Lists and Diagrams 2.0

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

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

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

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

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

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

campbell has a blog.

We gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday

wiggas: heads up

flickr ransom note generator

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!

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

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

baggage

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

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

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

screw toby

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

hand-sewn felt donuts. perfect.

misprintedtype

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

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

props

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the italian food revolution.

homemade iPod mini advertisement

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!!!

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

t.d.

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

flickr comments

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

it's so true!

drog - drug blog

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

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

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.