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Das Rad

an insightful, beautiful video about rocks.

The credits read “C 2001 Wittlinger Stenner Gruber”

Trav writes a very thoughtful piece.

Wandering around the desert wearing nothing more than body paint, a jockstrap made from a $1 pair of used overalls, and a ceremonial staff covered with LEDs and driven by a microcontroller that you soldered together and programmed out of $15 worth of parts is the new conspicuous consumption: it takes $16 worth of materials, and 2,000 hours of time.

Yup. That’s how wer’re wired. Funny, i’n’t is? Go read the whole thing.

Darn, I see all kinds of interesting arguments I’d like to pick at. If only I could get my inbox below 400 unread emails. (yeah, I’m flaunting a little by saying that, but also it’s uncool of me to not reply to my friends’ emails :-o)

Warm up your flame throwers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H effects and get ready to gyrate your hips. This coming weekend is going to rock.

Box Shop Party

Friday October 15th, 8ish at
The Boxshop, 951 Hudson Ave, SF (Hudson is a dirt road that’s the first left off of Evans past India Basin Park)
Bring some food or drink or fire to share.

There will be fire, pumpkin carving, the Boxshop Jam band(only for people who can’t play instruments!), the incredible athletic prowess of Boxshop ball bearing curling, high Voltage powered by fart machine, and whatever other silliness and debauchery the night may bring!

NIMBY Party
Saturday Oct 16th

$16 donation and up
Extra action Marching band
2pir back from Denmark
Tiger Honey pot
CoRE
The Can Cannibals
The Traveling Wonders of The Boiler Bar
The Derailers
The Merkins
Alex Nolan’s Solar Sound Sculpture SOL
The Disgusting Spectacle
Work by Hett
Work by Feng Jin
Work by Clody Gates
Work in progress by Carl Heiney- Rajaphant Work in progress by Bruce Tomb- Maria Del Camino Work in progress by Gimpy’s Hotrods- 1929 Model AA work by Zsuzsanna Laszlo Works in progress by Ilana Spector and Mark Grieve The Fountain of American Truth by John Porter Chriss Schardt’s 4pyre2 Work by Spy Emerson Photo Boof And much much more!!
If you think nobody cares, miss a payment Bike racks provided Close to BART come on down, the water is great!

Find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/nimbyspace

Find us in Oakland at 8410 Amelia Street off 85th

Find us on the web at www.nimbyspace.org

Here’s a video bit of Brent and I talking about earthmine to the people in Cyberjaya, Malaysia.

http://cyberjaya-tv.com/v2/2010/10/3d-street-level-view-data-collection/

(local version)

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

PS. Great thanks to Moses Francis at Cuzzy Media for sending me an .flv version of the video that I can make available here. The Cyberjaya folks are all terrific!

I’m in Hong Kong airport after a successful 10 days of picture taking. Malaysia is totally nice; I’ll show you my 50,000 picture scrapbook soon.

I drove every meter of every road in George Town, Cyberjaya, and Melaka. Well, think we missed like 3 blocks total but that was my fault.

Next up: Riyadh from Oct 25-31.

Holy crap.  Driving on the wrong side of the road is INCREDIBLY STRESSFUL!

I just went out to dinner. We’ve always been having dinner in our hotel at the Putrajaya Shangri-La. It’s good but we have both been getting bored with the menu. I went out but Brent stayed at the hotel.

In Malaysia, the steering wheel is on the right, the shifter on the left, the blinkers on the right, both side mirrors are convex (i.e. “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”), the rear mirror is to your left, but the ignition is oddly still on the right.

I drove a total of like 3km to the mall and back and I’m so frazzled. I shouldn’t be. I mean, I’ve been sitting in the back seat as navigator for like 1,o00 kilometers of roads, half city miles. My job has been to make sure we drive EVERY meter of EVERY road in all the cities we drive… Cyberjaya, Malaka, Georgetown, and some other cities coming up. Amazingly, I haven’t gotten car sick from reading in the car even though I’ve been reading maps in a moving car continuously for 3 days straight. It took a while to get used to navigating in this drive-on-the-left country; left turns are easier, reading offramps is backwards etc…

Now it’s time to sleep!  (It’s 10pm here, it’s 7am in San Francisco!)

I am sitting in a high backed easy chair with arms that curve up and down sensually. Out the window I can only see the tops of palm trees out to 200 meters and the spire of Taman Putra Perdana. The torrential downpour shrouds the rest of the world in a gray mist. An hour ago I could clearly see the dramatic oversized moire cables of the Seri Wawasan Bridge, and the dramatic onion shaped  minarets  of both the Putra Mosque and the office of the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Any of those landmarks are good for a story on their own. But right now the rain, lightning, and grand opulent rolling thunder take center stage.

It’s quite a show! Every day by 3pm tall black featureless clouds amble in from the north. You can see them an hour away. Today I could sense them approaching while sitting in this very spot. I couldn’t see them from my seat but I knew they were about to make their appearance. The color of the air changed a little, the wind shifted, the distant drumroll of thunder offered ample announcement.

This has been quite a trip. Yesterday the rain caught us while driving. Due to the sensitive nature of our cameras, we can’t have even 1 drop of rain on any of our 8 lenses. We found ourselves at a highway underpass, along with some motorcylists, hiding from the torrents of rain. But it found a way to get me soaked. The first time a car went by, the splash soaked the backs of my legs while I was slipping the lens covers on the rig. I thought I had the rain beat by hiding behind the car when the next vehicles went by. But the truck sent up a wave that soaked us both even behind the car! Now, ducking my head low behind the car, below the windows as each car past I felt better… until a van got the angles just right and soaked me again! I laughed out loud, totally soaked with the clean warm rainwater.
(this photo taken 5 minutes after the rains let up a bit)

Standing on the balcony of my hotel room in Malaysia on my birthday. In the background is the office of the prime minister of Malaysia! (Derek Zoolander say relax!)

In the continuing effort to fight comment spam, I installed the Bad Behavior plugin on the blog. If this accidentally stops your legitimate comment, please email me at Lee at Lee dat org.

update 4-11-11: I removed Bad Behavior a while back. See the comments

I’m going off on a trip to Malaysia tonight til Oct 1st for work! There will be some time for play. Any suggestions for what to see or do?