Gecko Bloggle

via We-Make-Money-Not-Art

This article about Valerio Spolentini’s project, called V-Scratch talks about this university student’s simple idea for video/audio scratching using a very simple layout.

A turntable with a record on it (any record with a paper label in the center, I assume).
A laptop (for the audio/video sources).
An audio mixer (but I’m not sure you’d REALLY need this)
Speakers
LCD projector (if you’re doing video)
and here’s the kicker:
an optical mouse attached to the turntable in such a way that it “sees” the record turning underneath it

The only other setup I’ve seen before now that did anything even close to this was FinalScratch by NativeInstruments, using specially crafted timecode-producing records.

I can’t wait until the HackADay people get ahold of this, and figure out how to do it, or even better: the guy either makes this an open-source project, or sells it direct to users, ’cause I’d flip him $50 for the software, if it works for mp3s and mixing.

Via OhNoTheyDidn’t

“The Da Vinci Code” drew lukewarm praise, shrugs of indifference, some jeering laughter and a few derisive jabs Tuesday from arguably the world’s toughest movie crowd: critics at the Cannes Film Festival.
The year’s most anticipated movie, “The Da Vinci Code” was a generally faithful adaptation of Dan Brown’s monster best seller, spinning a murder thriller that stems from a cover-up of secrets about Christianity’s roots.
While readers worldwide devoured the novel, reaction from Cannes critics ranged from mild endorsement of its potboiler suspense to groans of ridicule over its heavy melodrama.

I’m sorry if you read this book, and thought it was groundbreaking, or beautifully written, but I spent most of my time going “Is it over yet?”

Not because it’s “a religious movie,” but the book sure as heck wasn’t.

“…readers worldwide devoured the novel…”

Yeah, they also devour lots and lots of stale cheezies. Doesn’t mean they’re good.

I’ll have to see if I can find the video I’m talking out in this repost from our YahooGroup in December of 2001…
[Edit: Yep. Here it is.� Requires IE, or at least something more like IE than Firefox.]

Hebbo one and all.

Okay, maybe Frank didn’t like this, but I thought it was hilarious. Ten minutes of solid marketing spew, most likely designed by people who can’t use the photocopier down the hall, and have blown up entire lunch-rooms trying to make coffee in the toaster oven.

But what do I know? I’m from Chilliwack. When you’ve been starin’ at corn for twelve years, just about everything’s funny. Except for the last 1/2 hour of SNL.

Oh yeah, the PR thing.

I’d like to see a “Part II” of this marketing thing (or maybe just a re-edit) with the Masai guy hucking a spear through the tree-powered display screen and having the yuppies in the sushi bar gettin’ kabobbed.

It was like all of the “future tech” junk in every Arnold Ham’n’egger film from Terminator through Sixth Day being spliced into a 10-minute PR bomb. Here’s what the future looks like! Don’t need it? Didn’t want it? Never use it in a million years? We’ve got it! (Maybe. After Sony makes one. It’s our idea though.)

Finally: glass doors I can walk *through* without them having to open, or maybe they were just logo-displaying goo, or soap bubbles. Either way, how do you know which ones you’re allowed to walk through? “And if you’ll follow me, over here we have the g-*BANG!* Oh! I ting I bwoke by doze!”

And another thing: Where’d the mice go? Apparently, LG doesn’t make mice. Maybe they make invisible mice that look like cheese sandwiches, ’cause that’s so futuristic.

They do, however appear to make games that have the following handy-dandy keyboard controls:

ASDF – (turn left, in varying degrees)
JKL; – (turn right, in varying degrees)
Spacebar – Lose suddenly, without reason.
Shift-Spacebar – Win suddenly, without reason.
Ctrl-Alt-Space-Underscore-Backspace – Cause hunks of raw perch to spew out of a tree somewhere in Uganda.

I don’t wanna think about what this “game” would look like.

Maybe it’s called “Wobbly Jello Bike Passenger Shake Off Panic” or something. In Japan, it’ll be known simply as “Pocky Game for Short Men,” and become a HUGE hit, just to confuse marketing people in the West.

Oh yeah, with the even *more* handy-dandy auto-gloat-cam, built right into the game console.

Oh yeah, and another *other* thing: If I’m playing a game against some poor schmo on another continent, and my mom’s face pops up in the middle of the game to talk to me, do I get to yell at my mom for seriously hampering my ping time? If I get gibbed ’cause some telemarketer really really REALLY wants to sell me a subscription to TheProvince.Com, I’m gonna send ’em some cat sand in my snazzy new FAXeleporter.

And what was up with that guy hugging the kid on the stoop in GenericThirdWorldica? Get OFF me, ya weirdo. No I *don’t* wanna look at what your watch can do. No I don’t wanna talk to your plastic daughter. I’m hungry, give me your freeze-dried perch-on-a-spear-flavoured PowerBar, or I’m gonna pour hot coffee into your watch and scald your mother-in-law.

All walls everywhere are uniformly white and light up. How convenient. Thank goodness there’s no messy windows or art or doors anywhere. Simplifies interior decoration quite a bit, doesn’t it? What does Feng Shui have to say about this?

Let’s hear it for LG for thinking up a stainless steel bubble that attached to a pole like some sorta fireman’s speed-bump thing, and it holds everything you’d want in a kitchen, as long as everything you want in a kitchen consists of a single bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Maybe some time in the future, I’ll be running around with a wet towel wrapped around my head, and I’ll need something self-guiding that I can stick up my nose to get the tracking unit out, and LG will be there.

Or maybe I’ll just end up poking my brains out with it the nose-track-unit-remover ’cause LG had to put a fifteen-foot antennae on the end of it so my financial advisor could interrupt me in the middle of the procedure to tell me I need broken nose insurance.

Thanks Sean,
I needed that.

Zen (I don’t need a picture frame that’s *actually* a two way camera next to MY bed) Render

Via Download Squad:

Hold onto your job while you’re looking around in here.

101 Free Games

I have no excuse for this, other than me playing with Newpaper Snippet Generator, and making myself laugh.

Someone out there wanted the Internet’s help buying a G5 (at .25c per person, he got up to his $5,000 he needed).

How’d he do it?

By promising to BLOW UP HIS CURRENT Mac (a G4).

Now I’ve got to go find out how much Tannerite costs.

Much better quality and humour than one would usually find in a video of this genre.

Looks like BlueSecurity is making enough of a dent in spam (or at least is annoying enough to the spammer community) that the spammers are attempting to strike back. I’ve been using BlueFrog, which automatically reports spammers who fail to comply with the Do Not Intrude registry, for a few months, and today, for the first time, I received about eight anti-BlueSecurity spams on my work account, all claiming that I would receive many more of these unless I removed myself from the registry immediately.

I’ve reported them as spam, of course, so we’ll see what happens.

As of right now, it appears that BlueSecurity.com is not responding, which means one of two things, I suspect:

1) The spammers, having given up on spamming addresses in the DNI, have started DOSing the BlueSecurity site.
or
2) Someone posted this information to SlashDot before I did.

Still: What’s really sad is that someone, somewhere, is going to buy a sexual enhancement pill tonight because they got a spam. (Don’t get me started on why you’d do this).