Visualizing and Abstraction

Now I didn't find these [I did, just not on my own]. It was first over at core77, then at notcot.org. It is one of the most fantastic videos I've seen in a while. Even more amazing is that its over thirty years old! I don't remember getting any of this when I was a kid in school. I did get something, that was more from my mom and her flash cards [I should go find those...]. As I recall, school just didn't encourage this enough. And by the time I was in high school it was pretty much left to the way side. Now I'm reminded of Sir Ken Robinson's speech. Now my mind is off and racing with ideas, I hope yours is too.

[Edit: Check out this great post at Presentation Zen on Sir Ken Robinson]

Marathon

I ran the Los Angeles Marathon this past weekend. It was fun, recorded a personal best at 3 hours and 52 minutes [ 40 minutes better than my previous time, I can't wait to see what training will do to that ]. I also carried my camera with me this time, here is a video, in hindsight, I wish I had recorded more footage like this.  It would be fun to splice it with scenes from Godzilla or Cloverfield.

iDoodle

As a person who carries his sketchbook with him everywhere, this is the iPhone Web App I've been waiting for. I'll review it once I've played with it for a week. Bookmark yours here.

Free! Audiobooks

Podiobooks.

You can register for free and then go through the archive and see if there is anything that interests you. Wasn't anything from my too read list, so I couldn't bring myself past that registration barrier.

Lyre Bird

This bird is amazing, as a mating call it mimics the sound of its environment. This came up in my Beautiful Networks class, and we discussed how it was a measurement of what is going on in the world. People are trying to create various feedback systems [in regards to energy use and environmental impact], and here nature has presented us with an amazing signal of our times. Someone mentioned the sad irony of this bird unknowingly signaling the nearing of its own destruction by sounding out chainsaws and tractors. A its almost natural emergency signal, disguised as a call for love.

On a more inspirational note, hearing the Lyre bird mimic a camera  and camera with a motor drive is pretty awesome. In class we also talked about how this reflects upon art as a means to get a mate. Another student noted, that it is fantastic that the best way for a male to get a mate is to reflect his environment sort of causing the female to say "oh, you're right, that is where we live." Speaking of reflecting one's environment, Michel de Broin's Superficielle is quite interesting.

Grafische Visualisierung

I'm assuming that means graphic visualization, and that the topic of that visualization is interaction. I don't know German, so I can't say for sure. I just think the graphs looks beautiful, I can only hope that they're representing the information well. I could argue that it's not done well enough, or else I'd be able to understand it regardless of the language. This is just on the cusp of my understanding though, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt...

That's how the post started out, until I discovered the little english button in the corner of the webpage. Haha. After reading the english summary of the goals and process execution I am very intrigued by the graphics from a different perspective. I enjoy the combination of human interpretation and machine automation side by side. The finer details of how they went about trying to represent the info was informative. It was also a bit to complex for me to internalize, and I'll have to reread it later on down the line.

image via munterbund.de

Free! Films [from books]

Watch the books that were made into films on a big screen for free at the Pasadena Library, Wednesday's from 1pm to 3pm. I know, the timing is poor, I'll work on finding a better free film event.