. verture [prik] net .

New year - new toys

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:37:08 +0100

These days, most things get posted to my chyrp-powered blog over there.

Because it's much quicker and easier.

Feed, toy, feed, I say.

The 31st is wrap-up day

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:47:17 +0100

Last day of the year, and everybody is making lists describing the best, the worst, the most unexpected, etc. etc that happened to them and in the world during these last 365 days.

I guess I could do that as well, but I won't.

I'll just say thank you, for a year so full of events that wouldn't even fit into a fairytale.

And here's to many more of those.

Happy new year!

J'ai toujours r�v� d'�tre un gangster

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:05:18 +0100

A recommendation from me, to you.

If it shows up in a cinema near you, go watch it, you'll laugh. And Bob Marley will never be the same again.

Sociable robots

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:06:59 +0100

I went to a talk this evening by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, who's the director of the Personal Robots Group at the MIT.

Her talk was centered around the sociable robots, and the research she is doing in that area. The talk was luckily devoid of much of the usual technical lingo you normally meet in talks like this, and instead it was interestingly full of all the social and psychological issues in making a robot learn how to perform tasks by watching others do it — through social learning. This, as Dr. Breazeal said, is very important if we want robots to be human, and sociable, because that's how we learn.

She showed a lot of video clips of her main project with the robot Leonardo, but also from Autom, Huggable and the mds robot, which are all reachable from the projects page of the Robots Lab at MIT.

The Q&A was good, run by a presenter from RTE (whose name escapes me), but there was the token robophobic questions about how far we are from the world of Blade Runner (which deals with genetics, and not with robotics), and what's going to stop the robots from turning against us, if we make them so clever. The answer? It's related to culture. We, in the western world, see robots as something we eventually will have to fight with. In Japan for example, robots are seen as colleagues, partners, friends, someone that you co-exist with, and which helps us do things better, and who understands us, on a human level.

That's pretty deep, and as the presenter said, he might end up marrying a robot some day, at least, if they get as good as Dr. Breazeal is working toward making them.

Useful links

Friendly Robots on PBS
Leonardo learning about buttons on YouTube

Chocolate City, and its Vanilla suburbs

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:01:56 +0100

In light of what happened yesterday, and inspired of an email I just got, stating that WFMU played Chocolate City on repeat for 3 hours yesterday, here's my contribution. Listen to this track, and listen to it well. Who wouldn't want Stevie Wonder as Minister of Fine Arts (as long as he doesn't play "I Just Called")?

They still call it the White House
But that's a temporary condition, too.
Can you dig it, CC?

Some videos for tomorrows vote

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:13:41 +0100

Saul Williams wrote An Open Letter To History:

And Dres from Black Sheep rewrote the lyrics for The Choice is Yours, to fit the purpose:

Too bad Europeans can only sit back and wait for the votes to be counted (while we watch some pretty good videos, granted).

Music links

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:07:10 +0100

Bodytonic talks to Christian Prommer about his jazz treatment of a handful of major dance tracks on Drum Lesson Vol1
MTV Music — A large catalogue of music videos. I'm sure this will become a quite popular source of music at parties, but they fail to provide Rock Me Amadeus with Falco, they only have The Sound of Music. I think that should be the litmus test of any service providing music videos. It's an adventure in 80s baroque, I'd say
Lella and Rosella's Onemoretune.ie is up and running. They have a lot of interviews with musicians playing in Dublin, check it out

3D Turntable Art

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:05:55 +0100

Using the Zoetropes principle, artist Jim Lefevre created a bunch of special 3D discs that he set spinning using an old fashioned turntable to create the illusion of 3D movement. �

I think the 1210 would be offended by being called old fashioned. But the idea is sweetly executed!

Humor and magic

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:02:19 +0100

See why Bob Marley shouldn't have acted as his own attorney, and what the whole "saving the princess"-thing did to Mario on the Seth Macfarlane Cavalcade. Actually, they are all pretty funny.

Attended a very engaging talk with Richard Wiseman last night at the Science Gallery, it was brilliant. Prof. Wiseman is a very eloquent speaker, and he showed some great optical illusions, of which I'm a great fan. One of them is the "pink dots to green" illusion. Do as it says on the tin, and you see stuff disappear, change colour, and reappear. All that, without drugs (:

He's also the man behind the colour changing card trick.

Technical issues with my contact form

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:44:41 +0200

If you have send me a message recently, through the contact form on this site, and I haven't answered you yet, then please send it again. It turns out the email-monkeys had taken a break, and mail wasn't getting through to me. Now it works, so please, with sugar on top, do send again, if I haven't responded to your message yet.

Friday edutainment

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:08:15 +0200

Ajesh Patalay has selected the 50 best art videos on YouTube:

YouTube is best known for its offbeat videos that become viral sensations. But among its millions of clips is a treasure trove of rare and fascinating arts footage, lovingly posted by fans. [...] Joy Division's TV debut, readings by Jack Kerouac, a Marlene Dietrich screen test, Madonna's first performance... and much more

So you thought Sir Mixx-a-Lot was the only one to write lyrics about that most precious asset of the female body? Think again, there's plenty of hommage for the butt out there, even if you are a soul diva. Songs about Butts That's not "Baby's Got Back" or "Shake Your Booty". via Mikkel.

Bonus points for the editor's note:

Editor�s Note: This list was not intended to be exhaustive, but if you feel we�ve excluded essential ass tracks, create your own Butt List here.

And in case you didn't know, Spain is actually the backstage room at the Brixton Academy, according to Howard Moon. Mighty Boosh shows off some of the gifts they've gotten from their kinky fans.

Little Spanish Flea

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:18:34 +0200

Tell me this doesn't make you wanna dance a little? via by chat.

More tape

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:10:14 +0200

Made another little opentape, ripples, heavily inspired by what I've been listening to over the past 3-4 months. Enjoy. You can follow the link above, or play the tracks from the player below.

Gigs of the fall

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:19:35 +0200

I did this last year as well, went completely nuts with gigs and events in the autumn. This year is no different in that regard. So many great concerts to go to, so little time to do it in.

Here's what I've got lined up so far:

Roots Manuva
Wallis Bird
Laura Izibor
Documentary on legendary Sun Ra
Milosh (He's like the one-man Canadian version of Future 3)
Daedelus + Steinski + Poets of Rhythm
?uestlove DJ Set
Nouvelle Vague
Lykke Li

Not to forget that Choice Cuts is hitting us with an alternative to the usual stale Xmas parties with soul and funk for your soul during December. Hypnotic Brass Band is playing, Sweet Charles (again), and The Sweet Vandals. Well worth checking out all of them, if you need a reason to shake your booty during December.

Unfortunately, My Morning Jacket just cancelled their show, due to Jim James being injured. Let's hope he recovers soon, so they can come to Dublin for a warm welcome.

Notes from the top of my head

jonas.voss@gmail.com (Jonas) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:25:43 +0200

Loopable gifs to spice up that clip art presentation for management, I'd like to see Sun Yuan's fake dead seniors at the reopened Saatchi Gallery, probably the best photo blog I've come across, a mixtape with music from musicians who died in 2008.