Frantic Mantis: April 2007


RSS in Plain English

Saturday, April 28, 2007
There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Great video to show Moms and friends who don't RSS!

Labels: , , ,

Future Interface



Multi-touch interface talk with Jeff Han. Amazing interface possibilities that make you wonder when we will begin to think of keyboards and current laptop/computer design to seem outdated and silly.

Labels: , ,

Evolution Street

Friday, April 27, 2007


CN blog brings to attention this amazing Evolution street art by Unknown artist.

[ FULL SIZE VERSION ]

Labels: , , , ,

Cellular Automata Video Synth



The sound of my brain!

[ KIT FROM MAKE ]

Robot Recipes

Thursday, April 26, 2007


Google, Intel, and Microsoft are funding Robot Research! These big three corps are enabling researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to create a new series of Internet-connected robots using common parts and Qwerk kits.

[ VIEW A SMALL ASSORTMENT OF TELEPRESENCE ROBOT KITS ]

Sao Paolo, Brazil Bans Public Ads

Wednesday, April 18, 2007


Photo by Tony de Marco.

Come the new year, this city of 11 million, overwhelmed by what the authorities call visual pollution, plans to press the “delete all” button and offer its residents unimpeded views of their surroundings.

(…) Since “it is hard in a city of 11 million to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what was and wasn’t legal, we decided to go all the way, to zero things out,” Kassab said. “When you prohibit everything, society itself becomes your partner in enforcing the law” and reporting violations.


That's one thing that is nice about Washington, D.C. - yeah there are some ads but really not that many, there are strict restrictions so there are bus ads, bus-stop ads, and ads in the metro trains. No billboards but a few walls in DC have some ads by some of the freeways but it's rather infrequent. I often forget about the infrequency of ads in DC and get a minor psychic landscape shock when traveling to other parts of the USA. This occurrence in Brazil is beautiful.

[ BILLBOARD BAN ANGERS ADVERTISTERS ARTICLE ] (Herald Tribune)

[ IMAGES OF AD-FREE SAO PAOLO ] (Flickr)

Mail App Mod, OS X



For those of you with widescreen Mac laptops, Comrade Harlock tipped me off with a great mod for your Mail.app in OS X.

[ LETTER BOX MAP.APP MOD ]

Labels: , , ,

Mini Cardboard Art Synths

Thursday, April 12, 2007


Wow, just found this guy out - Dan McPharlin, who makes tiny fictional modular synths from cardboard, posts the results on Flickr (Synth Set), and sells them.

(from Musicthing)

Labels: , , , , ,

OLPC OS, The Future...

Wednesday, April 11, 2007


One Laptop Per Child Linux OS now available. I shall download and try it on my macbook. I always thought one of these stripped down laptops would be good for touring bands. Biodiesel and OLPC Laptops and free album on bit-torrent is the future? It actually still surprises me that with all these community sites and everything bands are still thinking they have a "big chance" to be "rockstars", when in reality they have to wake up and realize we are all in this together and really redo the independent music code of ethics that doesn't really exist anymore since 1999.

[ IMAGE GALLERY OF OS ]

[ LINK TO BUILD .ISO ]

Care of engadget.com

Labels: , ,

Also blogging at...

Tuesday, April 10, 2007


I am also blogging at: Expensiveshit.biz with Shadow-Mantii Gabriel!

Labels: , ,

Storage Robot



A USB Hard-drive array "robot". Perhaps our data-redundancy woes are over. Like when two hard-drives containing the only copies of the latest Frantic Mantis recordings crashed. Fortunately there was a copy on Håkan's laptop - but still... what a fragile data-driven world we live in.

[ STORAGE "ROBOT" PRODUCT PAGE ]

New GIbson Book




"Tito is in his early twenties. Born in Cuba, he speaks fluent Russian, lives in one room in a NoLita warehouse, and does delicate jobs involving information transfer.

Hollis Henry is an investigative journalist, on assignment from a magazine called Node. Node doesn't exist yet, which is fine; she's used to that. But it seems to be actively blocking the kind of buzz that magazines normally cultivate before they start up. Really actively blocking it. It's odd, even a little scary, if Hollis lets herself think about it much. Which she doesn't; she can't afford to.

Milgrim is a junkie. A high-end junkie, hooked on prescription antianxiety drugs. Milgrim figures he wouldn't survive twenty-four hours if Brown, the mystery man who saved him from a misunderstanding with his dealer, ever stopped supplying those little bubble packs. What exactly Brown is up to Milgrim can't say, but it seems to be military in nature. At least, Milgrim's very nuanced Russian would seem to be a big part of it, as would breaking into locked rooms.

Bobby Chombo is a "producer," and an enigma. In his day job, Bobby is a troubleshooter for manufacturers of military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one. Hollis Henry has been told to find him. "

EXCITING!

Labels: ,

William Gibson UK Book Covers







Why are William Gibson's book covers a million times better in the UK than the US releases?! Here are the US equivalents below:








Help!

Labels: , , , ,

Jarvis Cocker on Music

Sunday, April 08, 2007
Interviewer: ...you said you were driven by the suspicion that music isn't as central to peoples' lives as it once was. Perhaps the act of listening to music is more passive now, and it's not the youth or pop culture force it once was.

Jarvis: It was just a question that had been on my mind a lot at that particular time, because there seems to be a contradiction in the fact that there's more music around and more channels or downloading music or more channels on TV, and yet at the same time, in some ways it doesn't seem to be as vital as it once was. It seems to be just another entertainment option or lifestyle enhancement aid or something.

Because culture shouldn't be a pacifying thing. It shouldn't be something that you just passively accept. I think it should be something that, in some ways, is quite disruptive-- makes you think and question things, and actually sparks debate. And a lot of the time now, people use culture and music and films and stuff in the same ways you use them on kids. If kids are driving you mad and chucking stuff around the house, you put a Disney CD or DVD on, and then they shut up and watch it, and you get some peace. I've done it. I feel guilty about it sometimes, but I do it. And I think that kind of thing, in some ways, has moved into adult culture as well. In a way, if you're watching a film on DVD, the time passes, and-- do you know what I mean?-- there's a bit too much just letting things wash over you rather than actually engaging with what you're watching, or what you're listening to. That was the point of having that debate, because I don't know the answers, and I still don't know the answers, and I'll try and do further investigation.

— Jarvis Cocker on Music/Culture

Google Reader

I love this web-app... easiest for keeping up with websites/blogs:

Google Reader.

Steve Jobs Thoughts On Music

An interesting article from Apple's honcho about DRM:

Excerpt: "Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player."

Though it would be nice to choose to have DRM free music on iTunes if you are an independent label, perhaps someone should start a petition.

[ LINK TO ARTICLE ]

Is it too late? Probably.

Friday, April 06, 2007




















Web 2.0: The folly of amateurs?

An interesting article about Web 2.0, blogs, the internet... makes me want to read the book and complain along. I also have been recently thinking that the internet is kind of just as bad as Television, or at least a similar time vortex. Will there be a backlash?

Amazing Japanese Shooter



I was obsessed with this shooter a few years ago - download the mac port and use Z to shoot and select game when booted!

[ DOWNLOAD NOIZ ]

Also, the original developers at ABA Games have the Windows versions and some other games they made. Kind of like REZ for PS2/DREAMCAST.

[ ABA GAMES ]

Sony Glass Interface Prototype

Windows Vista

Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Got the "Upgrade" version to work on Macbook running Parallels. Annoying microsoft really tries to make it hard when using a purchased Vista Upgrade (Requires a version of XP) and when it doesn't work the installer suggests you buy a higher version of Vista. C'mon!

This is how I did it (thanks to the Parallels Visualization Blog):

1) Get a modern licenced version of Parallels and install it on OS/X
2) Create a Vista partition in OS/X with at least 512Mb memory and 20 GB disk space
3) Boot the legitimate Vista DVD upgrade from the Parallels partition (when the Parallels session boots, it trys to start the DVD in any case)
4) Click "Install Now"
5) Do not enter a Product key when prompted - if you try to you will get an ACPI, BSOD or can't upgrade error.
6) You will see a list of Vista editions. Select the one you have bought.
7) Install Vista normally - though it will be a trial copy with no serial number, only valid for 30 days.
8) Once the install is complete (which takes circa 30 minutes), restart the DVD-based setup from within the demo Windows Vista.
9) Perform an in-place upgrade.
10) Enter your Product Key when prompted
11) Let Vista go through the upgrade a second time.

Didn't seem that I needed XP though with this method. So now I can explore this OS for work purposes. Exciting yes?

Frantic Mantis new album? Haven't touched the files for a few months - want to redo some things and write some new songs.