xirdalium

xirdalium on the move

Finally I began to pack my things, and started to drive to and fro in the tiny moonrover you can see in the upper left corner. What I want to say: My blog 'xirdalium' here is in the process of moving to a new home at ↑xirdalium.net. The blog over there is already up and running (including comments :-), there is new content, and during the next weeks all the content here will be there, too. And with the new system on the new domain new content will be generated regularly. For all those who so kindly have linked to my blog here: I'd be more than thankful if you'd update the link to the new domain.

arkham

mk vs. dc

Since DC/Marvel's ↑crossover comic ↑'Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man' from 1976 I am a regular fanboy of heavy crossovers, I have to confess. ↑'Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe' is a somewhat perfect specimen. Besides ↑Ed Boon, the co-creator of the 'Mortal Kombat' series, narrating, what I especially dig in this movie, is Superman firing his heat-vision right into Scorpion's face at point-blank range (that sound!), and then slamming him through a dozen or so walls. To do this kind of over-the-top cartoon violence Tex-Avery style full justice, I'd welcome another crossover: 'Mortal Kombat vs. Tom & Jerry,' or, maybe even better, vs. 'Itchy & Scratchy.'

shanzhai

'Maxpy,' a 22-year-old programmer from Shenzhen, PR China, has developed and built a device which makes an iPod Touch into an iPhone. The '↑Apple Peel 520' is a case fitting around an iPod Touch, containing a battery, dock connector and SIM card.

What's more is the Apple Peel also illustrates the evolution of China's massive "shanzhai," or black market, phone industry. Based mostly in Shenzhen, it is an industry characterized by the massive production of copycat mobile phones and other devices, which are sold at lower prices and often with more localized functionality than global brands [bold emphasis mine].

via DT@FB—tnx

don't care

via email from alhambra—tnx

eldredge reloaded

With the video Jeffrey "cwtrain" Eldredge uploaded to YouTube yesterday, the story of the inverse tie-knots finally seems to have come to an end. In the video Jeffrey demonstrates exactly ↵the sequence I had come up with on 19 October 2008. This knotting-sequence I had christened 'Eldredge Variant,' because all I did was adding two through-the-loop moves to Jeffrey's original sequence, thereby making it into a knot. Since then I regularly wear the knot in public and even made inverse tie-knots the core topic of my Habilitationsvortrag '↑There is no Merovingian! Tie-knots, Neo-Dandyism and Cyberculture,' presented on 03 February 2010. Because I only added two twists to Jeffrey's sequence, I shied away from giving the knot a new name, although I like to call it 'xirdalium' in private. In order to give due credit to those involved, and to clear some matters up, here are the landmarks in the history of the inverse tie-knots:

On 21 June 2003 Luke "edeity" Housego invents the inverse tie-knots. The day before he had seen 'Matrix Reloaded' at the cinema and wanted to have a tie-knot as cool as the one the character 'Merovingian' sports in the movie.
On 28 September 2003 Luke publishes a .pdf-tutorial for his knot on the Internet. He calls his invention 'edeity's knot.'
On 03 February 2006 Victor Allen "Lord Whimsy" Crawford III publishes a .pdf-tutorial for a tie-knot he calls 'The Merovingian.' In fact it is edeity's sequence, but rendered much more clearly than in edeity's original .pdf. Whimsy had the idea from said .pdf, but was not sure, if he had matched the sequence.
On 16 February 2007 Henry "SimplyJustHen" Hu publishes a video on YouTube wherein he shows how to tie a knot he calls the 'Hen Tie.' In the video Henry makes clear that he has the idea from edeity's .pdf-tutorial, but that he was not sure if he had matched the sequence. In fact Henry's sequence slightly differs from edeity's.
On 18 February 2007 the knot called 'Merovingian' appears in the German version of the Wikipedia, linking to Lord Whimsy's tutorial.
On 04 May 2008 Jeffrey "cwtrain" Eldredge publishes a video on YouTube, demonstrating how to tie an even larger inverse tie-knot he calls the 'Eldredge.' Luke "edeity" Housego gave the world the inverse tie-knots, and Jeffrey Eldredge invented a subterfuge in tie-knotting not to be found in the literature so far: He simply tucks away the rest of the tie's narrow end under the collar, thereby making possible the largest tie-knot known. This move rightfully can be called 'the Eldredge tuckaway.' But there is a problem with Jeffrey's knot: It's not a knot, but more a 'wrapping.'
On 19 October 2008 Alexander "zephyrin_xirdal" Knorr publishes the description and sequence of the 'Eldredge Variant' in his weblog, making the 'Eldredge' into a true knot.
On 19 June 2010 Jeffrey Eldredge publishes the video 'The Eldredge Knot: Revisited' on YouTube, demonstrating how to tie the sequence of the 'Eldredge Variant.'

In detail and with background information, pictures, sequences, diagrams, and movies the, more or less, full story can be read in my old blog-entries (in chronological order): ↵merovingian ties, ↵more merovingian ties, ↵the eldredge, and ↵eldredge variant.

foot 2010

Just in time for the World Cup, ↵R�mi Gaillard "d�fend une nouvelle fois les couleurs de Montpellier et tire n'importe o�," thereby appropriating urban landscapes ↵by mastership.

pixels

The comment by haablaust is one of the finest specimen of multi-layered online-culture humour: 'Clearly this is shopped! you can totally see the pixels!'

uncut escape

"I can only hope you and your ↑Convergence Culture are happy now, ↑Henry Jenkins!"—that's ↑Bruce Sterling's comment on ↑Casey Pugh's meanwhile finished project '↑Star Wars Uncut'

via entry at beyond the beyond

amateur anthropologist

... and he ↵said it again. Here's an excerpt from a recent round of ↑Q&A with William Gibson:

Question: On more philosophical and complicated themes. You are an artist, a creator, but more: you are through your writing an influencer, a shaper of technology, of society itself. Does that scare you?
Answer: I don't actually buy that, the mighty thunderer and shaper of technology thing. I think I'm more of an interpreter of technologies, an amateur anthropologist. I'm a sort of Victorian weekend naturalist of technology, who somehow found a way to make a living doing that (and a bunch of other things at the same time).

zero history

William Gibson's latest novel "↑Zero History" is slated for publication on 07 September 2010.

cybermind

↑MARSHALL, JONATHAN PAUL. 2007. Living on cybermind: Categories, communication, and control. New York: Peter Lang.

Cybermind is an Internet mailing list, originally founded in 1994 to discuss the issues and problems of living online. It proved exceptionally fertile and is still going strong thirteen years later.
This book is an ethnographic investigation which follows Cybermind members in their daily lives on the List, and explores the ways they look at the world, argue, relate online life to offline life, use gender, and build community. Perhaps the most comprehensive history of an Internet group ever published, it includes detailed analyses using List members' own words and commentary, and develops a unique theory of the relationship between culture, the problems of communication, and the ongoing processes of categorisation. Living on Cybermind illustrates how behaviour is affected by the organisation of communication, and how people deal with the paradoxes involved in resolving ambiguity and truth in a situation in which presence is always on the verge of slipping away.

At the moment I am writing a review of Marshall's book— the German anthropological journal "↑Anthropos" has asked me for it, and the deadline dawns. It is a more than worthwhile read for everybody interested in online groups/milieus/scenes and in doing according fieldwork, I have to say.

technium

kevin kelly on technology

Kelly's speech at the TEDxAmsterdam in November 2009 finely illustrates how much one of the most prominent contemporary technology-intellectuals is influenced by two academic endeavours: anthropology and cybernetics.

from 2R via email—tnx

kaizo mario world

impossibly hard variant of super mario world

This is to humble every single speedrunner, trickjumper, DeFRaGger, or first-person-shooter virtuoso/elitist who ever dared to badmouth about 2D jump'n'run sidescrollers and the supposed lack of skill involved in playing them.

The "kaizo" ("hack" or "mod") of Super Mario World shown in the video was created by T. Takemoto. For the movie he made his friend R. Kiba play his creation. Obviously Kiba possesses god-like skill, but still Takemoto's level's are more than a challenge for him. The dramaturgy of the movie is only digestable for the real oldskool aficionados, I confess—but still I find the pace set right in order not to get boring. There are more of Takemoto's levels on YouTube, and even a second installment. So, if you haven't got enough yet, plus a whole day to waste, search for 'em ;-)

interview with a doomed marine

Again those little mosaic-tiles keep falling in place—and the timing is perfect. Just some days ago ↑John Postill confirmed via email that a paper I proposed for the ↑11th biennial conference of the ↑European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) has been accepted for the media anthropology network's workshop ↑The Rewards of Media. Just one day before gamescares published an ↑interview with Peter Papadopoulos, Remedy's community manager. Pete is an old friend of mine from the glorious days of Max-Payne modding. Within the online-scene he is better known as ADM, short for "a doomed marine," of course an allusion to the protagonist of the Doom-series. Have an excerpt from the interview:

It's a bit of a long story so I'll try and shorten it as much as I can but it goes back to when I was a regular in the Max Payne community. [...] It's also worth pointing out that the Max Payne community was a great booster for many peoples careers with several members now working at studios such as EA/Dice, Gearbox, Crytek and of course Remedy.

And here is the abstract of my paper called "modding's rewards":

Within the transnational technoludic online communities of practice—among which I am doing persistent thick participation since 2002—informal mutual tutelage and training is a core practice. In the case of 'game modding' this may well amount to 'postindustrial unwaged labour.' But there is another, less negative interpretation. First, the online-communal practices enable the members to live their personal conglomerations of ambiences, sentiments, aesthetics, and narrative content, built from a lifetime of digesting popular culture, and of assimilating its modes of representation into their own conceptions of life. Second, since I presented 'my online tribe' at the 2006 workshop of the media anthropology network, more than half of the core-group has crossed the blurry border to professionalism and works in exactly the jobs they envisioned during the early times of the community. By expanding Henry Jenkins's notion of co-creative media I will collapse this twofoldness of rewards, mythopoeic and economic, into one.

the chess master and the computer

Not just in terms of ↵machine chess, but in general: ↑Garry Kasparov's article "↑The Chess Master and the Computer" in The New York Review of Books is the best text I've read so far this year.

initially via BK @ FB—tnx

keep on tracking

Walking the street, earbuds in, and listening to the music from the iPod is not an instance of escapism. Rather it means an augmentation. Mundane life now has a soundtrack.

nextgen anthropology jobs

The following excerpts are from a 24 August 2009 ↑press release by Gartner, Inc., a consultancy company focussed on 'information technology research and advisory [�],' on their report called 'Social science meets technology in next-generation jobs':

As individuals and organizations progress in their adoption and leverage of the Web, new work streams and needs will arise, resulting in companies utilizing social sciences to fill next-generation technology jobs [�].

The sprawling use of consumer technology is spurring the demand for new skills in the workplace. Gartner said that during the next five years, consumer adoption of technology will accelerate as individuals and groups become more comfortable and adept at using it to manage their family, social, and business relationships. At the same time, organizations will struggle to keep pace as they integrate rapidly changing behaviors and technology into an already established business culture and infrastructure. [...] With the volume and diversity of content generated, posted and modified on the Web, there is a rising need for information anthropologists who trace the origin, history, and evolution of Web content. Their objectives range from providing the history of content or information to spotting fraudulent or modified images, audio and texts. Information anthropologists may therefore contribute to legal analysis or to processes where intellectual property or information quality and integrity are at risk. [italics emphasis mine]

� and what exactly was it, what I am preaching since about six years? Huh? Actually, I am far from being the prophet—a comment on ↑the story at eweek starts: 'Way to finally wake up and smell the coffee, Gartner. I've been using anthropological interviewing techniques to understand the hows and whys (especially organizational culture) for over two decades now. Techniques I learned going out into the field with my mother (Ph.D.) in anthropology. I also know for a fact that several enterprises have used anthropologist and others in the behavioral sciences in product development, and that factoid dates back to at least the early '90's (1991 as I recall). [�]'

initially via email from John Postill—tnx

40

Since about 100,000 years there is something called 'human culture' on Earth. It is save to assume that every single human being having lived since has now and then glanced up to the moon in the skies. But it is just 40 years ago from today that human beings walked on moon's surface. In the face of that and in spite of all the crap happening every day on our planet, imagine in what kind of phantastic and special times we are living.

life and live

In a way '↑Second Life' (SL) is the online analogon to a social club of sorts—"↑Quake Live" (QL) in turn emulates a boxing gym, or any other sports club centred around a competitive pastime. In the end both of course are social institutions, but differ in terms of qualities, differ in culture.