A Collosus of Genius

Browsing around my old mixes recently, I found two quite old ones from the years 2006 and 2007 that I just have to publish! One is called E-Lounge and the other one Springbreak. I have been listening to them while working today and although it is now nearly 6 years ago when i made them, I was surprised how fresh and full of energy they went… and I made myself a rule that all mixes that I am still listening to today, I will keep on my blog – so here you go…

Check out my music section, scroll down to the very bottom and download them right away! Feel free to get the other ones while you are at it as well (if you haven’t done so already) and don’t forget to leave some feedback!

I have a new ‘mixtape‘ for you guys! This time it contains my favorite tracks of the past few months. I had them in a kind of heavy rotation while working, and now i put them together in a sequence.

I like to imagine it is going up like a rocket into the orbit in the beginning where suddenly (at around half of the mix) you stop moving and just kind of float around in zero gravity until you drop back down to earth (in the last 12mins). So it is kind of chillout with some energy boost here and there.

Hope you enjoy!! Don’t forget to provide some feedback in the comment section…

Listen now…

Yay! I just accidently found a game called ‘Sequence’ on Steam! Wait. Steam has what now?! Ok, from the start: I love the indie game releases this year, so i regularly check what’s on Steam. And there it was featured today: Sequence is one of those rhythm games that are flooding the market lately (most prominent example would probably be Guitar Hero). I am actually not so very impressed by this gameplay idea in general and the fact that it combines RPG elements with the timing of direction punching on the keyboard or gamepad is not the reason why i mention it here. No, the real reason is that it is featuring music by Ronald Jenkees and this guy is just genius! I have been watching his performances with the synthesizers quite some time ago on youtube and was always thinking about ordering one of his CDs. You can see that he just loves what he is doing when improvising along his sequencers. And now that I just found out that he obviously contributed some tracks to this game, i have basically no choice but to support him finally – with the tiny price of 3.59EUR (its 10% off right now) there is absolutely no reason to hesitate! If you would like to know who Ronald is and what’s his music like, here is my favorite track:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zOrV-5vh1A

I know: it is old. I know: everyone has probably seen it. Get off my case! Somehow it came up at work today – i guess it was because of the second hack but i am not sure. In any case, I realized that i haven’t honored this piece by posting it on my blog yet (and I can’t stop asking myself why i haven’t done so before). Why do I? Because I also know: it is awesome! There are three things about it that make it worth watching over and over again:

1. It is not one of those obvious mind manipulating advertisement for some crappy product nobody wants but an emotional short clip that has nothing to do with the product in the first place.

2. It was NOT computer generated, to my surprise – because when I first saw it, I thought it was.

3. The song is just pure gold, thanks to José González and even without the clip worth listening to.

Overall, I might even go so far as to claim this to be the best advertisement I have ever seen. Sure there are some pretty funny heineken spots out there. But without being funny, good ads are rare and therefor ads are to be avoided altogether… Well, except like I said: this piece of art! Check out the making of, to see the idea behind it and most importantly: the firing of the ball cannons yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KPjWZQ1lp0

PS: Did I mention that I find the song just beau-ti-ful?!

This HD video of the view from the International Space Station down on earth gave me a very intense realization of how it must be like up there. Its like a long distance night flight on a plane – just bazillion times more awesome. I am curious to see more footage but preferable in real time. As impressive as this clip is, everything is just going by too fast for me to really enjoy it. So if you know a place where to get more video, let me know! Although i can imagine its quite complicated: the images seem to been taken with an extremely long exposure time (observe how intense the sunlight gets), otherwise the amazing glow in the atmosphere would not have been that visible. The surface (where there are no city lights) and clouds seem to be very well illuminated by the moon (plus the mentioned long exposure takes care of their visibility). I am wondering where on earth that is, what we are seeing here…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ

People (like me) are running around with their headphones on and their eyes on the phones all the time. Especially commuting to and from work is kind of boring if you have no music in your ears  and sometimes even spooky because you realize that nobody is talking to anyone at all. Why not break the silence and ask those people what they are listening to? I find this idea inspiring and the answers sometimes even surprising:

Totale Koerperbeherrschung, absolut unerschuetterliche Ausdauer und musikalisch grossartigster Geschmack – all dies sind Faehigkeiten, die ich mir selbst nicht zuschreiben kann – aber diesem Team! Sie sind einfach faszinierend im Breakdance on Dubstep und das auch noch synchronisiert! Besonders gefallen mir die fastforward und slomo moves, sowie die Wechsel zwischen eben diesen. Und was die Mucke angeht: Dubstep loest bei mir haeufig einfach nur ein innerliches Grinsen aus. In diesem Fall inbesondere das Stueck von Minute 3 bis 4… Continue reading

They are everywhere! Even the new business cards of my company has a QR-Code on the back now. The most prominent application for them must be in advertisement, where the little block of visual bits forms the connection between print media and online content. The idea is simple: For example, on some poster that already got your attention they put this square of black and white spots. With a camera and an app on your mobile (for example Barcode Scanner on Android) you take a picture and *bam* your phone has just decrypted the URL within the code, which you can then visit without typing a single letter. Basically it works like a Barcode but with two dimensions. The one on my business card contains all my contact information, so you don’t have to scan it or even type it into your phone.

Now this dude, Brian Benchoff, found out that according to the specification, a lot of the code (up to 30%) can be “unreadable” by the phone and still be decoded. So he did the obvious, he put some stuff inside the code like so:

You should try it yourself, it actually still works and in this example gives you the URL of Mozilla Firefox if you scan it. This is actually a pretty sweet idea and if I would make my own business cards with a QR-Code on them, i would definitely integrate a logo like this as well.

Read the full Article with all the explanation why and how it works on Hackaday.com.

Check out The Top 10 QR-Code Generators in case you would like to try creating your own Codes. In addition, here is a small clip of another interesting application of QR-Codes in Korea where you can go shopping in a virtual store.

While I have been near Lago Maggiore in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, I have also been going up the stream of one of the rivers – leading into the Verzasca Valley. And by “going” i mean “driving”. Anyway… After a while you find yourself in front of a cement wall: the Contra dam. Wait a second, I know that sight: From this dam James Bond took his famous bungee jump in Goldeneye! In fact you can even do the jump yourself if you dare. Even though i just posted all those adventurous things i would like to do some day, bungee jumping was not one of them.

Contra dam aka the favorite place for Bond to Bungee Jump

Instead I continued going up the river, beyond the enormous artificial lake of the dam, and I reached a wonderful river bed carved into solid granite near a very old roman bridge. Wow. What a sight! Around this river you can climb along the rocks from one small stream to another. Near the bridge you see the mountains in the back and the water is flowing very slowly and is several meters deep. Some small streams go all around the rocks so it may very well happen that were you climb along would turn out to be a dead end after a while because you cannot cross the water except by swimming. Continue reading

I know i do. Well, not just at home. I am also at work, but its basically the same thing: there is a desk, a computer and i am sitting in my chair in front of that. Sitting, sitting, sitting. What i am doing might change depending on where I am, but no matter what that might be, i am sitting. That is why once every couple of hours i need a little inspiration to imagine I am doing things outside of the digital world and on my feet. Inspiration that might make me think “Hey, that’s EXACTLY what I always wanted to do!!” – and hopefully I am going to do that too later that week.

So i did what everyone would do nowadays: I went online (while sitting) and I was looking for awesome inspirational videos. I ended up with a handful of adventurous outdoor activity clips… interestingly, every one of those is showcasing some people going downhill in one way or the other (what that means is to be interpreted by YOU). Continue reading