Lavonardo

Cloverfield, the recent Big Monster Romps Through Gotham-movie, as visualized on a map. Obviously, there are major spoilers involved.

Old school paper maps have been badly sidelined by the constant innovation in the electronic realm.

Panamaps brings in multilayering.

Looks nifty in the ads, obviously - but the techology’s worth in real life remains unproven.

Do not attempt to locate a hidden message in the selection.

There isn’t any.

• Color-shifting tiles, just the thing for the upgraded bathroom.
• Let no internet meme be uninvited to this party.
• Origami CD case. Probably a bit more difficult than the garden variety crane.
• When did Star Wars jump the shark? What about Star Trek? And bad things in science fiction in general… Certainly the have been named and numbered already. You bet they have.
• Vector Magic, surprisingly effective tool to convert bitmap images into vectorized format.
• Largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an …
• A collection of Kindle links.
• Shredz64, a game for the Guitar Hero-controller on the commodore 64. Respect.

The unexpected inclusion of a flight simulator in the newest version of Google Earth seems to be the worst-kept easter egg in a while.

And the program itself, these days equipped with a treasure trove of stellar images from several sources, still ranks amongst the worst time stealers there is.

Why, certainly!

• One more great map from strangemaps, this one showing which US state matches with which country size- and GDP-wise. Finland = Colorado, which ain’t bad at all.
• Photographs of speed. Some seriously great snaps.
• The end is nigh: multicore programming is hard.
• With candidates like these, the seven new wonders are bound to be boring. Where’s teh internet from the list?
• Been a happy google reader user for quite a while, but with their recent data loss issues, having another RSS-reader might be worthwhile. Or not. Anyway, seems that there’s quite a selection of the tools available.
• Sushi books.
• Editing CSS isn’t exactly the best fun available, a good editor makes it less of a chore.
• Airlinemeals, just the thing to check before a transatlantic crossing in the cattle section of a 757.
• The 65 million dollar pants-case makes it to the court. By the description the session was high on surreal, and fortunately low on understanding the accuser.

[ image nabbed from goopymart's photoset on flickr. ]

No rhyme or reason, just things to poke and click.

• What would the world map look like if the countries were sized according to named criteria.
• Presentation files from O’Reilly’s recent Emerging Telephony 07 are available.
• Economist, the next generation? That’s what Project Red Stripe attempts to be.
• Amazing kids’ book on typographic animals.
• Evolution of blogging.
• Dance Dance Immolation, for those among us that are really confident in their steps.
• Over a million free stock photos at everystockphoto.com.

[ Abba the Hutt image from studio muscle. ]

Google Maps + Books = showing where the story happens. Brilliant.

Now if only somebody put up a map of the Middle Earth or Westeros in fully zoomable form.

The license and registration, please.

• The release imminent release of Windows Vista is accompanied weird alternate reality game: Vanishing Point (and a related wiki).
• Lounasblogi, about having lunch in downtown Helsinki would be much more usable were I able to actually have lunch somewhere else than the ghetto of Pitäjänmäki.
• Playing Fair with the Player, first new article about interactive fiction in quite a while.
• Feltron’s annual report - great idea, great design.
• What do 200 calories look like. There is quite a difference between celery and peanut butter (more than 30 times of weight).
• The initial set of Firefox 3.0 requirements is out. Nice.
• The music of Veronica Mars.
• Mapperz - an interesting blog/newssite on geographic web.
• Video on demand never got off the ground - how about books on demand?

For those about to click.

• IBM has published a gentle introduction of the wonders of virtualization.
• The collected wisdom of lifehackery is out in book form.
• The D programming language, somewhere beyond C, but not in the same direction as C++.
• Tony vs. Paul (which goes to show that stop motion is still a viable technology).
• Map of Gotham City, straight off the pages of Batman.
• A truly scary article on ultra-right wing mercenaries running wild in Iraq.
• The weather in Helsinki sucks, we’ve established that much recently. Space weather is much more interesting.
• Of the 365 days of 2006, the Internet Explorer was unsafe for 286 of them.

Jason Kottke has listed the cream of the crop of his 2400 links remaindered last year. Most still as interesting as on the day of posting.

Germany is under martial law, following the appearance of a gigantic insect on the countryside, as shown on the attached image from Google Maps. Fortunately the critter has been very docile, and has not moved since the initial sighting.

Seriously, though, this is old hat, and the insect has been identified as a thrips that got squished during the scanning of aerial (as opposed to satellite) photography.

Where n is 9.

• A page on the evolution of speech bubbles in comics.
• independent gaming is all about what the title states. Sadly windows-centric.
• Neatest google maps mash-up in a while: NYC subway mapped onto the streets of the city.
• Never tried out the addiction called World of Warcraft - according to a study, a whopping 40% of its players suffer from acute addiction.
• The firefox crop circle.
• Nintendo DS homebrew portal.
• John Heilemann’s “counter-historical” article: What If 9/11 Never Happened.
• Llamasoft history, from programming a space invaders clone on zx81 to the modern day (most of the tale still not written).
• Amazing kinetic sculptures (and yeah, it is a BMW commercial, but well worth watching).

So, all of a sudden the street-level map of Helsinki (and probably of many other places) is available in google maps. Missed the addition of non-satellite map data completely. And the satellite map data seems to have vastly increased in clarity.

Looks good, apart from some names that persist in swedish (like Berghäll in the attached image). I’m sure someone has already complained.

Not all six shots expended here.

• ASCII maps renders google maps through a slightly lossy pipeline. The site seems to have lost colour in the maps since the first visit.
• Not all the depictions of the “Internet” in the movies have been truthful - a decent WSJ article exposes some of the good, bad and the ugly.
• Woo. Warren Ellis is a guest of honor in the Helsinki comic festival
• Been looking for a new camera recently - the G3 is good, but a bit slow and definitely a bit bulky. The good old dpreview.com seems to be the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to analyzing equipment.
• Rob Hubbard was the composer in 8-bit days, now his output has been carefully collected and catalogued.

EDIT 30.8.2008: Neither the Sarjakuvafestivaali nor the Hubbard links have survived to this day.

Google expanded their mapping service to cover Mars.

But it seems to be missing the canals, and I couldn’t find Dejah Thoris’ palace either. Perhaps she’s just getting ready for Jon Favreau’s movie adaptation of the ERB classic.

And the famous face in Cydonia (at 40.75N, 9.46W, and available as a tagged object) seems less prominent on the maps than in the theories spouted by those convinced that it is a monument of extraterrestrial nature.

Sweet!

• The Believer/McSweeney crowd will publish the first issue of Wholpin, a dvd-zine filled with short films. I want, especially when it includes unpublished bits by Spike Jonze. But am denied purchase by Amazon, it would seem, as “Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S”. Well, this is where ebay will come in useful, certainly.
• FNORD. A classified sequel to the classic game of world-domination and losing friends.
• Chuck Norris, meet U-15, the last man you’ll ever challenge to a staring contest.
• Yet more funky lego-constructions. This time it’s Babbage’s difference engine.
• Ok, ok. Joss Whedon’s Firefly was vastly better than the average show, and untimely cancelled. But this attempt shooting for a second season seems a tad optimistic. Considering that Serenity didn’t exactly break the box office.
• Google Earth, the nighttime version. Images have ugly watermarks, but squint hard, and the world’s a better place for sure.
• Museum of Hoaxes. This will spruce up a boring meeting. Something to visit again and again. And when the museum’s no longer enough, it’s time to take a plunge into the wild world of urban legends. The real thing, not the D-class teen slashers of yesteryear.
• What do you get when you mix up an ancient Nintendo classic, the chorus of an Aerosmith song and a vice-president with quail-shaped friends: Cheney’s got a Gun. This is less safe for work than the previous. At least mute the laptop before clicking.

What does mine say?

Things that have impressed or stupefied this week. Entirely Sony Rootkit-free, that subject has been discussed and dissed to the death already.

• A remake of the classic Prisoner show has been proposed. With most of the cool/unique bits removed with surgical precision.
• Sam Peckinpah’s marvellous ode to the end of the western era, The Wild Bunch, finally gets a decent dvd treatment. The current version is an ancient flipper, and this update is much appreciated.
• Hell must be freezing over: an interesting Microsoft Blog.
• The third Ben Schott’s Miscellany book will soon be out in finnish.
• A finnish google maps blog. Now the question on where a hole drilled from Helsinki through the centre of the Earth would surface on the other side can finally be settled.
• A definitive list of 100 best board games ever. Backgammon and go are present among the commercial games, but chess is conspicuously absent. Or my search-fu is weak.
• Someone with a decent amount of time in his hands has implemented a UNIX-lookalike virtual machine in Javascript. It even has a functional vi in it. Redirection seems to be misbehaving, but it’s a hack-y achievement nonetheless.
• Risto Isomäki’s Sarasvatin Hiekka is shortlisted for the Finlandia-award. But with the decision done by our ex-prime minister and all around master grouch, I don’t think that a science fiction book has no chance of success. But who knows, maybe Paavo is a recovering trekkie, now on a serious B5-binge.
• Google analytics started working, but clearly the launch capacity needs were vastly under-estimated.
• The search terms that reach the Lavonardo HQ are lame, when compared to those of benrope.

Ok, so it’s NOT rootkit free, but this image is way too clever to miss out on. Sue me.

A random selection of things that have tickled my fancy one way or the other.

• The collective death of the angry young man as a concept has indeed been misreported.
• The uncyclopedia entry about Finland is chuckle-inducing, but only if you can spot the references. Or at least the majority thereof, quite a few are on the obscure side.
• V for Vendetta is out in finnish. Quite a nice hard cover edition. Ought to get, just to entice the publisher for continuing the good work.
• Never knew there were so many Taschen books around. Will get the “Movies of the $DECADE” one of these days. After the bookshelf-capacity has been increased.
• PopOut Maps rule as a tourist accessory. The official site manages to suck in several interesting ways (like the utter inability to provide a decent catalogue of the range), so it’s better to check amazon for the locations the maps are available. Collection thus far: Boston, Dublin and Barcelona. All bought on location, used and appreciated.
• Surprisingly vocal endorsement of the 770. Which has its own watchblog, so there’s clear pent-up interest. And the release ought to be imminent, with 3Q/05 ending in just two and a half weeks.
• A big collection of Hello, World-programs in tons of different languages.
• boingboing has been wallowing in post-Katrina-Bush-hatefest, but still occasionally contains gems. Like this scrabble-set in 1337-speak
• Perspectives on the inevitable Google vs. Microsoft battle: Phil Wainewright, Tim O’Reilly.

Google has gone on a regular release spree lately.

Haven’t yet given their desktop a spin, but will at work where the disk (and especially Outlook’s myriad folders) are just cluttered with hard-to-find nuggets.

Google Earth is nothing short of fabulous, and an incredible timewaster. Even though I do think that the Golden Gate pylons are upright as opposed to reclining on the surface of the bay…

However, the most immediate impact is felt from their brand-spanking new (and still beta) Google Talk, their interpretation of IM. Eschews bells and whistles and concentrates on what’s really useful, talk itself.

Of course, such a closely spaced bunch of releases (though Earth is old news) always raises questions about where the company is heading. Jason Kottke crafted a well-thought out piece on potential future of no less than the entire operating system domain. His analysis preceded the talk-release, but is thought-provoking to say the least. And despite the hopelessly speculative nature of the article, it’s an enjoyable read - and a head and shoulders above the site’s usual fare. While the remaindered links are interesting - the capacity for thorough analysis on various matters is definitely more to my taste.

And while on topic of these next-gen desktop thingamabobs, I finally got around to checking out konfabulator. And nifty it is indeed. Coding-wise as well, so it’s probably time to hoist the sleeves and get cracking. Even though it’s in javascript which I don’t really like - but the choice of an interpreted language means that any interesting widgets can be dissected to atoms. Which bodes well for shallowing out the learning curve…

Unlike I assumed previously, the google maps does work well enough even with limited satellite data to show the whereabouts of Lavonardo HQ.

And the utterly missing street-information’s bound to show up sooner or later.

Google Maps now covers the whole world. Though without street-level details, or precise satellite imagery. But it’s a nudge (a big nudge at that) in the correct direction.