Video | Alphabet soup

“A Canadian filmaker travels to the north Pacific Ocean to discover a world of unknown plastic pollution.” Well, that’s what the video says at least, truth be told this videos’ message is much more important because this concrete issue has been so neglected till recently. There’s actually a shitload of waste, floating and sinking in the middle of the Pacific, and cleaning it up is nothing short of impossible. Had no idea that plasti dissolves so fast (due mainly to the sun and the salt in the water), had no idea that abundantly eating fish is, in a way, also eating my own trash. Length | 12: 49

Links: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” | Great Pacific Garbage Patch (W) | Ship pollution (W)

For more insight into waste problems subscribe to Geekofriendly.

Video | Zaha Hadid – The Opus

Although I appreciate Zaha’s work, I can’t really say she isn’t lazily copy/pasting her old stuff a lot of the time, kind of suffering from the Gehry syndrome, if you will. But this time, I’ve gotta hand it to her, she’s definitely realized where her strengths lie and has shifted away from generic organic shapes on the outside to make better use of them in the core of the building. In one word, her new buildding in Dubai, The Opus, looks awesome, and the trailer below is nothing shy of hypnotic due to clever use of atmospheric music, smooth voice-over and good renders.  More info here.

Links: Zaha Hadid | The Opus | more Opus

(via: architectural videos*)

For more insight into architecture subscribe to Geekofriendly.

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Metacafe Bets Its Future On The Power Of Wikis (here’s to hoping YouTube follows)
• [Eco] [Economy] Green New Deal (atm quite the buzzword)
• [Nano] I Bet You’ve Never Seen Water Bounce Before (nuff said)
• [Health] Less-Invasive Brain Interfaces
• [Politics] Food Security in Japan (well-made & the last 30 secs are LOL funny)
• [Man-made] TED Talks Luca Turin: The science of scent (great stuff!)

ENTERTAINMENT

• Snoop Dogg on Martha Stewart (shizzle on the ridicculizl)
• Older people have more black and white dreams
• Amazing Story of a Man Who Survived Being Buried 40 Days
• Dubai and the UAE
• Police dash cam of Meteor over Edmonton, Canada (just like in the movies)
• Shrimp Vs Octopus

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to chilling the fuck out.

.

(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

For more random stuff subscribe to Geekofriendly.

The Manchurian microchip or how China might be preparing to bring the western world to its knees…Chinese government gives “no comment”

Ok, so the Manchurian microchip thing got some leverage in the press (as expected) and the news is spreading like wildfire in California (sorry, bad example – my heart goes out to the forest vegetation and the animals!). So anyways, here’s a BBC article (I didn’t Diigo because I pretty much already mentioned everything useful from the article) .

The epilogue of this mess awaits…

(via: BBC)

For more political espionage subscribe to Geekofriendly.

The Manchurian microchip or how China might be preparing to bring the western world to its knees

The most interesting thing I’ve read this week so far…I don’t know what to make of it yet, but if it turns out to be just a product of imagination it would still be eerie enough to make an excellent summer blockbuster thriller.  An excerpt:

The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to “call home” if and when activated.

The reality: It may actually be true.

…

“It is there, deep inside your computer, if they decide to call it up,” the security chief of a multinational corporation told The Investigator. “It is capable of providing Chinese intelligence with everything stored on your system — on everyone’s system — from e- mail to documents. I call it Call Home Technology. It doesn’t mean to say they’re sucking data from everyone’s computer today, it means the Chinese think ahead — and they now have the potential to do it when it suits their purposes.

I’ll leave you with that, go here to read the full article and for the Diigoed version go here.

(via: Ignacio)

For more political espionage subscribe to Geekofriendly.

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] 3D Display Offers Glimpse of Future Media (other ideas on where the future is headed here)
• [IT] BeatMyPrice Finds Deals, Integrates RetailMeNot
• [Future] Top 10 forecasts for 2009 and beyond
• [Politics] Barack Obama Can’t Save The World Alone (I think it needs to be said, the hype is still growing)
• [Man-made] Six Real Gadgets Minority Report Predicted Correctly
• [Man-made] AirGlass: Today’s little bit of wow

ENTERTAINMENT

• Scenes from Antarctica
• The Incredible Shrinking Peanut Butter Jar
• US Air Force Abandoned Nuclear Bomb in Greenland
• “Star Wars” – an a cappella tribute to John Williams
• Big Buck Bunny
• On S’Embrasse?

WEEKLY TRIBUTE

.

(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

For more random stuff subscribe to Geekofriendly.

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] CNN’s telepresence debut (see how it works here, see what’s been done before CNN here)
• [Health] First complete cancer genome sequenced
• [Politics] What Happens when Countries Go Bankrupt?
• [Economy] 100,000 Chinese Factories Closing: Orders Off; Regulations Up
  
• [Man-made] Brain-only Computer Interfaces Becoming Reality (can’t wait till it gets mainstream)
• [Psychology] Think graphic design doesn’t matter? (an important point)

ENTERTAINMENT

• 9 of the Most Bizarre Animal Defense Mechanisms
• The Top Ten Reasons iTunes Sucks (bless you, Scott Gilbertson!)
• Unruly Children To Be Punished With ‘Innovative’ Foot Massages (too WTF not to post here)
• Russian Basso Profondo: The Lowest Voices (unearthly)
• A Flood collapses road in a few minutes
• TIME’s Best Inventions of 2008 (worth checking out for the diversity of inventions alone)
  

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to true pressure. It comes with added bonus sometimes…

My congrats to the man, but I refuse to make a big deal out of it. Hearing and reading about people who say they couldn’t believe a non-caucasian person would ever become president of a western nation makes me feel friggin shocked above all. Then sad…because for a split second I realize how right all these people actually were. Then happy…because we were all proven wrong. Then sad again…because its almost 2009 and we’re all applauding something that’s way over due…

(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

For more random stuff subscribe to Geekofriendly.

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Internet Altering the Way Our Brains Work
• [IT] Get the Green Web 3.0 Experience on Truevert (or how ‘green’ is raising the bar with semantic web)
• [Future] Police will use new device to take fingerprints in street
• [Nature] Bacteria Cause Old Buildings To Feel Off-color (a must-read for anybody in the construction business)
• [Politics] Atlas of hidden water may avert future conflict
• [Man-made] [Nature] How biometrics could change security (see the video)

ENTERTAINMENT

• F-f-freaks @ adg conference
• High Performance Fighter Uniform Can Stop Bleeding In 20 Seconds
• What Do We Have Here? TWINS? (lol celeb pics)
• 52 Epic Natural Wonders of the World
• Red Enhances Men’s Attraction To Women?…
• Obama and McCain – Dance Off!

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to perfect timing, or in my case chance & coincidence…pour me another one of those ‘CC’s, please:)

.

(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

For more random stuff subscribe to Geekofriendly.

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Some much needed improvements (Watch Seth Godin’s video below to get a better idea of what I mean)
• [Eco] Should They be Generation E?
• [Nature] When under attack, plants can signal microbial friends for help (amazing stuff)
  
• [Man-made] 3D Virtual Heart So Real Doctors’ Own Hearts Go Pitter Patter
• [Man-made] Seth Godin’s Tribes (great presentation on video…I really can’t describe in words how much I feel exactly, EXACTLY(!!!!!!!!!!!!!)  like Seth on this one:). Of all the futurists, he is easily the most pragmatic one!)
• [Sociology] [Psychology] Does the use of hand gestures slow language learning? (I drool over this type of empirical research data)

ENTERTAINMENT

• Not Photoshopped: Li Wei’s Astounding Action Art
• Dolls and Toys that Creep us Out
• That’s Worlds Highest Bungee Jump @ Helicopter @ 500m/1640ft
• Tuttuki Bako (after seeing the video…spechless!)
• When Robot Programmers get bored
• Improv Everywhere Creates Epic Balloon Battles Using MP3 Players (IE still rocks)

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to PBwiki. I’ve tried a couple of online wiki’s, and this one’s price-performance (for personal use, cost-zero!) is by far the best I’ve seen and used thus far. The interface is incredibly slick and easy to use and is a big time-saver. They also put strong emphasis on back-up (which you can also manually download onto your pc) and guarantee that loss of data will not occur on their watch (how much that can be trusted is of course up to you). What’s also pretty sweet is the ability to invite guests and have them look only at a particular page of your wiki and not the whole thing (so personal info and to-do lists of celebrity hotties are safe from prying eyes). Other cool features: RSS (comes in handy if/when many users update pages), downloading pages as .pdf’s, interface flexibility…

My personal thought is that every single company (even a one-man band) MUST have a personal wiki (or anything that allows fluid and user-friendly knowledge-transfer that will be put to good use) to handle the abundance of info they deal with.

One of those things that simply make my life so much easier and better! Simply a must:) For more on IT that I think is really practical and useful, click here.

.

(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

For more random stuff subscribe to Geekofriendly.

The future of designing buildings and other man-made structures

Oh its at least a couple of years away (mildly put) from becoming mainstream, but  the video after the jump gives a surprisingly detailed and thought-out idea of an efficient (again, mildly put) work environment and indisputably shows how technology can be an architect’s best friend. And an engineer’s, designers, you name it!

Hod do I know this? I just do…for I have been to the mountaintop:

On a lighter side, let’s look at it from a different, albeit still important perspective. A mirror of the not-so-distant future, if you willl…

Do you wanna be the I-have-a-serious-long-term-relationship-with-my-desktop-computer,-my-mouse-is-bigger-than-my-erect-penis-and-my-idea-of-exercise-is-opening-a-new-jar-of-mayonnaise bald fat fuck:

Or do you want to be the I’m-actually-psycho-but-still-take-care-of-myself-because-I-predominantly-do-my-work-standing-or-at-least-move-my-arms-and-upper-body-a-whole-lot wholesome, good looking guy like Tom Cruise:

I crossed the line with ‘wholesome’, but the question was rhetorical…or was it?

Further information on building Information modeling (BIM), especially the last paragraph of ‘BIM in the USA’.

For more ideas for the future subscribe to Geekofriendly.