Community – Page 2

Roboexotica uprising on track

It’s the day before the big opening of the main event here in Vienna, Austria, the 10th annual Roboexotica Festival for Cocktail-Robotics. Lots of preparation action going on in the Freiraum with several of Johannes’ students collaborating on a few delightfully rude drink dispensing bots. I’m happily joined here by many bot friendly pals from the States including Bre Pettis, CTP, Kal Spelletich, Al Honig and Mitch Heinrich to name just a few, all on track with their creations. Here’s some pix to whet your appetite of the madness to come.

Community | Travel | Weird

Metelkova, autonomous art city in Slovenia

While in Ljubljana, Slovenia recently for the HAIP festival, I detoured over to the autonomous artists enclave of Metelkova and snapped some pix. Metelkova began as a squat in 1993, taking over former military buildings of the Yugoslav Army. Now it consists of a handful of buildings that are event venues, gallery spaces and nightclubs. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to take in the scene at night, though am quite happy at what I discovered by day. Check it out.

Community | Geek | Projects | San Francisco

My Ybike

A few weeks ago, this solar powered, GPS-enabled, picture taking purple cruiser bike showed up at my door. It’s one of 20 bikes that Yahoo! commissioned as an experiment by the fine folks at Uncommon Projects and are being sprinkled around the world. There are three here in San Francisco and I have one of them. Some others are in New York, Vermont, Sydney Australia, Copenhagen Denmark and Singapore. You can see the whole list on Yahoo’s Start Wearing Purple site.

The bike is an 8-speed Electra Townie equipped with a Nokia N95 cellphone that takes a photo every minute while the bike is moving. It geotags the photo and uploads to a dedicated Flickr account immediately over the cell network. The solar panels on the back sit on top of a control panel connected to a long life battery that charges while out and about in the sun. I could ride the bike across the country nonstop, though I admit I haven’t tried that yet. If for some reason the bike runs out of juice, there’s an AC plug in the control panel that will charge the whole thing up overnight.

It comes with the nicely designed cat friendly owner’s manual.

If you dig into Start Wearing Purple, you can follow my bike on these sweet maps that plot the photos posted to Flickr. Unfortunately, the site is all in Flash and I can’t link directly to maps section. You can also see maps directly through the bike’s Flickr account.

Here’s a set of photos and slideshow my bike took while riding on Chris Carlsson’s SF Bicycle History Tour which I highly recommend!

So the verdict? It’s fun to ride, is a great conversation piece and proves that you can voluntarily surveil yourself very easily. The plus side of that is if the bike is stolen I can easily track it down. So far, I haven’t had to do that. The battery does last a long time (several days) so charging is an afterthought. The initial rev of the custom software running on the N95 was a little buggy and the phone would just stop taking photos sometimes as well as not geotag some photos. I had to open up the camera housing and force a reboot to get it going again until Tarikh from Uncommon Projects stopped by and upgraded it. It’s been smooth sailing ever since.

UPDATE: The Associated Press did a little video news segment on the ybike featuring Amit Gupta, who also has one of the three bikes in SF. Note the Unamerican sticker on the side of his solar panel box, a little gift from me. 🙂

Community | Projects | Self Promotion | SRL

Gearing up for fundraiser for Todd Blair

Todd Blair, whom I’ve known since 1999 through Survival Research Labs, suffered a traumatic head injury last year at the Robodock SRL show in Amsterdam. I posted previously about it here. He’s back home in the US slowly and arduously recovering. Traumatic brain injuries are probably the worst kind of injury a human being could suffer, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. To help offset Todd’s massive medical and physical therapy bills, a fundraiser event is being held this Sunday, July 20th. It’s not just an event, but a culmination of lots of work and dedication from Todd’s friends and family with some unique creative twists.

The event on Sunday will be the unveiling of the “gear wall”. The 7′ x 8′ wall consists of 25 interlocking aluminum gears built by 25 friends and artists who have committed to raising a minimum of $500 each. I have taken on one of the gears and am currently fund raising to reach my $500 goal. If you’d like to support me and in supporting Todd, that would be super awesome. You can make a donation for as little or as much as you like through the PayPal link below. Or if you prefer to write a check, this page has details on where to send it. Be sure to mention my name when making the donation so I get credit for it. $5, $10 or $20 would be really spectacular, every little bit helps. Whether you donate or not, be sure to come out on Sunday to Rhythmix Cultural Works in Alameda for the grand unveiling of the gear wall. Thanks!! Hope to see you there.

Community | Projects | Self Promotion | Video

Help me make a film with Spike Lee and Nokia

I’ve been asked by Nokia to help with a pretty cool collaborative promotional project they’re doing with filmmaker Spike Lee. They’re encouraging people like you to use your cell phones and send in snapshots of moments from your life that fits the overall theme of HUMANITY. Spike also wants you to think of how music helps to tell the story of HUMANITY. These snapshots will be edited together into a coherent film, directed by Spike Lee himself. Well, not just himself. I’m one of five “assistant directors” who are here to help guide people in sending stuff in. As part of that, Nokia has setup a group blog for us assistants where we’ll post examples of what to submit, answer questions and help identify the pearls in the sea of submissions that are sure to flood in.

The project is broken into three Acts. The first Act BIRTH, has already come and gone. Act II is LIFE and it just opened today for submissions. Act III has yet to be announced, though it may not be too hard guess what it is. Now through July 2nd, you can submit text, pictures, music or video via the Jumpcut platform that Nokia Productions is using to build this thing. It has its limitations and the main Nokia Productions site isn’t very well integrated into the Jumpcut platform but don’t let that discourage you. As the kids say, there’s plenty of win here!

What’s really encouraged is using your crappy old cell phone to send stuff in. Take a photo or a low-res pixelated video. Do a lot with a little. This won’t be Cloverfield, but if you were being attacked by a big space monster, how would you capture it? This doesn’t mean you can’t use more pro gear. Content from any device is totally acceptable, it just needs to fit the theme of humanity in the context of music telling a story. They’ve even sent us assistants older Nokia 3555 phones to challenge us to submit stuff with low end cheap technology. No streaming N95s here! Once I figure out how to get stuff off the 3555 on to Jumpcut, I’ll post some examples to the group blog.

This NY Times article from April digs into the project a bit deeper, addressing how it fits into the greater world of social networking and “user generated content” (I really hate that term). Check the Nokia Productions site for more details and point me to anything you’ve submitted. I’d love to check out your stuff. Oh yeah, you can also win stuff.

Community | Projects | Travel | Video

Checking out Bocas del Toro, Panama

I’m in Panama, you know the country, checking out a friend’s property that he may turn into a coworking getaway. It’s pretty dope, situated amongst the tropical lazy islands of Bocas del Toro in the northwestern part of the country close to the Costa Rican border. It’s as beautiful a spot as you’d expect in the tropics and very peaceful, not overrun with tourists. Here’s a quick video I threw together of getting there:

And I’ve been taking tons of photos. Feel free to peruse the set on Flickr.

Community | San Francisco | SRL

Two Great Benefits for Two Great People

This weekend there are two fundraiser events for two amazing friends of mine who’ve each had their more than fair share of hard times the past few months. The first event is Friday evening for Amy Woloszyn, who was nearly killed by a drunk driver while riding home on her bicycle in San Francisco. She sustained a lot of injuries and has no health insurance which means insane medical bills. To make matters worse, this is the second time this has happened to her on San Francisco’s streets. She’s a safe rider, an amazing artist, a passionate beautiful human being and doesn’t deserve the ugliness that the mean streets have foisted on her. She has a blog chronicling her ordeal which she is able to update regularly. Amy’s event is at Balazo Gallery, Friday the 30th starting at 6pm.

Todd Blair is a friend whom I met in 1999 while working on an SRL show in Tokyo. He’s one of the nicest and most giving human beings in the world and it is utterly heartbreaking the trauma he’s going through. He sustained massive head injuries while loading out the most recent SRL show in Amsterdam (I wasn’t there for that one). He is still in an Amsterdam hospital two months later slowly recovering as he battle complications. His love Alex is there by his side and constantly updating his blog with the daily ups and downs he’s had two endure since the accident. Todd’s fundraiser will be an amazing show of love and support from friends and artists at Somarts Gallery on Saturday, November 1st beginning at 8pm. I’m really bummed that I’ll be out of town and not be able to make either of these.

Damn zombies back again!

It seems as though the Double L gyroscopic undead attractor was activated last night which led to countless zombies converging on the San Francisco library where a debate among mayoral candidates was taking place. One mayoral candidate didn’t make it out alive. Chicken John Rinaldi was captured and turned into a zombie as this footage indicates. Best to stay away from the west coast of the US at all costs.

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Community | San Francisco | Weird

Perry Farrell, I love you man!

Today was one of those karmically awesome days where good things happen, just because! I was lucky enough to see Perry Farrell and Satellite Party rock out today. Twice! For free! Thanks to Corey’s tweet, I stumbled across this scene outside the Virgin Megastore in SF today. Perry and the band were doing a little street gig, complete with little mini portable amps and snare drums. I only caught the last couple of songs, Porno for Pyro’s Tahitian Moon and Jane’s Been Caught Stealing with Perry being all whimsical grabbing people’s hats and one dude’s mega iced Starbucks drink. There couldn’t have been more than 30 people not including the band.

After the awesomeness went quiet, I walked up to Perry’s beautiful wife Etty and it went something like this: Do you know if the show tonight is sold out? It isn’t, would you like to go? I’d love to go! I can put you on the guest list? That would be awesome, are you serious? I love you!!

It’s weird, over the years I’ve had several random occasions to bump into Perry and I’d always tell my pal Carlton about them. So I called him and put Perry on the line. It went something like: Hey this is Perry Farrell and I’m standing on Market street with your friend… what’s your name? Eddie… who looks like a nice enough guy. Hi!

Sure enough, Etty didn’t disappoint and neither did Jane’s Addiction, I mean Satellite Party. Third song in was Mountain Song and before the night was out they had ripped through most of my Jane’s faves: Stop!, Been Caught Stealing, Jane Says and a couple from 2003 Jane: Just Because and Superhero. Porno for Pyro’s stuff too, Tahitian Moon and the happy singalong Pets. Whatever was left, which wasn’t much, must of been Satellite songs.

Perry was beaming love to the crowd and the crowd was bouncing it right back. Lots of high fives and hugging and thoughtful sentiments, even the pit was all love, mostly. At one moment, Perry stopped to take a nice fat hit off a fan’s pipe. The crowd exploded. During the encore, Perry brought out a bottle of wine and poured the sacrament in many waiting open mouths. He then pulled a couple of cuties from the crowd up on stage and then more and more. Etty did the same filling the stage. One cutie was doing some nice sexy dance thing with Etty which the house manager or whomever didn’t like much. She was kicking people off the stage as Perry was pulling people up.

The message of the night was celebration, love, hope and a brighter future. Or was it sex, drugs and rock n roll? Same thing really.

Community | Travel | Video

Dawn-a-pa-Drew-za 2007

I spent a soggy yet awesome weekend camping at Dawn & Drew‘s farm in Wisconsin last weekend for their first ever Dawnapadrewza (aka a nice excuse for Dawn to gets lots of birthday presents). They’re awesome as were all the people I met from around the country. On the last morning, after my keys were securely extracted from the trunk of my rental car, I shot this short video of my last moments. Featured are their four dogs Spec (smallest dog, biggest cock), Zoe (the retarded mom), Hercules and Raisin (the kids) and a nice egg & maple sausage breakfast that the enchanting Rinne cooked up. Good times indeed. I hope to see many of you new friends at the Podcast Expo next month.

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