In a New Box. » Things Found Online

where the buffalo roam

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:43:14 +0000

The American Museum of Natural History has a collection of old photos taken around the museum online. The ones of workers creating exhibitions are very interesting:

“Oops, so sorry about that….let me just put these back here…”

Photos found via Pruned.

surveillance cam screensaver

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:36:57 +0000

Woe is me \ ‘o, > o,’ / !! Thesis thesis thesis will you never be done? You are so difficult. But listening to Bach on strings helps. It just makes me feel so *siiiiiigh* sorry for myself. They will find me, 2 days from now, a spider spinning a web between my brow and blue pen, my face stuck to interview transcripts, dead with a cringed when-will-it-end expression on my face. And waffles will be softly crying behind

THE MOST AWESOMEST SCREENSAVER (via BoingBoing)

SurveillanceSaver is an OS X screensaver that shows live images of over 600 network surveillance cameras worldwide. a haunting live soap opera. it is the first release of my ongoing experiments with network surveillance cameras.

It is truly somewhat haunting to view these feeds. Even if only a rural intersection or abandoned warehouse. Oh wait – I guess that’s why they might be haunting.

A happier song just came on. I’m not dead anymore.

tagged “couch”

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:43:38 +0000

I am learning that if you search Flickr for pictures tagged “couch”, it is very difficult to find a vacant couch. They are all occupied with pets, children or naked women.

forgot to miss missed connections

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:46:28 +0000

The other night at supper A reminded me of craigslist missed connections. I had forgotten about them! Not so interesting when in another country and there is 0% chance of surprise…1% chance and I am sucked in!
I wrote about them before and this time, I’m thinking about the different types of posts. Some of the characteristics or variables are:

frequency of encounters with the sought person: one to multiple times (possibly in daily routine)
deepness of relationship: total stranger to someone very close
location scope: specified (I saw you), guessing (I think you might live in…now), where??
types of locations: transportation, grocery stores, restaurants, bars, shows, in the street, class etc.
identifiers: physical descriptions, description of event or place, names
interactions: nothing, phone/email exchange, dancing, smile, conversation, being serviced (e.g. waiter), etc.
seeker’s expectation: just throwing this out there to I must find you
time: recent encounter to distant past
(…)

The one thing I am not liking is this one dude pouring his heart out over an ex (I assume) that he misses deeply. Now I know, missed connections can be a good emotional outlet for broken-hearted people and there is that word “miss”(ed) in there. However, when somebody posts they are doing so for their own benefit – the small possibility that the person they seek will read the post and they can reconnect or connect again. At the same time, they are benefiting the community of missed connection readers by adding to perceived chance, arousing curiosity and satisfying some voyeurism. I feel like the sob letter posts do not provide the same benefit and enjoyment to the community and they add noise to the information I am interested in. Not that this is a service for my enjoyment, its purpose is missed connections, and maybe some people do enjoy reading about the heartbreak of others but…I wonder if a separate craigslist category would be more suitable? One between missed connections and rants and raves.

I was also wondering, if I was an Asian woman and I saw “Asian girl on the skytrain” how would I identify with that? Like…especially living in Vancouver. Maybe I wouldn’t even think about it. It is a physical description. I am “Tall girl on the 25″. But I wonder if the difference is that “Tall girl on the 25″ could be posted by any man but, I am going to guess that the guy who posted “Asian girl on the skytrain” is not Asian. Tell me if I am wrong but, if this is the case then it is interesting how, while specifying filter information, the man implicitly includes information about himself.

Finally, I have never written a missed connection myself and I wonder, if the occasion comes about in the future, will I be reflecting on the saucy man I saw in the soup aisle at the supermarket (sorry about that) and think – I should missed connect! Or, will I be composing the classified the moment I see him walk away with a can of Campbell’s tomato?

(Actually when I think about it, the soup aisle might have the lowest flow of male customers but I have no evidence to back that up. Though I am sure someone has researched male versus female flow through the grocery store and if I can’t fall asleep in the next 15 minutes I might just have to look that up.)

finally cashing in

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:42:54 +0000

I am currently on hold with air miles. Want to book a flight for this fall. They are playing the mooooooooooooost depressing music. I am talking Seal’s Kiss from a Rose interrupted by a please hold message every 10 seconds which itself gets interrupted by another please hold message from another woman. This is the part that is not free I guess. Oh yeah and there’s also the taxes and gas prices and other fees…I am sleepy and tempted to hang up. Or at least the skype equivalent of hang up button which is not as satisfying and you still feel like the person on the other line can hear you.

My sister pointed me to this:

http://www.blackle.com/

check the about – it is kind of interesting and a nice change from the usual Google interface.

beats mr. dressup’s use of coloured tape any day

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:11:16 +0000

More from Pink Tentacle: writes about a mini documentary on the guy who makes the tape signs in Shinjuku station. Construction in large stations can be HELL and involve a lot of redirection signs. The man making these ones does an incredibly beautiful job at it.

Links to video:

Part 1

Part 2

They are in Japanese (with Japanese subtitles) but watch it for a bit at least to see this man’s work. Reminds me of something I love about this country: people take pride in their work and people take pride in other people’s work. But I guess pride is not the right word because people are humble. Maybe…”put importance”…please replace that for me I’m leaving early….

yubnub

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:23:37 +0000

K I have not gotten into it that deeply yet and won’t tonight because I am supposed to be working on the T-H-E-S-I-S but yubnub looks soooooooooo cool. A google like interface with a command library expandable by…yes…you! You can enter something like “g nunnery” and it will do a google search for nunnery. Then there’s the mash command. Enter “mash g wp nunnery” and get a google/wikipedia split pane of nunnery results. Entering “simpsons” gives you a random simpsons quote (Homer: The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication.) and the list goes on…

Literally hours of entertainment awaits me…motivation to get back to work!

thchalk

Mon, 28 May 2007 09:22:26 +0000

From Popgadget – the chalk mug. The second after I realized what it was a shudder ran through my body and I writhed around in my chair for a bit. Even now, having a hard time handling the thought of handling this mug. Chalkboard…dusty chalk…putting your mouth on it…….aahhhhhuurrrghhhdhfdsfdsfadfbdsfajkhvbalgkhsdkgjahewaoruiy(‘489y6!!!

Can I get the magic marker mug please?

kotonoha.cc

Thu, 17 May 2007 05:20:52 +0000

I was searching for a project done by a woman I am meeting on Monday called “kotonoha” and came across kotonoha.cc. Very interestingly because both are related to my work – object interface to information and (given the current direction of things) questions, surveys, and polling for personal expression and satisfying that desire to see what other people think.
Kotonoha.cc looks addictive and with my current Japanese and browser translator I am already enjoying the type of questions posted and the responses. Oh yeah – what is it? It is a site where people can indicate their opinion on various “things” (koto) by choosing “O” or “X” and add a little explanatory comment. The “O” “X” o tsukeru system is the common “yes” “no” system in Japan. Examples of things are:

- which are scarier, spiders or cockroaches

- can you remember numbers past 3.1415

Users have simple profiles (photo, nickname, URL) and you can subscribe to different users and receive feeds of their posts in an site-based inbox.

Browsing the questions so far has been really really interesting. I am not just learning about the people or “community” through their responses but also through the questions they are posing. Yes some (like my examples above) are about mundane, general things but others are about current events, issues, popular things (indicators of what the “current” in the country might be) and others about the kotonoha community itself.

モスバーガーはモスと略す O X

(“mos burger” abbreviate to “mos”?) from what I can tell, most people do. It is good that I know this.
The one thing that bugs me is that they don’t display (from what I can tell) a tally of “O” and “X”. I can see that 690 have responded to the mos burger question and a list of the most recent results and comments…but not those two numbers – how many “O” and how many “X”. But…is this intentional? To avoid bias?

What if it went a step further and I had to respond before seeing any responses/comments? While this might motivate people to respond and eliminate bias from seeing what the majority thinks, it might take away from the experience of being in the kotonoha social space which, now that I think of it, seems less to do with knowing what the majority thinks, what the winning side it, etc. and more to do with knowing that people have an opinion.

a little slow here…

Tue, 01 May 2007 06:20:05 +0000

It is Golden Week and most people have taken Tuesday and Wednesday off of work as well so currently there are like 6 out of 40 some people in the office. It is a good chance to travel but expensive so I am limiting my adventures to the park/tokyo bay by my apartment which actually has been very vacation-y and relaxing. Both Sunday and Monday afternoons were gorgeous and I sat by the water drawing with the sound of waves lapping over voices of children and BBQ aromas in the air. A nice prelude to the summer and enough alone / meditation-y time spent for me to get to the thesis for the rest of this week. Except for on Thursday – I am going to check out the digital public art festival in Tokyo.

But…the reason why I called you here…please look at these amaaaaaaazing works of art in cake form. Astonishing.