Culture
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE EIU (Economic Intelligence Unit) is an intelligence company that provides lots of databases.
I found the City database nice : "The city-by-city guide to product prices and business costs worldwide "
Paul Polastron publiera le 15 janvier un livre sur les incendies de bibliothèque depuis 5 000 ans. Entre celles dAlexandrie et Bagdad, lauteur sintéresse longuement à la bibliothèque de luniversité Lyon 2. Déjà auteur du Papier, 2 000 ans dhistoire et de savoir-faire, Polastron défend : Dans lhistoire, la régression générale de la culture et de lintelligence va de pair avec les malheurs à répétition des bibliothèques. Les incendies sexpliquent souvent par le fait que les gens cultivés sont trop difficiles à gouverner, comme les légistes en Chine. Et la bibliothèque universelle, encyclopédique, fait peur à beaucoup de régimes, décoles de pensée, de religion. Louvrage, chez Denoël, sintitulera : Livres en feu. Histoire de la destruction sans fin des bibliothèques.
Je me rappel du numéro d'Actuel édité spécialement pour l'an 2000 (ou quelque chose comme ca) qui mentionnait la recherche underground ou hors structure (et notamment benveniste sur la mémoire de l'eau ou jean pierre petit et les ummits). Je pense à cela maintenant, car je sors de la lecture d'un rapport très intéressant édité par Millénaire 3 (la structure de prospective du Grand Lyon). Cela traite d'intelligence et de production d'idée. En gros l'idée était d'évaluer la vie intellectuelle de la ville de Lyon (qui pour ceux qui sont hors france est dénigré, ainsi que tout le reste de la France, par la capitale pour des raisons évidemment fallacieuses).
Le rapport en question démontre d'abord la vitalité de la vie intellectuelle lyonnaise en témoignant non seulement de la présence de structures de l'establishment (labos de recherche, universités, opéra, maison de la danse, consulats, grandes firmes...) mais aussi de petites structures (petites galeries d'arts, petits éditeurs, association, chercheurs hors structure...) et finalement l'inter relation entre tout ce petit monde. L'enquête insiste de ce fait sur la notion de réseau et d'intelligence collective qui émerge.
Une seconde partie présente des manières de faire progresser la productiond 'idées : encourager les initatitives locales, favoriser le spetites structures, les lieux de rencontres... et surtout COMMUNIQUER à ce propos auprès de la popualtion. J'insiste sur ce point car cela me semble (ou semblait car les choses on changées) crucial. Beacuoup de villes souffrent de ce manque de communication (c'est le cas pour Genève par exemple).
Si ce rapport m'a intéressé, ce n'est pas seulement parce qu'il tarite de Lyon et de son bouillonnement intellectuel mais c'est aussi que cela me ramène encore une fois à mon projet avec Lyon Game (structure semi publique regroupant tous les acteurs du jeu vidéo à Lyon) de faire émerger un centre de recherche sur le jeu vidéo.
Ce genre de rapport m'encourage à continuer dans cette voie dans le sens où les petites structures productrices d'idées (comme des labos de recherche et développement hors establishment) peuvent avoir leur place et même espérer des financements certes difficiles mais possibles. Vais creuser tout cas...
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE As advocated by social fiction, I am totally in favor of bottom-up cityplanning ! And I am doubting current decision-makers agree with this. It sucks because since they are kind of "above" the others they are no longer in touch with the real life of their city. How many mayors practice psychogeography ?
PML rocks !
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE My pal JD told me that his ex-gilfriend just sent him a cool package via postmail : a 10 page letter, a bag, 3CDs, an ashtray full of medics, drills and a sponge.
what a cool world !
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Smart paper in gamasutra about wasted time. The author (Jamie Fristrom) deals with turnaround time in video-game, the time between making a change and testing the change. It seems that this time tend to be getting longer every year. With 3D rendering, game prototype it is terribly time-consuming !
This is also true for toher field, especially for server-based technology (like this fucking perl-based blog) : rebuilding is so boring (and gosh when you have more than 500 posts, you can go the café).
The author gives coding advices to lower turnaround (since it is video game stuff, it is C++).
I just noticed a very smart spatial pattern on my office : the documents are organized in such a way : I work on the closest documents. Here is a picture :
1 : the paper I am currently reading (about formualting availability and location in mobile phone concevrsations) 2 : a proof read paper I need to modify (sooner published here !) about use of space in collaborative problem solving 3 : books I need to write my paper (2) : Social navigation of information space and Wireless world : social and interactional aspects of the mobile age. 4 : literature review of a short research project on how multi-user gamers use space to coordinate 5 : books about dynamic situations Patrick gave me to read to find ideas for my phd 6 : papers I read last week about Team Situatin Awareness, play the role of a reminder about Mutual Modelling and Awareness. 7 : books about UML and JAVA, things I need to learn in my next life 8 : paper I read since I am here about mobile computing, space, mobile phones, proxemics.
We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the SunIvan Chtcheglov
For this grid blogging specially devoted to the topic of BRAND, I came up with the idea of branding psychogeography.
According to Guy Debord, Psychogegraphy is the study of the effects of geographical settings, consciously managed or not, acting directly on the mood and behaviour of the individual". That is to say, "a rather pleasing vagueness" bounded with so-called derive (i.e. drift). The dérive is an example of a situation-creating technique in which one navigate among cities and places. In addition, navigation is just based on our feelings.
Lots of drifting games or scenarios have been invented, like cruising around in Paris with a map of London. The idea of branding psychogeography is to try to re-create a logo of a specific brand while walking in a city. For instance, you try to form the Nike swoosh while walking in Paris and you must follow this rule (i.e. you should not change the logo expected to be formed by your drift).
Situationists used to write psychogeographical and dérive reports. For this grid blogging, I preferred showing a dérive map that shows the logo
Healey and Baker's report about European Cities (best cities to locate a business today). In the overall rating of best cities for business the top cities of London, Paris and Frankfurt remain unchanged. The other cities to move up this year are: Manchester (19th to 13th), Geneva (15th to 14th), Lisbon (17th to 15th), Lyon (20th to 19th), Warsaw (26th to 22nd), Budapest (25th to 23rd), Oslo (29th to 27th), and Moscow (30th to 28th). Access to markets just pips the availability of qualified staff as the single most important factor. Communication factors remain very important. Cost factors come next, with cost of staff the most important of these. Quality of life factors are the least significant.
It's been nearly 8months that I blog and I never talk about my blog activity. I would like to adress different issues I noticed : - this blog have regular readers and occasional readers. - most of the occasional readers often come up with two comments. The first is that they are wondering when I have the time to find stuff to blog. The second is simply : why do you put weird stuff on your blog ? - it appears that I have a strong tendency/capability to find weird/strange/odd stuff everywhere (both in real and virtual world). - since I post about weird things my keywords are weird - my blog is messy (it's on purpose !!! and if you want to get all my research post, just read the post in the research category, actually, I have a link for that, I should put it on the main index. But I don't want it, I like the idea of mixing my research and other things) - yes I am french, yes I write in english (with mistakes of course :( - people from "outside" (people who browse the web less than one time a week, yes those people exists in the real world and have no existence on google) finds the blog idea (and this blog) 'funny' but it seems that they don't understand its usefulness
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Le sonderfall c'est le "cas particulier". Il y a dans l'inconscient suisse cette idee que nous sommes la Suisse est une Nation particuliere. Cela explique le "alleingang" suisse (la voie unique, sans l'europe) et le succès de Blocher (UDC, droite bien à droite).
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE raminagrobis : gros chat qui n'aime pas du tout les lapinous et les belettes.
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE The Skilled Worker Self-Assessment Test will help you decide if you should apply to immigrate to Canada as a Skilled Worker. The current pass mark is 67.
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE
Last week end, in a very nice restaurant, the menu was pretty simple :
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The book of madness by snake mountain is about bullshit concerning : animal magic, strange food, margaret thatcher and lots of other things. The website propose awfull pictures, very interesting. |
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE skateboarding as it foster urban drift could be seen as a "urban reading technology" in the sense that skaters often have a different perception of the city. I, as a skateboarder, am very accustomed to look at specific details : stairs, handrails and stuff like that.
Skaters are used to read the urban landscape. Now lots of people try to look at the possibilities for mobile technologies to function like the 'tool' of the skateboard in urban spaces.
" Skateboarding is just a particular kind of lense" I like this idea (stated by Katherine Moriwaki) of the skateboarding practice "which transforms, not only visual "recognition" of meaning in places and objects, but a change in the particular configuration (social, psychological, physical) of how one approaches public space. "
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE I am not into the ET and martian crap but I found this map interesting : "This map has been compiled from the latest satellite images of the Groom Lake Base, combined with the input of very reliable sources that prefer to remain anonymous."
Who on Earth could care about those so important facts like Hangar 18 located at the GPS coordinates N 37° 14.149' / W 115° 48.823' is &9m long and 77m large !!!!
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Via Renaud LE GOIX Gated communities : a place that represents a form of urbanism where public space is privatized. They include public infrastructures and spaces behind the gates, which can otherwise be used by everyone, such as streets, parks, sidewalks and beaches. They are becoming one of the symbols of the metropolitan fragmentation and of the increase of social segregation. Going outside is a risk !
Bookmarklets | MOVABLE TYPE Via The science of location (pdf) "Much of the form and function of cities, in both social and physical sense, is designed to minimize the time and cost of searching for people and information"
-> cities could be seen as an information map, a spatially-organized database in which an overlap between real space (the city organized in blocks) and virtual space (information).
One of the coolest invention of 2003 according to Time Magazine :"Want to add some pizazz to your aquarium? A Taiwanese scientist has devised a way to make otherwise colorless fish glow neon green in the dark. Professor H.J. Tsai at National Taiwan University works this biological magic by injecting a protein extracted from jellyfish into the fertilized eggs of rice fish. He also uses a protein from coral to make fish glow a vibrant reddish pink. Opponents of genetic engineering fear that these creatures could crossbreed with wild species, creating glowing schools of Frankenfish. To keep them from spreading their shining DNA, the distributor, Taikong International, sterilizes them all."
website of his invention...