I’ve started a public Google calendar for tango events (milonga’s, salons) in and around Brussels. My preferred site, milonga.be has gone down, the agenda at tango.be is quite ugly (it uses frames *shiver* ), and Marisa & Oliver’s agenda cannot be exported. So I made my own:
Continue reading ‘Brussels Tango on Google Calendar’
Monthly Archive for August, 2006
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Pukkelpop festival
Pukkelpop is the last of the big summer festivals, and for me, the best. It might be the Limburg influence, something in the water, or the relaxed guidance of its founder, Chokri Mahassine, but everyone working at the festival seems to be so happy and aiming to please.
I spent most of my time there at the press lounge, in the pleasant company of Clo, Zabine, Bart, Ben, Gunther, Sylvie, Lien, Vanessa and so many others. I also received a much-too-short massage from Tamara at the Coca-Cola booth. Clo has pictures, so they’re bound to show up at some moment.
Continue reading ‘Pukkelpop 2006′
I went to the “Miami Vice” opening yesterday. It was disappointing: unnecessary, unrealistic and generally unnerving.
I had most problems with Colin Farrell as Sonny Crockett. He looked like a hillbilly with a mullet and a stuble that was beyond fashionable (Don Johnson shaved, at least). Jamie Foxx (as Ricardo Tubbs) was all muscle and almost no dialogue. Li Gong (the Chinese love interest of Sonny) only has 2 expressions (angry and tough), as does Naomi Harris (girlfriend of Tubbs) – oh no, she has a third: the expressionless I’m-in-a-coma look. The omission of Jan Hammer’s music is stupid, since it was only replaced with mediocre shit. The tone of the movie hesitates between boring and over-the-top. The lack of realism was not amusing, like it was in Kill Bill.
Some of the camera work was interesting, sometimes the lack of soundtrack was also interesting (if you’re into shot gun sounds), but overall it was a waste of time (a lot of people left the theatre during the movie). Other people might disagree, but I think the movie sucked. Michael killed one of his babies.
Interesting Flickr
Last year, when Flickr wanted to create a ranking system for its pictures, they developed an algorithm for “interestingness”.
There are lots of things that make a photo ‘interesting’ (or not) in the Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over time, as more and more fantastic photos and stories are added to Flickr.
from About Interestingness
Taking into account views, comments, notes, favorites and user reputations, it is an advanced wisdom-of-the-crowds long-tail recommendation engine. The exact formula is unknown and the indivual ‘interestingness’ score of a photo cannot be displayed. Just like with Google PageRank, people try to guess how it works internally.
Continue reading ‘“Interestingness” for Google web search’
Just a thought I had:
if the “rule of thirds” is so effective for photo composition, could it also be used to create more pleasing Powerpoint presentation designs?
An example of the layout dimensions could be like this (don’t focus on the boring picture/font, just the relative placement):
Well, it has been recently discussed on Presentation Zen, with some really nice pictures. However, judging by the standard templates in Powerpoint, the people at the ‘Microsoft Office Powerpoint’ team are not yet aware of this rule and other design principles.
Keep in mind, this is just a tiny make-up aspect of a presentation. There are more important issues like, … erm, content:
Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won’t make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.
from Powerpoint is evil
and
* Use a lot of slides. Change them rapidly.
* The slides go with the words–they aren’t just there as backdrops.
* The slides are NOT the words. They represent the idea you’re talking about, either directly or emotionally.
from Kathy Sierra
I had an interesting discussion some days ago: will the iPods move to more storage (e.g. the Terabyte iPod) or more bandwidth (Bluetooth, EDGE, Wifi). Let me sketch what those two scenarios for the future iPod look like:
2009 iPod as personal media storage
That new iPod ‘3D’ might not be much bigger than the current 60GB iPod video, but it has a better 16:9 screen, and way more storage. It ships with a 500GB Flash card that is replaceable. You typically buy more storage cards: 1 for all your music, 1 for essential movies (with that Hitchcock and Tarantino collection), 1 for TV series (one season is around 15GB) and fill them up from your 50TB home media set-up.
The sleek white player has wireless USB and uses wireless battery reload (with magnetic holder) so you don’t need a cable for anything. Your 5.1 headphones: wireless. Copying from that 50TB iTunes/Tivo media station: wireless. Hooking it up to an HD-TV: wireless. Sure, it has Gigabit Wifi too (which is really only around 250Mbps, but we’re used to that from the 802.11 guys), but not everyone uses that yet, certainly not in that Ardennes village where you booked that small hotel for your “24″ marathon (12 seasons, who would have thought? Thank god for the 2x hi-speed viewing mode).
It can obviously play the new “3HD” (3-dimensions) standard, which is really neat if you have one of those new holographic projectors. If you have subscribed to the (rather expensive) iTunes ‘Premium Hollywood’ service, you get all new movies on your iPod at the same moment when they are released in the cinemas. You only get them at consumer-grade HD resolution (2048×1080 – looks OK on that 50″ screen), not at the new DCI 8K standard for movie theatres (8192×4320 with HDR) but who’s complaining.
2009 iPod as personal media receiver
When on holiday, one can kill time solving Sudoku puzzles. When one has done a dozen of those puzzles and one happens to have a wandering mind like mine, one starts wondering how those Sudoku challenges are created, and if it would be possible to describe an algorithm that can make such a scarcely filled-in 9-by-9 grid. Some sunny hours later one has a system that might work (I haven’t implemented it fully yet). For my future reference: here’s how I would do it.
REMARK: this algorithm is quite logical and as such, I seriously doubt I would be the first one to think of it. I can imagine that Sudoku puzzles are already made by the hundreds with a program that uses this or a quite similar system. I’m not claiming it’s an original ‘invention’, just a fun problem to tackle.
Step 1: take a good root grid
Let’s start with an completely valid Sudoku filled-in grid. Any one would do, I take the one that has 1-2-…-9 in the top row, and in the top left 3×3 square:
Continue reading ‘A Sudoku challenge generator’
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