Category: Kim Blog (English)

Personal blog. Thoughts, conspiracies with a danish twist etc.

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Julian Beever – Amazing 3D illusion pavement drawings

Julian Beever - Batman and Robin to the rescueMy attention was just drawn (badam tisch!) to the works of Julian Beever, instead of linking to the sites that posts copies of his works, I googled him a little and found this homepage.

Julian Beever

Julian Beever has specialised in pavement drawings that plays tricks on the eye, “anamorphic 3D projections” I believe that they’re called, I came to think of M.C. Escher when looking at his pictures.

When viewed from the right angle, these drawings look three dimensional.

Regarding M.C. Escher, I was once told a story about the love mathematicians has for M.C. Escher.

In the story, a mathematician that admired M.C. Escher, once meet with him, only to discover, to his disappointment, that M.C. Escher had no detailed knowledge of advanced mathematics.

Made me wonder if Julian Beever has a love for mathematics.

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English) Mactopia Technology

Apple Opens Up: Kernel, Mac OS Forge, iCal Server, Bonjour, Launchd

Mac OS Forge

Apple Opens Up: Kernel, Mac OS Forge, iCal Server, Bonjour, Launchd

Apple seems to be doing the right thing, and is renewing it’s commitment to the power of open source, following the disappointing decision to shut down OpenDarwin.org.

First of all the Intel Kernel sources will be made available. Quote from the mailing list:

As of today, we are posting buildable kernel sources for Intel-based Macs alongside the usual PowerPC (and other Intel) sources, starting with Mac OS X 10.4.7. We regret the delay in readying the new kernel for release, and thank you for your patience.

More importantly a new community project web-site called Mac OS Forge has been launched, and a number of projects are already hosted on Mac OS Forge.

Most notable on the list of featured projects is the calendar server from Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, that was unveiled yesterday.

I was a bit worried that the Mac OS X Leopard Calendar server would be a closed project, so this is great news.

But Mac OS Forge is definitely no OpenDarwin, yet!

Thanks to macnyt.dk for drawing my attention to this important news.

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Apple – QuickTime – WWDC 2006 Keynote – Intel Transition complete and Leopard preview

WWDC 2006 KeynoteApple – QuickTime – WWDC 2006

Finally the 7th of august arrived, and the WWDC 2006 Keynote has been delivered. It’s available as a stream from the link above, but expect sluggish performance for some time, everybody seems to be tuning in.

And boy was this one hyped event, as the “Joy of Tech” pointed out, it seems like all tech web-sites, even non rumour sites, were turning into rumour sites.

Come on, this is WWDC, it’s about developers, and I didn’t expect anything besides the unveiling of Leopard.

And the anticipation was building with banners bashing Microsoft and calling Leopard Vista 2.0.

With the Keynote kicking off with the “PC” from the “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” commercials asking the Mac developers to take a long break, or come help him out with Vista – we need it!, the tone was set.

Continue reading “Apple – QuickTime – WWDC 2006 Keynote – Intel Transition complete and Leopard preview”
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Review: DO Y’ALL FELL GOOD? The Godfather of Soul: James Brown in Copenhagen

Mr. James Brown

  • The Godfather of Soul
  • The hardest working man in show business
  • the list goes on

visited the Amager Bio Venue in Copenhagen on the 30th on July 2006.

This was an event not to be missed, how often do you get to see such a legend live, and in a relatively small venue with somewhat of a club like atmosphere.

Mr. Brown brought with him an all star band, with extremely strong rhythm and horn sections, they were tight indeed, mastering jazz, soul and funk. And what great backup singers.

From a quite slow jazzy start where Mr. Brown was mostly acting as a big band leader, the show picked up the pace, and the godfather showed some of his moves, and when he occasionally let himself loose his voice showed remarkable strength.

Finally the venue was jumping, and the delivery of “Sexmachine” and finally “It’s a man’s world” were amazing. Suddenly the show was over, way, way too soon, and the church of soul that had temporarily been opened at Amager Bio, closed down, with no room for encores.

Thank you, and “Mr Brown, you know that we don’t start, till you make the count”, please start it again sometime. It felt REALLY REALLY good!

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English) Open Source Technology

Ohloh – Explore Open Source

Ohloh - Explore Open SourceOhloh – Explore Open Source

Ohloh is a directory of open source software projects, and it looks like a promising tool when navigating the fragmented jungle of OSS.

Here’s a quote from the Ohloh website:

We’re mapping the open source world by collecting objective information on open source software. Search our site for the most current software metrics and project information on open source software projects.

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English) Rumforskning Technology Videnskab

NASA – STS-121 – Shuttle Discovery has landed

Shuttle Mission STS-121Welcome back Discovery. It’s amazing watching the landing procedure as seen from the cockpit, the descend is steep and quick.

It will be interesting to hear the post mission briefings, I hope that the Shuttle is finally considered safe again, so that the construction of the International Space Station can pick up pace.

Congratulations to NASA with a successful mission, but what’s with the constant need to reboot the computers?

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Blogs Bookmarks Kim Blog (English) Music Technology

Last.fm relaunches with a depth charge

last.fm logoTools – Downloads – Last.fm

Yesterday last.fm was down for maintenance, only stating that we should get ready for “depth charge”.

BOOM! last.fm has relaunched, with lots of improvements and a cool new personal page called the “Dashboard”, but the most impressive new feature is the new rich client, I guees the Last.fm developers got feed up with JavaScript, so now we have a full featured client for our enjoyment.

Here’s a screen shot of the new client:
Last.fm client screenshot
The new client is a tremendous improvement over the previous client, now taking advantage of the community.

It’s getting more and more like iTunes, it will run on basically anything, is open source and uses it’s own streaming protocol making it independent of Apple and Microsoft. What’s not to like?

Last.fm is one of the coolest things on the planet, and I feel that they think exactly the same way I do.

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Blogs Kim Blog (English) Music

GUF music store in Copenhagen to relaunch

During this week I’ve been buying more music than all of last year, and I haven’t used the net at all.

It started last Friday at Pladehjørnet, continued Wednesday at the Fair in Vig, and ended yesterday, when I was in Lars Bjørnsstræde to check my favourite clothing store, Tracks

I noticed that the GUF music store looked very changed.

It turns out that it is going to re-launch with a new concept of low stock, music related artwork and collectibles and a display with classics mixed with new releases.

It’s a bold move, but I think that this is what is needed to counter the mass-consumerism of the music industry, we need speciality shops like this, it’s much akin to cartoon stores like Fantask!

The clerk asked me how many of the classics he had displayed that I owned, he was surprised to hear that the count was one, Speakerboxx by Outcast. Hmm…why don’t I have any Ray Charles? Now I have! His display clearly works.

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Off topic: Comment from islamqa.com?

Hmm…This comment to my article about the music I bought last week, must be labelled off-topic.

The sender calls herself(?) anne, and the mail address a@a.com looks bogus, there was, however, a link to the site islamqa.com.

But since the message doesn’t appear to be machine generated spam – well it MIGHT be – I’ve decided to post it.

I didn’t gain much insight into Islam from the comment, that I didn’t already have, and I have already received an answer to my theological questions regarding SÅ«ra 2.112 by an Iman from the Islamic Faith Center in Copehagen.

In my interpretation SÅ«ra 2.112 is as far removed from fundamentalism as anything I’ve ever read.

“Nay,–whoever submits His whole self to Allah and is a doer of good,–He will get his reward with his Lord; on such shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”

My interpretation is that you can receive absolution if you worship God (e.g. Allah) and is a doer of good.

The Iman acknowledged that this was an interesting SÅ«ra, but I guess that he’d disagree with the fact that I look upon God as one, e.g. being the same in all religious systems. To an Islamic faithful Allah, as recognised in the Islamic tradition, is the one and only God.

Shokoron and Salaam Aleikum

———————————- klip —————————–
Name: anne | E-mail: a@a.com | URI: http://islamqa.com

hej..jeg søgte lidt om islam for at prøve at forstå de så tit omtalte muslimere, så fandt jeg dette som jeg vil dele med dig, det forklarer lidt ang det de tror på

Continue reading “Off topic: Comment from islamqa.com?”
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Summer and new music – hip-hop and you don’t stop

Once in a while you have to pay your local record store (Musik Hjørnet in Taastrup BIG UP!) a visit, I did that yesterday, and left with a small record collection.

Since it’s summer for real in Denmark, and I’ve been in the mood for Dancehall – well almost since the “R*A*W” event in august 2004, but especially since “Bikstok Røgsystem” spilled “Over stok og sten” – and I’ve been listening to Internet radio stations like Baby Ace Radio and Batanga Reggaeton, for the last couple of days I asked the clerk for some Hispanic Dancehall (aka. Reggaeton).

Well the clerk obviously knew something about the subject, so he found a small collection, but I noticed that he included a DefJamacian record, he clearly was a fan of hip-hop.

A lot of the Dancehall records on the market are far too mainstream for my taste, so we began discussing hip-hop in general, and I asked for some more experimental stuff, like MF Doom and Dangerdoom, and it turned out that Doom and Danger were among his favourites too!

A couple of hours later I left with this collection:

  • Track 72 – Rockin’ “Dansk når det er bedst”
  • Madlid – Shades Of Blue “Doesn’t really sound like anything else”
  • Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique “Legendary but I only have a 12” and I “missed it””
  • Various – DefJamaican “Dancehall and big hip/hop stars”
  • Madlid – Blunted In The Bomb Shelter Mix by Madlib
  • Various – Dancehall Nice Again 2004 “Well had to have some”
  • Masta Ace – A Long Hot Summer “And I ordered a ticket for the Jam in Copenhagen”
  • Queen Latifah – All Hail The Queen “YOU SAID IT. I LOVE YOU LATIFAH”

Thanks mate! My nano is maxing out!