Archives for June 2012
дороги, которые мы выбираем
14 June 2012 | Accessories, Art, Geography | No Comments
представьте: вы берете места, где побывали, и соединяете эти точки на карте линиями. в итоге рождается некая геометрическая фигура, или meshu — как называют ее здесь. после чего эту фигуру вырезают с помощью лазеров или распечатывают на 3D принтерах. и выходят запонки, или ожерелье, или сержки — желанные памяти километры и минуты.
акценты
14 June 2012 | Culturology, Journalism, Sport | No Comments
вот отрывки из комментария Владимира Никитовича Маслаченко с финала Лиги Чемпионов в 1999 году в Барселоне. по-моему, это ужасный набор слов, где очень много личных местоимений единственного числа и только разве что каждая десятая фраза относится к собственно игре.
кстати, никогда не знал, что вот этот пассаж о пижонах считается классическим. может оттого, что сам вырос на другой фразе в параллельном репортаже, где не обсуждают проигравших, но только радуются за победивших:
Manchester United have reached the promised land!
как говорится, еще одна небольшая разница в копилку.
о будущем
13 June 2012 | Games, Lifeform | 4 Comments
картина безутешна:
I’ve been playing the same game of Civ II for 10 years. <...> The results are as follows.
- The world is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation.
- There are 3 remaining super nations [The Celts (me), The Vikings, and the Americans] in the year 3991 A.D, each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands.
- The ice caps have melted over 20 times (somehow) due primarily to the many nuclear wars. As a result, every inch of land in the world that isn’t a mountain is inundated swamp land, useless to farming. Most of which is irradiated anyway.
- As a result, big cities are a thing of the distant past. Roughly 90% of the worlds population (at it’s peak 2000 years ago) has died either from nuclear annihilation or famine caused by the global warming that has left absolutely zero arable land to farm. Engineers (late game worker units) are always busy continuously building roads so that new armies can reach the front lines. Roads that are destroyed the very next turn when the enemy goes. So there isn’t any time to clear swamps or clean up the nuclear fallout.
- You’ve heard of the 100 year war? Try the 1700 year war. The three remaining nations have been locked in an eternal death struggle for almost 2000 years. Peace seems to be impossible. Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons.
и дополнительный ньюанс:
The only governments left are two theocracies and myself, a communist state.
а я почему-то вспоминаю Квинту.
смешенье
13 June 2012 | Cinematograph, History | No Comments
еще один герой нуара:
The Fast and the Furious director Rob Cohen has announced that he’s teaming up with Rocky producer Gene Kirkwood to produce a new action franchise – starring Isaac Newton as a detective.
начитались, поди.
it’s a bit more complex than that
13 June 2012 | Television | No Comments
и как можно не заинтересоваться таким сериалом?
He: Why? I don’t understand. Is it something I’ve done?
She: Look, it’s just not gonna work, OK?
He: Five years, you know? Five years!
She: I… I was drunk.
сам себе режиссер
12 June 2012 | Apple, Facebook, Lifeform, Twitter | No Comments
меткое наблюдение:
Why read about someone else when you could write about yourself? Soon the “Tap to post” to Facebook and Twitter buttons announced at WWDC today will appear in iOS and OS X Mountain Lion’s Notifications centers so you’ll always be just a swipe away from sharing. But that means you won’t have to visit Facebook or Twitter where you collide with what others create, diminishing the ambient intimacy they offer and turning them into ego-driven broadcast channels.
By divorcing the composer from the content, sharing starts to feel like shouting into a black hole. So thanks a lot, Apple. You’re so bad at social you might actually be making us more anti-social.
мне только непонятно слово “might”.
hideous things
12 June 2012 | Cinematograph, Literature, Religion | No Comments
возвращаясь к Лавкрафту, посмотрел документальный “Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown” (не то, чтобы откровение, но все равно мило) и волшебный художественный “The Whisperer in Darkness”, изящная стилизация одного из самых любимых рассказов, очень трогательная.
а вот, кстати, и сам Мискатоникский университет; чудесный абсолютно.
Michael, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel
12 June 2012 | Apple, Facebook, Google, The Great Game | No Comments
итак, Apple выпустила собственные карты и систему навигации, а так же поставила на Facebook:
iOS 6 offers the “tap to post” option directly from iOS 6, and sharing from Photos, Safari, Maps and other applications. Apple has also added Facebook messages to its address book and Facebook events to its calendar app. Across mobile and desktop, the App Store now includes Like buttons so users can see which apps, music, movies and shows their friends Like. Game Center will import friends from Facebook, though it’s unclear whether Game Center Challenges will work for cross-platform Facebook-mobile games.
<...>
[О]n OSX Mountain Lion <...> Facebook sharing will be supported in Safari, Notes, PhotoBooth and iPhoto, according to Apple’s website. OS X also adds users’ Facebook friends and profile photos to Contacts. Facebook notifications show up in Notification Center, and users can update their status from there.
The integration that will come with this fall’s release of iOS 6 will deliver boat-loads of content to Facebook that will draw people to its news feed that it monetizes with ads. Data about App Store Likes will also be lucrative for powering ad targeting. As I detailed yesterday, since iOS apps are now Open Graph objects with Like buttons, people who’ve Liked them can be targeted with ads. Developers may be willing to pay high premiums to target ads to users of similar apps or ones by their competitors.
Apple meanwhile gets a more seamless user experience where people don’t have to do tons of copying, app switching, and pasting to share with friends. It will also rake in sales from referral traffic driven by stories linking to iTunes and the App Store.
кроме того, Facebook, полагаю, не прийдется делать свой телефон — зачем, если доступен самый популярный. где, к тому же, еще и хранятся миллионы наших кредиток в запасниках iTunes Store.
звучит тревожно, не правда ли?
как бы там ни было, однако главная мысль этой презентации направлена в иную сторону: Apple сделает все, что только можно, воеже лишить Google пользовательских данных и забрать, тем самым, рекламные доходы — реклама суть нефть интернета, за нее они и будут драться. сегодня это карты и плевок в сторону Google+, а завтра?
astonishing depravity
11 June 2012 | Biology, Culturology, Geography, History | No Comments
а вот снова о любви — краткое содержание статьи доктора Джорджа Мюррея Левика из (той самой) Северной партии Роберта Скотта:
A previously unpublished four-page pamphlet by Dr. George Murray Levick R.N. (1876–1956) on the ‘Sexual habits of the Adélie penguin’ was recently rediscovered at the Natural History Museum (NHM) at Tring. It was printed in 1915 but declined for publication with the official expedition reports. The account, based upon Levick’s detailed field observations at Cape Adare (71°18′S, 170°09′E) during the course of the British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition 1910, commented on frequency of sexual activity, autoerotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of young unpaired males and females including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, non-procreative sex and homosexual behaviour. His observations were however accurate, valid and, with the benefit of hindsight, deserving of publication. Here we publish the pamphlet in its entirety, reinterpret selected observations and comment on its significance as a forgotten work by the pioneer of research on Adélie penguin Pygoscelis adeliae (Hombron and Jacquinot 1841) biology.
это он еще в английской частной школе не учился. но все равно увлекательный анторпологический срез.
via.
twilight man
11 June 2012 | Culturology, Music | 1 Comment
Love is one of those words whose meaning is seen as absolute and universal, yet there are more varieties of love than there are different factions of Christianity. As most people define it, I’d say it’s lust diluted with sentimentality. I have nothing against lust or sentimentality per se, but they aren’t a particularly winning combination.
все так и есть.