc, the lead singer. he was about 10 times more energetic though, kept pacing around the 2x3m stage. in the background, i noticed they were using a 12" powerbook, for the beats i imagine.

i scored a poster with the band "bloc party" on one side (the headline act for the night, i missed them), and "vice guide to picking up chicks" on the other. i also got the 3rd vice cd, and a couple of really good photos.

i'm moblogging from the conference, and it's starting again so better go...

melbourne's the best

2005-02-08T19:11:00.000+08:00

i'm currently sitting at a cafe on brunswick, and two other people are also using powerbooks at this cafe. i saw a guy featured in vice magazine earlier, the guy who built knuckledusters into his umbrella. he was carrying the umbrella, and i think he was wearing the same clothes he did in the photoshoot for vice.

earlier i saw a sign in the window of a clothing store that said DO YOU ALWAYS DISAPPEAR FROM THE BAR WHEN ITS YOUR TURN TO SHOUT? Fashion addicts your not alone, visit... etc.

i wasn't very happy about this sign, until i noticed that someone had corrected it to read "IT'S YOUR TURN" and "you're not alone".

then i saw another store with a fuckload of awesome nike dunks, which i am certain i will spend all my money at tomorrow when it's open.

damn, it's a monday night, and everyone's out and about. it's fantastic. and my long macchiato is excellent!

just for you, CW

2005-02-08T11:51:00.000+08:00

the title of this flyer is "some things were never meant to fly". look at the picture in the bottom left, it's a plane. tonnes of steel, hurtling through the air, powered by explosive chemicals? ridiculous!

avalanches: flight tonight

2005-02-08T11:18:00.000+08:00

just killin' time, rockin the departure lounge, and moblogging via my phone (bluetooth -> gprs). werd. i'll be at melbourne airport in a few hours, they have wifi there so i'll post pics of the flight. w00t.

history of portable audio

2005-02-08T01:11:00.000+08:00

the canadian broadcast corp has a cool article on the history of portable audio, from the first portable wirelesses to the present day. an interesting factoid: one of the first companies developing the pocket radio, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, decided to change its name to something more western, and chose a mixture between the latin word for sound, sonos, and the american expression "sonny boy" meaning young, and came up with Sony.

new kleptones album!

2005-02-05T13:40:00.000+08:00

from the creators of "a night at the hip-hopera" comes "from detroit to j.a.". i haven't listened to it yet (still downloading), but i'm certain it's excellent!

omg wanna cyber?

2005-02-05T06:39:00.000+08:00

you have to read this. laugh-out-loud funny. irc is the best.

Bloodninja: Wanna cyber?
MommyMelissa: Sure, you into vegetables?
Bloodninja: What like gardening an shit?
MommyMelissa: Yeah, something like that.
Bloodninja: Nuthin turns me on more, check this out
Bloodninja: You bend over to harvest your radishes.
(pause)
MommyMelissa: is that it?
Bloodninja: You water your tomato patch.
Bloodninja: Are you ready for my fresh produce?
MommyMelissa: I was thinking of like, sexual acts INVOLVING vegetables... Can you make it a little more sexy for me?
(pause)
Bloodninja: I touch you on your lettuce, you massage my spinach... Sexily.
Bloodninja: I ride your buttocks, like they were amber waves of grains.
MommyMelissa: Grain doesn't really turn me on... I was thinking more along the lines of carrots and zucchinis.
Bloodninja: my zucchinis carresses your carrots.
Bloodninja: Damn baby your right, this shit is HOT.

I TAKE IT ALL BACK

2005-02-05T05:20:00.000+08:00

whatever i said about PA jumping the shark (which i didn't think they actually were, it's just introducing new characters is often a prelude to a series getting really crap), i take it ALL back. their latest strip is GOLD. i love tycho and his vocabulary so much.

objects shot

2005-02-05T02:05:00.000+08:00

Soap bar
Originally uploaded by spyzter.

here's a gallery of objects being shot with a .22 and a high-speed camera at the same time. this is a bar of soap. pretty cool.

pantone mugs

2005-02-05T01:57:00.000+08:00

i love design that is totally non-invasive, doesn't force you to do anything a certain way, essentially objects that suggest a better way of doing things, in a voice you can ignore if you want. these mugs by british designer onkar singh kular are colour-coded to match all the possible shades of tea you could want. there's 126 of them, so the idea is you pick the shade that has the perfect amount of milk, and if someone else is making tea for you, they know exactly how much milk you like. i like mine black, so it doesn't help me much, but then again i don't have that problem of people putting an inappropriate amount of milk in. i'd like to see them come out for coffee.

spot the difference

2005-02-03T00:56:00.000+08:00

broken toe
Originally uploaded by listsanddiagrams.

the one on the left is broken. no parkour for me for a while.

pa is dying

2005-02-01T10:18:00.000+08:00

i've been really impressed with pa lately, the drawing has been getting really interesting and the jokes are top-notch. but they say that when a series, particularly a tv show but others can apply, starts dying, the producers add extra characters to keep it interesting. quote:

As might have just become apparent, we're thinking about trying something different for this year's E3 strips. And also, it's kind of hard to like earnest young Ann, who herself seems to like The Merch. But that's not outside the statistical tolerance of her demographic.

ann is going to e3 with them.

hope it doesn't jump the shark.

w00t

2005-01-31T23:41:00.000+08:00

new powerbooks are out. pretty crap update, if you ask me. speeds are barely increased. no g5's, not even dual-core g4's, just 1.5 and 1.67ghz g4's. the only really cool thing is the sudden motion sensor that stops your hard drive if you drop it, but these have been in thinkpads for a while now. at least mine doesn't look old yet!

australia day

2005-01-30T18:33:00.000+08:00

Picture 0033
Originally uploaded by listsanddiagrams.

james and i took his inflatable boat out onto the swan on australia day to watch the fireworks, it was really awesome. i didn't think that there were any photos of the event because i forgot to take my camera and matt didn't take his down to the foreshore, and no-one else had one either, but i just found out that alex snapped this pic with his cameraphone. the black blotch on the water is me and james. looks pretty cool. i really hope a better quality picture of us turns up on flickr or something.

the thought project

2005-01-28T11:07:00.000+08:00

Simon Høegsberg has recorded the faces of a whole load of people in copenhagen and new york city, and what they were thinking at the time. their answers are surprisingly honest.

(via cool hunting)

tetris-mania

2005-01-27T20:38:00.000+08:00

amazon.com has this cool plug'n'play tetris game built into the controller, and it's got the best controller ever.

you just plug it into your tv, and you're rockin the squares.

the latest slashdot poll is about which game you dream about the most, and the comments talk about tetris. i remember when we went to rotto, i brought my gameboy, which we all played incessantly, until all everyone could see was tetris blocks. and we were in such a tiny, cramped cabin, it was well hard to make lines! all those blocks everywhere.

best garfield ever

2005-01-27T14:47:00.000+08:00

the best garfield comics ever. viva la remix!

(via waxy)

not me

2005-01-27T13:35:00.001+08:00

i only have one to look cool
and for blogging

it's an advertisment booklet done by matt groening for apple around 1989, targeted at college students
it's pretty cool, and interesting to imagine a time you'd be at college/uni and not have a computer, at least in your family if not one of your own.

coincidences

2005-01-27T13:35:00.000+08:00

i just typed "coincidence" into google to check the spelling, and the first result was hilarious! some people will believe anything. the other first few results were quite interesting as well.

really? me too

2005-01-27T13:18:00.000+08:00

what a coincidence

vagknee

2005-01-23T05:11:00.000+08:00

men are smarter than women

2005-01-22T03:20:00.000+08:00

science proves it. just look at the diagram!

for all the women out there who don't know, grey matter is the part of the brain that does the actual thinking. the white matter is just filler.

TEH 1

2005-01-21T23:33:00.000+08:00

TEH 1
Originally uploaded by listsanddiagrams.

more like TEH SUXX0R

werd to that.

2005-01-21T21:52:00.000+08:00

suicide polo

2005-01-21T03:08:00.000+08:00

weird. (2.5mb .mov)

mortor link fixed

2005-01-21T02:59:00.000+08:00

here's a link that works, unlike this.

coke shipment fucks up

2005-01-20T16:58:00.000+08:00

bring your straw, it's a rail not a bump

rice and peas

2005-01-20T14:28:00.000+08:00

i've recently noticed references to rice and peas in several hiphop songs:

4000 miles by blackalicious

"instrumentals blendin' like cinnamon, rice and peas"

hey mama by black eyed peas

"finga' lickin' like rice and peas and chicken stuffing"

no roots by faithless

"i'll fill you up like rice and peas"

is there some kind of afro-american cultural significance, or are they just delish?

"rapper's delight" mentions peas, but not rice

"the macaroni's soggy, the peas are mushed, and the chicken tastes like wood"

one does not simply walk into mortor

2005-01-19T17:21:00.000+08:00

i would watch that movie!

dreams

2005-01-17T14:21:00.000+08:00

i watched spirited away last night, and had a weird dream which i think was affected by it. first i started watching the film, got half way though and had a nap (not because i was bored, it's a great movie, i was just very tired), then woke up an hour and a half later and watched the second half. i had a dream that i took a bullet train to an apple store, and each time i looked in my wallet, i had more money. first i had about $100 that i didn't know was in there, then it just went higher and higher, each time there was some kind of explanation, like i realised that i had the 20s and 50s confused when i was counting it, or found a couple of 100s in what i thought was a stack of 5s. when i got to the store, all i wanted was a keyboard. "for the ergonomics", i told the salespeople, because the top of your monitor should be at eye-height, but on a laptop this makes the keyboard too high and uncomfortable. which is true. the salespeople kept trying to take my money, like when i was counting it, they offered to hold it for me to help me count. but they were trying to steal it. i didn't really mind, because i had no use for all that money, except for a keyboard, but i didn't want them taking it because i thought they were just being greedy.

when i woke up, i thought about the no-face with all the gold, and the girl refusing it, saying she had no use for it. and also all the bath employees begging the no-face for money.

i only mention this because i very rarely have dreams, and for most of my life have never dreamt, or at least by the time i woke up, had completely forgotten about it. but one part was very strange, during my dream, i actually thought i might be dreaming. this happened to me once before, and i woke up almost before i realised that i thought it could be a dream. i theorised that perhaps if you realise you are dreaming, then you cannot dream any longer. like neo could not be placed back into the matrix after he had taken the red pill. last night, however, during my dream, i thought that i could be dreaming, and remembered my theory, and decided that i could not be dreaming, because if i were, i would have woken up. obviously my theory was very, very wrong.

campbell and fred and i were thinking about this recently. how if you could convincingly believe that your dream was in fact real life, and never know any different, you could live in a fantasy world. this subject has been explored in films such as waking life, and vanilla sky. both of which i loved. i think there's also something in the art of looking sideways about it.

james reveals his source

2005-01-17T13:44:00.000+08:00

a while ago (19th october to be exact), i sent james an email asking him where he found out about all the sexy video clips he seems to know about:

you often seem to find the best (read: sexiest) music video clips. do you just have a knack, or do you have a method?

he never replied. now he reveals his source. the ministry of sound article says that the annual 2005 limited edition has a video dvd with all the sexiest clips.

street porn

2005-01-16T14:34:00.000+08:00

cum in the streets is a site of photos of pornographic poster art put up in some kind of large city, possibly london or somewhere else in europa. pretty cool!

bad albums

2005-01-15T14:25:00.000+08:00

no-one will be copying these, however

album knock-offs

2005-01-15T14:20:00.000+08:00

this site is dedicated to album covers that are either knock-offs or a reference to the original, out of respect. some of them are really cool, like:

gizmodo

2005-01-15T13:31:00.000+08:00

i love gizmodo. the stories are always cool, but the best thing about it is the writing style:

Machrone tells us about how he's been using his Cold Head soldering iron to weld together Fender Blues Junior amps. I give him an 'E' for 'awEsome.'

below a pic of a hello kitty-customised ferrari:

This has got to be photoshopped, but if it's not, I want to meet the person who commissioned it. Sassy kawaii capitalism kitty crossed with trombone-engined super-phallus makes my head asplode [sic].

Verizon's position in this matter is, in a word, douchey,

Meanwhile, Kotaku has found a video of some Japanese teens beating the tar out of a perfectly good PSP for an unknown reason. This is known as a 'dekumuva' in Japanese, from the English 'total dick move, dude.'

i would love to see the australian written like this.

the ipods are everywhere!

2005-01-14T01:58:00.000+08:00

really weird video featuring ipods. very strange.

poor taste

2005-01-12T19:11:00.000+08:00

heard these from a guy at work. please excuse my shockingly poor taste.

have you heard the results of the margret river surf competition?

it was won by an indonesian on a wardrobe.

this christmas, santa didn't have time to go to indonesia, so he just flew past on his sleigh and gave them a big wave.

as part of the relief effort, the australian army dropped a shipment of Omo on Phuket. there were bodies washing up everywhere!

ah fuck yas!
thanks, i'll be here all week!

mario sheet music

2005-01-12T13:42:00.000+08:00

the blindfolded pianist has written up the score to super mario bros 3 and posted it online, if you haven't seen his work before, take a look. (7.6MB WMV link)

i love the annotation of how you're meant to play the piece (i forget what this is called), the underworld theme should be played Mysterioso.

cultural differences

2005-01-12T13:35:00.000+08:00

in the US shuffle site, it tells you not to eat your ipod shuffle, even though it's about the same size as a pack of gum. (who puts a whole pack of gum in their mouth, anyway?) but in the UK shuffle site, it tells you not to chew the shuffle. it's good that they think about these kinds of cultural sensibilities. interestingly, on the australian and german sites, they don't tell you not to eat or chew anything.

apple-x.net mobloggers

2005-01-12T04:24:00.000+08:00

2
Originally uploaded by listsanddiagrams.

these are the guys from apple-x moblogging mwsf. how cool are they! actually they're not really moblogging, they're moposting to their irc channel, which was too full for me to get onto. love the ray bans.

photos1
photos2