in Ann Arbor, MI 48103
{ Monthly archives }
Via Ed, information about a “freecycling” event today at the Farmer’s Market:
Our next Ann Arbor FREE4ALL is April 23, 2005 from 4-8pm at the Farmers Market in Ann Arbor. You will be able to dispose of mega amounts of your unwanted/unneeded treasures.
This might be worth investigating if only for the likely sight of folks dragging stuff through the snow.
Fun meetup! “AAiO,” George, Laura, Murph, OFWInsurgent, and Scott attended, with a special appearance by Brandon’s spectacular necktie.
Beforehand, I tried to articulate to George an idea about the difference between tagging and more conventional categorization arising in part from the (effective!) illusions of control and freedom conferred by being presented a text field to type into rather than somebody else’s menu to pick from. (You see a something like voguelike interactive fiction criticism here.)
Afterwards Scott introduced me to Arbor Vitae, which is one of those Ann Arbor things I feel like I should have figured out years ago.
George: here is the Kottke OS X article I was telling you about at dinner.
I can really honestly truly state that until today I had never considered how a waferbaby corner monkey interview with Guido van Rossum, inventor of the Python programming language, would read.
Hey, we’re meeting over at Café Ambrosia on Thursday, April 21st at 7:00PM. Please find event details at Upcoming or Meetup, and a summary of last month’s deal over at Arborblogs.
(Since Meetup has switched to a for-fee structure, this event, if it continues into the future, will probably be organized elsewhere. George Hotelling has kindly sponsored the group in the short term.)
The basic value proposition for these (or at least: our) blogland meetups is that they create a tiny blissful whirling nexus of urban planning students, acronym-laden anarcho-technocrats, artists in variously advanced stages of self-loathing, ITZone-addled dot-com expats, and the like — in other words, a really sweet group of human beings.
Hope to see you there!
There’s a new game for the Nintendo DS called Electroplankton which, frankly, is the first DS title to get my attention.
Electroplankton was (as the packaging so prominently asserts) “created by Toshio Iwai” — the Japanese media artist behind, among other things, the SimTunes PC game. (SimTunes is itself a pretty astonishing entry into this video game microgenre. It’s a paint-by-numbers CricketDraw with a goofy emergent soundtrack.)
Andrew Vestal’s preview at 1up is the only thing I’ve read about this game, but it certainly seems to be another exploratory soundscape thing, perhaps more like Tranquility than REZ.
Long story short, it’s a collection of ten aquatic-themed, cartoon tone toys. The point of this game is: you cajole and prod underwater creatures and listen! And then you do it again! I defer to the 1up preview for details:
Most of the plankton create tonal-but-unstructured sounds, like wind chimes. There’s no way to save or share your creations, and the dynamic nature of most of the plankton makes it all-but-impossible to duplicate previous creations. Also, several of the plankton automatically “decay,” making it impossible to keep a composition “alive” in a steady state. Life’s pleasures are fleeting, and art should reflect life — that’s the lesson of Electroplankton.
I’m looking forwards to playing this at some point; sounds (get it?) like fun.
“Improved focus can be achieved through activities such as meditation, yoga and turning off instant messaging.” — Ulrich Mayr, University of Oregon
In the future, you will go to the Space Market and pick up a box of Oreos and read the following:
cookies creme food nabisco snacks sugar wrapped-in-plastic
