What:
The artist will be making a photograpgh where he is asking for
people to particiapte in. this is part of the IWONDER project of Dream
Amsterdam. People are asked to bring an opbject that is dear to them
from home. Peter will then make one of his famous compositions. These
photographs are truly transcendent representations of the moments and the
beauty in the stories that happen in cities everyday on the corner of
the street.
When / Where:
At Central Station in Amsterdam on Saturday June, 6 2009 @ 16:00 (4 pm). To be specific - the mid tunnel, downstairs at platform 4/5.
Google Map
I admit I was excited to see the Toy Story Teaser from Pixar. I'm just a huge animation fan, and Pixar is one of the most amazing stories in animation. It started out as a research group with George Lucasinside ILM. Because Lucas was getting divorced he had to sell some stuff from his empire, and the research group (which was looking into computer generated animation techniques) was one to go. Steve Jobs stepped up then and bought the company. Actually Ross Perot almost bought it first. When Pixar was finishing on Toy Story, Jobs, who had a lot of free time on his hands and was going through a bit of a crisis after Apple and Next, became slightly obsessed with the project. To his name, he struck a 3 picture deal with Disney, but more importantly made sure that the Pixar Leader came in the opening credits . This created Pixar as the name in 3D animation when Toy Story was released in the early 90's. So much so that other movies following that used 3D animation, such as Dream Works, were in the public's eye attributed to Pixar. Good branding. If you would like to read more about that part of Pixar's history, you should check out the book The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. But he was a real tyrant as well. He almost moved the Pixar animation Studio acros the state so that his commute for the meetings would be shorter. This in the final months of production with a huge deadline, and the first time a 3D Full Length Feature was ever created by Pixar. Luckily this didn't happen.
Seeing as today John Lasseter is now running Disney Animation (Principal Creative Advisor), it will be very interesting to see how this movie comes out.
File this in the category: WTF? I log into my twitter today to see this:
MY FREAKN ACCOUNT IS SUSPENDED! FOR WHAT? And what pisses me off the most is the fact that there is no email to sent to me to give a "Head's Up!" or WHY? Nothing what so ever. I have to surf through the site for 30 min. to put in a request that will probably take a week or so for me to get through. Screw it. If this service treats it's users with such fascist authority, I'm out. Fuck Twitter, Fuck Biz Stone fuck the lot of you.... So I'll probably burn in hell for this. Might as well post my shitter video with Chris Sacca (one of the investors in twitter). Yes I can feel the burn now...
update: It seems that there was a glitch in the matrix with twitter. I again have access, but all the sudden I started following strange people in my account. Looks like I have to purge my followers. I beleive my twitter account was hacked actually. Marc believes it was Russians. Great, now I've got Russians hacking me to worry about. In the end I'm still upset and turned off by twitter as I still have no idea, no correspondence, nothing to what happened or what it going on. Come on guys! Can't you even explain what happened in 140 characters to me? I find this lack of communication disturbing.
Last month when I went to moderate a session about online video in Bilbao for the nonick conference. the day after the conference, Marc from Amsterdamize and I rented a couple bikes from the hotel to go explore the city. This video Marc edited as a part1 of that wonderful day we had together. I know he is working on more, with some fun action shots through Bilbao, but this sets a nice tone for the day.
If you do goto Bilbao, I highly recommend checking out The Guggenheim Museum. Besides being an amazing building, I really loved the exhibitions they had there. Marc and I spent close to 4-5 hours in the museum hanging around and checking out the work. At the moment they have some amazing Video Art pieces that you can sit and literally loose yourself in for hours. If you were not stoned before going in, the effects of these films will transport you to that state. Then head up to the top floor to see Murakami. An awesome artist that has been highly influenced by popular culture in Japan such as Anime, Manga as well as traditional artists. If you are into Anime, contemporary art or Asian culture, this exhibition is for you!
Many of you may be planning a vacation, or maybe staying around town for vacation. One thing I love during vacations or long drives is audiobooks. It's nice to listen to podcasts, but sometimes a nice audiobook for a longer period is better. Although you can buy many audiobooks on Amazon and Audible.com, there are a lot of FREE audiobooks at LibriVox. Also great for you students who have to read some books over the summer! Have a look, and have a listen. It is opensource, so that means if you really like a book, you could create an audiobook from it as well (as long as it is public domain). Yes that is the catch. Only public Domain books, but there are quite a lot of classics amoungst them. Enjoy!
I'm sitting here after dinner and @askfrasco is setting next to me on the couch. I asked her if she played flash games online. "Not really" she said. So I told her about one fun game, Grow. Have a look for yourself. Once you play it 2 or 3 times you will get it, and then you can spend hours on the different games. Enjoy free flash games!
Sometime this afternoon I started getting mails from people asking me about a link I had mailed through facebook. I thought it was one of the links I put through twitter. Then I noticed it was a message I hadn't sent at all. Plus, it had sent it to practically everyone in my friends list. Some application, website, something somewhere had hacked into my facebook account and sent emails saying "Look at this" with a link to something called silvertag.be. As soon as I noticed I started replying to people saying it was not from me. Then I quickly changed my facebook and some other passwords. Fortunately I don't use the same passwords for facebook and twitter type sites. This makes it easier for me to make sure that even though one attack might get through on one of these sites or apps, it will not hit anything that can really make my life miserable. Like my paypal or banking passwords. It is a good idea to create a series of passwords that you can remember easy for different levels of security you would like on different sites. Here are some tips to good passwords.
One nice thing about the MacOSX is that it has a secure keychain for many passwords. However, what many people do not know is that Mozilla browsers are easily hackable if you do not secure them. One way to do this is to go into your mozilla browser (such as Firefox or Flock) and set a Master Password.
Firefox-> Preferences -> Security. This makes sure that all those saved passwords on all the different websites will not auto fill in when someone else tries to use your browser. By setting a master password, Firefox or Flock will ask you for your password at startup. If you enter it, then it will auto fill and auto login to all those sites you use most often. If you do not set it, then no passwords or sites will be logged into. It's not the be all end all of securtiy measures, but it does help.
I am sorry I got tagged with this virus on FB, and am sorry to any friends that it inconvenienced. Sorry folks.
update: I just saw on Mashable Pete Cashmore talking about it. He said " Today my Facebook inbox shows there’s another attack underway that’s suckering even some of the most tech savvy users:". Now I don't feel as bad at being suckered in.
While at Webcom, I added a few days to stay the weekend so I could see my good friends Nuno and Nikki. I love those 2! When I arrived Nuno and I promptly started geeking out and catching up on the latest apps and tricks about vlogging, internet, and also talking about life. He talked about selling his place, staying in Waterloo, how google is moving there, and things are starting to pick up again.
Within a few hours of arriving we hit the pub where we met up with some of thier friends, and then hit a club. Lots of drinks, lots of dance, lots of fun, which eventually ended in an afterparty at Jenn's place (a friend of Nikki's). It was absolutly hilarious fun time. At one point people huddled onto the couch and started listening to all the stories I was telling about Hollywood, New York and Europe. Real fun.
Next day we hit the Diner where Nuno and Nikki met. Nuno read his comics, then we started making drawings, chilling talking, then someone ordered 2 Godfather Burgers. OMG! These things were massive! As you can see very only 40 something people have actually finished this massive burger. It reminds me of the steak in the movie "The Great Outdoors". when I asked if they had to finish the fries as well, Jenn said, "We let that slide nowadays. But I will tell you that it seems to be asians that always finish it. LOL?"
That night we initiated Nikki to The Big Lebowski. Halfway through we got hungry so Nuno and Nikki took me to Harvey's and gave me this complete artery clogging meal. Delicious!
The next day I drove back to Montreal and caught my flight back to Amsterdam, but I relived every moment the 2 days before. So much fun, such good ideas, Thanks Nuno and Nikki! U 2 ROCK!!