Monthly Archives: December 2011

cyberpunk listings update

Posted on by December 17, 2011
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The lists of cyberpunkish artefacts in the menu ↵cyberpunk (see above) still are (and forever will be :-) work in progress, but I heavily updated them. The last days I was down with some kind of flu, hence couldn’t concentrate on harder tasks anyway, and so gave it a go. First I added a lot of movies to the ↵motion pictures list—in fact every single movie ↑Emily E. Auger calls ↵tech noir. In other words: I cannibalized her wonderful book (2011). Next I introduced two subcategories: ↵television and ↵video. In consequence the motion pictures list now only features movies which … Continue reading →

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bricks and games

Posted on by December 15, 2011
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truly transmedial to and fro This is a moc [my own creation] ↑interpretation by afol [adult fan of LEGO] ↑m_o_n_k_e_y of the ↑Vic Viper. This fighter spaceship is a signature element of the ↑Gradius games, a series of scrolling shooters by Konami. The first game of the series was released in 1985, the latest in 2011. So over the course of a quarter of a century versions of the ship appear in more than two dozen computer games for different platforms.     Within the LEGO scene the Vic Viper has a ↑massive and very productive fandom, ↑originally inspired by … Continue reading →

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cyberanthropology reviews

Posted on by September 12, 2014
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Now that some reviews of my book ‘↑Cyberanthropology‘ have seen the light of day, it makes sense to begin to collect them [naturally they’re all in German]:     The Titel-Magazin was first with ↑Ein Buch mit System! (27 September 2011). As short as enthusiastic—and it is very short.     Next came Karl-Heinz Kohl’s review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: ↑Völkerkunde war gestern, Cyberanthropology ist heute (16 November 2011). Unfortunately behind a paywall on the FAZ-server, but buecher.de has the ↑full text of the review online (and perlentaucher.de posted a ↑short notice).     On 30 November 2011 SWR2 … Continue reading →

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tri knot

Posted on by December 13, 2011
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  The above was uploaded to YouTube by McGreyling on 22 September 2010 and shows how to tie a before unknown inverse tie knot. Like Edeity’s knot, Henry Hu’s Hen Tie, and Lord Whimsy’s Merovingian it is of size 11. In the video McGreyling doesn’t stick to the convention of having the tie’s wide blade hanging to the right (from the wearer’s point of view). So, for sequencing I mirrored the movements in the video. In Fink-Mao notation McGreyling’s knot reads like this:     Ri Co Ri Lo Ci Ro Li Co TRi Lo TCi [ET]     In … Continue reading →

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who’s bad?

Posted on by December 13, 2011
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zeph’s pop culture quiz #7 What’s the name of the villain?     Just leave a comment with your educated guess—you can ask for additional hints, too. [Leaving a comment is easy; just click the ‘Leave a comment’ at the end of the post and fill in the form. If it’s the first time you post a comment, it will be held for moderation. But I am constantly checking, and once I’ve approved a comment, your next ones won’t be held, but published immediately by the system.] UPDATE and solution (13 December 2011): Frankly, I have no idea how he’s … Continue reading →

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beyond westworld

Posted on by December 11, 2011
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Yul Brynner always has been one of my all-time favourite actors. So it is hardly surprising that his impersonation of the Gunslinger in ‘↑Westworld‘ (Crichton 1973) is one of my favourite robots. Marking the naturalistic android to be artificial only by way of the metallic eyes—see above—was a stroke of genius. The sequel ‘↑Futureworld‘ (Heffron 1976) followed. Unfortunately Brynner returned just for a short dream sequence. Both movies I saw as a kid on television and have them on DVD since long. Just recently I got to know that a television series was produced, set out to carry the story … Continue reading →

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inverse in time

Posted on by December 9, 2011
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Due to public demand I created the category ↵sartorial and the tag ↵dandyism. For starters I hauled over five according entries from ↑ye ole xirdalium. In detail and with background information, pictures, sequences, diagrams, and movies you now can read the, more or less, full story of the inverse tie knots (in chronological order): ↵merovingian ties, ↵more merovingian ties, ↵the eldredge, ↵eldredge variant, and finally ↵eldredge reloaded.     This comes in time with ‘↑In Time‘ (Niccol 2011) still in the cinemas—at least over here in Europe. I thought I had spotted it while seeing the movie ↵just recently. So … Continue reading →

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decommissioned

Posted on by December 9, 2011
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This vig[nette] by Alex Fojtik simply is called ↑Decommissioned and once again proofs that it is possible to create poetry out of LEGO bricks. It immediately reminded me of the robot soldier turned gardener in ‘↑Laputa: Castle in the Sky‘ (Miyazaki 1986):  Since 2001 a life-sized replica of one of those robot soldiers can be seen ↑in the rooftop garden of the ↑Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo. Life-sized in his case means five meters tall:  ↵Life after people, robots after people, technology after people … here’s what I saw ↑at boingboing this week:  Cory Doctorow writes: ‘The Bughouse Future … Continue reading →

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graeber’s debt

Posted on by December 8, 2011
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↑David Graeber‘s book ‘↑Debt: The First 5,000 years‘ (2011) just arrived on my desk. Unfortunately at the moment I don’t have the time to sit down and read it in peace. Nevertheless I skimmed through it, read a bit here and there, and then couldn’t help but beginning to read it from the front cover on.     It won’t be long and Graeber will owe me hours :-)     There are books with which I do maintain a love-hate relationship. While reading those I constantly do have the impression that there really is something more than worthwhile, original, … Continue reading →

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