A two-minute minidocumentary about the Big Bang. Personally, it’s thrilling to see the short-form science doc evolve. But seriously: magenta?
The music video for The Blow’s Parantheses has some crazy recursions in it. Especially if you are watching it embedded in a Facebook page (wait for the end). ¶
The Last Days of the Polymath. After finishing high school I took a one-year computer technology course and possibly the best thing about it was one of the instructors’ recurrent rants against overspecialization. Specialization is for insects, but it is hard to be a human nowadays… ¶
Would you rather be rich or appear rich - you kinda choose between the two, you know? Here’s a thought: After all the things that happened because people borrowed more than they afforded to, shouldn’t interest rates be higher? I mean, why should my money in the bank and in investments be worth less while people who got loans to buy private condos are partying away with the surplus of their lowered payments? ¶
Bad science story of the week: Early humans started walking upright for sex and food. Here’s a newsflash: every single living species that still lives started
A psychedelic Nigerian movie about Satan. I trully think Nollywood is closer to the future of motion pictures than Hollywood. If only those guys read the DV Rebels’ Guide. ¶
Curiosities of Locomotive Design. When I was a kid my favourite toy was an 8-shaped electrical train track, that allowed for the reenactment of awesome rail accidents. Funny how one forgets about such things.
Recently I gave an interview to a local magazine, you can read it online - my interview starts on page 12 (it’s in portuguese, obviously).
Despite the generic name and 1990s-like design this website, this survey of online video hosts is quite useful, as you can compare the embed quality and performance of different sites in a single page. I’ve been a Vimeo user for the last two years, but some things prevented from taking the plunge into a paid account (mostly the buggy player and the sleazy way the introduction of paid accounts meant the removal of features from the free ones). I also have YouTube for a few things, but again I think its player will be an iconic piece of ugly design of the noughts, and the 10 minute limit is a bore. So I wonder about Exposure Room (ugly site though) and OpenFilm…
This year’s winners include an Economics Prize awarded to the executives of Icelandic banks “for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy” and a Peace Prize awarded to the scientists of Bern, Switzerland (the city where Albert Einstein devised his Theory of Relativity, no less) who discovered full bottles of beer do less damage in a bar fight than empty ones.
I wholeheartedly agree with Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker on the main virtue of Windows: no zealots. I dislike Macs by the same reason why I’ll defend my crappy ‘95 Punto against every verbal assault. It works for me, so shut up already. (via The Null Device)
For almost a year now I have been a Facebook user. I do like the idea of social networks, and while I’m aware of the argument that those websites are actually saying “Come and join the Big Brother, it’s Fun Fun Fun!”, I’m also aware it’s eventually up to you what information you do surrender - just like in the good old Web-at-Large. And while I might not like the centralization principle and how, for instance, having a YouTube account became more important than having your own, DIY website, the truth is that centralization just became inevitable when you really think about it. The anarchic utopia of the good old, from-Geocities-to-your-own-domain Web needed good search engines to be of any use, while in fact ‘mediocre’ is too good a word to describe the best search engines out there.
So yeah, anyway: I use, and like Facebook. I often post somewhat interesting stuff there, the kind of things that don’t make the If Then Else cut (the greatest example are music videos, which risk removal from YouTube and yelding a broken link), or stuff that doesn’t make much sense unless read by friends. But since I now think it actually allows for interesting blogging and notekeeping, I’m starting This Week In Facebook, in which I’ll list some of the B-grade stuff I added to my Wall. So:
Björk’s Triumph of the Heart music video. Spike Jonze has a great touch for magical realism, in the sense of setting the bizarre in an everyday realist context. Exactly: this is that cat video. ¶
The Incredible Amazing Awesomest Apple Keynote. I won’t doubt for a second this video made the rounds among Apple fanboys as a great thing, but rest assured: my intent was purely cynical. Those guys sell sleaze. ¶
In 1993, David Fincher directed some ads for AT&T about THE FUTURE. And those turned out quite accurate, in fact THE FUTURE is actually even cooler since we got rid of all those f- ugly CRT monitors. YouTube commenters pointed out how eerie it was that such accurate predictions could be made. Except those weren’t predictions. To see something cool-for-real check out Mr. Kay. ¶
Twenty reasons you’re still single. If you read If Then Else frequently, be thankful I almost never repost the Digg fodder I happen to read sometimes. But anyway, my reasons are #2 too independent, #8, doormat nice, and #10 too shy. And #21 I post crappy lists off the Digg frontpage to Facebook for all my female contacts to see. ¶
The music video for Public Image’s Rise. You know, the Johnny Lydon not-in-the-Pistols band. I like the video, perhaps because there’s people beating mats in it. Or perhaps because I always think it’s a parody of something when I see it. I could be wrong, I could be right. ¶
As you probably know, since the 50s that most films are shot for a 1.85 or even narrower (2.2, 2.35, 2.85, etc) aspect ratio, meaning an image much wider than the 4x3 (1.33) aspect ratio of ordinary television sets. So while films on television should obviously be letterboxed (meaning the addition of black padding outside the film frame), stupid viewers everywhere (I’m sorry, there’s no other way to put it) demanded the ‘stolen’ area of their TV sets back, which gave rise to the practice of doing ‘pan and scan’ reedits of the films, with the frames (and many times the actual editing) readjusted for 4x3 screens.
I absolutely hate watching pan-and-scan films. You keep all of your TV set’s pixels in use and instead it’s the actual film that’s being stolen (as if advertising breaks weren’t annoying enough). This video pretty much explains it all.
It’s an interesting reminder, even though nothing on this list is new. You should never ask for well-done meat in restaurants, and the same goes for being careful in those joints where they pepper your steaks - basic tricks in hiding bad meat. There’s also another cheap trick they haven’t mentioned, which is done in almost every ‘better’ restaurant - using a salt ‘bed’ to tenderize the meat.
Maria, which I have known for what feels like my entire life and is the coolest friend in the Universe, turns twenty-five today. Happy B’day girl!
Google recently unveiled Street View for both Porto and Lisbon. Privacy concerns apart (I actually believe Street View fits nicely in a discussion of photographers’ rights, in which my personal view is that public spaces are precisely that - public), I think Street View might actually be quite an interesting tool for scouting locations for indie films. Of course, it’s insane to go shoot somewhere without checking it out for yourself first, but SV does allow me to see if there are interesting streets worth a visit in person, besides being very useful in checking out details that might have been missed.
I take pride in trying to know as many places here in Porto as I can, but a certain shyness of taking the camera to the streets prevents me from being less conservative in the street locations I choose for my short films. I always try to be aware of lighting conditions, parking, and the residents’ nosiness towards people with video cameras (to prevent the type of situation which really ruins my day, such as having an actor giving a great performance while some old bastard across the street decides to stop and stare at the camera). Shame that Street View can’t help you with that.
In Helga Steppan’s All My Things, the artist sorts her belongings by color. A fun project idea for the next time I decide to indulge in an obsessive-compulsive weekend activity. (via VVORK)
I’ve watched the entire series of Tim Hunkin’s The Secret Life of Machines (page includes torrent links, you can also stream it here). Not only it is a example of really good television that is entertaining and educational, it’s also a reminder of a simpler, gentler era when TV documentaries could be concise, without all those constant “later on… but first”, “after the break…” that are the scourge of cable television documentaries. Despite being twenty years dated, SLOM does a great job at explaining the fundamental building blocks of today’s technology. When technology is deliberately mystified and made to seem like magic (I’m sick of those docs that promise to tell you How It’s Made and then just show you some assembly line without explaining much), The Secret Life of Machines may very well be essential viewing.
I’ll now watch Why Things Go Wrong, which also seems pretty interesting.
Pretty useful. Add a moon and tide calculator and a weather forecast, and it’d be the perfect photographer/filmmaker’s almanac. If on my (not fancy) cellphone.
