shows the most popular pages in wiki pedia.
Right now it is (still) unfiltered and it shows pretty much how the internet really looks like.
Two things become obvious:
1. Lots of ‘smut’ intermixed with technical and current topics.
2. The long tail. First content entry ranking #3 right now is “Pluto” with 0.1%. Or in other words one in a thousand views falls on the most prominent topic right now.
The most expensive paintings were made during a brief period. Most of them in Paris. If you were an Artist in those days you better rent in and around the Montparnasse. Even though back in the day the money was not flowing their way, a handful of artists seem now to make up the quintessential olymp of the fine arts. A show of them will raw big crowds only matched by sports events.
Pop stars. Big freaking Madonna like box office hits.
All along during the times of mass society there was this big and scary void below the mega stars. Nobody would have want to be caught during the travels to fame. The rise of the Popstar needs to be instant, overnight. The uncanny valley between nobody and stardom had to be passed instantly. It was the nowhere land of mediocrity. Where those not so good artists dwelled. Who wants to buy a painting from a ‘not so good’ artist?
Mass media made those Pop stars by putting the massive firehose gush of its attention on specific individuals. It was and is a hit or miss game. Mass media as it developed in industrial societies means that few outlets serve to millions of minds.
Along came the internet. And the thing happened almost unnoticed that would fill the gap between unknown knitting grandma and Picasso. It is filled with content. Decent great content. Lot’s of it. The cost to publish it, allows for an revolutionary amount of diversity.
An example. While window shopping in Hamburgs ‘Stilwerk’, more or less an Ikea for the rich, I came across David Steets “Australia”. I liked it allot. Lumas has a shop in the former Coffee factory, and it seems to do well. Their concept is not to build and sell few popstars, they have maybe a hundred Photographer’s to pick from.
The actual framing is done very well. So well that I used Sander myself, and they have been great. Only complaint is that they don’t have an LA office. So my large prints will probably remain in Europe.
The Lumas concept works well. Based on technological break throughs it allows the content to broaden: Steets sells his images for a couple of hundred Euros. Both sides do well in this transaction. The digital prints make beautiful images. Thirty years ago the alternative would have been a mass produced poster or an original that was unaffordable.
The middle grounds between nobody and pop star artist is now filled with a range of great work that fits all tastes. Other examples of this new art economy could be Etsy but also Flickr qualifies. There is no ‘lower boarder’: Back in the day the Pop Stars clinging on to the
arts Olymp had to defend the few square feet in the spotlight. “That’s not art, that’s amateur stuff” used to be one of their pump guns to defend it. The middle range art market that is emerging does not share this problem. It allows for growth around demand.
There is of course nothing wrong with flash. Just that I don’t want to do it.
Here are my reasons why I don’t waste any clock cycles on it.
Of course sites like youtube, the early flickr or etsy highly use flash and are very sucessful in doing so. Of course flash is here to stay.
Just that I will not deal with it.
What a brilliant concept: Just air some green screen footage. The kids and youTube will do the rest.
Next stop: tracking markers.
Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.
“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.�
So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.
“It’s perfect!� she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?�
“Five thousand dollars,� the artist replied.
“B-b-but, what?� the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!�
To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.�
Nice story, probably not true. Who cares.
Culture has survived things like this.
I would think it’s pretty much unkillable then.
Mr Strandbeest is back
I usually like my job allot. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes I would like to do something else.
Apple’s XCode comes free with your operating system. It allows you to compile code. But is it a decent Development API? I highly doubt so. I don’t spend 50 hours a week with it. I hope nobody has too. I wasted the last thirty minutes of my life trying to find a way to rename a project. Just giving it a new name. Not more not less. I truly sucks. This is probably not a bug, just some ridicolous user interface disaster. XCode. It truly sucks, and, isn’t that a coincidence, there is no real alternative to it.
Seth Godin asks what happens to Radio
Well, first of all, Radio has survived lots of new media. It has changed everytime. Radio plays did not survived radio’s struggle for survival though. Which is a real sad thing. I grew up with those little gems. No, I am not a million years old. Radio plays were a blessing of the german government funded radio stations: They just kept the same kind of program structure they always had. In the seventies we had at least three radio plays a week. Since nobody nobody listened, the authors could get away with allot of stuff. And my parents thought I would be safe if I listened to the radio. Better than TV, they thought. Little they knew.
But that is the past of Radio.
Another personal radio experience was moving to LA and therefor into the reach of KCRW in the mid ninetees. Ear opening, back then. Twelve years of radio in Munich had almost killed my interest in music before that.
KCRW however got supplanted by podcasts. It’s still a decent station, but podcasts fit what I want to hear much better. And, even if my podcast mix contains some NPR, I still prefer the leech from my shuffle: I pause as I like, resume where I left things off, and I mix my shows the way I like it.
So there is no more Radio in my life.
Somebody should start a podcast with Radio Plays though. I have an idea what to play on August 14
Since years I used the ‘bc’ unix command line calculator. Nice for copy paste jobs, better than a push button calculator, since you can see your calculators. Of course pretty stupid otherwise. I am sure there are advanced calculators around. Those that I would always forget how to use. Speaking of, ‘bc’ needs you to set the decimal precision before something like 5 / 3 gives a result as usually expected. Every couple of month I am trying to find a way to set scale = 4 in a default environment etc. Never had any luck.
Today osxhints – which comes up first for most unix searches these days – I found the Google Command Line Calculator
It’s very very nice. Written in ruby which comes with OS X. Commandline, but that’s what I liked.