StumbleUpon | LifeHacker's blog posts

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/26874574/

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 04:57:04 -0700

Pure:dyne Discussion on Netbehaviour.

Marc invited two team members of the GOTO10 collective, Heather Corcoran and Aymeric Mansoux to discuss about pure:dyne on the Netbehaviour list - http://www.netbehaviour.org.

This fascinating and dynamic discussion took place from the October 16th - 23rd Oct 08. It was an interview, and an open discussion for anyone to be part of the dialogue if they wished. There has been minimal edits to maintain the context and processes of the discussion as they happened.

pure:dyne is a Linux distribution based on a modified core of the dyne:bolic Linux Live CD distributon. It is dedicated to live audiovisual processing and streaming, and focuses largely on the Pure Data audio synthesis system, although it also includes SuperCollider, Csound as well as live video-processing systems such as Packet Forth and Fluxus. Another aspect of pure:dyne is that it is maintained by media artists for media artists. The system provides particular optimizations at the kernel and compilation level to take the most out of i686 machines for real-time audio and video. As a consequence, this operating system is well suited for live performances and art installations. The modular aspect makes it easy for artists to customize and deploy it quickly to their own project needs.

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/22783535/

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:17:11 -0700

Every Tool Became a Weapon
Talking with Yusef Komunyakaa about race and war.

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA INTERVIEWED BY TOD MARSHALL

Tod Marshall: You're working on a series of "quasi-sonnets" called "Love in the Time of War." The title implies that the poems might directly connect to our country's present conflict.

Yusef Komunyakaa: "Love in the Time of War" is the first section of my forthcoming book, Warhorses. The first poem in this sequence is about weaponry, and the first phrase in it is "The jawbone of an ass," echoing the biblical history of human warfare. And, yes, our involvement in Iraq is central; that was perhaps what initially triggered the need to write Warhorses, but I think this collection addresses multiple dimensions of the history of war.

more...
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/feature.html?id=181387

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/22782599/

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:24:21 -0700

What does it mean to be an Open Source author?

A story from the inside
Laurent Cohen .

I hear daily about open source projects, the open source business model, what it means in terms of freedom, choice, risks, investment, etc... What I rarely hear about is what is life like for those who actually contribute and dedicate a part of their life to open source?

I do not pretend to understand how it is for most open source contributors, or even that there are patterns to understand. However I do believe that there are stories worth telling. Here is mine, I'll let you appreciate ... or not :)

First, the project is called JPPF (Java Parallel Processing Framework) and that's all I'm going to say about it. This article is not about the project itself, but about the difference it makes and the impact it has in people's lives, including mine.

more...
http://www.jroller.com/jppf/entry/what_does_it_mean_to

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/9485158/

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:56:22 -0700

Sentences on Conceptual Art

by Sol Lewitt

1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
4. Formal art is essentially rational.
5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
7. The artist's will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
23. The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
24. Perception is subjective.
25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist's mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist's concept involved the material.
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

originally from here:
http://www.altx.com/vizarts/conceptual.html

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/8929255/

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:02:30 -0700

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/8928890/

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:38:39 -0700

I have changed my main image because it felt a bit strange having my own image up there, so I have uploaded a drawing in its place - hope you like it :-)

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/8833588/

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:08:48 -0700

Beautiful Lie.

Oh thy self deception is beautiful
it is beautiful - and it is vulnerable
a reflection of one who is unable
to bite onto realities ever conformity
and that is beauty, simple and complicated
healthy and complacent - unsure accent
deeper than skin and akin to sadness
I feed on lies - on these I believe
to deceive myself and so many others
indeed truth does stammer, next to doubt
self-lies are a backbone - life's spine
for filling, for fuelling, for filling all.
It is a nerve to heart resuscitation
a resurrection of one's need for love
that thing of which flitters, untouchable
when darkness questions our fathomable
crumbling built walls - deception rebuilds
nothing is more true than a lie

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/8313197/

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 06:07:37 -0800

Anaplasty.

anaplasty is the suppozed self

weaving continuously

changing

conforming to the temporal non-static process

mutation is not mutilation

it is reinvention - new cells retrace the old

the body before, no more

recycled is the frame we think we knew

body flesh tone - transmaterialized

atom based shifters cause the transfer

we exist and move

yet inners change the inside of us

a constant fluxuation creates a no choice integration

an emigration of psycho-place, no place no space

the body is a dipper

and others dip into that place all the time

my body is a place

it exists as a memory trace

recognition is subsumed by the mediation

now we have no place, no trace no place

plasma gushes - keeping the vessel in motion

breathing the intake, no fake

yet the mind is a liar, and so is mediation

a perpetual constant integration

amalgamation of familiars inform us

objects guide us, just like information

we lap up the haze, yes we graze, oxen munching

placid in odious conformity, no choice just a voice

lost in subsume, it consumes the voice

emotion is our freedom, formalism is our sanity

emotion is our vanity, logic is a standard

my fingers reach out there

but are still connected to me, and I see

what the world wants me to see

sucking the metaphorical glaze, it's juicy and sweet

and we always want more - hungry little children

chewing on the cud

I eat the world as it eats me

my defines are blurred by the (ex) - external

what was once seen as external, now all of me

so now I cannot see me, for I am out there

and we all share this continuum, maelstrom of uniformity

and the enormity of the larger thing which we are of

we are the world, we are the world, we are the world

poem by marc garrett (1993)

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/7722754/

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 12:12:48 -0800

Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons
Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order.

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.

The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be available to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in science-fiction films and TV shows, whose heroes fly "antimatter-powered spaceships" and do battle with "antimatter guns."

But antimatter itself isn't fiction; it actually exists and has been intensively studied by physicists since the 1930s. In a sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.

http://LifeHacker.stumbleupon.com/review/7205076/

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 20:08:12 -0800

I have just started this Stumble thang and will add more goodies as time goes by. Loking forward to yet another interesting and dynamic year ahead. Quite worried about the global warming and how pathetic our governments are, and the result of the wars that they have stupidly created. We are living in dark times and I hope that things get better for everyone on this planet soon...