Blogs

Watch the video

cycle rickshaw ride in chandni chowk, old delhi, 09/05/2006

I had my wakeup call this afternoon as we were leaving work. as a quick background, the site is still largely a building site with workmen & women living in makeshift tents - a piece of thick plastic (that blue stuff they cover roofs with after cyclone damage) with a couple of sticks holding it up. as we drive past I could see some have a plank of wood which is like one of those wooden crate plinths (not sure of the real name) so it looks like they sleep on this under the tent. keep in mind it's about to be monsoon season, so they'll be sleeping 2 inches above soggy ground most days over the next few weeks. the workmen used to live under the awnings of the walkways - it has a roof and they'd strung plastic sheets as walls. at least there was a cement floor about 1/2 metre above the ground but they've been kicked out of there as murdoch is due for a visit soon and other vips have come for meetings (though they seem to find excuses to leave and only stay an hour). anyway, there were friday drinks this afternoon as we were leaving (early for once!!) - which isn't really drinks like in aus, but is argyaaal sweets and (yummy & filling) vegetable samoas instead. we were talking to one of the guys about the food - they provide a hot cooked lunch for the staff at work (I can't eat it more than once every couple of weeks but some people do). I said we should get the samosas as they were good and chatted about what the workers eat. then one of the guys mentioned in some parts of mumbai there were people who ate a similar dish for breakfast, lunch & dinner every day of the year. I (stupidly) said (without thinking) "don't they get sick of having the same thing everyday?" (which they think is strange coming from me who has vegemite sandwiches every day - brought the vegemite with me and make them at breakfast in the fancy hotel). and he replied, "no.. it's all they can afford to eat so they don't ever have anything else". which made me feel really bad. not only for saying something dumb & inconsiderate but for being so oblivious to the fact that I take for granted the luxury of eating different choice meals each night/day and have never even thought twice that I don't have this option available to me. now this could have been a slight exaggeration on his part and perhaps they do have a minimal choice of really cheap food, but I've seen things here which leads me to believe he wasn't exaggerating. sorry, just had to write this down and this thread seemed like a place for it.

Watch the video Attached is a 1 minute recording of inside the Bahai Lotus Temple in Delhi, India taken on 30/04/2006. Sounds never cease in Delhi - the traffic and the people, so finding a quiet spot is like an oasis. This building has amazing acoustics - the sounds of coughs and whistles vibrates through the space. It was a really nice place to sit and relax on a really hot afternoon. I hope you enjoy it.I recorded it using a Sony MiniDisc and a cheap pc mic.

http://www.bahaindia.org/ has images/info about the temple

I've emailed this to the organiser of the Quiet American website - http://www.quietamerican.org/vacation.html - they have 1 minute recordings from people's holidays from around the world.

Watch the video my WATM Challenge 1: Half Second Cuts video - half second of different cities from the last couple of years travels - Seoul - Auckland - Delhi - Sydney

http://wearethemedia.com/2006/06/19/watm-challenge-1-half-second-cuts

Watch the video

a quick clip of the colourful sarees seen whilst walking to the lotus temple in delhi. processed in isadora. video only - no sound.

sarees.izz file attached

Play Quicktime version

I didn't make it to vloggercon06, but caught a couple of the saturday sessions online. second life was pretty quiet - they must have got the video working inworld after I left.

I saw some via the vloggercon website though and was on the chat channel for a bit.

there's links to video recordings of the sessions here

I'm catching up on emails on my day off and have just read one of the videoblogging list posts about the shallow nature of videoblogging in comparison to the footage and daily life in Iraq portrayed in the doco on AlterNet.org. There's a debate going on but it's drifted away from the topic of the disturbing images in the doco. I've only watched half of it - will catch the rest tomorrow when my net connection is more stable. I live with such luxury... the worst thing I have to worry about at the moment is not being able to connect to the net if the hotel internet connection is down.. now that's shallow!! I can't imagine living in a war torn place and seeing the realities of death everyday. It's a video that I think everyone should watch.. http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/36871/

Clay Sharky writes an interesting article on Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality about the popularity of a small percentage of blogs.

well maybe u do in delhi from june onwards, but today was my first elephant-in-the-street-sighting, so thought I'd share some pics.

the driver stopped the car so I could take the photos. I think he got a fright as I started getting too excited saying "there's an elephant, an elephant!" - tourists hey...

I need a faster camera though - missed the good shot of his head. was too busy watching him walk past.

people were giving me funny looks from the side of the road - same old same old to them I guess..

Play Quicktime version

I'm getting into Second Life. I tried to use it a couple of years ago when I first heard of it but my old laptop graphics card wasn't up to spec so I couldn't actually logon :( since getting the macbook I no longer have this problem! so my second life name is Alia Kiama, I haven't bought any land yet but I'm going to try make some objects.. once I work out all the new terminology. it's similar to the old compuserve worlds away and active worlds avatar based systems but seem to be more popular. the main difference is that when you build something you are allowed to keep your IP. people are making their living in RL (real life) creating objects in the world. you can buy and sell Linden $ (the inworld currency) on websites, and for US$.

(I'll post SL articles using my second life name, Alia Kiama)

some links whilst researching second life stuff :
(read more)

There's a couple of conferences coming up which I wouldn't mind checking out.. don't think I'll have a chance in person as I'm still in Delhi for work, but I think they'll have video / audio recordings of them so I can check out later.

Vloggercon 2006 is being held in San Francisco this year. Here's the blurb from their site:
"VLOGGERCON 2006 is the intersection between media-makers and technology. A space for dialog and interaction. Of creation and collaboration. A media village born on the internet, and making camp for one weekend in San Francisco.

In the past year, videoblogging has grown into a myriad of forms with a worldwide voice. And your voice is needed at Vloggercon– after all, the media is being made by you so it’s your voice that we want to hear! Vloggercon is a two-day collection of roundtable discussions about the emergence and the future of this new medium; not a series of lec-tures. This conference is created for meeting and learning from each other, so be ready to share your thoughts!

Vloggercon 2006 will be held June 10 & 11 at the Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market Street, San Francisco CA 94114. "
http://www.vloggercon.com/ - tickets are available online.

Where 2.0
This one's about locative and GIS / Google Earth, Second Life / Electric Sheep & similar web apps. Would be good to see what's happening on this front at the moment. Here's the blurb from their site :

" Everything happens somewhere. With open source and free web mapping tools like Ka-Map and Google Maps, we finally have a way to display location information. At last year's Where 2.0, we put the spotlight on the grassroots developers building mash-ups on platforms from Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google. This year we'll look at the latest developments in those platforms as well as the latest startups, civic projects, and labs experiments built on them.

In addition you'll find source mapping tools, open standards for data and location web services, and sensors for obtaining location data. We'll learn how the established geo industry is reacting to the first businesses making money from their grassroots geospatial projects. There's no better place to meet the people behind the mash-ups, the people behind the platforms, and the people looking ahead to the future of geospatial. "
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/where2006/

here's another video of part of the drive to work - this time you can see some of the apartments, shops and people of New Delhi (southern region).

itunes seems to play the direct links, otherwise try videolan if the video doesn't play in the browser automatically. try double clicking the video window in th browser to start playing

--UPDATE : I've changed the video player link below to use the vPIP (video Playing in Place) utility from Cinegage Utilities and quicktime seems to like it better!
try the util for yourself @ http://utilities.cinegage.com/videos-playing-in-place/

Play Quicktime version

double click on the movie to play and stop if it doesn't autoplay

direct link - mpeg4 video format (~8Mb):
http://www.archive.org/download/Delhi__Drive_to_work_28042006/Delhi_driv...

direct link - .mv4 video ipod / psp format (~15.2Mb)
http://www.archive.org/download/Delhi__Drive_to_work_28042006_.mv4/Delhi...

Here's a quick video I shot whilst driving to work yesterday - it's of a few scenes in New Delhi, India. I don't really like talking on camera but thought it was time I practiced and started uploading some more videos.

It's an .mv4 file - hopefully it will open in QuickTime!

Play Quicktime version

or click on the link below for direct download / to open file manually

http://www.archive.org/download/Delhi__Drive_to_work_25042006/delhi_driv...