today was Memorial day where the fallen people of Israel are remembered. there was a nation-wide siren last night at 8pm but I was still at work so missed it. today was a public holiday, as is tomorrow for Independence Day - the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel. at 11am this morning there was another siren. I left the apartment with about 1 minute to spare. the guy from upstairs ran down the stairwell just in front of me. he made it out the gate then the siren started. I was still in the front yard and I didn't want to move once it had started but I took a video from behind the green gate. the man from the laundromat was standing near his motorbike. another man stood by the car he was unpacking. a man stood on his balcony across the street - head bowed. another man put his grocery bags down and stood by them on the footpath across the road. the cars stopped. it was silent except for the ringing of the siren which could be heard across the city.

some sites with news of Israel

http://jerusalempost.com : Jerusalem Post - this is the online version of the Jerusalem Post newspaper

http://www.jerusalem-times.net - The Jerusalem Times - this is based in East Jerusalem and has Palestinian & Arabic news, though their website is often hacked so there's not much to read there

http://www.sderotmedia.com - Sderot Media - news and info about the city of Sderot which is targeted regularly and constantly by missiles from Gaza. myth busting site - here you can see that Israel actually helps Gaza residents and counter arguments against the propaganda that the media portray about the area.
articles with people living in Sderot

http://www.israelnationalradio.com - English radio documentaries and programs

http://www.israelnationalnews.com - Arutz Sheva - Israeli news site. you can receive daily email summaries of articles

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articles

most of the cafes and taxis here in Jerusalem listen to Galatz Radio - this is the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) station. army service is a part of everyone's life here in Israel with teenagers having to serve after they finish high school. they have a Hebrew news services & play popular Israeli and International music.

"India produces everything - it doesn't import anything ..." - this is what the Indian guys from work were telling me. I'm not sure if it's an exaggeration or spot on. but when I was there I certainly saw most things were locally made - from Tata & Reliance and other large corporations. I think some of the Westerners laugh at some of the locally made products - some are a little rough around the edges. but I wonder who'll be laughing in the next 10 years when India is the global economic power it's touted to be/come.

I wonder what percentage of things Australia imports? I know Australians love to support Australian-made - the green & gold. I think for Australia to stay in the list of leading countries it needs to keep producing it's own goods.

I've read that the USA doesn't produce anything any more (obviously an exaggeration) - and perhaps this will be it's downfall, especially if they keep printing more money to buy more things and 'pay off' their debts.

wow it sounds like George Monbiot got it right - unfortunately :(

from 2007 :
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329758811-121568,00.html
If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels
- Oil produced from plants sets up competition for food between cars and people. People - and the environment - will lose
George Monbiot
Tuesday March 27, 2007

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks.

In the budget last week, Gordon Brown announced that he would extend the tax rebate for biofuels until 2010. From next year all suppliers in the UK will have to ensure that 2.5% of the fuel they sell is made from plants - if not, they must pay a penalty of 15p a litre. The obligation rises to 5% in 2010. By 2050, the government hopes that 33% of our fuel will come from crops. Last month George Bush announced that he would quintuple the US target for biofuels: by 2017 they should be supplying 24% of the nation's transport fuel.

So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 I warned, on these pages, that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats. I received more abuse than I've had for any other column - except for when I attacked the 9/11 conspiracists. I was told my claims were ridiculous, laughable, impossible. Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn't materialise for many years. They are happening already.

I'm doing another MLA course - this one with Starhawk called Earth As Teacher - Earth As Healer.

20042008878, originally uploaded by AliaK.

walking through the old part of the city in Istanbul - near Balat. I liked the shadows this window grill made

20/04/2008, Istanbul, Turkey

20042008878

Agit - (pron. aught ??) Kurdish women wailing in music. traditional in Eastern Turkey

book (Andrew bought) - "Journey of a Sufi musician"

other music styles : Fasil, Arabesque music

music of Turkey wikipedia entry

Taksim - improvisation : A specific sequence of classical Turkish musical forms become a fasil, a suite an instrumental prelude, an instrumental postlude (saz semaisi), and in between, the main section of vocal compositions which begins with and is punctuated by instrumental improvisations taksim

makams - musical scales in Turkish music

instrument - Oud, Saz

week1

right click to download the audio mp3 file

a sound walk through the old city of jerusalem

jugglers in jerusalem's ben yehuda mall. my friend darren & late friend angus are both jugglers so I took this to show them. my timing was out a bit as I watched the guys juggle for a while then remembered to start filming.

08/02/2008

Click To Play

Watch the video

this is just a quick piece - playing with 3d mosaics. this week there was a terrorist bomb explosion in Dimona, in the south of Israel. multiple organisations claimed it and there were a few theories on where the terrorists came from - possibly entered following the breach of the wall between gaza & egypt, possibly they were already in the country. a policeman shot a second bomber and became a hero. one woman died and many were injured. it happened in a cafe. in a town that hasn't seen trouble before. there hasn't been a bombing for around a year. it was on the news, radio, tv, papers & online. people were commenting. I just wanted to slice up the news a bit - to remind me of the confusion & speculation - the twisting & turning of the different theories. the background is the first of the snow storm in jerusalem.

the news slices move & scale controlled by my mouse position as I move around the screen - I keep web browsing whilst the news & life is jumbled up

the music is a mixture of "Alone again so" by Kid Loco from A Grand Love Story album + "I fell once again" by Winx from the Left Above the Clouds album. I'd been wondering 'has it started again?' so I searched my itunes library for 'again' and these were a couple of the results.

06/02/2008 made in isadora. isadora patch is attached

http://blip.tv/file/651759
http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-newsSlicesInTheSnow510.mp4

it snowed in Jerusalem for a couple of days. the first day many of the roads were closed. the stores close - the city shuts down. my workplace was closed for both days (so a long weekend for some!). the second day by mid morning the sun was out and sky was blue.

snow in the middle east! lots of fun!

the music is "Snow" by Severed Heads off the Gigapus album
http://www.sevcom.com/

30-31/01/2008, jerusalem, israel

http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-jerusalemSnow649.flv
http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-jerusalemSnow649.mp4
http://blip.tv/file/651524

one of the workshops we did at electrofringe 2006 was on max / msp with Bruce Mowson
our group made a simple max patch which rotated through a few video clips we recorded of people who were in the workshop. we'd asked them to say something about the electrofringe / this is not art festival. the patch was basically a random video player. we only had an hour to make it so we chose something simple. we had to show Bruce the following day. our patch worked and we were one of two groups (well our group + 1 person from another group) who turned up the next day to demonstrate the finished patch

here's a photo of the attached patch - version 2

Mark's patch worked too - his is much more advanced! it's an identity bank ATM machine
Mark is from Chailight Productions - he lives in Melbourne now, but used to live in Brisbane and run the Spin'n'Jam nights, amongst other things such as some of the outdoor parties

one of the slides in Bruce's talk. I tried the url in the photo but it's a dead link now - granted it is 2 years later ;) no luck finding it on the wayback machine either :(

This is Not Art festival, Newcastle, Australia.
Electrofringe workshops.
Saturday 30/09/2006

http://www.thisisnotart.org/

alexa rating for ww.aliak.com

I've just installed the alexa toolbar so I can now see my site's rating. I'm not sure if it matters to me yet - still thinking about this - it seems to rate mostly US based sites, so I guess because this is a .com not .com.au it's included, not really sure. but interesting to see movement

01/02/2008 # 1797395
03/02/2008 # 1798744
08/02/2008 # 1606121
21/02/2008 # 963009 - under 1 million! what's going on?? (this is after the drupal 5 upgrade)
06/04/2008 # 597674 - almost under 500K! (crazy - this is after the drupal 6.1 upgrade. I hadn't been able to post for about 3 weeks - which turned out to be a net connection problem no site issue)
12/04/2008 # 580183

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http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/aliak.com/blog
Site Stats for aliak.com:

* Aliak.com has a traffic rank of: 597674 (up 1627945)
* Speed: Not available What's This?
* Other sites that link to this site: 30
* Online Since: 19-Dec-2000

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I need to make a drupal module to store / manage my video files - fields such as :
filename
date
location
subject
url01
url02
project used in
file path
version
movie format
original
camera
archived
archive location
backup drive
backup path

+ more as I think of them

attached is a text version - there's some missing as I had to delete some files from my backup drive to save space. so they'll need to be added once I find the box the dvd is stored in back in sydney (whenever that may be!) some have been lost as a backup drive I used in Auckland has broken :(

Watch the video

mimi on the beach

the music is an excerpt of the song 'mimi on the beach' by jane siberry (now known as issa) http://www.issalight.com

the footage is taken at bethells beach west of auckland, new zealand in early 2007

made in isadora and inspired by Will from Taylor Street Studio's work - I'm running some tests to see if I can work out how to do some of the effects he does as I love his work - it's so beautiful! http://www.taylorstreetstudio.com

28/01/2008

the isadora patch is attached. it's 3 videos - 1 is the kite flying near the lifesaver hut, the second is the girl skipping on the beach, the third is another video of the bethells beach but has a dither patch applied to create the 1x1 squares using the extracted colours from the 3rd video. the speed is slowed down and the girl video is cropped and reduced in size and overlayed on the beach & kite video. both of these have the outlines extracted using difference patches

I started off trying to learn how Will made the squares effect and I'd done other tests on having multiple video windows playing, but when I was combining the videos I liked the outline effect so went off on a tangent to what I'd originally planned. (as usual)

Watch the video

some questions from the streets of jerusalem

25/01/2008

music is "base for alec" by Yello from the "Yello 19080-1985 The New Mix In One Go" album

blip post @ http://blip.tv/file/623494
mpeg4 video @ http://blip.tv/file/get/AliaK-gotLove452.mp4

made using isadora

this video is made from 2 separate videos. one is grafitti on the wall of an abandoned building - most of it is in English so I think it's messages for the tourists. the other is a message on a wall nearby. the second video is combined with the first and tiled into small blocks over the pattern of the first wall's video content ie the writing on the building. the message on the wall is overlayed on top of the tiled / glitch video and moves around the screen according to the position of the underlying video. so it has some interactivity to it. it's recorded in real-time. each time I run it, it creates a different output.

got love? patch attached to blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/node/14273

I like this Israeli band called Blue Tech. whilst searching for them in itunes I realised I have a few 'blue' songs. blue playlist. some have blue in the filename if not listed here

[CSV]
Name,Artist,Album
Acid Blues,Calyx,Moving Shadow 99.1 (Disc 1)
Airstream,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
All Over The World,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Almost Blue,Everything But The Girl,Like The Deserts Miss the Rain
Ape To Angel [Bluetech's Evolution Remix]/Pitch Black,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Baby,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Bigger Stronger,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Blade Runner Blues,Vangelis,Blade Runner
Blue American,Placebo,Black Market Music
Blue Bar,Afterlife,"Café Del Mar Ibiza - Volumen Tres (compiled by José Padilla)
The Blue Blooded (Featuring The Blue Blooded Allstars),Hilltop Hoods,The Hard Road
Blue Easy Sleep,Seefeel,Polyfusia
Blue Eclipse,B.Jam,Tactical Manoeuvres
Blue Feel,Lithium Project,Many Worlds Theory
Blue Monday,New Order,Substance 1987 (Disc 1)
Blue Spliff,Sven Väth,0516 Sven Väth-Fusion
Blue Steel,the5000fingersofDrT,Sound Quality : Approved For Export (Disc 2)
Blue Train,John Coltrane,Blue Train
Blue Train (Alternate Take),John Coltrane,Blue Train
Bluegrass,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
The Blues,Definition Of Sound,Love And Life - A Journey With The Chameleons
Blues From Brother George Jackson (Mondo Grosso Next Wave Mix),Archie Shepp,Verve Remixed 2
Blueski,Underworld,Second Toughest In The Infants (Disc 1)
Clocks,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Condensation,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Darker Than Blue,Big Bud,Infinity + Infinity
deep concentration blues,tropical deep,in the mix
Derek Jarman BLUEs,Ghittoni Minella,An Endless Journey (Family Affair Vol 2)
Don't Panic,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Dreamtime Lullaby,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Enter The Lovely,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Even Diodes Get The Blues,Ray Diode,Motion - Movement In Australian Sound (Disc 1)
First Came The Stars [Bluetech Remix]/Shulman,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Forgiveness,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
From Blue To Green,Chicane,Far From The Maddening Crowds
A Garland Of Stars,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Hardcore Uproar / High On Hope (Out Of The Blue Remix),Various Artists,Breaks Bass & Bleeps 2
Here We Go Now,Bluejuice,The Aussie Hip Hop Army - Volume 1
High Speed,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Hypnosis,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
I'm Old Fashioned,John Coltrane,Blue Train
In My Place,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Into The Blue,Moby,Slicker Than Your Average
Into The Blue,Moby,Songs 1993-1998
Just Blue-Kettle Remix,Thug,Remixed
Just Blue-Photon Wallet Remix,Thug,Remixed
Just Blue-Telafonica's Static Cling Mix,Thug,Remixed
Just Blue-The Groovescooter Society Remix,Thug,Remixed
Lazy Bird,John Coltrane,Blue Train
Lazy Bird (Alternate Take),John Coltrane,Blue Train
Leaving Winter Behind,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Listen,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Locomotion,John Coltrane,Blue Train
Mekong Delta Blues,Various Artists,Bridges Remixed - curated by Jodi Rose
Mo' Bhangra Blues (Inst. Mix),Sonik Gurus,Indian Grooves: Dhol Bhangra And Beyond...
Mombassa,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Moment's Notice,John Coltrane,Blue Train
Mr Nice,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
My Spirit,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
On The Six,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Pan Blue,Yello,Pocket Universe
Parachutes,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Persian Blues,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Pure,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Return Of Spiritman,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
A Rush Of Blood To The Head,Coldplay,The Blu
Sapphire (Deepblue Mix),Zen Paradox,The Voyage
See You Soon,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Shades Of Blue,Lowrion, Blue MC - The Aussie Hip Hop Army : Volume 1
Shimmer,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Shiver,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Sky Blue,Peter Gabriel,Up
Soul Food,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Spacedub,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Sparks,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Spies,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
State Of Mind,Big Bud,Late Night Blues
Such A Rush,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
This Side of the Blue,Joanna Newsom,The Milk-Eyed Mender
Trouble,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
We Are Learning About Blue,Em:T - Natural Language,Em:T : Natural Language 0098
We B Movin,Epsilon blue,KOG Australian Sampler 2002
We Never Change,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
A Whisper,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
Wilderness,Blue Tech,Sines And Singularities
Yellow,Coldplay,The Blue Room&compilation
[/CSV]