Found Objects

Misc. links Jan 15th - Feb 15th

This article, The Rise of the New Groupthink, does much to explain why I need my own office, and why I hate brainstorming meetings. ¶

Slavoj Zizek writes about The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie. ¶

The Scale of the Universe 2 is an interactive Powers of Ten. ¶

EUscreen is an archive of free videos from a number of Europe’s public TV broadcasters. Portuguese RTP is conspicously absent - after all, our state broadcaster is notorious for its expensive and thoroughly copyrighted archives, despite being funded by taxpayers (our government does intend to fix this, though, by privatizing all this publicly-funded heritage as prescribed by the neoliberal zeitgeist, rather than giving free access to the archives to those who paid for them - for that would be Socialism, and therefore evil). ¶

It seems an English plainclothes police officer was running after himself for a while after being mistaken for a burglar by the CCTV operator. The whole incident has ‘idea for short film’ written all over it. ¶

Here are recipes for ‘old-school Instagram filters’. Meaning: how to take analog photos that look like those digital photos that look analog… I think I’ll have an headache. No wonder I’m more interested in messing with JPEGs. ¶

GIF: A Technical History is quite an interesting and accessible post about that nasty but cute, little image format that won’t go away. ¶

David Bordwell’s analysis of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is something I recommend you read if you’ve seen the film. I’ve found it great and demanding like a very fragile but precise piece of clockwork. It’s unfortunate we spectators aren’t used to stories this intricate told in such an economical fashion. I’d like more of this, please. ¶

Lists of Note lists lists. Of note. ¶

Rob Bechizza’s Mixtape of the Lost Decade. A pop history of the phantom decade between the 1970s and the 1980s. Which explains a lot, even if it’d mean I would now be on my forties. ¶

On Goals Scored, a blog about great football (soccer) infographics. Football for nerds, yay! ¶

musicForProgramming(); has a few cool ambient mixtapes that are quite good for all kinds of work that require focus (and not just computer programming). ¶