Wong Kar-Wai calendar - May 2008
WKW calendar for May 2008 by Susanne Weber, based on text from Days of Being Wild: "You will see me tonight in you dreams."
Download WKW calendars in printable and desktop wallpaper versions.
May 1, 2008 at 05:09 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Junot Díaz wins Pulitzer
MIT prof Junot Díaz has won this year's Pulitzer for fiction. I'd run to pick up the book if it weren't for a sprained ankle.
April 7, 2008 at 10:35 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Wong Kar-Wai calendar - April 2008
WKW calendar for April 2008 by Jesse Sibly, based on text from Happy Together: "Hong Kong is the opposite of Argentina. What does Hong Kong look like upside down?"
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April 1, 2008 at 10:56 AM | Link | Comments (0)
Wong Kar-Wai calendar - March 2008
WKW calendar for March 2008 by Dylan Lim, based on text from In the Mood for Love: "He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct."
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March 1, 2008 at 01:39 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová at Pitchfork
My favorite moment from this year's Oscars was when the female singer from Once and co-winner of Best Original Song was brought back to the stage by Jon Stewart to say her thanks after she had been cut off earlier by the orchestra. You can watch both segments here.
In an interview with Pitchfork, Markéta Irglová provides some details:
Pitchfork: Is it true that Colin Farrell had something to do with getting you back out to make your speech?
MI: I actually don't know. I don't know what happened, to be honest. I know that Colin Farrell was a huge supporter. He was so great. He came to rehearsals at 9 a.m. to say hello and say he'd be supporting us there that night. He was so great and friendly, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did, but I honestly don't know. I also hear that maybe the director of the show was the one who called it, or maybe it was Jon Stewart who called. All I know is that Jon Stewart came up to me and said "let's get you back on stage." But who took the initiative? I don't know.
Pitchfork: It's nerve-wracking enough when your name is announced. Is it even more nerve-wracking to have to go back out again?
MI: No. I thought we'd be so nervous performing that song, and that I would be shaking all trough the song. That's what I expected. It's a big deal! But I was very surprised by myself. I kept waiting for the nerves to hit, and they didn't. It was just really enjoyable to be part of that, even when I went on stage. Playing for all those people in the room, looking at all the people with their fingers crossed for us. I was just so happy. When we went on stage after our names were announced, I was just so full of joy and so excited. We had agreed that if we went up there, Glen would be the one to get to say something. That was OK with me. So when they asked me to go back on stage and make my speech, I actually didn't have anything prepared. It was kind of a mistake, really. I had honestly just leaned forward to say thank you, with this big screen in front of me counting down the time and saying "wrap it up." So I literally just wanted to say thank you, but the mic was off and the orchestra was playing. That was fine with me. It wasn't like I had some big speech prepared, but I guess it looked like I was in the middle of saying something when they cut me off. But even though I didn't expect it, I was delighted to get to go back onstage and say something. I had a ball.
Their performance of the winning song:
February 29, 2008 at 04:42 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Me vs the universe
Snowcat's words describe my feelings pretty well.
Maybe I could use some meat too.
February 20, 2008 at 08:23 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Electoral Compass USA
Electoral Compass USA tells me I'm closest to Obama and furthest from Huckabee. Sounds about right.
Super Tuesday is tomorrow. I'm hoping my second-ever vote as a US citizen will enjoy better luck than my first one in 2004.
February 4, 2008 at 11:57 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Super Bowl XLII
A sad ending to an amazing season for the Pats. Hats off to the relentless Giants.
I spent some of the afternoon on wkw.net trading barbs and YouTube bombs with a happy, taunting New Yorker - until he revealed he's actually a Jets fan. WTF? Pretty much the definition of a tool.
What hurts: Giants fan Jon Stewart rubbing it in and making fun of Boston and its denizens for a solid 10 minutes on his show. Ouch.
February 4, 2008 at 10:54 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Wong Kar-Wai calendar - February 2008
WKW calendar for February 2008 by Liew Shi Xiong, based on text from Ashes of Time: "The flags are still, no winds blow. It is the heart of man that is in tumult."
Download WKW calendars in printable and desktop wallpaper versions.
February 1, 2008 at 11:23 PM | Link | Comments (0)
MIT news
Some belated MIT-related items that I've been meaning to blog:
John Maeda will be RISD's new president. Catch John's video at risd.edu in which he talks about his approach and vision. Congratulations and best wishes to John.
Walter Lewin, my first college physics professor, made the NYT. The article does a decent job of describing his wackily entertaining approach to teaching, including the "nerd safari garb" bit. Lewin was a big reason for not skipping 8.01 lectures in my freshman year.
Course 6 will no longer offer 6.170. If that made no sense, it means that the MIT EECS department has eliminated its long-running Laboratory in Software Engineering class. It was one of my favorites as a Course 6 major. I do wish that I had participated more substantially in the final project, rather than just doing the meager visuals. Still, good times.
January 2, 2008 at 11:58 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Wong Kar-Wai calendar - January 2008
WKW calendar for January 2008 by Renee Gick, based on text from Happy Together: "We could start over."
The WKW calendar project now enters its fourth year. This year's theme: each artist will select a line of text from a WKW film as the basis for the calendar.
Download WKW calendars in printable and desktop wallpaper versions.
January 1, 2008 at 08:11 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Lossless Sounds Winter 2007
A seasonally inspired compilation of old and new favorite songs.
Lossless Sounds Winter 2007 (ZIP, 89MB)
01 Burial - Archangel
02 Aleksi Perala - Spacetime
03 Curve - Frozen
04 u-Ziq - Blainville
05 Vulva - Blue Phonkians
06 Sally Shapiro - Hold Me So Tight
07 Pentatonik - Cassiopeia
08 Joy Division - Isolation
09 Beaumont Hannant - Anokhi
10 Matthew Dear - Don and Sherri (Hot Chip Version)
11 Apparat - Fractales (Extended Rave Version)
12 Booka Shade - Lost High
See the Lossless Sounds page for front and back CD covers. The front cover image was made with Envisage, an audio visualization app I'd built as a consulting project.
January 1, 2008 at 05:24 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Wong Kar-Wai calendar - December 2007
WKW calendar for December 2007 by Chris Anthony Diaz, bringing together WKW and Ingmar Bergman.
Download WKW calendars in printable and desktop wallpaper versions.
December 1, 2007 at 12:58 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Wong Kar-Wai calendar - November 2007
WKW calendar for November 2007 by Daranee Win, bringing together WKW and Johnny To.
Download WKW calendars in printable and desktop wallpaper versions.
November 1, 2007 at 05:17 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Lossless Sounds Fall 2007
A seasonally inspired compilation of old and new favorite songs.
Lossless Sounds Fall 2007 (ZIP, 70MB)
01 Jens Lekman - Maple Leaves
02 April Showers - Abandon Ship
03 Solvent - Tonka Truck
04 Pale Saints - Colours and Shapes
05 Manitoba - Jacknuggeted
06 New Buffalo - You've Gone My Friend
07 New Order - As It Is When It Was
08 Phoenix - Long Distance Call
09 Luke Vibert - Comfycozy
10 The Blue Nile - Stay
11 The Durutti Column - Otis
12 Jens Lekman - Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig
See the Lossless Sounds page for front and back CD covers. The front cover image was made with Woozy, a slit-scan video rendering app that I plan to use for a music video.
October 31, 2007 at 10:48 PM | Link | Comments (2)
Wong Kar-Wai calendar - October 2007
WKW calendar for October 2007 by Nick Baldwin, bringing together WKW and Alain Resnais.
Download WKW calendars in printable and desktop wallpaper versions.
October 1, 2007 at 04:08 PM | Link | Comments (0)
The magical slide of General Petraeus
A slide that General Petraeus showed to Congress today at his presentation about progress in Iraq. The future looks bright... until you notice the distinct lack of a specific time scale along the horizontal axis. It makes the chart deceptively useless, rendering it merely a vision of where we pray we could be at some undefined point in time if we cross our fingers and all goes swimmingly. Maybe the general is just eager to be included in a Tufte book.
September 10, 2007 at 07:31 PM | Link | Comments (0)
Wong Kar-Wai calendar - September 2007
WKW calendar for September 2007 by Steven Wong, bringing together WKW and Alfred Hitchcock.
Download WKW calendars in printable and desktop wallpaper versions.
September 1, 2007 at 11:00 PM | Link | Comments (0)
White Glove Tracking visualization update
I've reworked two of the three WGT visualization videos that I had posted about earlier. Stretchy and Shapely are now a bit more watchable, that is, a little more enjoyable to sit through for the whole of Jackson's performance. I've also added the Processing source code for all three sketches.
Another update: I've uploaded the 3 videos onto YouTube: Slinky, Stretchy, Shapely. The resolution is subpar as expected, so I recommend the QuickTime versions.
August 26, 2007 at 10:41 PM | Link | Comments (2)
White Glove Tracking visualization
I just added White Glove Tracking visualization to the projects page. It's three new video sketches based on data from the White Glove Tracking project. It all centers around the legendary Motown 25 performance of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson in 1983.
I'm supposed to be on a summer break of sorts, but the WGT project was too delicious that I felt like whipping up something quick. I actually remember watching a Beta tape of Jackson's performance when I was living in Manila in '83, not long after it had aired on American national TV that year in May. Golly me, I'm old. I should mention that if you're a fan of Billie Jean, you must track down a copy of Gimix, a mix by the Avalanches, which features a gloriously joyful inversion of the line "she says I am the one". Gives me goosebumps in a very good way.
August 16, 2007 at 04:54 PM | Link | Comments (0)
