The Mollusk - Ween

I'd meant to put this up some time ago. The song 'The Mollusk' by Ween is a particulary odd song, not only for it's instrumentation but the lyrics and story told by said lyrics is rather bizzare. Some enterprising individual has literally interpreted the lyrics using LEGO for all to enjoy.

Stack The Memory - ? Warning geek content

Hilarious rap video sponsored by Seagate Inc. (A hard drive manufacturer).

Proposition 8 - The Musical

I realise this is a little late to the party but it's not less relevant today.

For a more serious examination of the issue check out Kieth Olbermann's special coment on gay marriage and Prop 8: here

Meteor!

So apparenlty a meteor fell to earth somewhere in western Canada around 5:30 pm (Mountain Time). There were reported sightings in both Saskatchewan and Alberta. You can read about it at the CBC here. Fortunately for us a police patrol car happened to capture this event on their in dash camera. The footage is stunning, Enjoy. I'm hoping that a higher quality version of this footage or perhaps other footage might surface as this story develops.

Updated 12:08 pm EST - Additional Footage.

Incredible

I got to see David Byrne at Massey Hall this wednesday. Suffice to say, I was more than pleased with the show. It was very funky, rythmic and heartfelt performance. He performed a range of material drawn from his collaborative work with Brian Eno both with Talking Heads and in solo outings. The delievery was hot, he can still move for 56. I was especially pleased with the number of pieces from the Remain in Light album, which happens to be in my 'Top 5 All Time Albums'.

There are a number write up, including the national papers:

National Post, Globe and Mail

Act 1:

• Strange Overtones
• I Zimbra
• One Fine Day
• Help Me Somebody
• Houses in Motion
• My Big Nurse
• My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)
• Heaven
• Never Thought
• The River
• Crosseyed and Painless
• Life Is Long
• Once in A Lifetime
• Life During Wartime
• I Feel My Stuff

Act 2:

• Take Me to the River
• The Great Curve

Act 3:

• Air
• Burning Down the House

Act 4:

• Everything That Happens

Block Party - Paris Acoustic - This Modern Love

Bloc Party, 'This Modern Love' - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Bonobo apes

This is a talk regarding the remarkable abilities of the Bonobos Apes. It's amazing.

Beautiful Music

I've always admired the aesthetics of Audi's cars and as I gather they're not bad in the function department either. I have been told a number of occasions of the 'never-quit' of the Audi 5000 by my father. In any case, the have a new marketing campaign truthinengineering.com. The music for a new ad for the redesigned A4 struck me as very beautiful so I've decided to post it here. It seems this is an orgininal composition that was made for the commericial itself. I had hoped there was more to it but it seems there is not. Still, a striking piece of audio for a beautiful car.

Fascinating

Watch CBS Videos Online

In an interview last night on 60 Minutes, a former Delta Force commander in charge of ground forces hunting for Bin Laden shortly after 9/11. It's quite an interesting and revealing interview. Enjoy. I don't believe an account of this detail has ever surfaced quite yet.

Energy Density - Perspective

(IEEE Spectrum, Image Bryan Christie Design)

I'm reasonably sure that the average person in the modern age has an appreciation for the precious resource that oil is. What I'm reasonably convinced the modern 'joe sixpack' doesn't aprreciate is just how incredibly energy dense oil is. In an effort to better communicate with the public about energy concerns a group of scientists have developed a more easily understood 'currency of energy'. Namely, a cubic mile of oil. There is an article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine outlining their efforts here. How does the cubic mile of oil relate to our current energy consumption? Well, we consume, globally today, roughly 1 cubic mile of oil per year. There is an estimated 45 cubic miles of oil left in the world. So just what exactly would it take to create the equivalent energy of our annual global consumption of oil? Alot.

There are of course a set of reasonable assumptions that go along with this, click the image the source image in greater detail.

"Assumptions: The Three Gorges Dam is rated at its full design capacity of 18 gigawatts. A nuclear power plant is postulated to be the equivalent of a 1.1-GW unit at the Diablo Canyon plant in California. A coal plant is one rated at 500 megawatts. A wind turbine is one with a 100‑meter blade span, and rated at 1.65 MW. A solar panel is a 2.1‑­kilowatt system made for home roofs. In comparing ­categories, bear in mind that the average amount of time that power is produced varies among them, so that total energy obtained is not a simple function of power rating."

What is unfortunately hard to make out from this image is that those equivelencies are for that many dams, nuclear power plants, solar cells or coal plants operating for 50 years.

The human race is in dire need of energy innovation in both generation and consumption. Fortunately, people seem to be finally awakening to this reality. It will be no small task to replace this consumption with alternative sources. The future will be interesting indeed.

Tambourines in an cement mixer.

I haven't posted on here in quite a while so I've decided to remedy that. I think that I need to give recognition to some amazing music I've listened to in the last few weeks and months.

• Beck - Modern Guilt

This is probably his best work since Odelay. The whole album flows together so well. I've probably listened to this album at least 30x through, Beck is frequently the soundtrack to adventures in the Volvo. The music is this odd fusion of sounds, it feels anachronistic, a blend of sounds from the near future and the past.

• David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

So yes, my previous post was about this album but now I actually have listened to it a bunch. It's beautiful and diverse. At times subtle and soft and at times bright and obvious. If you like the talking heads, you'll like this album. The instrumentals Eno has done up are wondrous. These two were really meant to work together, you can listen to their critically acclaimed 'Remain in Light' Talking Heads collaboration for further evidence of that.

Everything that happens will happen today.

Brian Eno and David Byrne have collaborated for the first time in 30 years or so. Their album, who's title is the title of this article, is availble for purchase and streaming through their website.
Enjoy.

Gustav

(Ninth Ward New Orleans, February 2008)

In the winter of 2008 I was lucky to have the opportunity to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity in Slidell Louisiana. Slidell was one of the inland communities about 30 minutes north of the City of New Orleans. The town lost quite a lot of structures to Katrina. As the prospect of a hurricane Gustav impacting the gulf of New Mexico looms, I am forced to recall the vast regions of New Orleans and the surrounding areas which remained utterly destroyed when we visited. The devastation of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, which still remains unprotected, and largely uninhabited, was a particularly significant experience. The photo above is one I took while I was there. The central point of all this is the notion that the City and southern Louisiana have not recovered from Katrina ,and they are far from ready to weather, for lack of a better word, another. The population sat at roughly 60 percent of it's pre-Katrina level in a 2007 estimate and whilst I was there, this was quite evident. Certainly the Federal Government has spend quite a lot of money strengthening the stormwater infrastructure of the city since 2005. Popular Mechanics has channel on their site dedicated to Hurricane Katrina related lessons, rebuilding and redesign efforts. So the the City may be more resilient to hurricanes but one cannot make a place 'hurricane proof', it's simply not possible. This misses the point though, even if we've prepared the infrastructure to survive a category 5 hurricane, the heath of a city or a populace for that matter cannot be measured by it's infrastructure alone. The 'people' it's economy, it's culture, in all the connotations that that term has, have yet to heal.

There is some encouraging news though, the residents of the City are, at least in part, already mobilizing to leave or leaving the city currently. The Mayor has issued a voluntary evacuation order for the city and a mandatory one may come sometime this Sunday. The New York Times has a write up of the current efforts to date. So hopefully, if Gustav does make landfall around New Orleans, the people will not be there to greet him.

RED Digital Video

skate - shot on red - 120 fps from opus magnum prod. on Vimeo.

A stunning piece of video created with the new RED digital camera. RED created a digital camera designed to directly address the common shortcomings of existing high quality digital cameras used in movie making. It seems as if they knew what they were doing as they have been lauded by the likes of Steven Soderberg and Peter Jackson for their efforts. Wired has an interesting write up here which outlines the history and evolution of the company, founded by the creator of Oakley. For the full experience, follow the video to the Vimeo page and watch the clip in high def.

Let's blow this popsicle stand

So exams are over for me, forever...unless I go the PhD route. This is quite a relief, as I now can focus soley on research. The prospect is exciting and daunting as my research is siginificantly different than any of my undergraduate work.

The picture above is one I took at the Hillside festival this summer. One of a few pleasant diversions I've had during this summer. Another diversion that just occurred was seeing Radiohead at the Molson Amphitheatre.

The oppening act was a band from Brooklyn called 'Grizzly Bear'. While I did enjoy some of the studio tracks Grizzly Bear had up on their site, their live performance left something to be desired. This may have had something to do with fact that we were being thoroughly soaked by rain during their set. Fortunately, during the hour before Radiohead's set the weather cleared. The weather was bizzarely apropos for a performance of their new materials as not one but two rainbows were present before their performance. It was a pretty awesome show, their lighting rig for the tour is amazing. Highlights for me include:

• Talk Show Host
• Climbing Up the Walls
• Reckoner
• Airbag
• House of Cards

A full set list can be found here, photos here.

On the whole it was a great show, good mix of old and new. I've seen them three times now. In 2003 at the skydome and in 2006 at the hummingbird center previously. The hummingbird was probably the best show, they were already playing stuff that ended up on the in Rainbows album and it was really intimate. That being said, every time I've seen Radiohead has been a great expeirence.

Stunning Photos of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

(Maximilien Brice, © CERN)

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a massive particle physics project that the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) has undertaken. Upon completion it should run CERN somewhere from 3.2 to 6.4 billion euros at completion. The essence of particle physics is...'smash stuff together and watch the outcome'. In this case, lead ions and protons are shot at each other. The hope is that, the results of the experiments will either confirm or refute a lot of theoretical constructs in particle physics. One of the things they're looking for is the 'God Particle', AKA Higgs boson, a theorised particle that 'give mass to matter'. It's also hopped that breakthroughs in dark matter may occur aswell.

Alan Taylor author of 'The Big Pitcture" - a column on boston.com examines 'News Stories in Photographs', has put together a stunning set of images of the Large Hadron Collider. Click the image above to see the article.

National Geographic has a good write up of the project here

Who said science can't be sexy?

Air Quality at the Olympics

Eastern China Air Pollution
(Image courtesy of NASA, 1999)

I'm sure that any of you who've been paying attention to some of the coverage regarding the upcoming Beijing Olympics have heard of the concerns there are about air pollution. There is a very telling graph that the UN published in their 2007 'state of the environment' piece that I'm going to try and dig up and put on here in a bit. For now though, the Wall Street Journal has a very interesting page up, cataloging the Air Pollution Index maintained by the Chinese Ministry for Environmental protection. Data from 2005 to present day is there and every so often a little blip on the graph links to a photo taken that day. Suffice to say, I fear for the athletes of Beijing.

The Index

The Wall Street Journal's China Blog

There is a little widget at the top right hand side of the page that gives you the daily air pollution index score.

Beijing is in the image above, trapped under that lovely layer of pollution. The image is linked to the NASA page it came from and you can get a more detailed description of the image there.

Radiohead - House of Cards Video

So Radiohead have come out with a new video for the song 'House of Cards off In Rainbows.
They've chosen to do things a bit different as the 'video', is not really a video at all in the traditional sense. They used a LIDAR system which scans in 360 degrees to build up 3D visualizations of the surrounding areas to 'shoot' this film...then they've obviously played around with the data in post production software to jazz it up some. The end product is quite something. There is a google page dedicated to the video, explaining how it was made in much greater detail, as well as allowing you to download the data generated to make your own visualisations.

The google page.

and the video:

Bert and Ernie Keep it Real

I ran into this clip earlier today and well, I think it speaks for itself.

And now for something completely Different: Summer Movies.

I wasn't too enthused with what I'd seen advertised to come out this summer. The Dark Knight, was the one exception to those observations. Hellboy II is actually getting quite good reviews and perhaps I shouldn't expect so little as it is the work of Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth). Thankfully I can now add another film to my list of films I must see. Pineapple Express is the new film by Seth Rogen and it looks amazing.

Check out the trailer for Pineapple Express here:

Art

Michael A. Salter has constructed sculptures of robots using excess polystyrene. Their proper name is, of course, styrobots (hehehe). His sight also features a number of other installations which seem pretty interesting. Enjoy.

http://michaelasalter.com/artwork/299343.html


PS - Beck's new album 'Modern Guilt' is out Tuesday.

Ride to Conquer Cancer Weekend

Four good friends of mine are off on a 200 km bike ride this weekend to raise funds for cancer research at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. This is a small slideshow of  the drop off day (yesterday). They are on the road right now, best of luck guys! Click the slideshow below to go to the picasaweb album containing these shots.  

Guelph Engineering Prof on CNN

One of the professors in the School of Engineering, Khosrow Farahbakhsh, has made it on to CNN for a trial water recycling system that he's integrated into his house. I had Dr. Farahbakhsh as a professor in undergrad twice and had the chance to be a teaching assistant in his thermodynamics class last fall. It's nice to see him getting recognition for his work, as he is a great professor.

Here's the link:

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/tech/2008/06/18/jeras.rainwater.recycling.cnn

He was also featured on daily planet on April 17th:

http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/daily-planet/april-2008/daily-planet-april-17-2008/#clip47098

Sebastien Grainger EP out!

For those of you who don't know, Sebastien Grainger was the singer and drummer of the now defunct Death from Above 1979. I got the chance to see him play at the Hillside Festival last year and it was quite a good show. I'd been following the work of both he and Jesse Keeler (The bassist) since the demise of the band. Jesse has since formed MSTRKRFT with one of their former producers, which has been putting out some interesting electronic music and hitting up clubs around the world. A while seemed to pass before I heard of any activity from Sebastien, until about two years ago when I heard that he was recording new music as 'Sebastien Grainger et les Montagnes'. Anyway...2 years later and we have an EP! It's out on 7" Vinyl and available from iTunes (DRM free too!, 256 kbit AAC files). While the iTunes option is decidedly less chic, it's cheaper, more portable and you get more songs than the vinyl (4 vs. 2). In any case, I think he's a great Canadian artist, worthy of support..so check it out:

http://www.sebastiengrainger.net/

I may of course get the record, just to have it, when I'm not so dirt poor as I am now. Also, one disappointment...the record is being sold as 'Sebastien Grainger & The Mountains', what's with this pandering to French illiteracy? Clearly 'et les Montagnes' is a cooler moniker.

David Byrne Installation

Any of you who know me on any serious level will know of my fondness for the Talking Heads. The principle creative force behind the band was, of course, David Byrne (You know, that nervous twictching guy in all their videos). Anyway, he's done quite a lot of interesting music / art pieces since the days of the band (Which, now that I think of it,is probably ~25 year ago, yep...25 years since he was part of the band). This is a recent piece I ran into at pitchfork.tv, where David has peformed sonic surgery, if you will, on an old building make the building a giant instrument. It'll make more sense if you watch the video. Apparently, he did this once before, in Stockholm.

Amazing Radiohead 'Nude' Remix entry

So Radiohead held a remix contest for their song 'Nude' off of In Rainbows.

 This guy went all out.  He rigged up a whole bunch of old electronics to 

reproduce the song. The result is nothing short of amazing, but don't take 

my word for it, check it out. It takes about a minute for the actual song to start, so just wait...it's worth it. 

Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

I want this car.

The 1989 Honda CRX-HF got 50 MPG highway, that's in-fucking-credible. More than twice the fuel economy of my venerable '89 740 GL. Then again, the Volvo is more akin to a tank and I'd rather be in it in an accident than the CRX. Still it amazes me the fuel economy discrepancy here. What' I'm getting at is that it's next to impossible to buy gas cars today, in the same size segment that even approach 50 MPG. Now let's be clear, that's US gallons we're talking, not that imperial BS that's so often quoted. To clear things up, it gets 4.7 L/100 Km highway, 5.7 city. That's amazing. If you go on the EPA's fuel economy site, this thing outstrips the 2008 Civic sedan and the hybrid civic as well. I would imagine that increasing car weight from safety features, noise dampening would account for some of the discrepancy. Presumably there more sophisticated emissions control units on the end, dropping the efficiency of the engines on the newer Honda's. There are no doubt more bells and whistles inside the modern cars...but it's something to consider that we were building cars that efficient, basically 20 years ago.

This whole rant stems from a Wired article, what car would make the best apocalypse-mobile.
They chose the 1980 Honda CRX HF for it's amazning Fuel Economy and reliability.


http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/what-is-the-ult.html

Europe Video Highlights

I finally got my hands on Andy and Brad's pictures about a week ago and have been trying to throw together a highlight reel of photos in a video. This is my first expeirmentation with iMovie, so it took a while to get the hang of it. I wasn't able to do everything that I had wanted to with the photos but I don't think iMovie is really meant to have all the bells and whistles of a full video editing suite. That being said, it's really easy to get the hang of and quite powerful for simple presentations. Without further ado, here is the video.

FYI: Music - The Clash - The Magnificient Seven

I'm working on a getting a higher quality version of this online. For now though,
this is about all you're gonna get unless you come see it in person. (Then you can watch it in delicous high-def).

Okay, finally got this thing posted on Google video..it's larger but more pixelated, oh well

can't win em' all. Click 'View' to see it.

View

Interesting Art

This guy made a self portrait using a jury rigged long distance GPS module in a suitcase and mapped the signals of the package as it traveled on very specific flight paths to create the largest portrait ever. The whole story, in detail, is at the URL below.

http://biggestdrawingintheworld.com/drawing.aspx

-update (May 28th) ...so Apparently this is a fake...I did have suspicions, not because it wasn't technically feasible but because it is ridiculously expensive. But hey, people have spent money on stupider things. Also, the fact that DHL was in on the joke sort of helped it look somewhat legit.

Also, this is a bit of an afterthought, Banksy is worth checking out. He's a semi-anonymous British graffiti artist. Saw one of his pieces on a sexual health clinic in Bristol, it was quite good.
Personally though, his CCTV piece seems the most 'on point' work he's done, in Britain at least.
The pervasiveness of CCTV's in England is pretty absurd. I couldn't help but think about the Orwellian nature of it all.

The greatest phone I have ever owned

I was getting pretty fed up with the shitty battery life and signal quality that my Motorola RAZR had been giving me of late. This is of particular interest to me as I have no land line. So I took things into my own hands and ordered a new battery online. Sadly, this did little to fix my battery issues. I eventually decided it was time to buy a new phone. I didn't like what was offered through my provider, as they, like every other provider in Canada, had limited selection and what they did have was only reasonably priced if you're extending your contract or some such bullshit. So I decided I'd remove them from the equation and got an unlocked GSM phone online. It's beautiful and was dirt cheap. My biggest problem with the phones offered by the service providers in Canada is that they seem to have quite a lot of trouble selling a phone that just talks/texts. I suppose it's a profitability thing? but you'll forgive me if I don't want a shitty camera built into my phone that's only going to degrade the device's call quality or something that has a full mobile browser for which I will be charged absurd data rates (Canada is terrible for this). But I digress, I have acquired a beautiful utilitarian Sony Erricsson J100a unlocked GSM phone. I believe it was originally meant for resale in mexico and the central Americas, in any case..I love it. Beautiful call quality, great battery life. What more could I ask for? I'm all for device convergence but it seems so often that this convergence comes with performance compromises. Did I mention it cost $50?

Listening to: LCD Soundsystem, Bruce Springsteen, Imogen Heap, Justice

Photo Highlights

A selection of photos from various places on the trip is now up:

http://picasaweb.google.com/murraysteve/HighlightsofEuropeAprilMay2008

Pictures up!

Hey, A random selection of photos is now up at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/murraysteve/Europe

After a long day of travel, our journey has led us to London England. We spent basically 8am-8pm traveling on trains, buses and a ferry to get from Paris to London. A surprisingly tiring process. The hostel we're at was very close to the subway station and getting here wasn't much trouble at all. The computers at the place, however are surprisingly ghetto..so photos will have to wait again. Our day long journey was for the most part, an effort not to pay the exorbitant amount of money it would cost us to take the chunnel (231 Euro a person). Our efforts succeeded as it cost us perhaps 80 Euros for all of us to get to London through trains and ferries. Anyway, more updates later...

Amsterdam!

It's mid morning in Amsterdam right now. We had a marathon adventure, arriving at 6:20 am local time (12:20 am EST) and not getting into our hostel until 10:30 pm local time. We had a pretty cool day touring the city. Met up with Deko and three of his friends. Van Gogh Museum, Red Light district, canal tour. Transit here is quite amazing, their public services make ours look pitiful and everyone rides bikes. I will post photos when more time is available. We're Paris bound this evening, but we may still do something in the Netherlands before we catch our train.

Europe-Bound

Shortly three intrepid travelers will head to Europe for an adventure filled with excess, frivolity and brief flirtations with the profound. Among our destinations lie the land of the Scots, Limeyville, cheese eating surrender monkey - town (Thank you grounds keeper Willy) and the Netherlands.

Our frequency of internet access is suspect, so updates may be sporadic. Posts may be fairly retrospective in nature given this.