Polaroid SX-70 Ad
This 11-minute video from the 70's about the Polaroid SX-70 is somehow just plain magic, you gotta watch it!
Top of the World
Click straight into Youtube (lower right corner of the video) for higher-res version of the video. Taken from the top of Ukko-Koli.
Rainy day in Lapland
Took this while playing around with the camera on a rainy day last week:
My new Panasonic GF1 was absolutely fabulous to have along while on the move. Really fast, versatile and reasonable size. Still learning about editing both video and RAW pictures. The pictures from my Fujifilm are actually easier to edit because they come out all full of vibrant color straight off the camera. This is more real-world I guess. I didn't have to recharge the camera at all during the trip and saved almost 10GB of media on it, 544 RAW pictures (20-30 with flash), 26 minutes of 720p video. Glad I got the 16GB memory card :). More pictures to come when I get them sorted out!Pixar's Ed Catmull on Management
A very interesting video from 2009 of Ed Catmull, one of the founders of Pixar, showed up in my twitter-feed this morning; its called “Keep Your Crises Small”:
It’s almost an hour long and was filmed at Stanford Graduate School of Business so it's mostly from a management and business perspective about the challenges that Pixar has had even though it has been successful. I spent a few years being pretty interesting in a lot of management and business stuff and read a lot about it; enough to become a little cynical I guess — management theory has some truth to it but there are lots of gurus who don’t really know very much in the end. This presentation is far from some management consultant guru and is packed with interesting and useful knowledge. Ed seems like a very pragmatic manager and he cuts through a lot of bullshit. I’d like to think its because of his technical background but I might be biased there :).Anyway, watch that if you have any interest in either background information about Pixar or practical management stuff, albeit on a a pretty high level.
Some of my notes:
- Don’t confuse organizational structure with communications structure, i.e. keep information flowing between teams and everywhere even if you put up a hierarchical structure
- Managers hate being surprised, don’t let them know about something new at a meeting among everyone else
- Success hides problems. Just like a healthy body can take a lot of unhealthy behavior, a successful company can get away with a lot of bad decisions
- People (and teams) are more important than ideas, good teams will do great things with mediocre ideas but mediocre teams will do mediocre stuff with good ideas
- People copy the wrong things, don’t copy 3D technology if the really good thing is the storytelling — easy to copy technology but almost always the wrong thing to copy
- Always do a post-mortem after projects but always change the metrics so people don’t game the system
- There are services that give you the essence of business books and they are really interesting because they show how content-free the books are (Henry: YES!)
- There are some phrases that are “truths” and important in the community but doesn’t actually change behavior, “Story is important” (movie making), “Designing from the inside out” (Architecture), “Quality is king” (Engineering)
- Human organizations are inherently unstable but fail very slowly, most people won’t notice it and let the success blind them — collapse is then quick.
- Constant self-assessment important, look for the hard truths — especially when successful.
TEDTalk: Gaming can make a better world
Jane McGonigal presents one of the best talks of TED 2010 this far, about how gaming can change the world. Very interesting ideas and information!
I especially like the whole idea about human resources not fully utilized in gamers. I also think there are, especially among young people, other groups of people that are underutilized in today's world because the people with money and resources don't understand them. Daniel Suarez's books Daemon and Freedom(tm) touch open these issues aswell. Maybe companies should start giving experience points for a job well done?Friday productivity killer: List of old Youtube favourites
Not sure if I have any twitter-follower anymore but today I decided to ruin everyones productivity by posting funny,old Youtube-clips on twitter. My favourites-list on Youtube came in handy here (you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/hagnas#g/f ).
Instead of continuing this barrage I will list all of the ones I posted and planned to post here and anyone can use their own judgement about viewing them or not :).
Already posted:
Comedy: Henry Rollins - Rave and Modern Rock Music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyRDDOpKaLM
Comedy: Sniper Business http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfz2D6dglCo
Comedy: Mr. Deity and the Science Advisor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Clm6nlWxzc
Extreme Sheep LED Art http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw
Cannonball in mercury http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm5D47nG9k4
Old Woman and Airbag http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZCoIege8oM
Inspired Bicycles - Danny MacAskill http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o
Urban Sprinting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96OljGZapv4
Public Dancing at Centraal Station Antwerpen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UE3CNu_rtY (Magical!)
Cat Shit One Movie Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr4QBZfjtqs
Important information about the danish language http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk
Rodney Mullen showing how skateboarding is done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U-cgn3cEGA
Ali-G interviews Posh Spice and David Beckham: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P842Tmi6lrc
Christopher Judge of SG-1 learns about Furries http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_1SK0I_sM
Club Coach, howto prep for tonights night out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xts0mCO3bQ8
Coolest 8-year old! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8x14cLGh5o Wonder what she does novadays?
I have decided to ruin your productive friday by posting links to old Youtube clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw
Planned to post:
Short film: Validation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao
Excellent interview with @donttrythis (Adam Savage from Mythbusters) from Reddit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8jqea8R-bE
Trailer: Office 2010 - The Movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I
Comedy: Handsome Men's Club http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyGJXLxtVEo
Comedy: Tim Minchin (@timminchin) - Storm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujUQn0HhGEk
Comedy: Louis CK - Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOtEQB-9tvk
Comedy: Jeff Dunham - Achmed the Dead Terrorist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go
Comedy: George Carlin - Saving the Planet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw
Comedy: Mithchell & Webb - The Evil Genius http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgX6JFoV0TM
Comedy: Dara O'Briain - Homeopathy & Nutritionists vs Real Science http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIaV8swc-fo
Music video, Fear the Boom and Bust (Hayek vs Keynes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
Music video, Helsinki Complaints Choir http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXV3DzKv68
Music video, Dub FX - Soothe Your Pain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F6EoMdn95E
Music video, The Guilt Song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGas0D9_zgI
Music video, Rock and Roll Nerd http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP9pnSXhibw
Music video, The World is Just Awesome XKCD-edition http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQAk_T9SBbw
Music video, The World Is Just Awesome 2009 (Boom De Yada!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0jZzBEKIMc
Music video, The World Is Just Awesome 2008 (Boom De Yada!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_f98qOGY0
Music video, The BossHoss - Hey Ya! (new vid b/c old link was killed.. ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQVWXAlEUB8
Music video, Large Hadron Rap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
Music video, The Space Camp Song! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY0xwRIGOdc
Music video, Richard Dawkins Rap - Beware the Believers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFXIALf9zDA
Music video, C.I.L.F (Cartoons I'd Like to F) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82DjpPX60xU
Music video, TSA Gangstaz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7AWw7t5zj0
Music video, The Day The Routers Died... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y36fG2Oba0
Now I can't use the same trick to ruin everyone's productivity next friday, luckily there's a whole week of brainstorming until then.. Have a nice weekend everyone!
Mobile video upload with N900
Been thinking, testing and planning to do more video-recording when appropriate and as a part of that I have been experimenting with mobile uploads straight from my Nokia N900.
Here's the twitvid-version which is lower in quality but faster to upload and auto-tweeted too:
I used Pixelpipe to upload the ca 40MB video, very easy and pain-free. Twitvid isn't really necessary I think; will instead setup autosharing to Twitter on Youtube and use Youtube exclusively for video in the future. Until Bambuser finishes their work on the Maemo-app, then I might have to start using that instead at times.
Video: The Next 4 Billion with Tomi Ahonen
via fora.tv
Excellent presentation by Tomi Ahonen about the state of mobile usage and where it is going. Eye-opener especially for those staring themselves blind on how mobile phones are used in the western world.
Randi speaks, positively, about Chemotherapy
James Randi, the Amazing Randi, magician and skeptic has recently been through a 6 month chemotherapy-treatment and would like to tell you that medicine does, in fact, improve and that chemotherapy isn't the bogeyman that it used to be. This is great news and good advice against other uninformed sources that might have you believe differently. Modern medicine works and continues to improve and I hope we will keep seeing Randi as active as ever for a long time to come!
The craft of Dice-making
There is nothing I respect more than expertise! Seeing or listening to a true professional at work is a thing of beauty and it almost brings tears to my eyes. No matter if it's someone cleaning windows, playing piano or writing code - you can see it in the economy of motion, in the emotions they bring or in the efficiency of their code how extremely talented and trained they are. They love what they do and they have done it a million times yet still love it.
On the Internet you can find all kinds of videos of experts in action, the TED talks are a great example of this ( http://www.ted.com ), they are joyful, awesome, educational and just so passionate about what they do! Not all of them are great of course but for instance Adam Savage's presentation about making a replica Dodo-bird is so full of passion you want to stand up and applaud in your own room afterwards. Burt Rutan's passion for flight brings tears to my eyes and I know the future exploration of space is in good hands when I listen to Bill Stone.
But these are people who are already big, Adam Savage - for good reason - brings millions of viewers to Discovery Channel with his show, Mythbusters. Burt Rutan has built the prototype of commercial space flight already and Bill Stone is working with NASA. What about the less known geniuses, experts and purveyors of awesomeness? Well, for them, we have Youtube!
Here is a two-part video of Colonel Louis Zocchi, the owner of Game Science and a veteran maker of dice. Yes, dice, and not just the normal casino-dices either, but the super-nerdy 20-sided dice used in Dungeons and Dragons-type games. He is an expert in such a small niche that only geeks and serious gamers know him but as you watch him present his wares you can see and hear the passion! I never needed a 20-sided dice and probably never will, but I find him describing how its made and what makes it good fascinating and I hope you will too!
Videos found via Henri Muurimaa, http://twitter.com/henrimuurimaa
Isn't the democratization of communication and information just plain awesome?
Henry Hagnäs
Long time chemical engineering student back to get his degree. General IT specialist and people person.
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