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The importance of making things (1)

In the current world economic crisis, it seems quite obvious that countries that make original things, from idea to final product, are the countries with the least problems.

In making, we also need to include food.

a morph between an image of Planet Earth and a typical pizza.

Consider what you have eaten today. From where in the world did the food come from? It would be interesting to consider if every packet with a “frozen dinner” in supermarkets had a map of where all it’s components originated and how it travelled to get to you. Perhaps there should also be a number, how many kilometres it travelled to get to you.

Have you ever considered how much land it takes to produce the food to sustain you for one year? Some say that in Ireland in the 19th century, 0.5 acres (0.2 hectares) would be sufficient to grow potatoes for 8 people, assuming that they also had some chickens, perhaps a pig, and a cow grazing on common land. With a modern, more balanced, diet, you probably need about 1 acre per person, or, 8 acres (3.2 hectares) for 8 people.

And, if you grow and make your own food, you have to do all the work. No need for any gym.

New (Irish) Dictionary

dead christmas tree

Arab Spring – a novel elastic form of democracy, originally developed in North Africa. It’ll never work in Ireland due to scattered showers and sunny spells.

Bailout – letting perpetrators get away while asking for more. Cf. dig-out, whip-around.

Billion – something you have never had but that you now have to pay to someone you don’t owe.

Bonus – an absurd amount of money paid to laid-off politicians, bankers, quango board members and higher civil servants in return for amnesia.

Crisis – what politicians and bankers experience when realising that their goal (making themselves richer) is not congruent with the goals of the general public.

Deficit – the current measure of trust in authority.

Haircut – a bald move, if succesful.

Household charge – the amount of electricity it takes to charge a mobile phone.

NAMA – an Irish nonsense word (cf. Bla bla bla), used for explaining all unmentionable things, avoiding truth (a.k.a. lying) and as a motivation for all kinds of unreasonable an irrational political decisions.

Occupation – reclaiming what is already ours.

Trolley – a major attraction in Irish hospitals. To be placed on a trolley makes you realise you’ve been taken for a ride, for years.

…to be continued…

Trust

You can always trust bankers. They will make you pay, one way or the other. Even if you’re loosing your home in the process or if you can’t afford food or health care, rest assured that the bankers can be trusted to bleed you dry until your withering bones are dry and disintegrate in the cold wind.

You can always trust politicians. They will lie to you to get you to vote for them to allow them to rip you off to enrich themselves while reducing your freedom and your rights, to make you more controllable and docile.

You can always trust a bookie, oh….

Whatyoumaycallitron v0.1

A first sketch of a new custom controller.

  • Sliders fading up and down
  • Knobs for turning
  • Cranks for turning
  • Buttons for activation – perhaps with aftertouch (force sensitive)
  • Switches for turning things on or off.
  • Wheels for turning
  • Squishy things for squeezing

USB i/o, perhaps using OSC protocol.

Build in a flight case.

controller sketch

The fluffy fecalities of marketing

I was walking up and down the aisles in the local shopping emporium the other day, carefully comparing prices and quality of things. I cannot for my life understand why so many different kinds of soap, tooth paste and toilet paper are needed or wanted. The latter category is really absurd. While it might be nice to be gentle to oneself, I find the associations used by marketeers utterly crazy. Who the hell wants to wipe their bum with a rabbit, puppy, small bear or kitten? Does the butterfly brand provide a particular fluttering tickle when used?

And why are most of them marked with “New Improved”? It’s toilet tissue!

12 years

This afternoon, I finally handed over the Course Directorship for UL‘s Masters in Interactive Media to my colleague Cristiano Storni. It’s been 12 long and exciting years with between 10 and 17 graduates per year. We now have graduates in many different countries around the world, at work ranging from teaching to new start-up companies to the usual multinationals.

It’s also about 14 years ago we started to discuss the need for a postgraduate course like this. It’s amazing how quickly time is passing, as well as how technology has evolved.

An organic afternoon in Co. Clare

Our provider of organic vegetables and fruit, Stephen, had invited us to visit his farm/garden. It was a really sweet summer afternoon (after weeks of cold rain) and East Clare looked its very best and greenest as we drove up along Lough Derg to Whitegate.

Several of Stephen’s customers showed up during the afternoon and various organic foods tasted and appreciated while conversing about life, the universe and everything.
It’s amazing to see how much can be done with a piece of land. If more people engaged in this practice, Ireland’s dependence on imports would be substantially reduced, it would be better for the environment and better for all people living here.
It is time to drop the idea of ornamental lawns, work the land and make food.

My Collected Silences

I’ve been using the excellent site and apps Audioboo for a couple of years. While other Audioboo makers provide stories, music, guiding, journalism or audio-blogs, I think all my Audioboo podcasts are SILENT.

This is an issue I’ve been thinking about for many years. In the mid-1960’s I read Heinrich Böll‘s story “Murke’s Collected Silences” and at that time I was fiddling with reel-to-reel tape-recorders, microphones, and in general exploring different perspectives of sound. Inspiration!

There are so many different forms of silence. A silence can be really quiet and peaceful, it can be really loud (I consider this silence as well, as you can’t have any purposeful or useful communication).

My Audioboos are available at the Audioboo site, and now also via iTunes podcasts.

Enjoy the silences!

Facebook getting worse

Over the past few days I have noticed that even without having a browser window or tab with Facebook open, suddenly you get a pop-up warning that the browser cannot authenticate Facebook.com over a https connection. I find this quite alarming as this implies that either, some spyware that I haven’t identified and zapped yet has come onboard the computers in question, or, that Facebook are leaving some extraordinary crap behind until you close and restart your browser, or, that other web sites are trying to exploit security holes in Facebook.

Computers used: MacBook Pro/OSX 10.5.8 and iPad (version1) iOS 4.3.3
Browsers: Safari and Firefox.

Is anybody else noticing this?

(Why OSX 10.5: it’s what I have on one of my machines. I haven’t tested this on 10.6 etc yet)

Weekend with Art, hacking, art and brains

Friday evening, we went to see the Old Irish Radio Show at The Loft @ The Locke. It was an interesting and entertaining take on how radio used to be in Ireland. Great venue!

Saturday started with 3Dcamp at UL with a number of interesting talks and demos.

I had to leave during the afternoon for a while as the Limerick School of Art and Design opened their end-of-year show.

I only had time to see about half of the exhibition and will have to get back there again during the coming week.

After this, back to UL for Prof. William O’Connor‘s highly stimulating talk about “Is the Internet changing your brain?”.