Off the charts - new coffee record

Cup of Excellence last week auctioned off 36 new lots, with great results:

• "the average lot price for all of the coffee was $4.75lb"
  
• "$49.75/lb. for his award winning coffee. "
  
• "Brazil’s seventh competition and the 22nd competition for the Cup of Excellence"
  

For reference, the old "record prize" was around $21. And like the Coffegeek said - this is before roasting, not to mention shipping and retail mark-up. So the streetprice might well end up hitting the $100 mark! Now that is a serious buzz. Still nice to see the CoE going strong, with the average price inching upwards.

good feeling for a good taste

We finally got around to picking up some top notch espresso; EL SALVADOR: finca La Fany, from the Cup of Excellence 2005. Got it at Mocca - a local roaster here in Oslo with a commitment to quality and fair relations (among other efforts they have participated in the COE as tasting judges. Of their 13 'singles', 6 are COE, including the finca from Honduras. Looks like it could be a nice spring in terms of gaggia enjoyment.

When will you be there?

CNET News.com story on securing a domain name and/or personal email address for babies: "So if a baby has an e-mail address, and people do write to him, he has a virtual time capsule waiting"

interesting in a twisted sort of way - would be akin to just putting all the cards in a box and hand it over a 13?

But there is definitely a "generation" perspective here, think of how much kids growing up today will glean from looking at their parents flickr and blogs, going through playlists and podcasts rather than stacks of lps. Assuming, that is, that the content will still be around and accessible in ten or twenty years time. Will html still be understood, will the servers over at Yahoo and Google (read: flickr and blogger) still be up?

How will the text and still-images pages of 1995 look in another twenty years? As dated as 19th century newspapers? Like the cavepaintings and stone carvings of old next to the all video all dimensional digital world?

So maybe you should take some extra time to archive for the next generation - both digitally (online and off, including some key software) and good old hard copy (go ahead and splurge on a book edition of your own blog!)

And then get moving into the future, making each day a little better than the last.

Finaly Fantasy XXII

Gizmodo has snooped up info on a "limited edition cordless compact controller for FINAL FANTASY Xll"
Nifty - now if only Square could get around to bringing out the european version of Kingdom Heart II, I'd be more than ready for FFXII

Whole word in your hand?

After many a failed ebook reader, and only lackluster sales of the various tablet PC versions - things seem to be picking up for the "other" type of terminal.

Nokia is experiencing supply problems for their 'pad' due to increased demand way beyond expectations, and at the CES Gizmodo has spotted the Sony Reader "that uses the display technology from E-Ink " - it looks really great for black and white comics, and that would be an interesting application (in addition to the odd PDF document and research reports of 250+ pages).

But - like so many announced products before it, it remains to be seen if it actually makes into stores and then into the homes and offices around the world.

Based on the last post I came across this site;Blambot - a different kind of type-house, as it specializes in fonts for comics (both lettering, titles and effects!) The names are worth a visit in and of themselves... whoop a** and Srgt. Sixpack to name two

Truth or dare?

There is a very strange/special/... webcomic called"Panel One". It has a slightly twisted description, and I guess the main point for now is to consider if it is truly art or parody or something alltogether more disturbing!?

"vehicle for exploring a variety of narrative and non-narrative ideas I have about comics and visual storytelling"

Even the next and back buttons are a bit on the side of the norm - but quite "in character"

Cold Day (141105)

It is another cold day
Turning into night
As l sit here thinking about
What might have been
All those years ago

It we had been someone else
Or maybe just sometime
Any time
But right then

The taste, the feeling in my head
Brings me back
To the day I heard
That he would be

NO MORE

One memory blends into another
As time somehow catches up

With me again
And I have to move
Before the day is over
And the new one begins

No pain, no direction , no sense

Too hot or too late?
Uncaring or simply beyond bother...

Finally it is summer but it is not enough for you
Somehow I need to find a way to the other end. And maybe end in the shadows instead.

As the dragon cloud is long gone and the evening is fast approaching once more, I stand here thinking.

...

In the sun and
feeling warm

once more and then it’s time

LeapFrog - flying knowledge?

LeapFrog : "learning is fun, surprising and exciting you do more than simply nourish growing minds, you inspire a lifelong love of learning"
Guess it goes to show how segmented the world has become - I'm not sure i would have heard about it living in the US without kids (but we do buy gifts for a few so maybe it would have been on a xmas list) - but never mentioned here in Norway. The big product is the basic Leappad - sort of an interactive ebook reader, with the option to enhance it with various stories and edutainment (newsstory dated 1.1.06 on the pad and competitor VTech).

But the real buzz this year is the Wired-featured Fly - a standalone pen, which uses specially textured paper to set up games and PDA-like features (technology provided by Anoto of Sweden, part owned by Logitech). Sounds sort of cool, but also a real hassle if you need to have a stack of special papers - it was one reason I skipped my Filofax mini; to hard to find paper to do quick notes in volume.

Then there is the newish demographic "tweens", ages 8 to 12, not kids anymore, but still not teens. Sort of sad - the time we have as kids is growing shorter, but we don't really grow up on the other end (or at least some of us think we don't and keep on doing the fun stuff ourselves)

(darn - the updated blogger pop-up has removed the strong in favor of the span style bloated code)

Gaming and gadget galore

"Going Ape" (Wired 13.12) - Michel Ancel of Ubisoft got to do the King Kong game because of BG&E - will it see a re-release, or perhaps be included in a bundle? Good fun game, haven't played it enough but still give it high marks. We have the pc version, but I think it actually works better on a console (like Tombraider).

Shuttle M1000 XPC oooh! nice design... would really love to have one small WMCE box and another one running linux with mythTV doing all the open source hacking. And then I would only need a month off each year to watch all the stuff that might just be interesting or fun or... But there is time and space constraints, so I will have to settle for some minor tweaks to the box we have (speakers, external hd for mid-term storage of stuff)

Say it loud?

outside the Dorchester in 1930s - as told by Julian Amery: a lady waiting with umbrella for the rolls to arrive, approached by a ragged man,

"i haven't eaten for three days"
"foolish man that you are - you must try.
if need be you must FORCE yourself"

same article, differnet source, one definition of a gentleman:

"someone who is never rude BY ACCIDENT"

(quoted in and from vanity fair, an article by C. Hitchens, in the December 2005 issue)

Art, games and something in between

unrealart.co.uk is a site by Alison Mealey - to showcase and explain her "unreal" art. How unreal? Well, according to the process page it is "created using data from the game 'Unreal Tournament' "
Neat use of a game engine for something a bit out of the ordinary - no bragging video about how many n00bs she has fragged, no machinima about two disgruntled guards shooting the breeze.

Ties nicely into the comments by/about Matias Faldbakken in a recent article; games are crossing boundaries TV will never be able to in terms of immersion and impact. "As opposed to movies games are non-linear, anti-compositoric (?), devoid of (inner/self-contained) meaning - and as such not ART (artistic/artsy) in the traditional sense" - it is creation, it is a product of both the mind and the actual process, and as such is definitely on line with books, movies, plays and other art. But at the same time a game is really nothing without the player, initiating the action (be it in the form of pre-set scripts for the bots in the Unreal Art, or with you voice doing the 'playing' in Singstar) and making the whole come together. Sure you can (and should) loose yourself in the great books, but the story isn't changed by your perception or attitude. Frodo still takes the ring, Boromir still freaks, no matter how you feel about their tone of voice or the way they look. But in KOTOR? The character could go all Vader or stay sparkly clean. But even though both "paths" are enabled by the game engine and the modules - it is still in the hands of the player.


"...it challenges everyday life in a way not even television has been able to" - with more and more games-related properties crossing over into other media (such as the Doom movie, and the Resident Evil and Tombraider), and the way new games are much more than games - they are platforms for the dedicated users to make their own parts or their own entertainment.

"the future of art is writing" (said about him) - because it is the story that moves us, be it the story behind or the story in the piece. It takes all the pieces (such as the voice of the actors, the musical score, the scenery, the camera angles) and makes it into a whole, something more than the sum of the parts.