Category: Playful or Cool

Monty Norman and the James Bond theme song

A couple months ago I stumbled on an intriguing connection. Monty Norman who is credited with the theme song for James Bond apparently adapted it from the score for Bad Sign, Good Sign, a tune that he had written for an ill-fated stage version of Naipal’s “A House for Mr Biswas.” See Monty Norman – The first man of James Bond music. That the James Bond theme song turns out to be based on a song meant to be sung by Mr Biswas is some sort of post-colonial irony.

Here are the lyrics to Bad Sign, Good Sign start,

I-I was born with this unlu-ucky sneeze and what is wo-orse I came into the the wo-orld the wrong way round. Pundits all agree that I-I’m the reason why…

The Journal of Urban Typography

Image
The Journal of Urban Typography is a project like the Dictionary of Words in the Wild that “is dedicated to the documentation and study of signs, word fragments, and typography created with utilitarian intent in urban environments.” Many of the images are beautiful – the author of the site calls it a journal but it is more of an art book. The interface is intriguing as if it were a bunch of polaroids. You can dismiss some and rearrange them. This is built on Tumblr, an online blogging or service that you can adapt to collecting different types of things. Thanks to Peter O for this.

The Pool

Screen shot of The PoolThe Pool is a project from the University of Maine new media group, Still Water who also developed ThoughtMesh. It is a collaboration between faculty and students that provides a visual space where ideas can be described (intent), approached and released. (The metaphor is fishing and releasing.) It encourages sharing, rating, and redevelopment of ideas. The have pools for code and art.

The Pool offers a very different message. This online environment is an experiment in sharing art, text, and code–not just sharing digital files themselves, but sharing the process of making them. In place of the single-artist, single-artwork paradigm favored by the overwhelming majority of studio art programs and collection management systems, The Pool stimulates and documents collaboration in a variety of forms, including multi-author, asynchronous, and cross-medium projects. (learn more -> purpose)

The Chronicle of Higher Education in New-Media Scholars’ Place in ‘the Pool’ Could Lead to Tenure (Andrea L. Foster, May 30, 2008, Volume 54, Issue 38, Page A10) discusses The Pool as an alternative form of peer review for getting tenure, which rather misses the point for me. What impresses me about this is the collaboration between students and faculty in experimentation around structured collaboration. The Pool could dry up, and some of the code pools seem rather poorly stocked, but that wouldn’t detract from what seems like thoughtful and sustained experimentation with social collaboration. The wiki, Flickr, Facebook and blog models of Web 2.0 social knowledge dominate our thinking about what is possible. The Pool reminds me that we don’t have to adapt successful models, there is room for new ideas. Catch this and release it.

Ante Up, Human: The Adventures of Polaris, the Poker-Playing Robot

Snippet of Comic

The current issue of Wired has another use (similar to Google’s) of comics to explain research advances in AI and gaming. In this case they feature Polaris by the U of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group led by Michael Bowling. The comic booklet, Ante Up, Human: The Adventures of Polaris, the Poker-Playing Robot features Michael in a smoking jacket and blue bunny slippers. I’m guessing the bunnies are a reference to the arctic hares that we have here in Edmonton, though it should be said that I have never seen Michael in such garb.

The interesting point is how Polaris chooses personalities for extended play.

How to dispose of your computer: In Loving Memory of the Mainframe (aka IMS)

In Loving Memory of the Mainframe (aka IMS) is a site with a YouTube video of the goodbye New Orleans jazz funeral that was held outside in the snow at the University of Manitoba for their IBM 650 mainframe. See the Network World story How to really bury a mainframe. The Network World site provides a transcript of the eulogy including this,

Farewell IMS, we’ll remember you well. After forty-seven years, there are many stories to tell. Like when Tel Reg nearly shut down MTS, and when the Y2K bug put us under duress. You helped us achieve our academic objectives, and gave our admin processes a proper perspective.

But now we must lay you under the flora, because we have to go deal with this bloody Aurora. So we commit your parts to be recycled. Earth to Earth. Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust. To the god of computers, please bless it and keep it, and give it grace and peace, but please do not resurrect it.

Now, how do we bury projects this gracefully?

Social Computing in 2020: Bluesky Innovation Competition – UC Transliteracies Project

From Susan a link to Social Computing in 2020: Bluesky Innovation Competition – UC Transliteracies Project. This competition is hosted by the University of California Transliteracies Project and UC Santa Barbara
Social Computing Group and is open to any student from any discipline. I think competitions like this and T-REX are going to become a more common way of fostering innovation and rewarding ideas.

Rome Reborn in Google Earth

Image of Google Rome Ever wondered what it was like to stand in the Roman forum back in 320 CE? Well, growing up in Rome and being dragged through the now hot and dusty forum I have wondered what it was like back then amny times. Now I can fly around imperial Rome thanks to a collaboration between the Rome Reborn project led by Bernie Frischer at Virginia and Google Earth. You can download the latest Google Earth viewer and relevant layers at Google Earth Rome. All that is missing is people.

This project has recieved a lot of press like the BBC story, Google Earth revives ancient Rome. I first noticed it on the Italian Google News where it made the Top Stories front page yesterday (called Prima Pagina in the Italian.) The mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno even blogged it on the Google blog inviting people to tour.

The idea that virtual technologies now let people experience the city that I guide as it appeared in 320 A.D. fills me with pride — a pride that I inherited from Rome’s glorious past.

As a humorous aside, there is an interesting view to be had if you go through the “floor” of ancient Rome. Then you see the satellite view of modern Rome (flattened) below the ancient 3D model in an interesting inversion of the archaeological layers.

Screen Shot from Google Earth Rome

Here you see the distinctive design of Michelangelo’s Campidoglio beneath the model. The lines are the flags for items of interest that you can click on to get descriptions of the buildings.

Fortune of the Day – Fortune Hunting

Visual Collocator

Lisa Young with the support of the Brown University Scholarly Technology Group (STG) has developed a Fortune of the Day – Fortune Hunting interactive art site based on a collection of scanned fortune cookie slips she created. It has elements of a public textuality site like the Dictionary though focused completely on fortunes. The interface is simple and elegant. I believe it has been exhibited recently for the first time. The project uses the TAPoRware Visual Collocator for one of its interfaces.