Monday, April 11, 2011

May I have the next algorithm?



The folks at Sapientia University have blended sorting algorithms and folk dance, go here for more.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

1869 Harvard entrance exam

from slashdot
"The New York Times remembers back to when 'college was a buyer's bazaar' and digs up 19th-century classified ads from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and others. In competitive efforts to attract students from the limited pool of qualified candidates, applications were taken as late as September for an October freshman class. Vassar offered lush room accommodations. The expectations were high: Latin, Greek, Virgil, Caesar's Commentaries; Harvard's entrance exam from 1869 is posted (PDF). Could any of us pass the exam today?"

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Annie Collinge


I've been shamelessly reposting things from The Fox is Black but you could skip my filtering and spend sometime enjoying their artful curating.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Bernard Voita



It's hard to find much on this artist online, image wise but this and a few other photos are very nice. Go HERE for a flickr set with a few images

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Cheap jammer screws GPS

Which is cool, but now I want a program that will randomize my word use and punctuation/capitalization to avoid this type of crap. Which I'm pretty sure all started with some nerd who wanted to know which roles Shakespeare performed in his plays. The idea being that the density of word use in the plays he was writing (which we had the dates for) could be cross correlated with the individual characters in the plays being performed (which we had the dates for). Or more precisely, if Juliet really liked the word wherefor, then that word frequency was likely to increase in the play Shakespeare was writing if he was playing that character.
Somehow this had something to do with unmasking the anonymous author of Primary Colors but I can't find anything on the web about this. So maybe I or someone else dreamed it up, if you remember details let me know.

Monday, March 7, 2011

language acquisition, son



After having recently attended a DARPA conference (STORyNET-download pdf describing STORyNET's goals) where the project manager said he would like "individual level narrative stimulus forecasting", or in other words, he would like to know what an individual will do when they hear a story, how narratives will play out in the global theater, the technology above is a little disturbing.

At the end of the Fast Company article Deb Roy mentions his new goals and the company he has started to pursue them: Bluefin Labs

Thursday, March 3, 2011

social rollercoaster

so before some teenager in Russia invented chatroulette, i came up with this less aptly named game description, but imagined it wouldn't work until it could function on smart phones, i still think the timed parameters would make the whole thing better, the idea initially emerged when trying to imagine a way to have online parties with friends in distant locations, the randomness imitating the way people bump into each other in the process of getting another beer, peeing, etc. the below was some kind of futuristic dictionary entry i probably write while high

social rollercoaster

a. a games show featured on the now defunct NBC that involved an incredibly sophisticated machine for moving people about violently and then putting them in front of other violently moved people, where they would then discuss something or other for 1, 5, or 10 minutes. The rules changed as the show progressed. It still is common to refer to show events and meeting of new people as 'the roll' .

b. as part of the media bath introduced with Social Rollercoaster, NBC introduced an online app that allowed people at home to enjoy the game. With rudimentary translation apps and crude graphics between rolls that suggested vertigo, rollers would choose 1, 5, or 10 minute coasts ending abruptly at the assigned time, two rollers would have only a few minutes to decide what to talk about and do it. This spawned over time the birth of the various coasts, tossed up at the edge of clouds, overlapping in an electrical thunderstorm. When Google introduced translatez the app improved quickly as Google assembled massive collections of sounds, sighed, barked, brittly formed, representing the elements of every sound of every language programs evolved, poets and musicians began to hammer together voices, overlapping phenomes, mashing 6 accents into a single sentence, users browsed a plethora of possible translatez. it is impossible to imagine anything before Coasts that compares in the overwhelming influence it has achieved in the behavior of the human.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Monday, February 21, 2011

Steve Lambert is the bees knees

Steve Lambert invented SELF CONTROL a program that allows you (on osx) to block access to email and the like (read facebook). Check him out

Monday, February 7, 2011

Boston Tree Party

Boston Tree Party website
The Boston Tree Party is a collaborative campaign to plant 100 pairs of heirloom apple trees in civic spaces across Greater Boston. We’re planting with schools, hospitals, faith communities, businesses, neighborhood groups, nonprofits, restaurants, social clubs, assisted living centers, and more. We want to plant with you!

Art of the Prank


Art of the Prank website

RadioLab

RadioLab website
Stochasticity episode

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Ju Duoqi


More Ju Duoqi

TWILIGHT OF THE TEEN IDOLS


TWILIGHT OF THE TEEN IDOLS: Brock Enright and Ivan HĂĽrzeler
reviewed by Ben Davis

Chris Harrison



Chris Harrison's website

Muir web visualization


This Muir Web shows all the habitat relationships for all the species on Mannahatta. Visualization by Chris Harrison of Carnegie-Mellon University. ©WCS

Beyond Mannahatta website

Prefuse Visualization Toolkit website

Miguel Palma



Miguel Palma's crazy dysfunctional website

Carrie Dickason


Carrie Dickason's website

Dave Kole


Dave Kole's website

Michel de Broin



Michel de Broin's website

Nick van Woert


Nick van Woert

Adam Harvey



Adam Harvey's Object Matrices
Adam Harvey's website

Katsumi Hayakawa


Katsumi Hayakawa's website

Nils Volker

One Hundred and Eight – Interactive Installation from Nils Völker on Vimeo.


Nils Voelker's website

Esther Stocker


Esther Stocker website