Riemann's Cut

Enda Kenny

2012-01-27T23:18:00.000Z

Illustrated Stories From The Bible

2012-01-23T15:38:00.001Z

Dear God

2012-01-23T15:35:00.002Z

There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses. One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God with no actual address. He thought he should open it to see what it was about.

The letter read:

Dear God,

I am an 83 year old widow, living on a very small pension.

Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had $100 in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension payment.

Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with, have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?

Sincerely, Edna

The postal worker was touched. He showed the letter to all the other workers. Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few dollars. By the time he made the rounds, he had collected $96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman.. The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of Edna and the dinner she would be able to share with her friends.

Christmas came and went.

A few days later, another letter came from the same old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened.

It read:

Dear God,

How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me?

Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift.

By the way, there was $4 missing. I think it might have been those bastards at the post office.

Sincerely, Edna

[via]

"Are You In Love" - Automatic Pilot

2012-01-21T23:52:00.001Z

I forgot I uploaded this video in 2010 and never posted it here. If it weren't for some silly hashtag thing on Twitter just now, I wouldn't have even thought of it. Here's my blurb from the video's Youtube description:

"Automatic Pilot perform "Are you In love." The audio on the original recording was quite thin and poor so I overdubbed the audio with another live performance taken from their "Live In Broadway" album and edited the video to roughly match. Some of the original audio is left on the soundtrack to keep it sounding "open" and "live". At the very least, it makes for an ad hoc music video. Copyrights (1982) owned by Karl Brown & Matthew McQueen."

Enjoy some of the finest classic 1980's Erotic Jazz Wave you will ever hear!

Meanwhile In New Zealand

2012-01-21T13:43:00.000Z

[ context ]

David Norris: Hung Like A Carcass

2012-01-20T16:45:00.000Z

High Resolution Photography

2012-01-20T16:44:00.000Z

A dichotomy has formed between technology, and the obsession with perfection. On one hand we want a dehumanising levels of flawless blemish free skin, as smooth as plastic or porcelain. Hours are spent in digital darkrooms, airbrushing away our biological markers, and yet, camera resolutions keep increasing, allowing us to see finer and finer details. Ironically, as we enter deeper into the Ultra High Definition world, and resolution depths increase, we will once again look towards fine details and "imperfections", for it's these imperfections that will bring a new level of realism to our viewing pleasure.

[ Download High Resolution Photography.mp3 ]

High resolution photography,
Increased spectral allure.
A new viewing fetish
For the modern voyeur.

Fine details bring intimacy,
Megapixels see more.
The pleasure is in zooming,
A view into every pore.

Digital existence,
The body superceeded.
Imperfections sought after,
Perfection not needed.

Traversing the landscapes,
Through pixelated mesh.
This is our life now,
Long live the new flesh.

Words, music, and thoughts conjured after watching Tron:Legacy (2010). Image: 640x640 crop of this 34MP photograph.

George Hook And The Great Animated GIF Experiment

2012-01-17T19:41:00.000Z

Dear reader,

Please stare at the looping gif image and listen to the music provided [dopplereffekt gesamtkunstwerk].

How does it make you feel? Do you have an increased sense of self worth? Increased apathy? Suicidal, perhaps? If I said the word "Erogenous", do you see the colour purple? If you have the equipment at home, take a measurement of the serotonin levels in your blood; I think you'll find that they have increased.

Write down your reports and send them to Dr. James O'Reilly, Fine Gael Offices, Dail Eireann.

Your government loves you.
Enda "Jesus" Kenny.

Spanish State Police - Forensics

2012-01-17T13:28:00.000Z

"Dying to know"

Not sure if this is an official patch or not. [via]

The Best Phone In The Universe (Mk. 1)

2012-01-17T13:17:00.000Z

There it is, a beauty is it not. It merges the best of all possible worlds: a modified Nokia 7110 running Android. I've chosen the body of the best phone ever made for ergonomics. This is still the only phone that I've ever owned where texting was a joy and not a trapeze act for my fingers to go through, where the eventual outcome is a complete state of spastic digits. It has that "Maxtric" flip-down part you see, which not only looked cool but if gave your bottom fingers something to grip while your thumb did it's textual magic. The concept is much the same as a violinist holding the violin with their chin and not their hand.

Not only was the 7110 the most comfortable phone to use, it was also a true milestone in mobile telecommunication technology, much more so than any Apple iPoop. But things have move on since the failure of the WAP crap. We have full internet on our phones for some years now, and we need an OS that can handle full colour pornography, so that's where Android comes in. I don't care too much for apps but it all has to be Open and Free.

Since this is only visual, I thought I might include some other proposed specs: it has a touchscreen of course. Multi touchscreen in fact, capable of tracking 11 fingers. An Intel i7 chipset, running at 7ghz. Power is provided by an old Soviet Union technology: a 5v micro-Chernobyl battery, with a 3 hour Fukushima redundancy chip. The whole unit will be generously cooled via technology originally invented by the Mayans.*

As you can see from the title, this is only the first version. A mk 2 is planned, which will finally solve the problem present with all mobile phones: they are all upside down.

* This paragraph should be taken with a pinch of salt, twice daily...

Tina Maze Wears Rubber Underpants

2012-01-15T12:16:00.001Z

Scandal recently erupted in the world of women's alpine skiing. Slovenian skier, Tina Maze, was accused of wearing an illegal ski-suit (or at least that's what I read at first) which had a plastic backing. Ski-suits are routinely tested by the FIS for breathablity. How much air passes through the fabric affects speed, so a standard is set and once the suit passes a test, a tag known as a "plomb" is attached.

It turns out that the "plastic ski-suit" was actually a rubber underpants! Maze was apparently wearing a one piece rubber "Long Johns" which some suggested was giving her an unfair aerodynamic advantage. She addressed this story after her run in this mornings Super G in Cortina d'Ampezzo with her "protest bra" pictured above.

Rachel Allen: Murderous Rampage With Huge Gun And Monster Vehical

2012-01-09T20:50:00.000Z

I listened, awestruck, to last Tuesdays RTÉ Liveline, where a man came on air and said that Rachel Allen was running around with a "huge gun" on a "murder" rampage. You can listen yourself with the embedded clip.

[ Listen on Liveline website ]

Wild and vivid images passed through my mind, not dissimilar to the picture I created above. Being a ghoul, I rushed to the internet to find this image of delectable Gore & Gomorrah, which was described on-par with the details of a rampage by the likes of Anders Breivik or Nordine Amrani! What I got instead was the image below:

I am being facetious, of course. I knew damn well that all this talk of "big guns" and "murder" would bring nothing more than an ordinary image of a person with a double barrel shotgun and a couple of dead birds. The caller was adamant to highlight his outrage though. Even though he wasn't to upset at people eating meat, the fact that Rachel Allen is a chef and went onto to cook the birds was irrelevent to him, for she was brandishing a "massive gun" in a photograph and thus, committing "murder". He was probably just trollin' to advertise his "Animal Rights" website, to be honest. The organisation connected to this website appears to be modelled on PETA, both in activity, and insanity.

Creating Stroboscopic Effects From The Refresh Rate Of A CRT Monitor

2012-01-09T20:39:00.000Z

The title of this post seems to promise an in-depth review of the technique but no, I'm afraid it's just a video I made of bubbles breaking the meniscus of a carbonated beverage, sitting in front of illumination of my computers monitor.

I did once make water drip backwards, like in this video, by using my monitor. I may have to document that at some point in the future.

John C. Dvorak Grinding His Organ (Suzuki Hammond SK series)

2012-01-09T03:32:00.000Z

That there, is technology journalist John C. Dvorak showing off his chops on his very own Hammond Organ, and is no way a dodgey chop-shop gif I made up from footage of his X3 netcasts. No.

If you would like to hear someone actually playing a Hammond SK organ (which was released last year), check out Vijay Tellis-Nayak playing an SK1 in the video below. I think you'll find the poly-rhythms particularly delicious.

And yes, the SK series was endorsed by Jon Lord.

In the Name of the MAINTAIN, and the HARDLINE, and the Holy KOPIMI

2012-01-08T14:13:00.001Z

[ story ]
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-lawyer-inspired-file-sharing-religion-catholic-bishop-unhappy-120107/

[ image resources ]
http://www.kopimi.com/kopimi/
http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/File:Kopimi_k1.svg
http://www.griffintrading.com/WP/?p=1396
http://www.clker.com/clipart-rainbow-color-square.html

Two Random Images I Browsed Across And Were Linked In My Mind

2012-01-08T14:13:00.000Z

This picture of Machu Picchu, Peru... [via]

This picture of Minecraft... [via]

Irish Military Archives Online

2012-01-07T13:30:00.000Z

The first part of the militaryarchives.ie online archive is up, comprising of "Maps, Plans, & Drawings". They are promising to add further archives in the future, including a cache of images that need help from the public with identifying (that's less about UFOs and more about personnel, I suspect). If you like the military and/or old documents it's a great place to browse through. The only downside is that they've used protected PDFs for the images, which mean's the experience isn't as fluid as it could have been.

[ via ]

Pat Kenny & The Woman With The Pyramid Tits

2012-01-02T19:35:00.000Z

Rare footage emerged at the start of December 2011, but has since disappeared, of a young Pat Kenny describing how he used to masturbate to lady's wearing "bullet bras". So influential were these images, and so sheltered was he, that he thought women's breasts were actually that shape underneath. To put it bluntly: he thought tits were pointy.

This information soon gained traction in local folklore and ever since has been known as the "Pyramid Tits" incident. Even Mick Wallace got in on the action. Who knows if this footage will ever emerge again, but if it does, I will be sure to bring it to you. God speed.

Johnathon, Ive Got A KBE

2012-01-02T02:42:00.000Z

[Sir] Johnathon Ive, genius Apple designer and not theif Apple designer* (no, not at all!), has gotten himself a KBE from the Queen of Great Britainland. That means that he now outranks a true computer genius and British war hero, Alan Turing, as Turing was only ever awarded a crappy OBE. Turing did get other rewards in his lifetime though. Chemical castration was one, a criminal record and a life of socially shunned loneliness were others. He finally got his life back on track though when in a fit of depression he killed himself. And all this because he was found out to be a homosexual. He might have saved Britain during WW2 but you know, he took it in the bum-bum, so that means he was worse than Hitler! You can sign the petition for an official pardon for Turing [ here ].

*as Steve Jobs would say, "grand theft".

Knocknaheeney Norries, Cross Dressing In Tesco (Wilton)

2012-01-02T01:38:00.000Z

The Origin Of STALKER's "Snork" Monster

2012-01-01T22:33:00.000Z

The first film I watched in 2012 is an obscure 1971 documentary about an English family living away in the woods, choosing to ignore modern society. In The Moon and the Sledgehammer(1971), we see a father and 4 adult children, living and working together, using antiquated tools and steam powered machinery, talking about their lives and the world around them. While you would be right to suspect their knowledge of the then current world was novel, they nevertheless had great insight into the reasons they had chosen to leave it pass them by. A fascinating little film, which now has it's documentary about the making of the film too.

This leads me to the topic of this post, and the series of "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." computer games which are a favorite of mine. One of the mutated creatures in the games is known as a "Snork" and as you can see in the picture is a particularly nasty looking knave who crawls around on his hands and knees and sports a gas mask over his face. It seems clear to me that the makers of the game were influenced by The Moon and The Sledgehammer as it includes a scene where the father crawls around the yard on hands and knees in a similar fashion, wearing a gas mask. You can watch the scene below (he appears to be impersonating an elephant). I am sure this is not a coincidence as the film has a very similar feel to Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker(1979), which the games are largely based upon.

Just a little bit of personal observation for you that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere before. Make of it what you will.

North Korea: The Foolish Tears Of A Brainwashed Nation

2012-01-01T21:11:00.000Z

Black Swan (2010)

2011-12-31T23:03:00.000Z

I’ve been promising to review Black Swan before the end of the year, ever since a review was requested by Sdaedalus months ago. Now, with mere hours to go, I am writing it.

The most condemning, and yet honest, thing to say about Black Swan is that it’s not a film about ballet. In fact, ballet has little to do with the story. Even though the story intertwines itself with the story of Swan Lake, it is still nothing more than a device, a backdrop, for the plot to flow over. It could easily have been a story involving, a singer, or actress, or any other performing profession. Indeed, it was this use (or lack there of) dancing that I found most disappointing about the film.

Thomas (Vincent Cassel), the character of the dance choreographer, promises Nina (Natalie Portman) a more “raw and visceral” version of Swan Lake. Well, neither the film, nor the production of Swan Lake in the film, turned out to be all that visceral. A story involving the topic of a ballerina descending into personal madness, screams for the use of abstract, contemporary, interpretive dance, and yet, no such element was present in the film. If you watch another popular ballet themed film, The Red Shoes (1948), you'll see that it is full of dance, and not some awful disembodied CGI dance either. That film includes over 15 minutes of a continuous staged version of Red Shoes, and benefits greatly from it. More dance in Black Swan would have improved it a great deal in my estimation. I swore I wouldn't mention his name in this review, but I can’t help but feel that a more accomplished director like David Cronenberg would have done a better job in this regard; capturing a synergy between madness and dance.

Cronenberg is a director who understands how movement, and not necessarily that of an actor, can be so much more communicative than any spoken word. He is also a master at developing complex, non-conformal relationships between characters. Black Swan attempts this and fails. A film by Cronenberg may have given us more. Take for example, the stairs scene in his A History of Violence (2005). Rarely does one get to see coitus in a film, with as much complexity and power reversal, as we do in that scene. We didn't get this complexity in Black Swan. The most that the viewer gets subjected to are lame attempts at tension, by physical domination; a maudlin sexual power-play between characters. Even the scenes of Thomas groping Nina are tame. If you want to see a truly frightening scene involving a dance teacher and her pupil, check out Isabelle Adjani's performance in Possession (1981), where she addresses the camera while taking pleasure in torturing a child dancer.

The director of Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky, has a history of making films with scenes involving lesbian sex. The seedy double-dildo scene in Requim for a Dream (2000) comes to mind. In Black Swan we get lapping at Portman’s crotch (although it could have easily been her belly button, such was the poor execution). Perhaps Aronofsky should just set aside a Saturday on a lazy weekend, and make himself a cheap and cheerful porno, just to get it out of his system once and for all. At the very least, he might discover how to direct such scenes in so they don’t come across so horribly fake and tacky.

What is most unfortunate about my dislike of Black Swan, is the way it has made me reflect on my original opinion of Aronofsky’s earlier film Pi (1998). For years, I have listed this as one of my favourite films, and indeed, if it were not for my viewing of Black Swan I would still be happy to have it listed there. Unfortunately though, my romantic memories of watching it through college were shattered when I rewatched it again after seeing Black Swan. It is, medicore at best. All the cool and “intellectual” stuff I thought was in it about deep mathematics comes across as nothing more than light weight number theory clap-trap, as if Aaron spent the afternoon before filming reading a pampflet on the topic. It’s still an enjoyable film to watch though, and at least in this one, Aronofsky refrains from gracing us with his lesbonic fantasies.

To give a final verdict on Black Swan, I find myself recalling stories of people killing each other while watching the it. I don’t think it’s that bad by any stretch of the imagination. It does have it’s moments and perhaps if one cares less about the dancing elements they might enjoy it more, but I still find myself thinking about the terrible CGI, the ham fisted intergration of Tchaikovsky's work into the score, the poor acting of the annoying actors playing wooden characters... If a numerical value suits the reader better, then I give it a very generous 5/10, it gained and extra mark for bringing ballet back into pop culture, and for Natalie Portman's eyebrows.

* I created "Les Cygnes et Les Corbeaux" a few days after watching Black Swan. It seems highly probable that it was inspired by my disappointment in the film.

Leo Laporte: Sexual Freeek

2011-12-30T23:50:00.000Z

While I was offline (it happens), Leo Leporte decided to release his cyber-jizz all over the web. It turns out, he is having some sort of a relationship with TWiT CEO, Lisa Kentzell, and a "scandalous" sex-chat between the two was inadvertently displayed by Laporte during a "This Week In Google" netcast, that he was hosting. Well, aren't we all shocked! No, neither am I.

Me [Laporte]: come over. I'm naked in bed (8:13 am)
[Laporte]: waiting for you. the door is open (8:13 am)
Lisa Kentzell: I love you. (11:48 am)
[Laporte]: i still smell and taste you. i adore you. (12:13 pm)

I don't know Laporte for as long as most others. I only started watching TWiT this year, after they moved into the TWiT Brick Shit House thing, but I tell you, from the moment I saw Laporte and Kentzell on screen together, I just assumed thy were an item. To me, it was as plain as day. Stuff was said, stuff was done, that extended way past normal colleague banter and horseplay.

The Gawker article came just days after a heated TWiT debate about piracy, where Laporte argued that the old model of ownership is now defunct: he's [roughly] quoted as saying: "if it exists in a digital form, you can't stop bits being spread around the internet, and you shouldn't try to."

I'm surprised at the amount of idiots saying how "disappointed" they are with Leo. The Gawker article is as inane as saying something like: "Shock, horror: Leo Laporte discovered to have a penis! Lock up yer' wives and daughters!". I wouldn't have even mentioned it here, but I now finally have a god-damn reason to blog this song by George Michael. I have been itching for a reason for years, because I think it's the only song in existence where the lyrics describe the programming language, Java, as being "sexy". Don't be alarmed by the video. It's full of debauchery, and Michael appears to be hooked up to all kinds of pipes and machines, but enough about his recent tracheotomy.

Christmas Bonus Video

2011-12-30T20:26:00.000Z

Nine seconds of classic Fair City crooning. I found this amidst the archives of my unpublished stuff, and I mean't to upload it before the 25th, but what the hell, you're getting it now while we're still within the "12 days of Christmas".

What are the 12 Days of Christmas exactly? I mean, what do they represent? Jesus has been born and will die in 30+ years from now, so what are these 12 days all about? Perhaps it's waiting for the residual giblets and afterbirth to fall out of Mary. Maybe that's what they mean by Little Christmas. Ah Jesus...