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HD video comes to digital SLRs – filmmaking revolution on the way?

It seems that only last month Nikon announced the D90, a digital single-lens-reflex (DSLR) camera, with the ability to shoot high definition video. DSLR cameras have always been the most popular with consumers and there are many different models from different manufacturers, to learn more about the infamous dslr read more here. So, this new […]

Artists and critical analysis

Jon Taplin’s blog has an interesting post on “Artists & The Crowd”. I’m particularly interested in two quotes he cites in the article, by Herbert Marcuse and Marshall McLuhan.

Marcuse says:

In its refusal to accept as final the limitations imposed upon freedom and happiness by society, in its refusal to forget what can be, […]

"Rice, Death and the Dollar" at the Asia Times

Interesting article by Spengler over at the Asia Times, talking about the food crisis as a result of monetary factors.

“Rice, Death and the Dollar”

Whether or not you agree with him, his writing is certainly colorful:

The George W. Bush administration might as well have used the State Department as a set for the […]

Who's the patriot?

“In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy‘s challenge to, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,’ gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.”

This may come as a surprise: Factor military duty into […]

So, what's ITP all about?

I get to understand my environment, by making models, by asking “what’s going on here”. For what it’s worth, here’s what I make of ITP. At the end are some thoughts on what could be done differently. (This is not meant to be definitive – I might change my mind by next week.)

When you […]

American favela

The BBC has a short piece on improvised shantytowns in Los Angeles, set up by people who have lost their homes in the subprime mortgage collapse.

These people aren’t junkies or mental patients: these were homeowners a few months ago! If you listen to the piece, a lot of them lost their homes, not specifically […]

Deadly Sugar addiction harming OLPC XO laptop

I’ve had the OLPC XO laptop now for several months, and feel I understand it well enough to comment further on it. I’ve spent a lot of time working with it, and feel that it is working as well as an OLPC XO is ever going to work. I’m using a development build of the […]

Future of video cameras, today

I was in Sakuraya (a large Japanese electronics retailer) today, and saw something interesting: Of the 20 models of video camcorder that they had on sale, only 3 used DV tape. One of these was a Sony HC-7 (HDV) and the other two were from Panasonic and Canon. Every other camcorder there recorded to DVD-R […]

Back in Japan!

Arrived in Tokyo two days ago.

I was happy to see how quickly I fit right back in – my phone rang already while I was standing in the immigration line! Patterns of interpersonal interaction, vocabulary, signs, the ways of navigating the city are all different from New York, and came back to me quickly.

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Visit to the Wired Nextfest

I went to see the Wired Nextfest in New York, a tradeshow/exhibition focused around technology and the future.

Frankly, I found it a bit disturbing. The vision of the future presented is very much technology for its own sake, dominated by large corporations, and with a strong militaristic streak. There is no real attempt to […]