March 2002 Archives

Cute and 3D: Cirque de Knetmasse. Even the soundtracque fantastique and qiuute!

Pretty serious, rich in content, looking good.Onet.pl The Polish web portal. Looks nice, doesn�t it?

A Easter collection of most Orisinal flash games. Enjoy. Thank you.

Currently enjoying Sonata No.1 in G minor, BWV 1001, 4th M - Presto by J.S.Bach from his Sonatas & Partitas for Violin Solo, BWV 1001, 1002, 1004 (Rachel Podger)

There is so much more than I understand. Currently working on PHP, in order to eventually make minilux.org work.

Yes, we are angry that Ameli� did not win any Oscars. It is probably the best foreign film of the past year after all. (What does foreign film mean, exactly?, see this is where the trouble starts.) Well, do you remember the gnome story?, You will like this slideshow: Gnew York Gnome.

This here is a global village, why not Collect interesting Spam?

It is springtime again in New York, or at least the pre spring time, the almost best time of the year, which feels like spring, but lacks the tiring allergies I get from all the beautiful blooming trees and grasses. Much less here than back in Europe, but still enough to make me helpless outdoors. was just packed with visitors today. There were lines to the water/hotdog stands and plenty of Frisbee throwers happy runners and ambitious inline skaters, strange looking singles, characters, various amounts of parents with various amounts of kids. What a pleasure to even just sit there on the bench and to look at all the working ways of living in New York. There are just so many ways to do it, so many great and completely logical social micro systems. All these nationalities grouped on these islands and this time even seemingly more grouped around the fence of the great lawn, which is about to open later, this spring. The snippets of conversations, make it so obvious why so much writing comes from New York. "And I could have sworn she was an alcoholic!" "Oh, you�re reading his book, I went to visit him up in Maine, he used to be a priest, you know, and now he just spends time writing, that�s what he does and he does it quite well." "Have you seen the peacock over there?" "They say there are no turtles here." This good mixture of Origin, Age, Opinion, somehow makes perfect harmonious sense. A world concentrated in a . So it was not at all surprising to see Kofi A. Annan walk by, engaged in a conversation with somebody else I must have seen somewhere before, right next to the Flute Player who came at exactly 4PM to take over the afternoon shift for the Saxophone player under the bridge near the Metropolitan. If you can make it here, why would you want to make it anywhere else. This does sound extremely NY-centric, doesn�t it? OK, I take it back. But really, I simply love New York.

and a piece of furniture from 1880?... wow.

Hmm, so simple... and good

First read about Wabi Sabi and then take a look at this.

So there is a Links section on this site, and I actually use it as my links away from home. There are not too many links there, I know, but more will come. I go to the section sometimes to look at places I liked in the past... (bookmarks.. no new idea)... Some of the links are real gems. Like The Contax G Pages, by Glen Campbell. What a great site. What great skill to build such a site. Glen�s personal pages are pretty serious too. Take a look at this and this. We will need to come back.

A blog is a dead blog without any links. So, baseline goes Minilux!. I knew it, I knew it. Minilux is the camera of choice from those who want to shoot great quick pictures. Dan, the guy who runs the baseline project wrote me in an email that he carries the minilux with him and that his aim to shoot time is around 5 seconds. A pretty good time, especially when you look at the pictures. Excellent.

The sky over Port Washington looks like a Flemish painting.

There was this great quote in the Branding book for Lego. "Childhood is not the beginning of life. It is life." (the quote is by a 4 year old). So now that I think back and put myself in the age of 11 or 12. It was a quite serious time. I felt like a very serious person at that time. I had my first computer, an Atari 600XL and I hacked away. I still have the computer somewhere, probably in Germany. My parents and I (and our dog) escaped to Germany when I was 11. It was all a secret operation and none of us spoke the language. So the age around 11 was one of the most intense times of my life. I had to quickly learn German as well as English, in order to get into a German Highschool (and then Russian too, as a "second language"). I managed to get in. I learned German in about a year. My German surely was not perfect, but when my mother went to talk to my teacher later that year, and told her that we had just come from Poland, the teacher asked her, how long we had been in Poland. She did not realize that I had been in Poland all my life. I am not very good with spelling I seem to learn laguages by listening to them, so my German papers were just really bad. How did I get onto this Tangent?... not quite sure...

A cousin in law (Ms. Post might not agree that there is somebody like a cousin in Law) A cousin in law of mine is 11 years old. She has this fascinating hobby, which is Powerpoint Presentations. Yes, real Powerpoint. Many of us have to use powerpoint to pitch ideas and it does not seem like a likely candidate for a hobby. A bit like turning going to the dentist into a hobby. I sometimes even call Powerpoint Weakpoint for that reason. This cousin (and I am not giving away the name here), has great fun with the application though. She makes these almost professional presentations all with funny transitions and with great sound effects. She really makes Powerpoint look pretty cool. When another cousin (22) asked her how long it takes her to make a presentation, she said something quite profound (and funny)... "A day. ...like, an hour".
Which shows that the future is definitely here. Forget 40 hour workweeks. The 5 hour workweek is here. Computers and Powerpoint make it possible. (How many hours did you really, honestly work on a project today?)

This site actually made it to the top 100 on weblogs. believe it or not. there were some hits comming from the top 100 list on weblogs. I am not linking now, because this editing of links by hand is a bit hard for me, with my thin HTML knowledge. So no links until I get home tonight.

Need to blog, need to blog, need to blog.
I am still in Long Island. Which means that I am using the web interface of blogger to post, and am not using my computer. (is there anything else than a web interface to blogger?). The connection here is somewhere in the 5K range, not the DSL at home and the computer is a cute old iMac. It is Aqua, you know. (And it is loud too...) The Spacebar makes a very loud sound, a clack, clack clack... makesmewanttotypewithoutthe spacebar, orIwillneedtogetadifferent keyboardforthiscomputerhere because of this spacebar... clickclack...

Still not at home. This interface does not really allow me to spellcheck anything here... but I need to post, I need to blog.

So we went from Boombox to Walkman, to minidisc, to iPod. And where is the share button on the iPod?, is sharing out now?, is music some private secret thing?. I hope not... Soundbug will finally allow to really terrorize the subway car again. Just attch this thing to anyu glass surface and make it into a speaker. This is the reversal of a Sony phone study from 1990, i think... where the phone was attached to the window and the window was the microphone. A nice idea... you would always have a conversation with your view... or maybe with your neighbor�s bathroom window. Cordless phones turned out to be more popular... ; ) Soundbug looks like lots of fun though, doesn�t it?... Thank you for the link, J�rgen.

Remember this walking machine that was not really a walking machine (and cost around 109 grand on amazon)? Well here is a "jumping machine" that actually works. Yes, I want one of those. Just imagine all the fun. Messengers should use these, instead of bicycles. Rush hour would look like the Australian outback. Thank you for the link Tom.

Wait a second... this one: PERFECT_ARTISTIC_WEB_SITE is just insane. THis is really great stuff. And now in Korean.

THE_END and this is just the beginning. YHChang heavy industries might not have the best typographical skills... (0 is not O... and so forth...) but who the $%^& cares. The Animations are beautiful. Remember when you first saw Sign of the Times (before your time?)... yeah, like that. fresh.

Blown away by RealEyes quite a superpack of skill on the site. What is reality anyway?

Just saw a BIG amazon box fall from the sky onto 96th street. WOW, they sure deliver. (It was an empty box and something might have thrown it from a high floor of the Columbia House but boy... just missed a great picture.)

J�rgen just sent me this gem of a link: Client Quotes. Yes. This is good stuff. (Is there a site for clients who deal with bad designers?... not all designers are brilliant, you know, and some of the client comments might have been desperate attempts to salvage something horrible...)

More than one French designer: T-CREATORs

And then there is T-FACTORY for all you pixel obsessed t-shirt lovers... ok I take it back. The designs are for those among us who see English as a very foreign language. Some of the shirt-copy is obviously written by a French designer who did not pay too much attention in English class. But then again... "Is Our children learning?"

Meeting people gets even easier using other atypyk products, like the ATYPYK>>DO DISTURB sign. (I like the various patches too...)

And then there is the Revenge CD (CD vengeance) from colette. Something for your neighbor and you. Hmm. How about buying a pack of two and playing track #3 - Orgasm (outstanding) at the same time. Meeting people is easy. My downstairs neighbor a few years ago really loved Radiohead. I like Radiohead too, just not through a wooden floor of a New York brownstone. So I put my speakers facedown on the floor and played the same tracks as she did. Until she stopped. I then left a bottle of Champagne on her doorstep. Now that�s European for you.

Who would have thought, the iPod case I mentioned before is available online.
So European.

How low do I need to go, in order to increase traffic to this site? Will Porn help? (No way man, not from me, not on this site), or how about some other fascinating News, like:British men are less fertile than hamsters
Which actually does not say much. Who would like to be more fertile than some rodent. On the other hand, the topic is serious. No drilling in Alaska.
(Ok, this should be enough keywords for today. Let�s get back to work, shall we?)

A great picture shot by Paul Fisher for the Mirror Project. It is like a Madonna snapshot, with switched Players. The Mirror Project | Paul Fisher | Irina Loves Caesar The more I think about it, the better it gets. Everybody in the picture has a Halo, the cat is named after a Roman Emperor. The cat is the only one not present only as a reflection. A picture that works on many levels.

Ahem, some of you will find it funny, some of you I just do not understand. The little box on the right hand side. [Find yourself]->GO is a search engine that allows you to find anything on witoldriedel.com. Anything that I have added so far and that has been indexed as of Sunday night. It is not a tool for finding yourself. This means that you might enter a search term into the box before pressing the Go button. ... wait a second. Did some of you think that just pressing *GO* is going to give out some universal wisdom?... Most users here just press on the GO button and I just did not understand, how were they able to ever use a search engine?, how did they find this site? This is usability testing the hard way. I will need to make this page more exciting. Let me think about ways to make this blog here more "engaging" or "fun". There are just so many other areas of the site that need immediate attention, that I did not have time to work on this, most popular Blog page. The Giraffe used to be called "Picture of the day" for about a month, until it had to be changed... and the hand holding the book is getting a bit old, even for me. But please do not give up on me here. If you dislike something here, chances are I am working on it. Or just email me, tell me, talk to me... or just type your secret wishes into the "find yourself" box and click that *go* button really hard. I will never know who you are, but I will know that you want change. Change is good.

Can please more of you link to me?, the statistics here:( blogdex) look pretty sad. Is this blog really this bad? Maybe I am just very "special" or maybe I am the first one in a pack.

Seriously MUJI does not put logos on their products. : )

You might have the iPod and not be happy because of the white plastic front, or maybe the display seems superflous, maybe the buttons, the dial, who put them there anyway? You want to look fabulous and special... Well, you are not alone...Christian Dior�s leather iPod holder. Just make all this ergonomic stuff disappear and replace it with a CD logo. Funny, how the initials of Christian Dior are identical with those of Compact Disc, which iPod makes obsolete. Maybe there should be a Leather pouch for a laptop that opens on the bottom so everything falls out... but looks fabulous closed... oh, wait a second... these are actually available at the prada store. Saw them with my own eyes. I blacked out however seeing the price.
How do I know all these exciting things? Guess what, I am ... European.
I do not have the iPod. (yet) and my powerbook case comes from muji... which means ... no logo. ; )

Found ****'s Blog! (somebody I know, who might want to have some privacy... not this much privacy, since it is a blog.) The Politics of Life A superbly funny blog. Will be added to the blog section right about now.

Guilty pleasures. Bought this rare old portrait lens for my praktina today. Zeiss 75/1.5 Biotar When you scroll to the bottom of the page. The camera on the left hand side is a praktina fx (my camera) with a metered prism (do not have it) and with this incredible lens. Looking forward to shooting with it. It is currently in Slovakia. In good hands.

Isn�t she beautiful? Leica - Digilux 1 Thank you for the link, Sten.

A serious event, a serious site.XXV Bienal de S�o Paulo

And three is a charm. (Aller guter Dinge sind drei) This one looks a bit vane, maybe, but i really did not see myself when shooting this picture. I was looking into the reflection of the camera.two mirrors make reflections look like real life. Ok, I saw myself when posting the image.

And one more. I think i like this one most. I am hiding between mirrors.hiding between two mirrors.

Here we go. Another picture added to the Mirror Project!F 1700 back to New York

Twelve photographs have been added to the 600x250 section of this site. Most were shot in Miami, or around Miami all this march.
"Bay" was shot through a mosquito net onto one of the bays of Sunny Isles. | "Bluefish" was shot at the aventura mall in Sunny Isles. | "Cabin" is the inside of the cabin of Continental F 1700 after landing in Newark. | "chopper" was shot over the Sunny Isles Bay, with a 50 year old PraktinaFX and a Carl Zeiss Sonnar f4/300 Lens (it was obviously wide open at the time). | "Dinoservus" were just a Dollar and I got in "trouble" for shooting them. I shot a bit more in the supermarket and soon the market manager came up to me and reminded me that it is not usually allowed to shoot in stores. "I know you shoot to get the prices. I understand, we do that too. Just before you do, you have to ask the store manager." O.K. this is not really trouble. There is more to come. | "Floral" is shot here in the apartment. by the window, again, lens wide open. This time again with the little minilux, lens is a Leica Summarit f2.4/40. | "go" is the corner of a citgo station against the Florida sky. (minilux) | "pinnacle" is a high rise building in miami. One of those new condos that grow right on the beach. The plane was one of a whole pack that pulled anti smoking banners. The Lens here again the Sonnar f4/300. She is 50, she is all dusty inside, but she still brings things so much closer. Great lens. | "pool" was shot from the roof of a building. The camera here was a Contax G2. The Lens was again a Carl Zeiss Sonnar. This time it is a f2.8/90 It is the most tele-tele-lens that currently fits onto the Contax G2. | "r" it is the sign of the rascal house, this amazing huge deli in Miami that has fed the retirees from New York and all over the world for 50 years now. (minilux) | "reflective" is a little interior detail a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. of a chandelier filled with reflections. and finally | "rolls" as in Rolls Royce. shot from the hip, from the center seat, going in the middle of the night, going back to New York. Home again.

Charlie Z. sent me this excellent link.. And the link is more than just a link. Take a look at the "Glass-Engine". I do not completely understand all this but it is somehow beautiful, fascinating. Ready to Click? Go: Philip Glass - Official Web Site . Yey!

Why am I not writing today? The scans are in. 594 scans. All the pictures taken in Miami last week (I found two more rolls, in the fridge, but these might be just some old Lomo leftovers). There are more Mirror Project images than any sane person could possibly submit, so I only sent off three. I am now going to organize the pictures a bit more extensively. In the meantime, please check out the brilliant pixel people on:chrisdiclerico.com.

Bootleg Art. funny crazy stuff...Eric Doeringer's Bootlegs. Not a really new concept, but obviously a crazy guy. He makes bongs too. Hmm, does not quite surprise me.

Ahem, so I signed up for the free version and after registering one book it is pretty clear that there are more interesting things to me than the number of pages in the books I own. Hmm, I will need to give this thing a second thought. Organize, collect, share your books with Singlefile Another fascinating feature of this database is the association with Amazon. Any click in the database gives the user a cookie, which provides 5-10% of the generated sales on amazon to the makers of the database. (Wait a second, I thought this was a pay service already). I am an amazon associate too, which means that any click on any of the book links on the site will give me the chance to collect 5-10% of the purchase my visitors make after reading my little reviews and recommendations. (Up to $10 per purchase, so if you buy a minilux I will get $10) To be quite honest, I have made $0 this way and I will probably make another big $0 in the future. What this whole program provides me with however is some additional tracking for clicks. Amazon is really good about it. I know that about 35 people clicked on the picture of the minilux in my links section, for example. I see it as a fun fact. But then this is me. I get excited about somebody finding my site because they entered "painting of big clown comforting little clown". Frightning, isn�t it? But also really funny.

Waferbaby finally posted J�rgen�s Eye in the Eye project!

Should we sign up for this?, is this any good?, or is it another way to have money taken away. Oh, and I also have way more than 500 books (most of my library is still in Germany) So shall weOrganize, collect, share your books with Singlefile? This is the question. The other question is. Where is my New York Times? it is almost 7:30 and no Times, no Times.
On my headphones. Beck.

New Diptych in Diptychs. It is called "Pillow"... for now.

I just keep refreshing The Iconfactory News Page the little animation that comes up is just a masterpiece, every single time. I have a collection of maybe 20 gifs now. Iconfactory rocks!

My favorite spots on this Coke page are the ones from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They feel a bit American, don�t they? I do not understand any Arabic, but the South African spot gives me an idea. It must be all about rediscovering the links between generations. Note how Coke portraits the various cultures. Fascinating. Think global, act local.

Just in case you were not able to open the virtual book. You need to maximize the window and then find the tiny vor> button on the right hand side. They are from Wiesbaden, what can I tell you? Try again. (this time preview Page 1)

Before I went to Florida, J�rgen gave me this book which he thought I might find interesting, "since I am interested in the Manhattan Project". The book was a hardcover of What Do You Care What Other People Think, by Richard Feynman. (I did not know that I was interested in the Manhattan Project, but there was a book on my wish list, so J�rgen got me something he liked) The picture on the cover looked familiar. It was the picture of Feynman taken by Faustin Bray and it looked familiar because it had been used in the Apple Think Different campaign. (I have also seen it over somebody�s desk at the office.) Hmm. So this smart guy, who�s girlfriend will go for her PhD in Physics gives me a book written by a guy who got a Nobel Prize in Physics. Apple wants us to think different, he does not care what other people think (including probably me)... to put it short, a red flag went up. I was ready to give up after the 3rd page maybe and to return the book to J�rgen after my return from Florida. I wanted to have something relaxing and entertaining to read in Miami though, so I picked a little book out of my private library: Jeff Wall�s "Szenarien im Bildraum der Wirklichkeit", a cute little book, a collection of Essays and Interviews with Jeff Wall, one of the great photographers of our time, famous and loved for his work since the late 70�s. He is the one who creates these huge boxes with cinematically arranged scenes. Really excellent work. Stunning. I have seen his work in so many places, even saw the retrospective at the Hirshhorn in Washington 1997, so I was looking forward to a happy, maybe even humorous intellectual read. I have no link for the Wall book. I can not find it anywhere. It must be out of print. Sorry.
You can probably guess by now what really happened. The Feynman book was pure joy and inspiration. Reminded me of my father, my childhood in Poland, made me feel warm and happy. A wonderful, touching book, down to earth. Written with the intention to be understood. A real guy writing about reality. Some passages felt as if they were written by a 17 year old. A 17 year old who has worked on the Manhattan Project and who got a Nobel Prize. Funny. Intelligent. Down to earth.
The second part of the book gives the reader a peak behind the scenes of the Space Shuttle Challenger hearings. Feynman, again describes this adventure with such freshness... pure joy.
So I read the book in a day. Maybe two. I am not the fastest reader. (I write even slower, so I hope you enjoy all this here.)
I can highly recommend the book, I have added more Feynman to my wish list on Amazon, which I use as a recommendation list, I am not really expecting anybody to buy me anything. (I am, most of the time, my own Santa Claus.)
Let�s take a look at the Jeff Wall book. The book is a translation into German. I usually do not like reading translated content, and I try to avoid translations as much as I can. I do not speak many Languages fluently but enough to be selective. German texts tend to turn into incomprehensible monsters when translated into, let�s say English. English texts can either become very complex, or quite simplistic, dependent on how deep the translator really decides to go.
I speak German a bit better than English still, I have lived in Germany for the longest part of my life.
Reading Jeff Wall hurts. It is not the most pleasant process. Maybe it is the translation, maybe it is the Florida sun. Reading about Jeff Wall feels more complex than the large slides and reading his Essays is just a quite complex experience. Jeff Wall is an Art Historian. (He really is an Art Historian) Writing seems to be his primary Language, (which is surprising, looking at his photographic work). Certain stylistic elements in his writing seem to come from Marx. Marx is famous for having a horrible style. Jeff Wall writes well and in complex ways, he is a good writer, it is just that certain things said, might just be better expressed by a picture than by a thousand words. It might be the fault of the translation, even though the translation is said to be excellent and in certain passages even closer to the original Wall than the same text published in English (Wall gave translators his original manuscripts which were not available to the English editors). I would love to have a relaxed conversation with Jeff Wall, maybe even over a glass of wine. He must be quite nice. His work is brilliant, he is from Canada. He really must be a good person to have a relaxed conversation with.
The trap I fell into is that what I was fearing might happen with Richard Feynman, happened with Jeff Wall. Feynman�s book was written for anybody, the bystander, somebody who would like to be taken onto an adventure. The Wall book was written for Art Historians. Experts.
It takes a bit longer to digest, to untangle the content, to look at what is really there and then to decide if the content really makes sense, and if what one sees here is really something that could only be said this way, or in many other, simpler ways.
Jeff Wall inspires as he admits that artist should not defend the art they make but create a body of written work around it, that works as nourishment to those who want to write about the art. It is one thing to break the rules and create rebellious art. It is a much more elegant approach to write new rules and then to show that the art created fits into this new, intellectual world.
I will need to write more about it. This whole experience will need some more and more serious commentary. I actually thought about a German Blog, since certain things can be said so much better in the Sprache der Dichter und Denker.
Not now. Tomorrow. I will need to come back to some aspects of Wall�s book. (I will also need to read most of it... again... And again)
Some categories established by Wall were just so obviously set there to suit his own work. Oh well. Not now.
Thank you for the book J�rgen. Thank you for some serious work Jeff Wall.
We will need to come back to all this. For now, good night.

No wonder the La's are not around anymore. Take a look at the date at the date on this piece called: The La's, Timeless Melody.
Hmm, the guys must have been more than 100 years old when i saw them. wow.

Listening to the La's again. This is fantastic. Great, simple Brit-pop. Saw them in Frankfurt (in the Batschkapp) 1991. I went to the concert without having listened to the record first. The crowd was crazy for these guys who sounded like reborn Beatles on some special substance. Each song was a simple but superb little hit. Just imagine if they kept recording. They would be right there now with Radiohead...
What happened to them?The La's What happened to Lee Mavers, John Power, Paul Hemmings and John Timson. What happened to James Joyce, Cammy (Peter James Camell) and Neil Mavers? I guess there will never even be a "Story behind the music" on VH1 or a "Biography Special" on E!
I managed to get some special CD's from England. Tired to order the special Japanese imports on Amazon.co.jp, but my Japanese just is not good enough.
Maybe I will just learn all the songs and perform them here for you later. There she Goes, there she goes again, rushing through my brain, and I just can�t contain This feeling that remains. There she blows, There she blows again, Pulsing through my vein... Wait a second... it is ten o'clock, almost, do we know where they are?

What always surprises me is the unlimited range of interesting links found by Tom. I am not surprised that the Logickeyboard is a Danish product. One might need to be close to the inventors of the ultimate plastic toy, (For our extraterrestrial readers: Lego the ultimate toy for Earthlings of all ages was invented by Ole Kirk Christiasen in Denemark.) to create such elegant gems of molded Plastic with a purpose.
And now let�s think about Something completely different.

ArtKrush - a website about art� Incredible! Artkrush finds "Powers of 10" Newsworthy. (See News Section, March 20th) There could not be a better welcome. Just walked in. I am absolutely amazed. A good thing is that the last few days have been pretty busy. If all goes well and some of the pictures came out, I might have more material to post. Oh, this is excellent news. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I was not able to post the last message for a moment, because this browser just scrolls without any scrollbars. so unless I am at the end of a line, I am not able to post. THis is quite funny. I could order barrons though. Ads are just everywhere. Ok... Post.

the test continues. i am typing this on one of the least comfortable terminals. it is an att public phone 2000i and it is located in an airport. this service is $.25 per minute so I have spent two dollars already just to find out that I can not view my own blog, because of "filtered content"... I must have used some four letter words somewhere. ; ) maybe even three letter words, like fun?.
The rest of the site is fine. I am able to check the catalogue from here, even though the browser is one of the ugliest things I have seen for a while. I am not even able to check my mail, because of some security issues. ok...
I could buy wireless phones on amazon though and even good year tires from here. but why wopuld i want to?... the keyboard is so uncomfortable, I will now quit. Who was this terminal designed for?... It is just unbearable.
Next blog will be from the comfort of home, using the apple airport. What a pleasure compared to this painful experience here. But... it is possible to blog out of an Airport. Using a public phone. Actually quite an amazing thing. Again... feels very much like the future. Later. Oh, wait a second I can not even post this message, because the browser window is so small ... oh... now...

: ) 1 second

Ok... my next post will certainly be from home. With just about 30 seconds left, and no chance to convince the internet bandit that money is good, I will need to post again once i get home. It is encouraging that I was able to see the blog and my site via this browser. It pays to use the simplest technology possible. SIte looks ok on this 640x480 screen... ok... time is out... roger and over and out. All the best from sunny Florida...

There is actually Nature here, real animals, real water. Have not been to the beach, but there are windows onto a bay and there were some amazing sightings so far. Day one brought the death of a pidgeon. I could not help the poor pidgeon. She decided to land on water in the middle of the bay. Pidgeons are not the best swimmers. What looked like a pelikan diving for food at first, turned out to be this pidgeon trying to start off the water surface. It just did not work. The pidgeon was really far away, but I managed to bring my 300mm lens, so I saw it there in the middle of the bay. A hammerhead shark came by, but decided not to eat it. Other bids came by, but decided not to eat it either. After maybe 20 minutes of attempted starts, the pidgeon tried diving instead, which just did not work out as well as it should have. A sad start. But there was a hmmerhead shark in the story, which was quite a surprise. On the following day there was a real hunting scene. A pack of larger fish. They looked a bit like tuna, but what do I know, managed t corner a school of small fish probably sardines. It was a food feast. Air bubbles, wld manouvers under water, excellent hunting skills. My view was from the 17th floor, but the lens helped. Yesterday, a dolphin swam by waving wildly and cheering happily. Really. A very happy dolphin. There is plenty of dolphins in the bay. They tend ot hunt in the morning. Even though everything happens in a far distance, the circles they make show clearly that their hunting goes pretty well. From time to time one of them amost jumps out of the water. Wild stuff... Later in the afternoon, a turtle swam by the apartment. A really huge turtle. It just came closer to the surface for a moment, but it was quite impressive. Mantas usually come in groups of 4 or 6 they do not seem to be as intelligent as some of the other animals. Or maybe they like the sun? There are so many other fish I can not classify.
Please forgive my spelling, i did not buy enough time to check it. ; )

It is Sunday and I am still away from my computer, no phone, no television, just sun and the ocean, the beautiful sky.
I am giving up.
There will be no more posts until I come back.
I think.
; )

Day two of delayed blogging. I am still able to blog. There is still enough time and enough energy to blog for a day or two. No links in these blogs, just pure quick text. For those who are just tuning in. I am not at my computer. The messages here are delayed posts. I will be back next week. I am trying to write as much as I can, so you have something to read in my absence and hopefully come back.
About promises and expectations. It happens again and again. The expectations are grand, and then the actual results might not even happen at all. A person of words and no deeds is like a garden full of weeds.
I remember when my parents and I went on our great journey to Bulgaria in 1978. The trip went through the Soviet Union, Romania, Bulgaria, of course, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and back. Yes, it was Soviet Union and not the Ukraine back then and yes, it was Czechoslovakia and not The Czech republic. The trip was an amazing adventure. About as adventurous as they should probably get for an 8 year old boy, but the reason why I am even mentioning this trip here, are the grand expectations I had for keeping track of the events. I had my pens with me and a special book and I was ready. I was ready for a serious documentation of the events to come. Just crossing the border to the Soviet Union could probably fill pages of a journal. Romania was a country so foreign, so different. I was ready for all these large events. I was not ready for their actual appearance and I was not ready for the lack of space in the back of our car. Next to me was this little boy who barely spoke, and I was always trapped in a place where I just could not write. And the events were more exciting than I would have been able to describe anyway. About that time I also wanted to write like Henryk Sienkiewicz (look him up, I am not putting any links here..., he is the one who wrote Quo Vadis and got a Nobel Prize in Literature for it.) I was in love with NEL (look her up.) and I was sure that I could write another W Pustyni I w Puszczy. His book had 500 pages, maybe... Mine was out of ideas on page 3. I just did not know how to describe anything. Things were just happening. I traveled. I walked, I saw. (Oh, it was me, me, me and the others)... But I did not really travel or do or see... It was all a bit too much. The trip to eastern Europe will need some entries. It was a really good trip for me. It was also the trip that made the other trip possible, that eventually led to me being able to write this very blog.

Promises, promises. How to write a blog away from the computer? As you are reading this. I am not at my computer. I am not even close to a phone, there is no Television and the New York Times has this other price, the one printed in smaller letters, the one outside of the metropolitan area. Where I am, the weather is quite perfect. Maybe a bit too warm, maybe a bit too sunny. I am far away from home, for sure.
During the days of my absence there was supposed to be some really revealing content here. Some things that would disclose information that I would not like to post while here and while ready for an immediate reaction.
But as so often, the time is running out again, the packing took longer, I was too tired yesterday, the haircut was not as quick as expected. So there might be new content here tomorrow, or there might be none.
It depends on how much I can write in the next half hour or so.
And really, the posting time on this daily entry was made possible by the magic of blogger pro. I am far away from my computer. I have cameras with me though and there will be pictures. Promised... Again?... Yeah.. Again.

It is one thing to hear encouraging words from friends who know me and who know how I create my work. It is a completely different thing to find encouraging words from somebody who only stumbles upon my work, or at least the tiny portion of it available online.
Michael Eades, the mastermind behind a very nice site, Yewknee (not sure what this name is about), had some really nice comments about the drawings for reservocation.
Michael enjoyed the �Powers of 10� and even sent his readers to take a look at this very site. He recommends the Photography section, to even those who do not have time to see anything else here.
This commentary feels especially good, because yewknee.com looks like a site I am going to visit often. The design looks great, fresh and original, and the content if the site is worth the exploration.
Today feels like a great day already, and it has not even really started yet. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Rascal's Menu
Should have blogged this one first. Look at the grand variety. A heart surgeon�s paradise.

Wolfie Cohen�s Rascal House.
Getting ready for a few days in the south. This should be a good one. No computer, no phone, just the happy analogue world of retired New Yorkers, happy hour at the Rascal House, a New York Deli on steroids with CNBC monitors everywhere. The world will look quite happy through the cataract surgery glasses, which I will have to get. Oh, this is going to be a good one. Never before has Miami looked this attractive.

And it is live! A first little showing of my drawings in a very nice , high quality context. I really feel special now. Jarrett Kertesz did a great job with the newest issue of his reservocation. Congratulations.
This is really a quite exciting moment for me... Feels good. (The piece is, of course, even slower than actually programmed, which is good... It is supposed to be veery slow)...reservocation

Yes, I have not been blogging too much in the last few days. I needed to finish a little piece for this excellent online magazine: reservocation. Jarrett Kertesz is the editor in chief and he liked the drawing on my homepage. (Thank you Jarrett!) The drawing on my homepage is just a fragment and the only one of my newer ink drawings currently visible to the public. This will change with the tenth issue of reservocation, due later this month. I made a special edition of drawings just for this 10th issue of reservocation. I am looking forward to seeing my humble work in the context of reservocation. Jarrett put together some great interviews again, check it out. It is high quality information. Great links too.

Chris� squirrel story is great. The things that happen to this man and his castle. I really hope the squirrel is doing fine.

Quite fascinating, there seems to be at least one reader of this blog coming from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, which is in the beautiful Netherlands. Is the visitor a real person?, or is it a robot which was born in the department of Kunstmatige Intelligentie (Artificial Intelligence). Watch this space.

This whole 404 page is slowly getting out of hand. There were so many hits to to the 404 page, because I just could not figure out the secret magic of permalinks. So now the Blog times are not links anymore. They did not work anyway, and they were just causing trouble. If you would like to read more, you are most likely to find the archive link at the bottom of this page. I will fix this dilemma eventually. I would also like to have a little comment option for my entries. But for now. No comments, no linking, no trouble... Until I can make it work. (my 404 page was a cry for help, but nobody answered, so here we go.) Have a good night.

New York�s bravest are working hard on 96th and Broadway tonight. A scaffolding on the Columbia House, a Condominium on the North West corner got loose, a panel might have fallen on the street, maybe hitting somebody, because there are three fire engines here, a fire marshall, two ambulances, two police cars. All working hard. And many neighbors are taking pictures. It is a bit like an all-star game. Three firefighters used Tower Ladder 22 to get to the top of the scaffold. We have excitement and a serious traffic jam.

As of yesterday, I am no more the most frequent visitor to this site. My IP address went from 1 to 3 in my log files, which means that there is somebody out there who reads this blog more often than I look at it or fix it (and it is very often). All power to you, visitor. Keep reading, the best is yet to come.
I will be on vacation from the 15th through the ...not sure yet. I will prepare some special content, or stories/comments that are not time sensitive, just to give you a fresh reason to come back every day. All the best, all the time.

This kid across the street watches Elmo... all day long. It must be a fairly young child. The televisoon set is across Broadway, but Elmo is full screen most of the time. A big, jumpy red man. I can not hear the voice... yes, definitely Elmo... again. Bigger than life. Even the tickled kind.

Slashdot | 802.11b on your Tivo
This means that Tivo will be able to use our Airport station to get the program schedules. This is really exciting. Playstation2 will use the Airport too... all will be wired through the air. (I will probably need to buy a tivo for it to work though, and also a playstation2). Remember?, I do not have a car. Still happy. Now let me investigate if I should open my Airport station, so my neighbors can surf on my bandwidth. ; )
update:
My neighbors can now indeed surf via my airport... : )
(comments closed because of comment spam.)

Nike: MOVE It is a beautiful spot. Very smooth and so well executed. Such fluidity of edits. Wonderful... and the idea of putting amateurs and pros on the same level by combining their movement into one large experience is just one of the things many of us always wanted to create, no?... (I remember a similar campaign we had proposed for Adidas 1991...Franz Aum�ller was the Creative Director at Trust in Frankfurt...).... tangent...
I had copied the article that is attached to the spot linked here, but I do not want to burn in Copyright hell, so I will include only its Credits: Agency: Wieden Kennedy, Portland | Creative Directors: Hal Curtis & Carlos Bayala | Copywriters: Mike Byrne & Kash Sree | Art Director: Hal Curtis | Agency Producer: Vic Palumbo | Production Company: RSA USA, Los Angeles | Director: Jake Scott | Editor: Adam Pertofsky, Rock, Paper, Scissors, Los Angeles | Visual Effects: A52, West Hollywood | VFX Producer: Leighton Greer | Inferno: Patrick Murphy | Flame: Cari Chadwick | Music: Jonathan Elias, Elias Arts, Los Angeles
(They just did it.)

Here we go again, one of my favorite viral spots recently is the BBH London piece for the X BOX. Creative Director is John Hegarty, Creatives are Fred & Farid (c�mon guys, they call me Witold), Agency Producer is Andy Gulliman, the production Company is Spectre in London. The Spot was directed by Daniel Kleinman, Producer here was Johnnie Frankel, DP: Ivan Bird, Post Production was done at Framestone in London and the Editor was Steve Gandolfi from Cut & Run... Another Commercial hosted on Boardsmag�s site. This one will win something... so interesting how advertising *can* deliver a deeper message, here is more proof: Enjoy...

There still seem to be some problems with blogger at this time. I can post, but i can not edit my posts, so there are more and more mistakes sneaking in... and i can not correct them... grrr... (sorry)... (not my fault)

Here we go, a truly wicked video by the White Stripes from Detroit. The production company was Partizan, the director was Michel Gondry, the label is XL, and the medium is LEGO. Yeah! Phantastic. And they are using regular bricks only... Thank you for the link, Charlie!

Ultimate Flash Face
Fantasticnaya website dla vas. Otchen prekrasnaja. Just came across this excellent Face building interface. I am still exploring it, but it looks loke a lot of fun. Made in Russia. Well done! (posting this one to my design links too..., for future reference.)

Beautiful, beautiful, cute little commercial:4K: film & TV: linguaphone. Looks like 4K is a very creative bunch. Hope I will get to work with them in the future sometimes, maybe?...

Wait a second, wait a second... how did this happen? Even my wakeupBlog is in the MIT database now? All the MIT students can now compare their wakeup times with mine?, the race is on?...( blogdex : search : link ) THis whole thing is getting more and more interesting, the more I look at it. Blogdex has crawled my site and discovered all these strange details... my wakeup blog is part of a database of links on blogger called erotic dreams?... I have not had erotic dreams for at least a week. (ok, yesterday), but how do they know that?... this is all becoming more and more interesting...
Also... there are now almost 500 regular readers to this blog. Please read and link, just the way I do it... you can take a look at the link section of this site. Just click on the top of this page, then follow the link from the homepage to links. enjoy... I will make little site souvenirs in the future. Surfing should be a bit like travel. YOu will then be able to collect these Souvenirs somewhere on your site... maybe?...
Feel free to copy this idea. : )

Wow, how did this happen? My site must have somehow become part of the MIT blog database:( blogdex ). Wow, I almost feel like a part of the MIT lab. Yey. (hitting the air with my fist... ok... hitting the air with my fist very softly.) It is getting late...

Turns out, my old Art College has a pretty flashy Intro Page. It is interactive too. It might even be art, who knows. The music is cute an European. Can you imagine The Cooper Union with an intro like this? I guess it would only attract a certain kind of crowd... The Site itself is pretty wild too. The Navigation is a bit frustrating, but hey, it is all dynamic and wiiiiild... Oh boy, the music on the intro just eneded... (a bad ending), well, check it out. hfg of_main (Hochschule f�r Gestaltung in Offenbach am Main is the full name.... an art College with University status, kids!)

This is crazy and unbelievable. I just had an email exchange with Stefan Becht, an old friend who is in the promotional business in Germany, and we were brainstorming about some possible projects we could work on together. We have not worked together for maybe four years now. As it turns out, the project that we worked on in 1998 is still live and up and running. It was my very first website. (I used to work in broadcast and print before)... It is a bit spooky. I built this thing in GoLive2, as far as I remember. It was an exhibition for contemporary American Photography in Wiesbaden, Germany. The participating artists were: Erica Baum, Barbara Bosworth, Andrew Bordwin, Catherine Chalmers, Peter Garfield, Lauren Greenfield, Laura Larson and Kuni� Sugiura. I think most of the artist did not have access to the site, and I remember that it was never Q/A�d, so some links are just bad. The Site is also designed like a catalogue in some ways. It takes several clicks to actually get to any real content. And the pictures were all designed for a 28.8 connection, so they are tiny. The site is bilingual however and it is incredibly easy to switch between languages... for all of you who like to do that 10 times during a visit. Well, you can go and visit the site. Please do so at your own risk, it is a quite special experience... just remember, this site is older than artnet.com or eyestorm. Enjoy, the photographs are still very powerful and several of the artist have currently exhibitions (Peter Garfield) or large features in Magazines (Barbara Bosworth in Blind Spot)...:Hot Spots, Contemporary American Photography

Had a really good laugh this morning. Chris DiClerico has posted a new version of me as a pixel person in the �Pixel People� portion of his site. There was an old me before, with long hair, but my hair has been cut since, I could have sworn that I looked pretty generic now and could not be portrait as a pixel person. Chris has proven me wrong here. The little picture of me has is wearing a blue shirt, just like the one of those I wear almost every day. (except for the rare occasions when I wear a black one, or white) ...and this old sweater with a grey rim that I have worn for years now (it is patched, but always clean)... and... my Pixel Person also holds a Leica minilux. : ) (It is the silver one that is now lost ) Chris even went so far as to include the red Leica dot (pixel) in the portrait. This is miniature portraiture brought into the 21st century. I really had a good laugh. Oh, and there is a self-portrait of Chris in the same section. He really looks like this. (He obviously works out more than me, has far less grey hair and smiles more)... This is really great!... Chris also started a Blog! and knowing Chris, this will probably be one of the funniest and most popular Blogs on the web. I am also looking forward to just seeing the posting times. This guy is like New York, he never sleeps.

Ok, I clearly need help with my Permalinks. They just do not work, and about 30% of you seem to be clicking on the time links... and all of those who do land on some abscure pages. I need help. Can one of you Blog gurus please give me a hand with these permalinks and the archives?... this is driving me crazy. (ok... a little bit)... it is quite annoying. I do not want to remove the times though... what can be done?

Cars, cars, cars. The only car I like to use in the morning and evening is the last car on the 2/3 lines, the 7th avenue express. But there are many people out there who build cars, like cars, own and use cars. There seems to be a large demand, still for going off the road, into the not so explored areas of the county. Probably. Maybe some American Native areas? There is the Jeep Grand Cherokee, and now there is a new Porsche Cayenne. I hope the servers will be able to handle the load soon... what I have seen of the car so far are a few photographs.
I do not own a car, I use public transportation. I like Environmentaly friendly vehicles. But I use Adobe Photoshop and live in Manahatta, on Broadway.

I just read that The Buddhas of Bamiyan will be rebuilt! That is *great news*.

Allrighty then... do not want to be too obsessed with worldly things here, but this: Mercedes-Benz 2003 SL 500 is a pretty nice two cars. (two in one)... the minisite is pretty sweet too, of course. (money?) This white and silver and orange buttlon look, makes me somehow think that this thing was designed on a Mac.

Think beyond the 404 code. : )
Possible "Success" codes are:
200 = Success: OK, 201 = Success: Created, 202 = Success: Accepted, 203 = Success: Partial Information, 204 = Success: No Response, 300 = Success: Redirected, 301 = Success: Moved, 302 = Success: Found, 303 = Success: New Method, 304 = Success: Not Modified
Possible "Failed" codes are
400 = Failed: Bad Request, 401 = Failed: Unauthorized, 402 = Failed: Payment Required, 403 = Failed: Forbidden, 404 = Failed: Not Found, 500 = Failed: Internal Error, 501 = Failed: Not Implemented, 502 = Failed: Overloaded Temporarily, 503 = Failed: Gateway Timeout

It is not as obvious in the Web version of the New York Times, but Waiting for the A Train, the Sophisticated Pigeon, Randy Kennedy�s story about Pidgeons riding the A Train, made it onto the front page of the Times today. They are New York pidgeons after all and yes, they do take the subway sometimes, some by accident, some seemingly on purpose. (The Photographs by William C. Lopez are really great.) When you think about it, for all Pidgeons riding the subway for free is perfectly legal too, since the New York subway is free for all who is short enough to fit under the turnstile. (A rule created for Kids, but might work for pidgeons, if they were too lazy to fly onto the platform.) Not that pidgeons would care about MTA rules, it is just a friendly, nice little New York detail. I really like these photographs.

I wonder how many people out there have natto as a breakfast snack. (The first link is a very kind description of this at first challenging food.) Here is a better one. Please be careful where you try natto for the first time, as it might trigger the gag reflex in some unprepared gourmets. You might want to start with Natto Maki in your local sushi shop... take your time. Once you acquire the taste, you will be addicted for life though, and maybe even have Natto for breakfast, as I just did.

a blueish, pinkish sky over Manhattan this morning... (from black to blueblack to this)... beautiful.

it seems that I do wake up before the New York Times hits my door step. (It just hit the door step, and I am obviously up.) Good Morning... I am definitely not getting enough sleep.

Mensa International - Mensa Workout hmm, got 27 out of 30. I can not tell you which ones i got wrong, since i do not want to spoil your fun. Two anwers were wrong because I was just trying to be faster than necessary had about 3 minutes left in the end... One answer was wrong, because I just thought that my English is not good enough, so I just gave up. Hmm, this probably shows that my emotional score is much worse than 27 out of 30. Not only did I not pay attention well enough, I also just gave up even though there was plenty of time left to just think... Hmm... I give myself an �allright� as a score. Multiple choice tests just do not include an emotional score...

It feels nice coming back to Rhizome.org. I had completely forgotten about this community until a friend reminded me yesterday. Oh, yes, there was this place. The logo designed by Markus Weisbeck, or Dr. Weisbeck as I used to call him, because of his incredibly intellectual approach to design. (Markus and I both went to Hochschule f�r Gestaltung in Offenbach... he was kind enough to include one or two of my covers in his TechnoStyle book)
I had stumbled across Rhizome years and years ago. I replied to an article written by Markus. I basically flamed him. And Rachel Greene turned this flame war into an article on typography. I was then asked to contribute more. But I really was no Rick Poynor so there was not very much I could say about typography at that time. Rhizome, were very kind; they promised me to get me tickets to the multimediale in Cannes. (A show only to those with very special tickets) I had many frequent flyer miles and went to Cannes on my own, but there was no ticket waiting for me...a misunderstanding. I was in Cannes, which I did not really enjoy... Except maybe for that church on the hill. I spent hours and hours there. Cannes itself, not my thing. I took a few pictures of chairs, thrown away into the ocean.
Tangents. Michael Samyn was pretending to be Jeff Koons on the rhizome list, I think, back in the day... Valery Grancher was pretty active on the list. It felt warm today, to see Valery�s name as a sender on one of the emails. Hmm... I am a very different person now. I am looking forward to our new interaction with rhizome.... Took a look at the �board of directors�... Hmm... Hmm, hmm...

Where can i find more information about Jamie Hewlett, I wonder? For such a web personality there should probably be plenty of material out there. I just can not find it as easily as I thought.

There are three. (3) people, in front of Dunkin Donuts on Broadway and 96th Street, going through the trash bags, looking for... hmm... donuts?.
There are no people in front of McDonalds next door.
There are four people now. One of them has a bicycle.
It is late. Sleep might be a good idea right now. Good Night. We should be glad to be inside now.

a rare event. two white doves are getting closer and closer to being a real clouple of white doves on the corner of broadway and 96th. New York is rainy and gray today. (or reiny end grey todey)

ok, it is time to get some sleep. almost 4 am, and I can barely see the screen. It should get easier and easier from here. I do not know why the links page looks grey in Netscape, but this should be a solvable challenge.
Can I post one more link before i pass out?...

Hmm, having some ftp related issues here...

Chase Manhattan Bank Interior 909 Third Avenue

Inside the Post Office on 909 Third Avenue (Max O. Urbahn & Associates in collaboration with Emery Roth & Sons, 1967), East Fifty-fourth to East Fifty-fifth Street.
Read more about it in New York 1960, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial by Robert A.M. Stern, Thomas Mellins and David Fishman. (Page 428)

A short follow up on a previous blog enty. The Moon pictures are a failure. They are bad. The scans are worse. The moon does look like a pill of on most prints. I kept the lens too open for the shots, and so the moon just overpowers everything. The scans are even worse. Bad scanjob this time. The film is scratched again. This whole operation is a mess.
Some of the shots with the 21mm Lens and the Contax G2 worked out quite nicely. The second visit to the Bronx-zoo also resulted in one or two quite bearable pictures. The scans are bad though, and the film is scratched.
Not very happy about all this. Quite upset actually.

It is pure pleasure to see what some of the visitors of this site were actually looking for. It seems that we have an ever evolving cultural destination here. Starting with Shrek, and Shreck, including the great Draftsman Architect Matteo Pericoli, including John the Baptist Paintings, Jennifer Aniston with short hair (why?)... All the way down to �soft, smooth tummy�. I like the word tummy. I like soft smooth tummy. And my thoughts are pretty innocent here. It would be interesting to see what thoughts are in the head of those who use these keywords just before they type them in.
�Ten different skyscrapers�. What thinking went into that? Why ten different skyscrapers?... Why this site?... Certainly because I keep writing about all these things, Like �Lauder Museum new york 86th street�. A real pinponted thought. Straight into this blog.