Category: 5things

Things of note for the week ending September 26th, 2014.

An image heavy week this week, kicking off with this utterly brilliant collection of mental photography featuring the one and only John Malkovich. Seriously.

Let’s dive in –

1. Audrey Hepburn

Speaking of amazing photography sets, I came across this collection of ‘rare’ Hepburn photos earlier this week and, well, they’re absolutely gorgeous.

Thing I learnt from this post? Audrey Hepburn had a pet deer named Pippin.

Lovely.

2. On Geeks
‘Geeks. You are no longer victims. Get over it.’ is the title of this provocative debate piece in last week’s New York Times (you read it regulalrly, right?) –

Popular culture right now frequently appears to be a large-scale experiment in cognitive dissonance. By any rational measure, the geeks — fans of comic books, science fiction, video games and fantasy — are utterly triumphant. Economically, the genre in the media is dominant, earning billions of dollars a year. Critically, it is celebrated, getting sympathetic reviews in the stuffiest publications and winning national awards. In every meaningful sense, geeks are the overdogs.

Believe it or not, the comments are actually well worth reading

3. What is El Niño?

Ever heard of El Niño? If you’re not in the US of A, it might be on the periphery of your weather-based awareness. If you’ve got a spare two minutes and seventeen seconds, you could increase your knowledge of the meteorological phenomenon right now by watching this video.

4. Zelda Art
If you’re a gamer of any shape or form, then you’ll probably agree that set of original Legend of Zelda this is unbelievably cool.

Beautiful.

5. Mark Ritson on Oreo
Mark Ritson is a professor of brand and one of the smartest people I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet. If you’ve known me for a while, I may’ve shared this with you before.

What with it being the end of Social Media Week, I thought it was a good time to share to again. This deconstruction of that Oreo Tweet is utterly fantastic. It’s 90mins long but I implore you – watch it, listen to it, put it on your Chromecast this weekend, or have it playing in the background while you work this afternoon.

Just consume it, and take it in.

Please.

No bonuses this week.

Whatley out.

Things of note for the week ending September 12th, 2014.

Apologies for the delay this week, kids. A trip to Ireland mid-week (for the rather fantastic Measurement.ie Conference), plus a shed load of work upon my return, threw my writing schedule out of whack.

It’s nothing to do with Destiny being out this week at all. No sir ree bob.

Also: lots of recommended reading this week.

Enjoy –

1. Love is not enough.
This is a hard read.
This is a tough read.
This is a good read.

Mark Manson on Love.

2. Sound of Net
I think I’ve written about Warren Ellis’ ‘Morning, Computer‘ blog before but a) this is lovely and b) no harm in recommending it again.

There are lightbulbs that are also wireless bluetooth speakers. Imagine being able to send robot text to one. A lightbulb that quietly recites The Shipping Forecast, or Dark Sky local rain alerts, or pings from the IFTTT Space Channel that tells you when an astronaut goes into orbit, or calendar tasks or any number of things. One of the many things I wish I knew how to make. I stopped being able to parse code somewhere between HTML 2.0 and CSS. It may be just as well that my ability to cause things is way, way below my ability to annoyingly conceive of things. Existing in a constant condition of low-level frustration with the small things in life probably prevents me from obsessing on the big things and then building bombs. Which anyone can do.
–
If I’d been able to make that thing, it would have been whispering “hashtag Ferguson” all night.

You should read it all.

3. Werner Herzog on Creativity

I picked this next piece up from the rather excellent ‘Brain Pickings‘ blog of Maria Popova. The article in question is a selection of highlights from Werner Herzog‘s new book ‘A guide for the Perplexed‘ and it’s not only a) brilliant reading but b) a collections of reasons to buy said book; this stuff is gold.

For example, when asked how he sees his ideal film school, Herzog says:

You would be allowed to submit an application only after having travelled, alone and on foot, let’s say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of nearly two thousand miles. While walking, write about your experiences, then give me your notebooks. I would immediately be able to tell who had really walked and who had not. You would learn more about filmmaking during your journey than if you spent five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. Somebody who has been a boxer in Africa would be better trained as a filmmaker than if he had graduated from one of the “best” film schools in the world. All that counts is real life.-

I know, right? He goes on

My film school would allow you to experience a certain climate of excitement of the mind, and would produce people with spirit, a furious inner excitement, a burning flame within. This is what ultimately creates films. Technical knowledge inevitably becomes dated; the ability to adapt to change will always be more important. At my utopian film academy there would be a vast loft with a boxing ring in one corner. Participants, working every day with a trainer, would learn to somersault, juggle and perform magic tricks. Whether you would be a filmmaker by the end I couldn’t say, but at least you would emerge as a confident and fearless athlete. After this vigorous physical work, sit quietly and master as many languages as possible. The end result would be like the knights of old who knew how to ride a horse, wield a sword and play the lute.

Sold. Gold.

Read the whole piece. Then buy the book.

4. IKEA Instructions gone wrong (right?)
These instructions on how to be a monster and more are excellent.

More, via Beautiful Decay.

5. Why Amazon has no profits (and why it works)
Informative post from one of the smarter brains on the planet, Ben Evans, talking about the economics of Amazon. Admittedly, it can kinda be summed up in one image –

But the whole article is worth reading.

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Bonuses this week are all music-related:

• Mumford & Sons – The Cave (Florian Paetzold Edit)
• Maribou State & Pedestrian – Bestival Desert Island Mix
• Maroon 5 at the iTunes Festival (yeah, and?)

Until next week.

Things of note for the week ending August 29th, 2014.

1. McMoons
No, this story isn’t about a lunar McDonald’s opening up sometime soon. No. This is in fact a STUPENDOUSLY AWESOME story about a bunch of ex-NASA civilians deciding to capture an abandoned satellite by taking over a disused McDonalds and assembling the tools they need from EBAY. Yes, that’s right, EBAY.

Not. Kidding.

Honestly, this is one of the best things I’ve read this month.

You should read it.

McMoon’s is, of course, what the crack team of space commandos have [re]christened their new home. Love it.

2. Ricky & Jerry
Jerry Seinfeld has, for some time now, had his own web series simply called ‘Comedians in cars getting coffee’. If you’ve never watched it before well hurrah! You’ve got loads to catch up on.

I watched the Ricky Gervais one last week and, aside from being hilarious, it reminded me not only of the lovely friendship the two have but also the quite frankly, fantastic HBO special, ‘Talking Funny‘.

It’s a 49 minute long discussion about comedy between Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Louie CK, and Ricky Gervais – and it is GOLD.

Watch it tonight instead of TV.

You won’t regret it.

3. Minority Reporting
A short dissection of the finale of the [criminally underrated] Minority Report. Spoilers, obviously. But read this and I doubt you’ll ever be able to watch it in the same way again.

4. Distracting Extras
I’m not a big one for adding list posts to a list of posts you should read. HOWEVER. This list of ‘The 12 most distracting extras in movie history‘ genuinely made me chuckle. Yes, the Star Wars Storm Trooper is in there, but what about the underwear girl from Teen Wolf? You ever seen her before?

Great work.

Link contains 12 YouTube clips. FYI.

5. What’s next for Twitter?
A great piece of conjectural thinking from Alex Young of We Are Social. If you’re sat around thinking ‘Exactly what is next for this Twitter thing I work so hard on?’, then this post is a really good place to start.

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Bonuses this week:

• Instagram has launched its own set of business tools [for advertising partners].
• How much Stanley Kubrick trivia can you stand? (I miss Kubrick).
• NSFW Robin Williams story. Amaze.
• ‘How I became a one man intelligence agency‘ – great read.
• HORNS is coming this Halloween. You might like it.

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Things of note for the week ending August 8th, 2014.

– thanks for the amazing photo, Lauren

1. Xiaomi* is coming.
I think it’s fairly reasonable to say that, globally, Samsung are the biggest seller of mobile devices. However, a relative minnow of a hardware manufacturer (but growing incredibly fast), Xiaomi*, actually beat Samsung last quarter to become China’s number one smartphone vendor in Q2 2014.

This is no insignificant feat.

Who are Xiaomi and why is this interesting? This Bloomberg Businessweek article is a pretty good read but, in short: not only does Xiamoi make gorgeous hardware but it also has a rather different way of doing business. From the Bloomberg piece –

Xiaomi’s real invention is its business model. It sells online, never in stores, and avoids conventional advertising, devoting only about 1 percent of its revenue to marketing. (By comparison, Samsung earmarks 5.4 percent.) Instead, the company relies on China’s social networks, Weibo and WeChat, and the free press Lei gets as a national tech hero. The money Xiaomi saves on marketing lets it buy top-notch components while keeping retail prices down. The Mi 3 costs 1,699 yuan, or $270; the iPhone in China starts at more than twice that. A Mi 3, or any Xiaomi phone, is a great deal if you’re lucky enough to snag one—the latest models routinely sell out. Xiaomi sells handsets in batches, usually of around 100,000. The first Mi 3 release, the company trumpeted, was bought up in only 86 seconds. It’s the technology equivalent of Air Jordans.

A few months back, I remarked to a friend that should Xiaomi want to widen its footprint outside of Asia, then it might need to consider a new name; perhaps one that is less worrisome to western tongues. Shortly thereafter, Xiaomi announced it had bought ‘Mi.com’ (two letter URLs, not easy/cheap to come by).

Xiaomi is coming.

Just watch.

*shall, but with a z – me // ‘zshou mee’. According to Hugo Barra, the best way to pronounce Xiaomi is to “think of ‘show me’ and then pronounce the first word as if it [were] ‘shower.’

2. Facebook + Instagram = Smart[er] Advertising
It was April 2012 when Mark Zuckerberg slapped a billion dollars on the table and walked away with Instagram in his pocket and, since then, the two platforms have been very slowly integrating their services together. First came the inevitable sharing of user info then, later, Instagram dropped Foursquare’s location data in exchange for Facebook Places.

When Instagram finally announced its plans to launch advertising last year, there was one particular quote that caught my eye:

We want to show ads from businesses that are interesting to you, and to do that we will use information about what you do on Instagram and Facebook (our parent company). For instance, this might include the people you follow and the photos and videos you like on Instagram, and your interests and other basic info on Facebook.

Basically, if your Instagram and your Facebook accounts are linked, the two companies will use that data to better sell you MORE STUFF.

So far, so what. None of this is news.

What is news is that this is now happening. Mercedez-Benz is conducting an experiment whereby it can retarget Facebook users that have seen its ads on Instagram.

We’re only in the testing phase, apparently. But this is it, kids. THIS IS THE FUTURE.

Digiday has more.

3. A Modern Take on Japanese Kutani Tableware

These are quite wonderful.

– via Colossal

4. Lord of the Rings plot hole busting

Ever wondered about this?

Some smart chap over on Reddit has come up with a fairly sound theory.

5. The Perfect Northen Lights

This, believe it or not, is the design for the newly approved ‘Krystall Hotel’. Currently being developed by Dutch Docklands, this floating hotel will be based in the fjords near Tromso, Norway, and – given its locale (middle of nowhere, zero light pollution) – will be the perfect spot to take in the Aurora Borealis.

Incredible.

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Bonuses this week are all video game related:

• Video game controller walk through history. A great photo essay.
• Street Fighter: The Movie – what went wrong. A fantastic read.
• Painkiller Deathstreak. A man’s first foray into the world of video gaming.

Things of note for the week ending August 1st, 2014.

1. Anti Surveillance YOUR FACE
Robinson Meyer slathered his face in make up and, as a result, achieves the oxymoronic feat of hiding in plain sight by looking ridiculous.

When it works, CV dazzle keeps facial-recognition algorithms from seeing a face. The technique takes its name from the dazzle camouflage of the two World Wars: The Great Power navies sought to protect their ships not by hiding them among the waves but by obscuring their size and movement.

The Atlantic has more.

2. I wrote about Gaza.
There’s not much else I can say aside from: please read and, if you so wish, pass it forward.

Failing that, donate to one of these three charities –

• The British Red Cross
• The Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund
• Save the Children Gaza Appeal

3. The American Room
Bizarrely, I found this adventure into, and subsequent critique thereof, the American room ‘with YouTube’ hugely interesting. Fundamentally it is an article about decor and the blandness against which lives are depicted and played out but, for some reason, when I reached the end of the article, I burst into tears.

The American Room

4. Happy (Neus Remix)
I was at the London Street Feast last night and the DJ played this EPIC Justice/Pharrel mash up –

Put it in your ears AND DANCE LIKE THERE IS NO TOMORROW because one day, there won’t be.

5. The Monkey Men of India
Outside of the recent Russian / Gecko space mentalism, this is probably my favourite animal-based news of recent weeks. Are you ready for this?

OK.

FORTY INDIAN MEN HAVE BEEN HIRED TO IMPERSONATE MONKEYS TO SCARE AWAY THE REAL MONKEYS FROM DEHLI’S PARLIAMENT BUILDING AND OTHER GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS.

This is not a joke.

Amazing.

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One bonus item this week:

I’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s hilarious. Marvel’s funniest film yet.

Go and see it.

___

Whatley out.

PS. Still off Twitter – it’s actually really quite refreshing. That said, my output has gone up on the other places where I dick about, e.g.: Facebook (public posts, often), Instagram (random photos), and Spotify (for ze choons).