Disconnected

Hello dear visitor, thanks for dropping by. I haven't been able to update my blog lately.
Since 3 days I'm without internet-connection and before that I only had a connection through dialup. I hope to have a dsl-connection again soon.
In the Netherlands where I live you need a phoneline connected by the former state-owned phonecompany who had a monopoly for a long time, to get a dsl-connection, in most cases.
Recently ther are more offers that can do without the phoneline, but not many companies have a network that covers the whole country.
As a web-addict I miss the daily browsing, listening to podcasts online, or downloading them, working on my websites, chatting with friends.
And of course I'm missing some of the hype and buzz going on on the web.

I hope to be able to post some more interesting news here soon, so don't forget to come back now and then!

Hurricane Katrina blogging

Quickly after the hurricane Katrina disaster bloggers started posting messages and photos to the web and special web-pages were set-up for exchanging information.
People who live or happen to be in the disaster-area tell first-hand stories, show photos of the scene, or give practical information like maps, lists of survivors.

Metroblogging New Orleans

A list of where people are and how to contact them

The Hurricane Katrina photo pool (flickr)

Hurricane Katrina disaster

After hurricane Katrina another disaster struck the south of the US: inaction and incompetence of the authorities.

FEMA, the federal emergency agency is doing press-conferences while people are dying, governors keep saying military troops are send in for rescue operations and to restore order,
so where are these troops hiding? Thugs are ruling the city with weapons they looted from the supermarket, a New Orleans police office had to protect itself against them with snipers, 20 percent of police officers didn't show up for duty in New Orleans. What is this? Some third world country?

Listen to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, fed up with slow response (CNN-webpage), interviewed by WWL Radio

In the meantime thousands of people are still trapped in alarming conditions in hospitals, elderly homes, churches, and dying like animals....And many are still missing.

I'm afraid there's a cynical, racial issue playing a part in this inaction: most of the victims are black and poor.....not very interesting for politicians to care for.....

Personal Digital Visuals

Nowadays there are many tools to digitally visualise your life, your environment and happenings and make it public.
You can put your home-movies on your web-site, or post your camera-phone photos to a online photo-album, or use tools that create maps, satellite or 3d-images to show where you are, or have been.

At the photo-site flickr.com you can see a daily refreshed collection of photos tagged 'burning man', which are posted from the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

The Google Earth tool is used to create a movie of a fly by Seattle tour, combined computer-generated images with live video. With Google maps it is possible to visualise a tour through a city or a marathon course.

Space, Man!

Damage discovery
The Shuttle has been launched to space again, it connected to the spacestation (ISS), you can watch the live or recorded videos on NASA TV (wmp/real), but there was a nasty discovery: (small) damage to the heatshield. Which on a larger scale caused the fatal crash of a shuttle returning to earth.
Let's hope this crew gets home safely.

Update!
One of the astronauts onboard the shuttle, Steve Robinson, has recorded the first podcast from space
Update 2!
The shuttle landed safely this morning, Tuesday, August 9 2005, at Edwards Air Force Base in California!

More space-related stuff
- Google has made a photomap of the moon on which you can see the landingspots of the Apollo- missions,
- You can see Quicktime VR panoramas of the Apollo 11-17 missions to the moon,
- a 10th planet (or is it not a planet?), larger than Pluto, has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system.

Revenge Of The Nerds

Many manufacturers of hardware and software produce stuff that is crippled in it's use and with locked features, like mp3-players that only cooperate with certain software or os's. They don't want the customer to use it as freely as the custumer wants it.
But there are clever nerds, who use their creative talents to liberate those products from their chains, so users, who paid for a fully-functional item, can fully enjoy it.
Sometimes these 'hackers' go even further and turn something in a completely different thing, with funny results.
There are special websites dedicated to this and 'Hackaday' is one of them
hack a day - www.hackaday.com _

Freedom for all!

Update about Claude Lelouch movie

On Januari 10, this year, I posted an article about a short movie by the French director Claude Lelouch, called 'Rendezvous', showing a rollercoaster ride through Paris (France) in the nineteen-seventies, by a guy on the way to a meeting with his girl.
The link to the movie-file in that post appears to be dead, as I found out at Michael Meiser's blog. But there is another place where you can find it, in a much smaller size.

There are also some other interesting articles to be found about this movie that has a "cult" status: one is a review on a site about cult films, and another is an excerpt from a biography of Claude Lelouch about the movie (in french).

Institute for Backup Trauma

John Cleese fans, here's a tip for you!

He's a doctor in "Institute for Backup Trauma", an ad for backup software.
It's about traumas caused by backup troubles with oldfashioned tapes, and it's really funny

Institute for Backup Trauma

Al Green - Minister of Soul

He did it again. My all time favorite music artist Al Green, the master of spiritual soul with the golden voice, has released a new album, Everything's OK. This album is much more than ok.

Listen here: http://www.bluenote.com/algreenplayer/ if you need to be convinced.
The New York Times has a meaningful article about him and the album:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/arts/music/19gree.html

With A Little Help From Her Friends

Lately I heard on Wholewheatradio about Mary Travers, of the Peter Paul & Mary folk-group. She's suffering from leukemia and is hopefully getting a bone marrow transplant in the New York hospital where she'll be for 6 weeks or more.
Let's all help her get through this, even if you don't know her. That would be a good use of the internet, to get people from all over the world to join for a good cause.
Forget your selfish thoughts to blog about for a moment and help a lady in distress.

You can do this by sending her 'get well' wishes, something to cheer her up, to the special email-address getwellmary@aol.com. Let's hear it for the girl!

The Place Where I Live

Hello visitors,

I posted some pictures of my home to my photo-album site,
so if your interested in where and how I live, take a look.

The Place Where I Live - a photoset on Flickr

IPod very popular at Microsoft

About two thirds of the Microsoft employees seem to be using Apple's iPod instead of audioplayers supported by Microsoft software. This worries the MS management a lot.

Hilarious, isn't it?!

Wired News: Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill

About arty

I've set up a new weblog about art (link below) which is a temporary tryout at Typepad, for about 3 months. You might find some interesting articles there, so take a look!

arty

Update: my typepad weblog (tryout) has expired. I've put the articles on a new page at my art site: http://www.geocities.com/pyhoo5/arty_tp.html

Funnie Movie-clips

Today I found two short movie-clips, both commercials, but the one for VW is a fake I believe.
I read somewhere on the internet that VW is going to take action against the maker/publisher.
The other one for John West (well-known for canned fish) is quite hilarious.

Here are the links: http://www.mikesimon.com/funny/bear.mpeg
and: http://www.student.kun.nl/h.huijbers/pics/VW_20_b3.mov

My new geocities website about my art

This evening I've set up a new website to show some of my artworks and info about me as an artist.

Have a look at my computer art, drawings and photos.

Patrick and his Art

The World Wide Panorama

You can have a look at the landscapes and monuments of the world on the website referred below. It shows Quicktime VR panorama (360 degrees) pictures in which you can move up and down and all around.

The World Wide Panorama

Macworld San Francisco 2005 Expo Keynote

Steve Jobs, still going strong after his cancer treatment, presented some great new Apple stuff at the MacWorld that's going on in San Francisco these days. I don't want to advertise for some company, but you got to admire those clever guys, who know so well how to make a computer more fun and ideal for creative people. The Mac Mini, the new computer that is not much bigger than a discman, the new iLife software with amazing features like High Definition movie editing, the iPod Shuffle, an mp3-player with the size of a lighter, and much more...
What a difference with Microsoft, Steve Balmer at their presentation yelling like a lunatic about some new dull features in dull software like Word and calling mp3 users thieves. Bill Gates saying free content makers and promotors (webloggers, podcasters) are commies. They don't like things they can't control and make big money with. First they should finally fix those mayor security holes in their crappy operatingsystem. This mediacenter thing is so dull too, tv watching on your computer, wow some invention?!


Apple - QuickTime - Macworld San Francisco 2005 Expo Keynote

Amazing movie of Claude Lelouch

On the website http://audio.weblogs.com/ I found a link to an amazing movie, made by the famous French director Claude Lelouch, that shows a very fast motorcycle-ride through Paris, France. Someone in a hurry to a date (rendezvous), probably filmed in the seventies.
You don't see the motorcycle itself, it's like you sit on the front of it.
The driver doesn't seem to care about other traffic and ignores several red traffic lights.
You expect an accident might happen. You're in the middle of the action.

millerlife.net � General

12/14/2004
Vroom!

And yall say I drive fast? warning… large avi file

See update!

Mega-tsunami

A much bigger tsunami than the one that hit Asia last Christmas could hit the U.S. and the Caribbean islands in the future.
Scientists from the States and from Europe are convinced that not only a earthquake, but also a landslide into the sea caused by the eruption of a volcano, could create a huge tsunami of up to 150 meters high. These could overflow 20 kilometers of land.
Eruptions of, for example, the Kraketau and volcanos on Hawaii have caused tsunamis in the previous century and the Cubre de Diega volcano, on the Canary island La Palma, could cause a enormous wave if a new eruption would let it fall apart even further after the previous one (1949).
But this catastrophe will be preceded by clear signs, so there will be some time to evacuate.

Just letting you know.

Happy New Year!