A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff.
“In case you haven’t been paying attention…” here is Slate’s pleasant recap of the Democratic Primary in a mere 8 and 1/2 minutes 7 minutes.
I find it hard enough paying close attention to my own country’s politics, but this recap is nice because it succinctly summarizes the highlights of the race so far.
A classic SNL moment: Chris Farley interviews Paul McCartney.
Last month the New Yorker held it’s annual conference: Stories from the Near Future. They’ve setup a videocast for the talks. Below is the video of Malcolm Gladwell speaking about innovation, genius, and the mismatch problem in his talk, Reinventing Invention.
See Reinventing Invention in pristine MP4 format.
I’ve played around in the open source 3D modelling software Blender a little bit. It may not be as fancy as the retail software on the market today, but if you compare it with versions of Maya or MAX from just a few years ago, it blows them out of the water.
A team of creative folks used the free software to make a short animated cartoon, Big Buck Bunny. They were funded by Blender foundation support and pre-orders of the DVD by the Blender community.
It’s licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, so it’s free to watch and distribute so long as the credits are attached. Theoretically you could even download the source files, remix the movie and then sell it for a profit. Here is the original movie via YouTube:
Watch Big Buck Bunny now on YouTube or one of the many other official viewing options.
I’m off to Drayton Valley to visit my sister and her family. She’s got three of the cutest kids imaginable:
In the meantime, posting may be sporadic, but I’ll be back soon.
My friends, Dave and April, were married on Saturday. I was lucky enough to be along with the wedding party and take a few candids at the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden in Lethbridge.
Here’s one of mine catching the official photographer in action:
LETHBRIDGE – 31 MAY 2008, David Logue and April (Matise) Logue pose for wedding photos in Lethbridge’s Japanese Garden.
It’s a great place to take photos; I highly recommend it.
As a former magician myself, I don’t believe in telling how the trick is done, but in this particular case the spoiler doesn’t just reveal how it’s done but is the actual trick.
Watch carefully.
[Colour Changing Card Trick – YouTube]
Displacements is an immersive film installation by Michael Naimark. He first filmed three people interacting in a typical Americana living room. Then the space and objects were painted white. The camera was replaced with a projector putting the action and colour back into the room with just light. The results are surreal.
Displacements is an immersive film installation. An archetypal Americana living room was installed in an exhibition space. Then two performers were filmed in the space using a 16mm motion picture camera on a slowly rotating turntable in the room’s center. After filming, the camera was replaced with a film loop projector and the entire contents of the room were spray-painted white. The reason was to make a projection screen the right shape for projecting everything back onto itself. The result was that everything appears strikingly 3D, except for the people, who of course weren’t spray-paint white, and consequently appeared very ghostlike and unreal.
Unfortunately the video linked from Vimeo has been taken down, but you’ll find a video in the link above.
This is a video of four people driving along a Saudi Arabian road with three of them outside the car doing what what appears to be sliding on concrete wearing nothing special on their feet.
[Only in Saudi Arabia – YouTube]
I received an email this morning outlining the Canadian Governments efforts to overturn the protection of free flowing rivers in Canada. As it stands now, the law in Canada protects the public right of navigation in Canadian waters and has done so since 1882—the right to navigate waterways in Canada is a tradition that pre-dates the beginning of our country.
In particular, Merv Tweeds of Brandon-Souris has headed up the cause for selling out on Canada’s natural resources. From his website:
Tweed leads the way to change waterway act
BRANDON — March 13, 2008 – Merv Tweed, Member of Parliament for Brandon-Souris, is leading the review to make critical and long-overdue changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act.
“This act controls every waterway in Canada, no matter how small, and has caused significant delay in the approval of new infrastructure,” said Tweed.
The Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities Committee, which Tweed chairs, will review the act and will be tabling a report on the findings and recommendations for change in June.
“I believe that refocusing the act will provide a more timely and predictable process for the review and approval of critical infrastructure projects,” said Tweed.
The Navigable Waters Protection Act was written in 1882 to protect the public right of navigation in Canadian waters. Unfortunately, this act does not allow for the ability to exclude anything “constructed or placed on, under, over, through or across” a navigable water, as everything may interfere with navigation to some degree.
Industry and provincial, territorial and municipal governments have, for years, been requesting changes to the NWPA to reflect current needs and respond to the increased volume and variety of uses of Canada’s waterways.
The existing backlog of approvals is impeding economic growth and the timely development and refurbishment of critical transportation infrastructure that, in turn, has the potential of creating a backlog for the implementation of projects under “Building Canada Plan”.
My favourite paragraph deserves some dissection: “Unfortunately, this act does not allow for the ability to exclude anything ‘constructed or placed on, under, over, through or across’ a navigable water, as everything may interfere with navigation to some degree.” So what he’s trying to say is, it’s unfortunate that the law protects the public right of navigation because we want to imped that right.
Continue reading “Navigable Waters Protection Act”