1st Impressions

The busy bees over at Delores Labs have created another Mechanical Turk toy called FaceStat in which you can throw a photo a day and have it be rated on 12 different aspects. Unlike previous internet face gimmicks, FaceStat's data is not built from the public, instead it uses the Amazon Mechanical Turk to develop statistics.

For you who don't know, Turk is a service in where real humans are used to crunch information that computers cannot (yet) do themselves, like reading band members off CD cases, choosing the best photo from a group, or in this case making value judgments on a face. The humans doing the processing are called Workers (which is not very imaginative I think) and are screened. Worker records are kept about the accuracy of the information they deliever.

The Workers are actually paid by the organizations that need the information, so to be able to have your face "Turked" for free, besides the website advertising, is quite special. The quality of FaceStat's Turk statistics is better than that of the unscreened/unpaid public.

So, it boils down to receiving a fairly straight and unbiased first impression of your face! The first time I saw the site I had reservations; I thought it looked too much like HotorNot.com from way back in the day, but the more I mulled it over and learned about the Mechanical Turk, the more I realized the value. That being said, here is my face and my averaged results (and the true answers):


ethnicity: Caucasian / White
TRUE
weight: average
TRUE
relationship status: dating
TRUE wow good job Workers
political affiliation: very liberal
TRUE
gender: male
TRUE
intoxicated? false
TRUE
wealth: poor
TRUE as a backpacker at the moment, I think I look the part.
trustworthy? true
TRUE sometimes I can keep a secret
attractive? false
OUCH that hurts.
age: 27
FALSE 23
intelligence: bright
TRUE at least to the BA level
funny? false
OUCH again, ugly and boring

So, the Workers of the Amazon Mechanical Turk are pretty dead on, except for perhaps the attractive and funny parts, and thanks to Delores Lab for footing the bill and creating FaceStat. Now, if there was only a way to remove my face from their database so my friends and family do not think I am vain.

I am going to repeat the experiment with a profession photo I use on my resume and see what happens.

5 Colors

5 Colors by Nothing Destroyed

Lofi Socks

Lofi Socks by Nothing Destroyed

Circles

Circles by Nothing Destroyed

Digital Stencil

by Nothing Destroyed
Mouth (Red), Digital mashup/Lofi Gif Art

Not Gray

by Nothing Destroyed

Lofi Girl

Original photo Last Nights Party
Alternation by Nothing Destroyed

Glass Candy

This band has been around forever, so one should not be blogging about the past but they are still awesome and small enough that there is no wikipedia article about them (someone wanna do that for the collective whole? I was never good at citing sources). The hot-chick-singer beside the dude-playing-synth combo is really doing it for me in 2008.

This no wave threesome from Portland, OR, is fronted by the strange and exquisite waif Ida No, whose crazy caterwauls recall the frantic singing of the Swans' Jarboe, David Bowie, and the shifty rhythms of James Chance. John David V provides disco beats, while a changing cast of drummers has included Avalon Kalin and Jimi Hey. Two singles ("Brittle Women" and "Metal Gods") appeared on K Records shortly after they began playing in the Pacific Northwest. A 2001 tour with the Baltimore band the Convocation Of... introduced their raw, glammy performance art-oriented show best captured on the Smashed Candy (Live) album on Vermin Scum. In 2003 they released their proper full-length debut, Love Love Love, on Troubleman Unlimited; Life After Sundown arrived the following year. (via allmusic)

Download Glass Candy - Rolling Down the Hills mp3
Glass Candy myspace

Smart Audio Visualizer takes Music Video to next level

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.
Read the specs on how he did the piece, a very good solution to the problem.

New Me

New Me is a delightful film piece from over at aleksandradomanovic.com, it is very imaginative and very well executed.
link

Crystal Castles EP and Tour

Photo © Ken Volk 2008Photo © Ken Volk 2008

Crystal Castles EP and Tour, fantastic, a blogger's dream. Ethan Kath & Alice Glass are totally the two sexiest people alive at the moment.
Click to Download mp3 from Crystal Castles self-titled EP
Crystal Castles - Untrust Us

Google Weblogs = Information Hell

Please read the following description and decide if the product equals information hell:
(copied from Blogger Dashboard welcome page)

Google Weblogs, or “GWeblogs,” or “Gblogs,” which will launch later this year in a public beta, is the next revolution in personal publishing. Here’s what you can expect:

• Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.
• No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right. Our advanced Google algorithms automatically populate your blog’s sidebar with the most relevant possible content.
• Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.
• Save your readers time and effort. We’ll automatically extract the most relevant sentence from your post for the index page, along with any necessary ellipsis. We'll also put some words in bold!
• Your blog’s header will stay fresh with new images from our team of artists, each and every anniversary of a scientific achievement.
• Unsure of what to post about? Just click “I’m Feeling Lucky” and we’ll “take care” of the rest!

?!?!?!?!!! I hardly know where to begin. Unsure what to post about? Probably should not be posting, nevermind letting Google, Inc. choose the most popular thing for you. Excuse me, I am going to preemptively vomit out the information developed with this scheme that inevitably will find its way to myself and everyone. Perhaps, just maybe, Google is becoming a bit too big, annoying, and dare I say it, Evil? link
Are you going to sign up for one?

Media Binge (& purge?)

For the past 30 days I have metabolizing media uncontrollably. I am curious as to whether this is 'normal', lets look at some of the stats:
Blog reading:
From your 82 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 3,230 items
Downloads:
190 mp3s
10 fonts
30 videos (not included streamed videos)

I feel an insatiable desire to consume images, videos, music, PDF's, fonts, ideas, knowledge. I am always filling and filling myself but hardly outputting. An analogous situation is that of supersaturation, a chemical term describing a solution that has more dissolved material in the solvent than it is capable of holding under normal situations. When the solution is returned to its normal state, the dissolved component remains non-precipitated until a seed crystal is introduced. At this point, a chain reaction occurs and the supersaturated solution precipitates, creating a new chemical compound, sometimes beautiful crystals (like sugar rock candy).

The troubling part is that I consider myself under "normal" conditions, but I still feel supersaturated with media and ideas, I must need a metaphorical temperature change or strong disturbance and a seed crystal to aggregate something from my gluttony.


Am I the only one who feels this way? What is your consumption versus output ratio?

Urbanization

“This wave of urbanization is without precedent. The changes are too large and too fast to allow planners and policymakers simply to react: In Africa and Asia, the number of people living in cities increases by approximately 1 million, on average, each week. Leaders need to be proactive and take far-sighted action to fully exploit the opportunities that urbanization offers,” says Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund. (link)

Most Populous Urban Agglomerations
Click on link for Google Image search of that {city + "street art" OR graffiti OR graff OR graf}

1. Tokyo, Japan - 34,100,000
2. Mexico City, Mexico - 22,650,000
3. Seoul, South Korea - 22,250,000
4. New York, United States - 21,850,000
5. Sao Paulo, Brazil - 20,200,000
6. Mumbai, India - 19,700,000
7. Dehli, India - 19,500,000
8. Los Angeles, United States - 17,950,000
9. Shanghai, China - 17,900,000
10. Jakarta, Indonesia - 17,150,000
11. Osaka, Japan - 16,800,000
12. Kolkata, India - 15,550,000
13. Cairo, Egypt - 15,450,000
14. Manila, Philippines - 14,850,000
15. Karachi, Pakistan - 14,100,000
16. Moscow, Russia - 13,750,000
17. Buenos Aires, Argentina - 13,400,000
18. Dhaka, Bangladesh - 13,100,000
19. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 12,100,000
20. Beijing, China - 11,950,000
20. London, United Kingdom - 11,950,000
22. Tehran, Iran - 11,800,000
23. Istanbul, Turkey - 11,400,000
24. Lagos, Nigeria - 11,000,000
25. Shenzhen, China - 10,450,000
26. Paris, France - 9,900,000
27. Chicago, United States - 9,750,000
28. Guangzhou, China (Canton) - 9,400,000
29. Chongqing, China (Chungking) - 9,200,000
30. Wuhan, China - 8,950,000
31. Lima, Peru - 8,500,000
32. Bogota, Colombia - 8,250,000
33. Washington-Baltimore, United States - 8,100,000
34. Nagoya, Japan - 8,050,000
link

Definition of Life

copies from Wikipedia

Conventional definition: Often scientists say that life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit the following phenomena:

1. Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature.
2. Organization: Being composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
3. Metabolism: Consumption of energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
4. Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catalysis. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
5. Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
6. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism when touched to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun or an animal chasing its prey.
7. Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.

Muxtape

If you liked mixtapes, I guess muxtape is the place for you?
There are differences between a real tape and a muxtape: it doesn't make your mp3s sound warm and fuzzy and the listener can jump around between songs as much as they want, without nervous anticipation for the next track. And you can't draw on the label (but you can pick a color).
There are a lot of things the new web toy is working out, but the plus side is sharing a 12 track favs with friends. So far I haven't found a way to download the embedded music files, but there has to be a way.

Right! so here is mine, get yourself started and shoot me yours
http://nothingdestroyed.muxtape.com/

Oh and the site is clean and easy to use, ++

Limitations of the Senses

Bound we are to only experiencing so much, and lately its dragging me down a bit. Especially with vision, but also with the other senses as well. The rainbow of distinct and discernible colors is rather small, after some time looking, I desire another, new color to enjoy. Perhaps the answer lies outside of what a human can perceive, if we could only see above and below the visible spectrum and take in a microwave or a radiowave. Something new, please! All the same sounds, all the same tactile sensations, all the same... same... When in fact the world we operate in is much more rich than we can thinly observe, I want to expand the senses.

Cell Structure

Cell Structure
An investigation into the aesthetic forms within the human-altered landscape as reflections and extensions of ourselves.

The Dodos - Fools

Yay, an IT sound. Check out their MySpace

Listen!
The Dodos - Fools

Plurality

There are a lot of good things out there but nothing is big anymore. This is a terribly large blanket statement, but what happened to the days when an entire nation got behind an idea? Like the Aztecs building their stone temples, the Chinese building the Great Wall, or the Egyptians building those pyramids? Nevermind that the population was enslaved and treated brutally, one could say the same for us. And nevermind that we build things bigger than any of those examples nowadays. Think about it this way, what if an entire nation with the capital and personnel of USA got together with a single consciousness and did something amazing? What kind of new world wonder could we make?

Don't get me wrong, I love plurality; meaning I love that everyone does their own little artworks, their own little expressions of truth. A blog like this here, a little MySpace band, some photos on flickr. I am merely pondering the possibility of the personal-project-ego being dropped and instead acting together to some end. What would be out of our reach? Settlements on the moon? New cities? Food for everyone?

This change would require an entirely new approach to society, and also a goal to work towards.