Reality of Star Wars Fandom

"There is a diabolical twist to Star Wars fandom, you see, that defies comprehension, and yet is the life-blood of all Star Wars fans. It is this:

Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. "

Read the rest of the truly "laugh out loud" article; The Complex and Terrifying Reality of Star Wars Fandom - from JIVEMagazine.com

Usefull Lego

Early last summer I came across an weird and wonderful article online, written by Andrew Lipson, called "Mathematical LEGO Sculptures". Then some months later the same Lipson was covered in Wired in a short article . So now seems a good time to bring it to your attention - Lego can be used for highly technical illustration, not to mention as the foundation of some fascinating discussions.

"I'm not quite sure how it first occurred to me to build a Möbius band out of LEGO bricks, but the thought was irresistible"

(his personal site has moved since the first article was published, and can now be found at ASL - which also features a wide variety of other Lego works)

Temporary ownership

Intelligent Life, a more or less yearly special issue from The Economist, had a interesting article called Buy now, sell later (paid sub req.) "eBay, the worldwide auction website that moved over $44 billion in merchandise last year"

The topic is how the sheer scale of eBay in the US has enabled both professional handlers, such as iSoldIt ($30 m in 2005) and more importantly - the ability to buy something used, have it for a while and then resell it, thereby cutting down on the barrier of entry for ownership. Want to have a pasta maker or try your hand at the drums? Buy it used, give it a shot then sell it when you are ready to move on to the next fascination.

Media in other realities

Shooting War is an online comic - stated off with a very well done animation, that feels just like a true news teaser. In it you get to follow the adventures of one Jimmy Burns, a video-logger who happens to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time with his camera running and uploading footage.

So what happens when everyday people end up in events way beyond their control and comfort zone? What happens to media when the boundaries between participant, journalist and bystander evaporates? And what happens when everything is online, globally, instantaneously ? How do we cope, how do we filter out the noise - and can we still find some sense in the overflowing channels?

And on the Media 3.0 blog, Shelly Palmer has an interesting piece on Content vs TV - be sure to check back in a while as well, since they promise to be: "publishing a paper that deconstructs the Long Tail for the online video business in a few weeks"

Best part - a quote very similar to one of my pet peeves: "YouTube is not a place … it is an application." Basically, YouTube is not about the content or the discussion/flamewars/spamlinks, it is about enablement and letting go of control - because they did not have a stake to loose in terms of viewers, ads or pageviews.

Because it was as easy as copying a link into email or msn, as easy as inserting an achor or an img tag in a blog, YouTube became a basic building block of the net - enabling millions to see video, and also to post videos with ease. The new "direct capure" from webcam is just the latest step in that direction, just like this Blogger window enables me to blog effortlessly, remotely and for free.

Random geek

King and Country is a Hong Kong based company, I saw an ad in the BBC History Mag - and their miniatures (1:30) look stunning, spanning the ages from Roman legionaries, past Saracen warriors of the Crusades, to WWII pieces like the bike in the image. Amazing detail level, but at just under £100 it is for the dedicated collectors out there.

Of course, there are many options so drool a little bit for more regular geeky stuff as well. Next time in London, I'll make sure to have some extra space in the suitcase on the way over - and taking the time to visit Forbidden Planet. Their insets in the SW magazine has convinced my of a burning need to Stormtroopers and bookends to decorate a little bit. A web store that not only has "Star Wars" as a menu choice - but then drills down and lets you browse by Episode? ...good thing there is a duty limit on ordering other items than books.

And Wired is once again in charge of the whole Wired.com business, so now you can get "enhanced" articles, like the one on LonelyGirl - with extra podcast and video from the photo shoot, or the Myspace murder article - with a full page of extra background information and links (including cached versions of now deleted profiles and blog posting)

"unscheduled disassembly" - RIP Columbia, technical terms convey so much more? (From the rather interesting article on infrasound - and how we can use digital listening to understand more of what's happening in our near space, both above and below - from volcanoes to ballistic missiles and meteorites)

And finally - putting things in perspective, based on the brilliant Bob Garfield article on YouTube. [Bob is also podcasted Onthemedia]: Google spent some 1.65 bn on Youtube. Sure, that's a lot of money.
But only about 18% of Googles revenues (back then, not adjusted for further growth since) - or less than 2,5% of the ANNUAL advertising spend on television in the US alone.
So, if you belive the 100 millions streams might grow into something bigger, and get a tiny slice of the ad budgets out there, then maybe, just maybe 1.65 isn't all that crazy.
Besides, it was a partially stock based deal - so they just "printed" the money... right?

300 and counting

Just a quick note - the last bunch of snippets on the mind actually tipped the number of posts past 300, sort of suitable right now that the Blogger interface is coming out of Beta and into the third version I've used

More random musings coming right up - it's officially a "post-athon" going on today, a snowed in Sunday makes for relaxation and perhaps even some insights

Snippets

Beware of short glasses

Apparently if you pour free hand into a short wide glass, rather than a tall slender one, you'll end up with 20-30% more. For more insight into the optical illusions and how we act - Cornell Professor Brian Wansink is a good place to start

BFFE

yes, it is true - at least according to a SciAm Mind article called "Good Friends"; "social interaction contributed greatly to the evolution of our brain" and "friendship increase life expectancy". Part of the reason seems to be the fact that friendships are "two-way streets" of mutual confirmation, both parties have to agree - it is not something "random" based on common lineage. According to Dunbar, we organize our friends into three general circles of 3-5 close friends, 12-20 friends and 30-50 looser acquaintances. And this is directly related to our brains, and their ability to handle complexity - he has developed a formula for estimating the "natural" size of groups for various animals, based on brain measurements.

Monkey see

Why do most people in the world go crazy over football, while most Americans think it involves holding and throwing a bloated banana? One interesting avenue is the influence of "mirror neurons" - which among other things enable empathy. They fire when we do certain actions, and help us remember how to do it. But they are also fired when we hear the actions described - or more importantly in this setting - when we see others performing the same action. So everyone who has felt the rush of shooting the ball in the net, will "relive" that when watching others play. (Yes, I'm simplifying by a factor of 1000....) And since a majority of youths in Europe, Africa, South America and soon (?) Asia, have played football on a dusty street, a vacant field or a parking lot after hours - the game will keep us enthralled for another generation and then some.

Mind and matter

Last summer I read an interesting article (and it's been gathering dust ever since - so finally digging down a bit and getting some thoughts out there again) about Matt Nagle and the Braingate system. [he was also featured in Wired back in issue 13.03] Really fascinating to see how we are, slowly albeit, moving towards taking control and interaction a step further. Not to mention the expression on his face in the image - the pure joy as he get the pointer moving with nothing but his mind.


Another take on interfacing our ideas, is the "brain map" being developed by Gratton and Fabiani [original noted in SciAm Mind, but their site seems to be down] - which uses fiber cables to detect which parts of the brain "lights up" during different kinds of thoughts, giving a huge increase in time-resolution compared to fMRI - enabling differentiation on the millisecond level rather than full seconds.

Sure, it might take away some of the "magic" over time, but so far all experience seems to indicate that insight usually gives a huge increase in the number of questions (like quantum mechanics, dna and genes, nano level, ...) - and even if we enable the mind to control outside forces directly, there is still a huge gap to the motivation... why do we select one link over the other, or spend time online rather than with a book or working out ... that will take another couple of huge steps forward

...and the sun is probably out - but well hidden by another minor blizzard, making everything into a true winter wonderland ...

Surfing in a whole new way

The Venice Project™ Beta-Testing Program -Cleared to blog

Yes, I'm officially a bandwidth hog at the moment, joined up with the beta testing of the newest buzz on the net (even if it might take a bit of a backseat to CES and Macworld this week) - The Venice Project, combining TV and PC - giving out some 200 mb per hour.

First opinions are often just that, but I'll put up some notes;

• Nice interface when you get the gist of it
• Sometimes a short pause when changing channels
• Good video quality so far
• Processor more tasked than memory

Considering that the beta is only just ramping up, I think there will be a great deal more to come - and that this is just the first step on a brand new and old road (new for TVP, old for those talking convergence in 2001)


...and the sun is somewhere on the other side of the globe at the moment...