Foursquare let you share your location, meet friends and comment on places. Chromaroma transformed public transport into a multiplayer game in London. And now a shadow city is unveiled, coexisting with the real one you're living in, in which you're a mage battling others like you. Check out Shadow Cities, a location-based multiplayer game for the iPhone:
You're walking down the bank of the Danube. Suddenly your instincts flare up, signaling danger. Can that suited-up guy who just took off the tram be an enemy mage? You reach for your phone to cast a spell...
Regardless of the realization, the idea is awesome. Unfortunately the app is not available in the Hungarian store yet and the game is limited to the iPhone, no Android client so far. Still, isn't it fascinating where technology is taking us?
Whenever I visit the cemetery where my granddad is buried I think of all the space needed for the gravestones and the pointlessness of the huge mausoleums some families build for themselves. I really don't think people need such mementos in order to be remembered. I'd much rather be cremated and thrown into the wind or a river than lie in a coffin.
It's probably old news but I've just stumbled upon a project of Spansih designer Martín Azúa: he created a special urn called Bios Urn from natural materials which turns people's ashes into trees. An awesome idea. After all, who wouldn't want to be a tree in a second life? You can even choose what kind.
Bios Urn
The Bios Urn project reintroduces the human being to the natural circle of life. It is the profaine ritual of regeneration and the return to nature. Bios is a mortuary urn made from biodegradable materials: coconut shell, compacted peat and cellulose. Inside it contains the seed of a tree. Once the urn is planted, the seed germinates and begins to grow. The seed can be changed for a different type of seed or plant more adequate to the chosen planting place, if need be.
Gerard Moline 2002, Tutors Martín Azúa, Emili Padros / Definitive product Azúamoliné 2005 / Top nominee - INDEX Awards 2005 / Produced by CIRE / Distributed by Limbo Disseny
I wasn't sure if I was going to post this. I don't know what to think about itt és most (here and now). One one hand it has some catchy sing-along tunes, on the other many songs are downright disturbing and full of unexpected experimental sounds. I'd wager not many would listen through the whole set. (I, for one, didn't either.) Although if you speak Hungarian, some of the lyrics are quite interesting and clever.
This is what the Nyerges Gábor Ádám said about his work:
itt és most (here and now) is a successor of the 2009 album akkor és ott (then and there). recording started in Summer 2010 because I was in a bad mood because I was happy. guilt and the like. although it's true I used some soundbits from before. nem rossz hely (not a bad place) was finished first, and since "many good men at this not a bad place are not afraid" everything went smoothly. I jotted down everything in a big red book, lyrics and tabs as well. in the meantime everything that was shit then and there at the time went worse, not to leave me without inspiration, only by then I didn't give a rat's ass. some numbers that started out as band versions ended up here as well, because there isn't really a band anymore and they fit in. stuff.
Unlike my previous music posts, chances are, you probably haven't heard about this band. Vanity & Jokes is the solo project of Udo Pesch and at the time of writing this he had a grand total of 652 plays on Last.fm. Regardless, I think he has an interesting voice.
Help SFportal win HUF 1 million on a tender by Budapest Bank to be able to enjoy the works of contemporary Hungarian science fiction authors translated to English.
Their aim is to organize an anthology of short stories and select a novel then have them translated into English and publish both on Amazon.com as an ebook. Any future income from the sale of these ebooks would be used to fund more translations.
If you believe this is a noble goal help them win by voting for them on Facebook. (The tender runs under the name of SFportal editor-in-chief, Jun Miyazaki.) The system allows one vote per person per day so remember to vote every day until the end of the first round on 5 August.
Rarely do I get music recommendations on Last.fm and those few are mostly self-marketers. Like this time when Bellerafont (age 20, from Ukraine), the frontman of My Personal Murderer sent his latest song, She's Dead. Don't ask why, I haven't been listening to this band ever before.
Regardless, I liked what I heard. All their songs are fascinatingly depressive with lyrics of doom and soft guitar-driven melodies. They live on Facebook instead of having a website and most of their material is free to download from Last.fm.
As a bonus here's a video for Danger Dancer (2011):
I went to see Kesh at Zöld Pardon yesterday. Unfortunately only before heading out did I realize that the Sony camera was still on the charger only unplugged from the wall socket: as a result the battery was fully drained. At least I assume that was why it happened. It's an old device and the battery is not in the best shape anyway.
Anyway, I was only armed with my Nexus S. No luck with that either: the pictures are either blurred or whitewashed and the soundtrack in the video is unusable; only a distorted cacophony of bass and drums. To an extent the Sony's mic distorts as well, but still handles concerts much better, like when I used it to capture Tides of Time.
Too bad because Kesh is the most popular search keyword here.
Update: My partner-in-crime Anett has an iPhone 4, which admittedly makes a much better concert recording equipment. Check out Mizu live at ZP.
After a few days of use I devised the following inbox-zero method:
Mail I read and been done with gets archived.
Mail that requires some kind of action later gets starred then archived.
After processed, starred items are un-starred.
This seems to work well enough so far.
However, the one thing I have issues with is search. I'm spoiled by the MobileMe / Mail.app power-search which indexes everything instantly rendering the use of folders and the like obsolete. Say I am looking for the confirmation email from my hosting provider, Laughing Squid: a quick search pops all messages with these keywords no matter where they are or how long ago I received them. Why would I want to organize mail into folders then? Or, for that matter, stick labels on them.
Enter Gmail: for some reason the search does not find all the emails I want it to find. Maybe it doesn't search in messages received years ago or doesn't index them all, I don't know. Alternatively, something got messed up during the import and some of the emails weren't copied over...
On the desktop I bought Sparrow because it was made specifically for Gmail. I am yet to test it but I'm afraid it will suffer from the same search problem. One solution would be the shiny new Lion Mail.app (which indexes everything) but would that be able to use the archive method Gmail prefers with the labels?
On that note I still haven't found a use for labels.
