A workmate of the PC had some photos in a new show that opened at PhotoAccess last night so we cruised along to check it out.
The show combines work from five scientists and is intended to show that even though science and art generally aren't spoken of in the same breath, the extensive use of photography in science can result in some particularly beautiful/interesting art.
There was a fair bit of variety in the work, some was was impressive and other images were a little average and felt like filler. Putting the photos into an art space brings some expectations I guess and given the explosion of images that you get at your fingertips now through Flickr and the ilk, you expect to see something extra special if it's stuck up on a wall in a gallery. I did particularly like a number of the turtle (tortoise?) pics though.
It's well worth a look if you like science, nature or just photography in general.
Nerds gone wild! is a pretty cool zine from Melbourne that comes out sporadically in comic book shops and other such places and features a great range of commentary and reviews.
Unsurprisingly, it focuses on geekdom, with feature articles so far including:
If nerds are cool now, why aren’t I, Mum?
William Shatner: ham bites back
Scrabble geeks and grandmasters
Windows Vista: all right or just a piss-weak OS X?
The Orcs in society post-LotR
Angel: if he’s immortal, why does he get fatter?
The complete guide to pretending you always loved Doctor Who
Obsessed nerd tells all: TV satellite hacking and my life
Jesus was basically and X-Man
Snowy versus Brain: dog challenge
Astroboy: why I always liked his sister better
Magicians: the first nerds?
The Sexiest Nerds Alive
Hallmark Attacks
Complete guide to LAN parties: dos and don’ts
Gingertrek Men: high-fat LAN snack recipes
Operation McFly
R2D2 versus Everything
Why it’s fun to hate Sony!
Special guest writer: Daniel Kitson
Best of all, previous issues are available as freely downloadable PDFs.
Bless their nerdy hearts.
There's also a discussion board there but it's a little underpopulated at the moment
One thing about the Nerds Gone Wild! title is that it always reminds me of the Girls Gone Wild series of videos, best explained by this great clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm:
GetUp! is an Australian activist organisation that uses the web really well to campaign on a huge range of issues. These lean toward the left (which suits me just fine) but GetUp! isn't aligned to any particular party. It has board members from community organisations alongside people from big business.
Their latest effort is a parody of the governments multi-million dollar ad campaign to greenwash their ongoing hopelessness in dealing with environmental issues.
Here's an example of one of the govt ads
(Funnily enough, the Dept of the Environment appears to have blocked commenting on this video - which stopped me from posting the link to the GetUp! version)
GetUp! is looking to run their interpretation of this during the AFL Grand Final this coming weekend. I couldn't embed their version (I guess they want everyone to view it directly through their site) but here are a couple of stills and you can watch the whole thing at https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateCleverer&id=126 (and donate too, if you're of a mind) (Couchmedia put in $50)
It's a little hard to see but the lab girl is cleaning the coal in the clean-coal shot with a brush.
(Don't get me started on this clean coal bollocks - it's essentially just the process of reducing the polluting effects of the worst form of coal to the second worst and is regarded by virtually everyone without a financial or political stake in coal as a total misnomer. Interestingly, when you search Wikipedia for Greenwash, clean coal comes up as the second top term in the search list)
As far as the ad plan goes, I'm actually a little surprised though that there are any slots available, I would have thought that they would be booked up weeks or even months in advance - maybe they already booked it and now have to pay for it?
Anyway, good on them for the idea, it's a great ad. (Just a shame they aren't prepared to make it web-publishable)
At times I wish that technology would just sit still for a minute - I'm just catching up to Second Life and its possibilities when along comes this video for Croquet (an open source virtual world system) that seems to do a dozen things that SL is missing.
(Mainly the ability to browse the internet from inside the game but also a few other things)
Seriously,watch the video, it's so worth the five minutes.
If you click on the Now button, you can see (statistically at least) a whole bunch of the crap things that are happening in the world (but at least, presumably, not to you)
Watch those barrels of oil flow - nice to see at least that more bicycles are being made than cars.
Had a good day in the kitchen yesterday after helping the PC move in on Saturday - a good solid clean and organise of the cupboards and all the pots and pans and assorted plastic containers. (Oh yes, the fun never stops in the Flanders house).
One of the things we came across was a bag of slightly old choc-bits (but really, does chocolate every really go off?) and so in saying that they were fine I pretty well set myself up to prove it and the great bikkie challenge was on.
They turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Thanks for the recipe PC and the advice. (Beating butter and sugar together is more complex than you'd think :)
250g Butter 1 cups caster sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence 2 eggs As many choc bits as you want (I put in about 150g) 2 cups self raising flour 5 and 1/2 cups cornflakes
Beat the butter and sugar together Add the vanilla essence and eggs and beat until fluffy
Add the flour and mix it in well with your hands Add the choc bits and cornflakes (don't crush up the cornflakes too much)
Bake on a greased tray at 180C for 20 mins.
This made about 25 biscuits (some might call them cookies)
