Life as an Artificial Lifeform

Watching the Steve Keynote today and reading everything I could find I feel the urge to comment on Apples next cat OS release that normal people have to wait until first half of next year. So what is it all about? Well you can read the official Apple promotion on it yourself. I just want to highlight some stuff. 64bit: It seems to be there at least what the memory management is concerned, as far as I could read its still NO complete 64 bit system. Safari RSS: Yawn. Get Netnewswire it will do more for you. Spotlight is cool on the surface but its still no metadata filesystem instead some indexing database tailored onto the OS. It seems fast (on a G5) but I am curious how the indexing will work and if it sucks realtime performance.
On the good front are some amazing things for the moving picture people. First off the the new MPG4 codec H264 looks stunning. I will let you all know once I get my dirty hands on it but having one codec fits all sizes is amazing. And if the quality gain is as claimed this is finally (since sorenson) a codec worth encouraging to use on the web (and dvd and cellphones and cds and ... and ...).
What excites me the most of what is known of the yellowblackwhitestripecat are the Coreplugins for image manipulation and video manipulation. Core Video will let ANY application developer who incorporates video get access to an array of effects that can be applied in REALTIME to any video (or for images in the case of coreimage). CoreVideo is hooked into the Kernel and is executed on the GPU. Yes you read it right it performs all necessary tasks to manipulate your images on your GraphicsCard leaving out the processor to do some more important tasks (ähm decoding DV clips for example). Apple delivers some multiple plugins with the package but you can roll your own of course. Ultra cool stuff and I can not wait until I can test drive motion which already incorporates this technology.
For the Rest (iChat conferencing, Konfabulator knockoff Dashboard etc) its nice additions and I am sure there will be a time when I use it but its not breathtaking. As for Xcode 2 I am sure developer will love the new overview interface and all the little enhancements I personally hope it will just be less buggy.

Posted by fALk at 23:11 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are a fan of lowfi, lowtech, blurry, noisy, easy made moving images – kommy known from the VJ central has posted an interesting link to a website that has a whole collection of those ordered by year (starting in 1991) or by genre (vj, computer, point of view and many more). There are hundreds of short clips that should keep you busy for the next days....

Posted by fALk at 12:28 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is an interesting article on 3dtotal.com with lots of examples of how color theory works in the creation of 3D pretty pics. Worth reading through.

Posted by fALk at 12:24 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I found this really entertaining article from a DJane who talks about all her secrets of DJing...

http://www.viceland.com/issues/v11n5/htdocs/hey.php

An excerpt:

TECHNIQUE FLOW: The only slightly ephemeral skill to learn is flow. Have you ever made a mixtape for someone you had a crush on? Then you already know what flow is—the ability to maintain a mood. I was at a party once where the DJ kept playing one danceable hip-hop track, then one undanceable slow classic-rock track, one hip-hop, one slow rock, on and on like that for an hour! We would get up and dance, and then sit down, and then we finally just stayed down and shot him really dirty looks. It was the opposite of flow. To master flow, you just need to not be a fucking moron. Can you handle that?

Great inside view of the hard sweaty world of spinning records.

Posted by fALk at 10:21 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

ArsTechnica is running an interview with Scott Collins of Netscape/Mozilla fame. He was also originally on the Apple Newton team and one of the programmers at Macromedia who developed the program that later became FinalCutPro.
He has some interesting views on the fall of Micro$oft and code developing in general.

Microsoft will be the fall of Microsoft, and that's when the little pieces that cooperate with each other will thrive. Will Mozilla beat Microsoft? No. Can Mozilla thrive? Yes. What will make Mozilla thrive? Microsoft's fall under their own weight.

Posted by fALk at 9:01 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Finally the HipHop Band that I am touring with has a demo. Its finest german HipHop mixed with Reggae and Rock. The band is making the songs available for free as MP3. Go check out their blog or download the songs directly from here:

1 Feedback.mp3 (5,1 MB)
2 Resümee.mp3 (5,2 MB)
3 ShuMo.mp3 (3,6 MB)

Tell them what you think.

Posted by fALk at 17:17 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As part of the Emergenza Band Contest we will play at the Uncle Sallys tent at the Berlinova festival tomorrow, Friday the 11th of June around 7 p.m. Watch the big 9x9 Screen Matrix I organized so that I can play in the brightness of the early evening. If you happen to be at Berlinova already on Friday and want to see a very creative new german HipHop Band come around and celebrate with us.

Posted by fALk at 16:48 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today a mass of spam email was send out from a group of far right wing NDP followers. The german spam content was quite shocking. I have learned that my email adress was used as a fake returner address. I want to state that in no way do I have anything to do with the spam nor do I agree with anything that is written inside the emails. They just used email address from persons to spoof. Neither my computer system nor my email account have been compromised the same goes for all the Spiege.de, Heise.de and most of the other personal addresses that have been used.
The spam is sent out via a bot net consisting probably of virus infected, trojaned and compromised PC nodes that are connected to the internet. If you are using a windows or Linux machine please install all the latest patches and turn on your firewall protection.

Posted by fALk at 16:39 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don´t´know if it was a joke or not when I got the call very late last night from Mo-Greens who told me that Klartext has won the Finals for the Berlin Emergenza round. I had to ask back 4 times to make sure that he is not making fun of me while I am asleep and still this morning its hard to believe that it was not a dream.
So while I am still awaiting the absolute official confirmation I am here to say YES we seem to have won besides a great array of other bands around us. We will play next weekend at the Berlinova Festival ... which is HUGE. Still don´t know what to make of it that the jury of the largest rocknroll band contest with a guitar as its logo has let a HipHop band win. THANKS goes out to all the fans and supporters and to MoGreens for bringing the band together in first place.

PS: For Berlinova I surely hope that they will get me a better Beama and a better Screen then the shit I had at Columbiahalle last night.

Posted by fALk at 9:54 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our local HipHop Band Klartext has been entitled to play at the big mighty Columbia Halle as Part of the Emergenza Band Contest. They will deliver finest german HipHop with their live Band and special visuals from myself. Start is 8.45 pm.

Posted by fALk at 10:06 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MoGreens and me are honored to play at the first ever german WikiPedia Party. I will feature some special WikiPedia Visuals and MoGreens will spin some 21st century worthy tunes. The Party is on Friday June 11th 2004 at the c-base Rungestrasse 20 Berlin-Mitte. Hope to see all you internet addicts there.

Posted by fALk at 21:26 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)