Engleek

All was quiet on the web front.

engleek@engleek.com

It's been a while since I dipped my nose in web development, slightly more than a month in fact. A month of work, learning to use C++ with Qt and OpenGL, in order to rebuild the simulator behind our Reactive Systems course.

The reason I've come back to web development though, is that Mootools, my favorite Javascript framework, has finally reached version 1.2. It's been a while since the first beta of this version came out, and I've been pretty damn excited about this one.

They've restructured the library to be more modular and lower level, which gives it much more potential, and makes for a much more efficient and speedy web experience.

Needless to say, I'm not going to be able to resist writing the scripts in my personal site, which needed an overhaul anyway.

While I'm here, let's take a look at some interesting sites I've come across in the Web2.0 world:

> I've been working on a web command line for a while, but it's still only a toy. However, I'm not the only one who likes command line. Goosh is a full command line version of Google, with all the functionality of Point&Click Google, but in delicious and satisfying prompt-o-vision: http://goosh.org/

> Google Maps gave us the ability to see the world from above, and plan journeys from A to B with nifty crazy algorithms, but what if you wanted a map of the Internet? Well now you can see The Whole Internet, IP addresses and all: http://thewholeinternet.wordtothewise.com/

> For those who like statistics, and even the more gruesome statistics, WorldOMeters has real time estimated statistics of many fascinating and scary nubers: http://www.worldometers.info/

> We've all seen and used RSS aggregators, and some of them stand out, like NetVibes for example, but RSSVoyage takes it a step further and makes you want to have a giant screen for your feeds: http://www.rssvoyage.com/#RSS=loaded

> Last but not least, here's a news application with a difference. It takes the latest Google News, and presents it in a meaningful tree graph: http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/

On a last note, it looks like all the major video streaming websites are upgrading their players, to my greatest delight, and even though they still don't beat Vimeo (all hail), it's a real breath of fresh air for the older sites, like YouTube.

A brief trip into real-life

engleek@engleek.com

As I enter my first real week of holidays, lists appear and I have to focus on new tasks to replace the drive in life that university gave me. Holidays are all very well, but it's so easy to waste them.

In jobs news, Last.fm haven't answered yet, and hope of an answer is dwindling by the day. I've pretty much given up on Google, as it's gotten too late now, but I'll try next year, with fists raised and full of optimism. So I'm pretty much resigned to looking for a "normal" job for this summer, and my decision to work in Rennes instead of my countryside hideaway seem to have bared it's fruit: There are quite a few jobs to be had here :)

I've also pretty much decided to move to other quarters, my present ones being damn expensive and a bit too tucked away. I've filtered the list down to 5 or 6 places, with particular attention for a 40mÂ² apartment not far from where I live now, and I have to visit them all this week.

The prospect of having to retake some of my exams looms ahead, but I hope I won't have to, and that I'll be able to spend the next few weeks without revising.

Whatever the situation though, it seems that I'm not going to spend much of my time relaxing ;)

In other remarks, it looks like Google Calendars is becoming even more useful, with support for free SMS notification of events. With this development I don't think I will be able avoid using it in the near future.

Also, it looks like my favourite animÃ©, Bleach, has once again slipped out of the main story into breather episodes. They've all magically and inexplicably appeared back home, and the whole Aizen situation is but a dream. All that they're missing is some Iced Tea while us fans stare in desperation at our screens.

Caught by the buzz

engleek@engleek.com

Friday night, or rather Saturday morning now, and the music has been loud and constant for several hours. It's not my music, and it's not a neighbour's music. For several hours, the Rock 'n' Solex concert slash festival has been under way only a couple of minutes down the road from here.

It's a pity that I wasn't up to date, a pity that no-one told me, and it's a pity that I have exams on Monday. It's at this point that I realise that even though I have quite a few friends at university and surrounds, I don't actually have a best-friend, the kind of friend whom you see often, with whom you've done so much and been to so many evenings. I long for those parties spent talking with really good friends, whom you can trust and would trust with your own life.

After a few hours, the time reaches 1am, and the buzz starts really setting in, the noise is no longer a nuisance, it's a call to rise and live, a call to come and see what's going on, a call to join the party. Failing to resist it, I don my boots, even though I really must get up early to work, even though I'm alone, even though this really isn't my style, I set off to investigate.

It's a shame, I suppose - or in this context, rather good luck - that two passing concert-goers take it upon their moral and civic duty to tell me that it's no place for a lone kid, and that violence of the shaved-head variety is populating the festivity's grounds. Common sense won over, and I changed my bearings for home.

With Stretch's song Why did you do that? playing loudly, I still walk with a rhythm in my Doc Marten steps. The buzz is still pretty strong, and for once I long not for my glowing screen, but for times with good friends, fun nights out, and adventure.

In an act of rare religion and faith, I pray that my application for internship at Last.fm is seen by favourable eyes, that I might spend a summer of buzz in my heartfelt equivalent to the city that never sleeps: London.

People and Pixels

engleek@engleek.com

When surfing around the information superhighway, you find some good sites, some bad, some bland, and some that detach themselves from the rest with ideas and concepts you probably won't find anywhere else.

This week I stumbled upon Datenform (http://www.datenform.de/indexeng.html), the personal web site of Aram Bartholl. He's a German artist who concentrates on the links between the digital world and the real world, and the influences of the data on our everyday lives.

His projects include walking around town with a giant programmable illuminated speech bubbles, FPS glasses, need for speed style giant directional arrows on the road, and my favorite, the Paper Pixels project, an 8x8 pixel screen powered byChristmas lights and player piano style perforated cardboard.

For those of me who like these pixel animations and screens, you might want to take a look at Vector::Scan(http://www.vector-scan.com/), the personal website of Ryota Kuwakubo, a Japanese artist who's made a lot of pixel oriented works.

On a last and special note, the Social Web t-shirt really did catch my eye, and is in fact what brought me to Datenform in the first place. I'm even considering getting one myself!

Music to the People!

engleek@engleek.com

Once again a famous music artist has made their music available through unconventional and more friendly ways. This time it's Portishead's turn, with their latest album entitled Third, a work which has been in the making for eleven years now, and promises to be another surprising but brilliant musical achievement.

Ok, so the new album is still only available on its own via the normal routes (iTunes, Amazon...), but there is also a collectors box set available at their own shop, which includes vinyls, artworks, and of course the album itself, but not as a CD. With purchase of box set, the album is delivered, along with video footage, on a customized - a white letter P - 1GiB USB drive. This in itself is interesting, and on top of selling the album on an unconventional music support, this seems to imply that burning it to CD is authorized.

What's more interesting though, is the fact that as of the 21st of April, the album was entirely available streamed from the ever wonderful Last.fm as part of an exclusive deal. This isn't the first album to be totally and freely available to listen to on Last.fm, but it is a first for such a well known artist.

Thumbs up to Portishead and Last.fm on this one!

Interested in the box set? You can buy it here while stocks last: http://www.portisheadshop.co.uk

Interested in listening to the album? Of course you are, and that's here: http://www.last.fm/music/Portishead/Third