Infinite tree box

Ooooooh - want! This installation consists of one solitary tree, surrounded by mirrors on all four sides.

Walk in, close the door and presto!

Infinite forest of trees!

Yay!

iPhone jailbreaking now legal in US

OK, how did I miss this news?

Owners of the iPhone will be able to legally unlock their devices so they can run software applications that haven’t been approved by Apple Inc., according to new government rules announced Monday.

The decision to allow the practice commonly known as “jailbreaking” is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized use of copyright-protected material.

The Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing uses of copyright-protected works.

For iPhone jailbreakers, the new rules effectively legitimize a practice that has been operating in a legal gray area by exempting it from liability. Apple claims that jailbreaking is an unauthorized modification of its software.

More importantly, does this apply outside of the United States?

Reeeeaaallly slow video

Watching stuff hitting other stuff, really, really slowed down is mesmerising.

WANT!

This tshirt explains exactly how I feel about our current society.

Thor trailer leaked

Trailer for Thor has been leaked. This looks so bad, it's GOTTA be good!

Hehe nice reference to Ironman in there as well...

Australia the generous nation?

Most of the world’s richest nations have committed 0.7% of their Gross National Income in overseas aid. This equates to just 70 cents out of every $100 dollars they earn. Not much really – but if every rich country contributed 0.7% of their GNI we could halve global poverty.

So where does Australia’s generosity rank in terms our contribution to making poverty history? The answer: a lowly 16th out of the world’s 23 richest nations.

So when will Australia do its fair share you ask? That’s the question the Make Poverty History (MPH) coalition has been putting to politicians around the country at a series of MPH Electoral Forums.

We don’t think the answer from the two major parties is good enough. Watch the compilation video including footage from a number of these forums and make up your own mind.

Then write to your local MP, asking when Australia will be making a fair contribution to halving global poverty.

First published on Oxfam Blogs

Wordpress petition plugin

In my first true Wordpress plugin adventure, I've made some adaptations and changes to the FreeCharity Petition Plugin.

I'm still quite shocked that this is the only WP plugin I could find aimed at providing an easy interface in the creation and management of online petitions. It's very good, but didn't quite fit the bill for the Make Poverty History campaign, for which I needed a decent petition functionality.

I wouldn't say I've adapted the plugin enough to warrant a re-release, but I've tweaked enough for it to better suit the generic needs of an advocacy or lobbying organisation.

Download my version of the plugin here - available under the GNU GPL.

2010 online election

We’ve already featured the great electionWIRE project being run by Vibewire and YouTube. Now adding to this, Google have launched their 2010 election coverage, which builds upon their interactive tools last used in the 2007 campaign.

You can explore your federal electorate on a map, see who holds power, and by how much. Once the data is finalised by the AEC, you’ll be able to find your closest polling booth so you’re ready when election day arrives.

Google trends enables you to find out which party are topping the Google search results at the moment. If you’re more interested in who’s at the helm, find out which of the leaders are more popular – Julia, Tony or Bob?

Or, skip the popularity contest altogether and find out what Australian’s care about in terms of policy and issues.

They’re also running the Under 18 election through schools around Australia, to find out how the next generation would have voted in the federal election.

The first few election scorecards are starting to appear, with the Australian Conservation Foundation and theAustralian Koala Foundation already releasing their reports. But some are utilising the interactive nature of online environments to make their ratings cards much more interesting and engaging – check out the Climate Institute’s Pollute-O-Meter to find where the parties stand on climate change policies.  (Stay tuned for the Make Poverty History election scorecard due to be released soon.)

Combined with the one-to-one interaction provided by Twitter, this election is shaping up to be a truly digital one. Services like TweetMP or My Politician allow you to find those current members that are tweeting away like mad on the campaign trail. The major parties have all invested in new websites designed to make it as easy as possible to contact and keep up to date with their candidates – check out the ALP, Liberal and Greenssites to find your candidates.

For the first time in an Australia election, you can follow and interact directly with the leaders of the major parties – Julie Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown. As the West Australian have recently featured, it seems Bob is using Twitter to his best advantage after being shut out of the leaders’ debate, but is losing in terms of sheer numbers to both Julia (30,843) and Tony (14,632), with 10,250 following the Green leader. But the real test will be in how these leaders use the technology to its true potential – numbers alone will not win votes here.

For the stats and figures wonks amongst us, check out Antony Green’s ABC Election site, Ben Raue’s Tally Room or Crikey’s Pollytics. Finally, bookmark the AEC’s official Virtual Tally Room (which for some reason is still displaying info from the 2007 election) for live results as they come in.

All in all, we’re seeing a dramatic shift from the traditional broadcast model so often applied to national election campaigns. Politicians (both potential and incumbent) are recognising the need to bring down the barriers and talk to their constituents in dynamic, instant and interactive ways. It might well be the start of a whole new form of representative democracy.

We’re interested to hear your tips and ideas for following the digital election – what interesting sites and tools have you seen that allow for better understanding of the parties, candidates, leaders or issues?

First published on Oxfam Blogs

Yo dawg

I am really just too funny sometimes.

Tron: Legacy

OMG OMG OMG.
New Tron trailer is out!

An explanation of the political system

Vibewire’s electionWIRE teamed up with Hungry Beast’s Kieran Ricketts to explain the political system, the political parties and the upcoming election.

electionWIRE is a space where hard-hitting journalism meets insightful user-generated content to present the issues defining the Federal Election for young Australians. Fourteen of the brightest reporters from the next generation. They’re stationed across the nation awaiting your questions and suggestions. The project will be overseen by seasoned political reporters and editors. You too can set the agenda by uploading your own reports, animations or opinion pieces!

Check out the YouTube channel here, or find out more about the reporters here.

First published on Oxfam Blogs

Wine floors. WANT!

EPIC WANT - floorboards made from reclaimed wine barrels!

Fontenay Wood has created a line of flooring made from reclaimed wine barrels.

The Cooperage collection uses the head of the barrel to display the markings unique to the wines stored inside.

The Wine Infusion collection takes the unmarked pieces of wood and shows off the color variation that has developed during the wine making process.

The Stave collection uses the outer sides of the barrel where the hoops have imprinted a distinct pattern. All of the available options have a rich quality comparable to the complexity of the wine that its collectors love.

via BB

Baby seal pinata

This is why I love Laughing Squid - the baby seal pinata.

Princess Bride Horror

The Princess Bride remixed as a horror film. Nice.

WANT!

These tiny stickers go over your laptop's built-in video camera, to remind everyone that THE GOVERNMENT IS WATCHING! ALWAYS WATCHING!

The Story of Cosmetics

The people behind the amazing Story of Stuff have teamed up with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to produce another animated documentary – The Story of Cosmetics.

The Story of Cosmetics employs the Story of Stuff style to examine the pervasive use of toxic chemicals in everyday personal care products, from lipstick to baby shampoo. The film will explore the health implications for consumers, workers, and the environment, and show how we can move the industry away from hazardous chemicals and toward safer alternatives.

The Story of Cosmetics is co-produced with the trailblazing environmental health activists at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The release will support the introduction of groundbreaking national legislation to regulate personal care product ingredients.

Check out more about the campaign here.

First published on Oxfam Blogs

Boy trades cellphone for Porsche

The barter system at work!

Steven Ortiz, a 17-year old boy, used Craigslist to trade his old cell phone for an iPod Touch. He traded that gadget for something better, which he then traded for something even better. After a total of fourteen trades, starting with a cell phone, he had a Porsche Boxster:

Steven started his lucrative journey when his friend gave him an old cell phone – the sort most people would throw away or shove into a junk drawer. He traded that phone for a better phone, which he then traded for an i-Pod touch. He traded that for a series of dirt bikes, a MacBook Pro, and a 1987 Toyota 4Runner.

At the time, Steven was just 15 and unable to drive his new acquisition. So he quickly swapped it out for a souped-up off-road golf cart, another more valuable dirt bike, a streetbike, then a series of cars ending with a 1975 Ford Bronco. He spent a few months enjoying each acquisition before determining he was looking for something else.

It was that Bronco that got him the Porsche. Because some older Broncos are considered collectibles, Steven estimated his was worth $15,000. He got offered all manner of trades – including a locksmith business – for the Bronco. The Porsche, worth about $9,000, was actually a trade down.

Full story here

Making a Real Doll

Fascinating (NSFW) short doco about the production of a Real Doll.

via Kottke

Don't Ask Don't Tell - in comic form!

Wow. I never knew that comics could teach so much.

Comics with Problems has an instructional comic book from the US Army on what to do if you discover a homosexual within your ranks.

I'm surprised the phrase 'burn fag burn' doesn't feature more prominently - I thought that was standard Army procedure?

via BB

The first rule of Ferris' Club

Nice edit of Ferris Bueller and Fight Club.

Surrealism cow dancing

Complete mindfuck in 5,4,3,2...

Vino Gigantis

You know, if you are buying alcoholic vessels from home shopping catalogues, I reckon you might want to reconsider your drinking habits.

via the Daily What

Wordpress Events Manager is doing my head in

So here's where I jump straight into geekdom. I normally don't blog about technical stuff, but this one is bugging me, and I'm hoping there's a random Wordpress genius who will read this and offer a solution.

I've been trying to use the Events Manager plugin for Wordpress on the Make Poverty History site, to manage and organise the upcoming events.

Basically, the plugin enables you to create event listings outside of the regular post/page breakdown of Wordpress, then organise and display these events in various formats. It applies various attributes to the events, such as date, time, location etc, which are then called by shortcodes. Eg the location town is called via #_TOWN. This data is fed to the Google Maps API and should be dynamically displayed when called.

Only problem is - for some reason the automatic Google mapping function doesn't work. Instead of displaying the map based on the event's location data, it just shows a blank green screen. The really weird thing is that the map shows up in the backend admin screen - it just doesn't display on the live site.

I've scoured the support forums to get some help, and it seems that it is not an uncommon problem. The 'solution' offered by a lot of people is to ensure that the Wordpress head code is installed in the theme, which I've checked, and it is (incidentally, the theme in use here is Original Premium News 2.2 by WooThemes).

I did find one temporary workaround, which involves utilising the standard Google Maps direct URL to a map location, replacing the normal actual address with the Events Manager shortcodes.

Very smart, and works quite well (aside from the lost ability to control the map speech bubble text, but that's ok). But this hack is really not that handy when it comes to displaying multiple events on a single map, which ultimately I'd like to use as the main navigation of all events.

So, wider internet - anyone want to come to my rescue? Why am I getting a green screen whenever I call a map based on Event Manager's shortcodes? Alternatively, how can I utilise the standard Google Map function to display a multi-point map that is called based on an URL?

Keep calm and fake a British accent

I'm not normally a fan of all of these rip-off's of the original awesomeness that is 'Keep Calm and Carry On'

But this one is pretty cool.

Ballface.

Ballface - where my fear of clowns merges with the memory of thousands of hours of playing Doom.

How Willy Wonka should have ended.

I have often thought this. Physics fail.

Firefly circa 1987

The opening credits for Firefly were already pretty good. But remaking them in the style of Airwolf just makes them awesome!

Mapping nukes in history

Well, this is terrifying.

Isao Hashimoto's multimedia piece 1945 - 1998 documents the 2053 nuclear explosions that have occured across the planet since the invention of the most destructive bomb known to humankind.

"This piece of work is a bird's eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world."

It takes a while to get started, but around the mid 1950s is when the terrifying light show really kicks off.

From the first nuclear test in 1945 until tests by Pakistan in 1998, there was never a period of more than 22 months with no nuclear testing. June 1998 to October 2006, when North Korea reported a successful underground nuclear test, was the longest period since 1945 with no acknowledged nuclear tests. Isao's work excludes two nuclear tests by North Korea - October 2006 and May 2009.

EPIC WANT!

I want need this kids typographic fun book.

I mean, my son needs this. Yeah, for him.

via Endemic World

Smart. I has one.

This is how smart I feel when I put on my glasses in the morning.

via Barry

Let's go dump oil on some beaches

Ad in today's Crikey email.

Strange - I thought that was BP's slogan...

Party on, Google.

Best streetview shot ever.

Iran bans mullets

Iran has banned the mullet.

Here's the full story, but I just told you all that you need to know.

This is what you are anxious about

This week refugees, boat people and population growth have hit the headlines again. But what are the boat people statistics? See this fascinating infographic created by Robert Corr, with each unit representative of 2000 people.


via Crikey

Nukes. In. Space!

In 1962, the United States set off a hydrogen bomb.
In space.
This was the first and (so far) the last time this was undertaken.

According to NPR's Robert Krulwich:

The plan was to send rockets hundreds of miles up, higher than the Earth's atmosphere, and then detonate nuclear weapons to see:

1. If a bomb's radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!);
2. If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby;
3. If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and - most peculiar - d) if a man-made explosion might "alter" the natural shape of the [Earth's magnetic] belts.

The Earth's magnetic field protects the planet from incredibly deadly radioactive waves flooding in from the sun.
And, yes, these genius decided to see if they could alter it.
With nuclear weapons.
Yay!

Full story: NPR

Epic white ninja cat

Epic white ninja cat is epic!

Does aid work?

Oxfam GB have produced a great animation detailing the effectiveness of aid, outlining where aid has made a difference to millions of lives in many of the poorest parts of the world.

Oxfam GB online campaigner Ian Sullivan:

“In a bid to try something different – not just writing policy papers and thousands of words blog type features – we came up with the idea of using animations. We wanted to give people who support Oxfam the tools to challenge aid sceptics. We also hope to reach new people who might not come across our policy positions any other way.”

Aid makes a difference to the lives of the poorest people around the world. It is a vital way to help to lift millions of people out of poverty. Because with healthy and educated people, poor countries can develop their economies and stand on their own two feet.

Some people argue that aid actually prevents countries from developing. Some people think that it should be stopped. But thanks to money from rich country donors, in the last few years we’ve seen 1.4 million extra HIV positive people on life saving anti-retro viral drugs; 40 million children who never would have learned to read and write are now getting an education. Aid has helped to make these things happen.

If given correctly, aid can help to reduce corruption. The money can be spent in a way that empowers people in developing countries to speak up, tell their governments what they need and hold them accountable for how aid money is spent.

Australia is a wealthy country – we need to do our fair share in providing overseas aid. We also need to recognise that climate change is already impacting on poor communities, making the fight against poverty even harder.

Ask our Treasurer to commit Australia to giving our fair share.

Halliburton kill wildlife, clean them and make money

Shock! Horror! Haliburton is profiting from an environmental catastrophe.

I know, you're all horribly shocked!

Let me illustrate it perfectly clear:

• Halliburton hired by BP to manage cement work on Deepwater Horizon drilling rig
• Cementing work most probably cause of blowout causing BP oil spill
• One week before blowout, Halliburton purchases Boots & Coots - company specialising in “prevention and risk-control services for oil and gas-well fires and blowouts"
• Halliburton now responsible for both accident and clean-up of oil disaster
• Public not at all surprised at prospect of huge multi-national corporation profiting from own failure

From the Earth Island Journal:

A week before the Deepwater Horizon accident, Halliburton purchased Boots & Coots, a $191 million company that specializes in “prevention and risk-control services for oil- and gas-well fires and blowouts,” according to an April 12 story in Daily Finance. The company also “helps enhance production for oil and gas operators,” and will likely see an increase in operations as more activity is focused on unconventional, difficult to extract fossil fuel sources like shale oil and gas.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, Boots & Coots is now under contract with BP to help with the relief well that will, hopefully, put a final cap on the blowout. Halliburton is essentially making money from causing the accident and then helping to repair it.

Halliburton’s many-fingered tentacles is just the latest illustration of how powerful the company is. The $18 billion-corporation is the second largest oil services business in the world, making it an indispensable part of the extraction industry. Its long reach brings to mind Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi’s evocative description of Goldman Sachs. Like the powerful investment banking firm, Halliburton is also “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”

via GOOD

Not a good start

It's only 8:30am and I've already encountered so many things that shit me.

• Someone littering the wrapping on their cigarette packet
• The same person smoking in a no smoking area
• Someone pressing the pedestrian crossing button when it's obviously already been pressed and there are four people waiting
• Two Metro customer service officers standing around doing nothing
• A hipster on a single gear bike
• Someone walking back and forth on the station platform, constantly checking if the train is coming, and making loud annoyed sounds when it isn't
• Someone yelling into their mobile, oblivious to the surrounding passengers

Today is not shaping up well.