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Groovy.

I have generally thought of  “Arse Elekronika” as just a humourous play on “Ars Electronica”. Kind of a “heh” thing. But the call below is very curious indeed!

(via, and)

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Call for Papers, Performances, Machines and Sponsors.

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Scottish SF author Iain Banks created a fictitious group-civilisation called “Culture” in his eponymous narrative. The vast majority of humanoid people in the “Culture” are born with greatly altered glands housed within their central nervous systems, who secrete – on command
– mood- and sensory-appreciation-altering compounds into the person’s bloodstream. Additionally many inhabitants have subtly altered reproductive organs – and control over the associated nerves – to enhance sexual pleasure. Ovulation is at will in the female, and a fetus up to a certain stage may be re-absorbed, aborted, or held at a static point in its development; again, as willed. Also, a viral change from one sex into the other, is possible. And there is a convention that each person should give birth to one child in their lives. It may sound strange, but Banks states that a society in which it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better than the other. Pressure for change within society would presumably build up until some form of sexual equality and hence numerical parity will be established.
Does this set-up sound too futuristic? Too utopian? Too bizarre?

We may not forget that mankind is a sexual and tool-using species.
And that’s why our annual conference Arse Elektronika deals with sex, technology and the future. As bio-hacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, this year will see us explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer. Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough.
“Bizarre enough for what?” — you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century.
Don’t you think, replicants?

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Please send us [arse2009 AT monochrom.at] your papers, ideas, machines!
Deadline: July 31, 2009!

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Festival Schedule:

October 1: Film festival(*), opening ceremony and Prixxx Arse
Elektronika(*) Gala
October 2: Literature, fiction, reading
October 3: Talks and discourse
October 4: DIY workshops
(*) Separate calls will be out shortly.

A Scanner Darkly 6-25-09 – cool… but sad and twisted.

Stranger Than Fiction. I liked when Harold Crick ate his first home-made cookie 43:15–43:35.

The Bucket List. Maybe I should have found it sappy, but I didn’t. I enjoyed it greatly.

That’s Rodin’s Gates of Hell at a garden museum at Stanford. I went there last Friday before going to SubZero. You can see The Thinker up top. Yes THAT “The Thinker”. He was originally designed to sit atop this piece so that be could ponder the sorry souls that were going through the gates.

The piece is astounding. I would say “simply Astounding” but there is nothing simple about it.

And that’s Adam and Eve standing beside the gates. Interestingly, The cowering Adam is the piece in this garden of naked people with the most fully formed junk. All the others have “tastefully” partially formed naughty bits.

Do you want to know the secret to search engine optimization (SEO)?

Create useful, unique content.

That’s it.

There is no more to it.

Now stop reading.

And start clicking my ads!

Muhahah!

You are still reading!

I have teh google juice and I control your mind!

Now click! Click for all time!

Update 6-18-15: After several years of running Google Ads, they have pretty much stopped generating revenue so I removed them. Say “La vee”!

Doing:

* Sunday & Monday: repairing SWARM orbs for Google IO, finishing sound design, shelling etc.

* Tuesday: Charlotte’s office hard drive failed. Spent the afternoon and evening recovering

* Wednesday: More hard drive recovery, finished sound design for Orbs. Performed at Google IO with SWARM! (you couldn’t hear the music over the DJ :-(((((((((((((((((   )

* Thursday: Attended Google IO, priced out computer for Charlotte’s office, attended Professional VFX Compositing With Adobe After Effects class at Crucible, sat in on German class at Noisebridge with Charlotte for a few minutes

* Friday: more computer help for Charlotte, working on lesson plan for a Crucible class I’m teaching, tidying hundreds of loose-ends emails

The class I’m teaching at the Crucible:

Youth Extreme Gizmos

Learn kinetic techniques to design, engineer, and construct a mechanical sculpture, contraption, or gadget with lights and moving parts. Using new and salvaged components, you will learn how motors, lights, and switches work, how to create mechanical structures, how to create different types of motion, and how to incorporate switches to operate your very own fantastical contraption!  

8-12 year olds, June 15-19 2009

Cost: $235.00 (Tuition: $180.00, Materials: $55.00), Members: $217.00

Youth Radical Robots

[KIN15-Y]

Build a simple remote-controlled robot . From the wheels up, you’ll create your robot’s shape and personality from salvaged components, mechanisms, and electrical components. You’ll also learn soldering, mechanical construction techniques, and how to remove and repurpose these items. Each student will receive a kit of motors, wheels, and a remote control toy.  

June 15-19 2009

Cost: $295.00 (Tuition: $220.00, Materials: $75.00), Members: $273.00

I use Dragon Naturally Speaking version 8.0. It’s useful when writing long items… a few paragraphs or more. Here is a list of phrases you can tell DNS to do good things:

select that/ correct that – correct the last thing you said
correct [word] through [word] – correct a string of words
(hit – on the keypad) – pulls up correction window

Show-dictation-box – pops up a text window that will paste when it’s closed. Good for Firefox.
Edit-selection – You should select something, say “Edit-Selection” and it’ll be pulled into a dictation box.

Cap … – next letter is capitalized
caps-on – Capitalize the First Letter of Every Important Word until “caps-off”
caps-off
All-caps – next word is in ALL CAPS
All-caps-on – EVERY LETTER IS CAPITALIZED UNTIL “All-caps-off”
All-caps-off
No-caps – next word is in all lower case.
No-caps-on – no caps until “no-caps-off”
Cap-that – capitalize the first letter of each word in the last phrase, or the selected text

open-quote – “
close-quote – “
open-parenthesis – (
close-parenthesis – )
open-bracket – [
close-bracket – ]
at-sign – @

scratch-that-[X]-times – multiple undo

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Moving the cursor and mouse

mouse-grid – brings up the mouse grid. Then…
mouse-click
mouse-double-click

move-up-[n]-lines
move-left-[n]-characters / words
go-to-top / bottom
go-to-beginning-of-line / end-of-line

insert-before-[word] / after

select-[words I want]
select-again – tries other choices

select-[starting word]-through-[ending word]
select-all
copy-all-to-clipboard
paste-that

backspace-[n]

scratch-that
undo-that

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Actions

To kill a voice-recognition action that has gone awry, click the little red X inside the Result box. That will also turn off the microphone.

To spell out individual letters or numbers, pause, say “spell-that”. Wait for the spelling menu.

I am seriously skeptical about this whole 140 character revolution. That said, my friend  Marah is going to be a presenter  at the  140 Characters Conference in New York City June 16 and 17.

Play some games.

Relax

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/

Laughing Squid recently had an article highlighting San Francisco Street Art & Graffiti Photographer Steve Rotman.

Here are some large excerpts and then my comment:

Continue reading ‘San Francisco Graffiti’ »