Gordon's Alive!

It recently struck me that the phrase "Gordon's Alive", as famously uttered by Brian Blessed in Flash Gordon (1980)[imdb], could easily make it into the general lexicon as an expression of surprise. For example: "Gordon's alive! That's the last time I wear white pants after eating a chilli tandoori combo."

Anyway... here's three unlikely 'Flash Gordon's:
1) Bearded Flash (1992)- authentic hair colour and good costume but what they hell is on his feet!? Not sure if Nordic beards are a fashionable way to save the planet either. [costume.org]
2) DragonCon Flash (2011)- atrocious hair colour, and the posture of this poor man does not say "hero". [flickr]
3) Communist Flash (1983)- not an intentional Flash, but this Soviet Union "Flash Gordon" does have the authentic 80's t-shirt and looks somewhat like a cross between Prince Baron and Freddie Mercury. He also comes with cool accessories like a portable radio antenna, which was probably designed by Russian Jew scientist, Hans Zarkovski. Of the three, he looks the most likely to save the planet, although it mightn't be pretty. [cover of 1983 "радио"("radio") magazine No.6]

Enda Kenny: Pew Pew Pew

Shaking Leaves

via [arbroath.blogspot.com]

Pi as a Fractal

A little thing I was experimenting with a while back, turning Pi (3.1415...) into a type of psedo-fractal image, hoping that some unexpected meaningful pattern would emerge. I sometimes have these crazy theories about Pi, you see. I sometimes think we could use Pi to gleam magical insight into the structure of nature, as if the last number of Pi were the quantum of the universe. And now that I've stunned you with that one, I think we should swiftly move along...


A close-up section of top image. Pink cross-hairs is the origin.

This was computed in Adobe Flash which was fine for small values but larger amounts (Pi to 10,000+ places) really started to stress it. Perhaps it could be made more effeciant, but I was pointed towards a Java programming environment, specifically designed for graphical projects called "Processing" [processing.org] via [twitter.com/rubot]. This looks like it would be perfect for the job.


1000 places of Pi.. a horse, perhaps? 

This Flash implementation is merely scratching the surface of what I have envisioned. I was put off from going any further because of the limitations I encountered. One day I hope to get the finger out and create something amazing with Processing, and when that happens I will no doubt blog again, and give a full explanation of what madness is rattling through my head.

The Deception of a Weeping Frenchman

Whenever you come across the image above, in a documentary or online resource, you will most likely be spun a description such as the following: "A Frenchman weeps as German soldiers march into the French capital, Paris, on June 14, 1940, after the Allied armies have been driven back across France." [dodmedia.osd.mil]

 The image made an appearance in a recent popular BuzzFeed video titled: "The World's Most Powerful Photographs"[youtube]. Once again, the description went along the lines of: "A French civilian cries in despair as Nazis occupy Paris during World War II."

Most may be content with that description. The Germans did occupy Northern France, including Paris, and we can take it from granted that not all Parisians might have been delighted about that, however, the image never looked right to me, so I started searching. After a little Googling I came across the following description:

"French people staring and waving at remaining troops of the French Army leaving metropolitan France at Toulon harbour, 1940, to reach the French colonies in Africa where they will be organized as Free French Forces fighting on the Allied side, while France is taken over by the Nazis and the Petain regime collaborating with them. Screenshot taken from the 1943 United States Army propaganda film Divide and Conquer (Why We Fight #3, @54:50) directed by Frank Capra and partially based on news archives, animations, restaged scenes and captured propaganda material from both sides. As a propaganda film from ambiguous sources, it is not certain that the scene was shot on location, or whether it was later restaged in studios." [wiki]

Armed with that information, I searched for the listed film and found it on Youtube. As described above, footage of the "Weeping Frenchman" appears at 54 minutes 50 seconds, amidst footage and naration about the French troops heading to Africa.



Given that this film was part of America's disinformation campaign of the time, and was filmed by Allied photographers, it's almost impossible to trust anything said about the origins of the image, at least not completely. The entire scene could have been staged outside of France, played by actors, in some Hollywood parking lot. That seems rather unlikely however, and it is more probable that the footage is of something authentic happening in France. Indeed, after a little bit more searching I came across this Wikipedia discussion about the image [wiki]. The final word on it being:

"Late (but right) answer. This man is M. Jerôme Barzetti, photo in Marseille, La Canebière, at passage of flags of dismounted regiments, sent in Algeria, after collapse of France. Date: approximatively Feb.19, 1941, and published on 3.3.41 by Life' Magazine."

So until anything else comes to light, we will have to accept this as being the closest description of the reality behind the image. One thing we can say for certain though, this is not a Parisian crying as he watches the Wehrmacht march into Paris.

The Life and Times of Boeing 737-4Y0 EI-CZK

One of the things I'm not, is a plane spotter, so it comes as no surprise that the picture above is one of the few aeroplane photographs I've taken over the years. In fact, it's the only one that I've kept on a local hard drive, the other few have been squirrelled away in an archive somewhere. It was taken sometime in 2004.

I decided to Google the plane's registration number and, low and behold, I found some of it's history [flyinginireland.com]. Manufactured in 1989, it was originally owned by Cayman Airways. It changed hands a few times before becoming part of the Skynet Airlines fleet. The plane would regularly fly between Shannon and Amsterdam, apparently this landing in Cork airport must have been a rare thing.


A better photo of the plane around the same time [flickr]

Then Skynet Airlines went bang in mid 2004 (perhaps a bad choice of words to describe an airline ceasing business). It once again changed hands a few times and now it flys with the livery of Russian airlines operator, Трансаэро (Transaero). As of April 2012, Трансаэро operate a maintenance company based at Shannon airport.


The most recent appearance of EI-CZK, over Spain, April 8 - 2012 [airliners.net/EI-CZK]

There's a long list of sightings of the plane on that airliners.net link, listed just above. I must say, I'm beginning to appreciate why some people love this kind of thing, be it sighting planes, trucks, trains etc. Tracing a plane's history and flight patterns over the years can be quite interesting, and then seeing it in the wild must bring the same thrill people get when they see a celebrity on the street. Fair play to these people. I don't think it's for me though.

Photo ID: 2093823 Views: 368 Aircraft Location & Date Transaero Airlines Boeing 737-4Y0 Madrid - Barajas (MAD / LEMD) Spain, April 8, 2012 Remark Photographer EI-CZK (cn 24519/1781) Late evening arrival from Moscow - Domodedovo as TSO379. Diego Ruiz de Vargas - Iberian Spotters

Blocked in Iran

After yesterday's [this morning's] blog post [Riemann's Cut] I discovered that this blog is blocked in Iran. The excitement lasted for about 3 seconds though, when I realised that all blogspot blogs are arbitrarily blocked (hence the subtle typo).

Iran are currently making their own internet, which is promised to be completely cut off from the rest of the world. I wish them luck with that. It's going to be like one big lan party, but with more public hangings (depends on the types of LAN parties you've attended I guess). They have just disabled access to Gmail recently, surely war with America is imminent.

If you'd like to know if you're blocked in Iran, before everything is blocked, try here [blockediniran.com].

America Attacks Iran with a Diabolical British Biological Weapon

CNN recently sent Piss Morgan to Iran [CNN.com], surely that is a clear act of war against any country. It's a pity Ahmadinejad wasn't a more exciting leader, like Saddam "gas them Kurds" Hussain, we might have rid the world of a true menace once and for all.



Not to worry though, Morgan was effectively destroyed by Ahmadinejad's answers. Why did CNN send such a lightweight to interview him? Maybe they really do want his contract terminated, and hoped Ahmed would do it for them. The one good thing that may come from it is Ahmadinejad's full explanation of what "wiping Israel off the map" mean't, so now hopefully we won't have to hear anymore of that bullshit meme in future talk of Iran.

Recursive Book Covers

Click for larger image...

I'm sure there must be many obvious examples, but these two are what come to mind. I came across the one on the right recently on ebaY and the one on the left is a childhood favourite, particularly for the humerous illustrations scattered amidst the chapters.

"Gullible's Travels" - Billy Connolly [books.google] "Riding" - C.P. Agelasto [books.google]

Finding a Decent News App' for Android Devices

N.B. this post was written many months ago

Let's have a look at a few popular news apps' for Android phones. I've picked three applications from news outlets that are familiar to people in Ireland, particularly because it's where our own media outlets (RTÉ) will speak to when dealing with international coverage. Amidst the topics on offer, all three apps' have something that relates to "Entertainment" or "Showbiz". Topics include the likes of:

SkyNews - Showbiz: "Posh Car: Beckham designs £80k Range Rover." 

CNN - Entertainment: "Do dating reality shows have a race problem?" 

FoxNews - Entertainment:  "Mariah Carey flaunts 70 pound weight loss."

Now lets have a look at another Android application, from RT [rt.com]. When you start up the app' you will be greeted with categories like in the other applications, but nowhere will you find the topics of "Entertainment" or "showbiz". Instead you will find the category of "Art And Culture". Within it you will find stories such as:

RT - Art And Culture: "Romeo and Juliet back at old Bolshoi."

Admittedly, the stories included aren't always as highfalutin as art, dance, and literature. Often a popular film is mentioned and I even spotted a story on the "Miss World" competition once, but the angle is definitely "art & culture"

Perhaps it's somewhat expected, that news outlets who have a reputation for being trash, should produce mobile applications that deliver trash. If the "showbiz" crap they claim to be news worthy is anything to go by, it asks serious questions about their coverage of currant affairs. I'm being factitious of course, it's obvious that all of their news content is trash. The problem is, what does all this to the human mind. People who are easily lead, are programmed into unthinking morons with all this "xFactor" rot, and end up believing any old tripe that's put up in front of them. The brain like any other organ, is altered by the input it is fed. You are what you eat...

There are two things one must remember when consuming news: 1) all media organisations have agendas. 2) most news is highly editorialised. The upshot of this is that you should always find reports from various alternative news agencies, just to get a better picture of what the truth actually is. Editorialising in news is particularly insidious because it attempts to make up your mind for you. In an ideal world, all news reports would be clinical and unbiased, robotic and inhuman, but we are far from an ideal world.

This post was always going to wander into the general standards of news quality, rather than the actual mobile application, but even if we do look at the apps' themselves, the RT one still trumps the others. Nice and clean, lightweight and straightforward. No bells and whistles, just the news. I wish more mobile applications were like this.

Like a lot of people these days, most of my news comes actually comes from social media, but when needed, RT is where I head to get a full story. They're a good antidote to all the crap we're fed in the West, but remember, RT have their own agendas too, so never swallow it whole. News is not a religion, you don't put faith in it; you investigate.

Hominid

Hominid is an animated teaser based on the Hominid series of photo composites by Brian Andrews. The series has been exhibited internationally, including at SIGGRAPH, in the Hong Kong Exhibition Center, and at numerous galleries. This animated teaser was produced at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts. Be on the lookout for future Hominid animations.

You can find out more information on the project at hominidanimation.net/.

[via]

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

For a film that's over 40 years old, it holds up particularly well, aided somewhat perhaps by it being set in the 1920s. The plot is pretty much that of the more modern film, Saw (2004) [imdb]. A series of deaths involving various contraptions, animals and scenarios are interwoven into a story of revenge and intrigue. There is a fun camp feeling to the film with the odd bits of full-on humour thrown in (one particular scene, involving the removal of brass unicorn head, looks as if it would sit well in a Naked Gun film).

Starring Vincent Price [imdb], it was also the last film for actress, Virginia North [imdb], whom appears in the gif animation I made above. She went on to marry some rich fellow and was never heard from again, so the IMDB forums say anyway.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) [ imdb ]

PCB Nail Polish

[ source ]

Judas Priest: Genuine Coincidence or Insidious Promotion

A few days [weeks] ago I came across some news purporting that Judas Priest were thinking of suing the clothing company, Gap, over unauthorised use of one their past album covers [digitalmusicnews.com].

Having a look at t-shirt I see there are definite similarities, and probably enough "proof" to say that the t-shirt is inspired by the artwork, although it's not a complete copy. Knowing that court cases for stuff like this often go nowhere, I was ready to leave the story when I came across a blog post written by music journalist, Chris Harris, where he wrote the following on the matter [gunshyassassin.com]:

Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher was the first to point out the similarities between the two designs, writing on his Instagram feed, “Leave it to the Gap to steal ideas for kid T-shirts. Seriously poor taste.” 

But then he asked exactly what I was thinking...

What the fuck is Bill doing in a Gap store? Maybe he’s a fan of their boxers, too. 

 And then the bombshell...

In related news, a special 30th anniversary edition of Screaming For Vengeance will be released next month.

Oh really? Isn't that just all fine and dandy. The only t-shirt that happened to infringe on some 'Priest artwork, just happened to have used the cover of the album that was being given a special 30th Anniversary re-release, just one month after the t-shirt was discovered, by some metal guitarist who was flicking through Gap's tacky "rock" t-shirts? Suscipicious. Then Rob Halford started talking publicly of feeling ripped off, of stolen artwork, of being hard done by, and possibly going to court and suing Gap. You can see the headlines: "Judas Priest appear in court, Screaming for Vengeance."

I realise this is exactly Watergate or 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff here but it is an odd collection of events, and I have to admit that even though I'm a Judas Priest fan, the re-release of the album had escaped my knowledge. It was only brought to my attention when reading these "breaking news" articles, and now that I know, I'm probably going to go out and buy the bloody thing because I've read it comes with a DVD of a concert they played in the early 80's [judaspriest.com]. So you tell me, who's the mad one! Or maybe, I was the one paid to post about all this, whichever you prefer thinking about. To emphasise that point, here's have Amazon link to it too, for you to buy [ amazon.com ] do it 

That's no way to finish a post so here's some real genuine Judas Priest plagerism. Phantom were always known as a bit of a knock-off Judas Priest act, but they really ramped up things in 1993 with their "Cyberchrist" album. The cover alone is shameless. A kind of chromed wolf thing, clenched fisted, with parrot feathers on it's back. It's clearly a Painkiller varient, and indeed that's what the music was trying to convey. Take a listen to "Graveyard Shift", and I'm sure you'll find the main riff being somewhat similar to Metal Meltdown (mind you, it's not exactly the most original riff to begin with).

Kurgan of Glory

World War 2 memorial - Minsk, Belarus. [wiki]  First image via [plus.google]

The Innocence of Youtube

Google has been giving mixed signals over the controvercial video, "Cultural Learnings of Islam for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of America" or "Innocence of Muslims" as it is correctly known [techcrunch.com]. It doesn't want to remove the video, but has censored it from certain countries. I'm really not sure why there was any debate on the matter, the video clearly broke Youtube's guidelines [youtube.com]:

We encourage free speech and defend everyone's right to express unpopular points of view. But we do not permit hate speech (speech which attacks or demeans a group based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status and sexual orientation/gender identity).

If a woman (and only a woman mind you, but misogyny is for another day) shows her nipples on Youtube, the video is banned straight away. Somehow this video, which is designed to insult Muslims and has been implicated with multiple deaths around the world, was worthy of being defended under the "Freedom of Speech" mantra. But here's the thing. The guidelines mentioned above are just that, and not the T&C you sign when creating a Youtube account. In fact, the only thing about offence in the terms and conditions is a waiver saying that you aknowledge that YOU might be offended by content on Youtube [youtube.com]. So really, Google can do what it wants with it's service, and that's fine, but it's that familiar carte blanche and colloquial attitude to Free Speech once again, that boils the blood.

Magnificent Coronal Mass Ejection

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. The image above includes an image of Earth to show the size of the CME compared to the size of Earth. [flickr]

 [via]

Rosanna Davison, Tit Censorship, Chris de Burgh, Mauritius, Death Photos

The topless Rosanna, tastefully censored, so as not to upset your senses...

Ireland's Ex- Miss World winner, Rosanna Davison [wiki], has appeared topless in this month's German edition of Playboy magazine [nachgebloggt.de]. You can't mention Rosanna Davison, without mentioning her father, Chris de Burgh. This is for obvious reasons, but far be it from me, in the cheap seat, to mention why this is so.

Chris de Burgh, singer-songwriter extraordinaire, has two song's that come to mind when hearing about this highly important news event: "For Rosanna" a sweet little number that he wrote about his daughter when she was only a wee little thing, and "Patricia the Stripper" which he sang about a woman whom wasn't his daughter.

For Rosanna, For Patricia

Much like the relationship the Falkland Islands have with Great Britain, Chris de Burgh is a bit of Argentina that doesn't really belong to us but we want to own him anyway. He wrote a few songs in Wexford at one point and ever since then he's been a 100% knick-knack Paddy Whack Irelander. Don't let that fool you though, his true love is for the land of Mauritius, the island nation where this Rosanna woman took off her clothes to pose for Playboy [feign outrage].

Mauritius is an island that became famous in Ireland last year. A woman, who was the daughter of some Gaelic GAA Irish sports manager person, was murdered while on honeymoon there [wiki]. A dreadful story, with the killers still on the loose! Much like the sensation these Playboy pix are causing [yes they are, you are incensed, don't deny it], outrage was sparked when crime-scene pictures of this poor dead woman ended up on the front page of a Mauritian newspaper. The pictures were quickly hushed up, and few have actually seen them. The few that have, include Ireland's prime minister, Enda "ghoul" Kenny. He said he recieved an email containing the images but he didn't inhale didn't look at them.


http://soundcloud.com/user9356733/lady-in-red-2011

I feel it only fitting that I now unveil my piece dedicated to this tragic story, utilising the power of de Burgh's "Lady in Red" song, synergised with a caller to Joe Duffy's Liveline radio show, whom spoke so eloquently when defending the land and people of Mauritius. It's called: "Lady in blood stained bridal gown".

Some powerful moments in the piece:
"He was probably one of the first ah, coloured people here..."
"You're very brown..."
"A very strong Catholic country..."
"He is actually going to represent Mauritius on da Tay-cwan-doh [sic] in deh Olympics, in 2012."*

* after some research, no such person competed for Mauritius in the London Olympics this year.

Shake Like Fuck

[ via ]

New Monkey Discovered

[ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57512950/shy-colorful-new-monkey-species-discovered/ ]

Communication Breakdown

The future of Irish television....

We can get pictures back from Mars, but getting video feed from Cork proved to be far too tricky for our national broadcaster. A cheap shot, almost as cheap as the ad. for the Apple iPad on the right.

The conference on the past, present, and future of Irish television [rte.ie/ucctv50] was as depressing as predicted. The views from speakers can be summarised as this: online content = morally wrong, frightening, illegal. To watch something online, even if it were a free podcast, is tantamount to treason.

Also mentioned was the replacement of the mandatory TV licence fee, not with a Pay-per-view service, but with a new household tax. This one is a real classic. They know damn well that if the likes of Ryan Tubridy and his Late Late Show shite was put on a PPV model, they would have zero subscribers. So instead, they want it in law that every house in Ireland, no matter what the viewing habits of the occupants, should pay for Ryan Tubridy to act like a goon every Friday night on RTE 1.

At least Ryan is Irish though. Admittedly, he's fashioned himself on some sort of mid-Atlantic bastard stepchild of Fred Astaire, but he and the show are Irish. It's all the American and foreign vomit that RTE broadcasts which annoys me. As much as I hate the language and the importance given to it, TG4 is the only Irish channel I have time for. It's the modesty of programming that I like the best. Plus it's level of Irish interest, locale, and cultural programming is something that RTE "main" should have more of (yes, even if it is more of "Nationwide" or "Paddy O'Gormon talks to the kiddie fiddlers").

The higher echelons of RTE must have some weird notion that they are managing one of the biggest broadcasting stations in the world. They aren't. They need to cut back on all that expensive American brain-rot that they pump out every week. There's a general obsession with America in RTE programming and RTE News. I'll leave the conspiracy theories to Jim Corr, but it does sometimes feel like Ireland is the 51st state.

They need to stop worrying about ratings and just produce content for the betterment of Irish citizens. I watched the heads of RTE and TV3 bicker like school children over what the best way to run the state broadcaster is. As much as it pains me to agree with a man in charge of the atrocious TV3 channel, RTE should be downsized. The argument is always given that RTE is hard to downsize, because they need to keep the "stars" highly paid. RTE doesn't need these presenters, there are other people out there. I would give the likes of Marian Finucane two options: a cut in her salary, or a cut in her throat.

Untangling the Mystery of the Carved Leg

As a more meaty follow-up to my previous post [riemann's cut], I decided to document my sleuthing for the origins of the image above, which became a popular entry on Reddit over the last few days, and another image that went under the forensic spotlight at the Hacker Factor blog [hackerfactor.com/legs].

I hadn't seen the image before reading about the analysis it went under on the HF blog. Using various techniques, Dr. Neal Krawetz discerned that the whole image may in fact be a digital composite. Somewhat instinctively however, the carving looked like just ordinary body paint, to me. The edges were jagged, like brush strokes. Some of the tonality of the surfaces looked off; blocky and flat (note the largest "white" surface just below the knee). I took a copy of the image and pushed up the midtones, the seemingly pitch-black areas began to give up their secrets and you could see how the tonality of the light hitting the bare skin, was matched in these dark areas.



Hope of a definite answer would only come if the creator could be found, but no-one on Reddit could give a original source for the image. Nor could Dr. Krawetz gleam information from any of the meta data. I initially started searching the obvious places, Google Image search, Tineye etc... but then moved on to East European social media sites to search for the image, as it is usually the case that if something novel appears on the internet without sources, it's from the East. I had no luck however.

The image put through one of Dr. Krawetz forensic filters. This Luminance Gradient algorithm is designed to show up camera sensor noise

I then noticed that the middle part of the carving looked like lettering, but odd lettering. Was the first character a "3" perhaps. That made me think it was Cyrillic script, but the other letters were still indiscernible. Armed with that, and still holding onto the inkling that this came from the East, I started adding Russian search terms to Google Image searches. I first tried "боди-арт" (body art) but had no luck. Then I tried "тату" (tattoo) and I found the following forum thread [yaplakal.com]. At the very bottom of that page, the name of a Russian Street-Artist was named, "знаг" (Znag), and it was stated that he used acrylic paints. Googling his name, a web gallery of his work appeared, with the "leg carving" image at the top [streetfiles.org]. I felt the case was solved, and it being the early hours of the morning, I resigned myself to bed.



I still maintain it's just paint, but Dr. Krawetz is having none of it! He says that even the high-res version [streetfiles.org] still shows forensic anomalies in the legs and background, and some of the other gallery images show signs of being altered too. I wonder if it's a simple case of the legs being "plasticated" from over Photoshopping' (the underside of the legs do look very smooth).  Perhaps the carving was "enhanced digitally too, like on the shin area. Whatever the case, it appears that rather than solving the case, finding the artist only threw up more mysteries.

The Incredible Kim Jong-Un

Just posting a few random images I used in a discussion over at The Hacker Factor blog, a few weeks ago [hackerfactor.com/kim], regarding the legitimacy of official images of Kim Jong-Un. Discussion centres around his height in photographs, and whether it's been altered for propaganda purposes.

"Launch Day" - Stanley Von Medvey

A very nice painting, somewhat marred however by the artists preoccupation with the female astronauts bottom. It has achieved a shape that seems most unlikely in the constrains of a launch-suit. One wonders if the artist should have had a wank before commencing the painting. On closer inspection though, even the male astronauts have a little bit of it going on, and on closer inspection still, there are bare bottoms all over the place. We shall forgive the artist however as he has envisioned a most delightful scenario surrounding the theme of the painting:

"It is a secular society that values tradition, and its greatest tradition is science. In this world, all grand scientific endeavors are met with great public enthusiasm, pomp and pageantry. Here astronauts are led to the launch pad by throngs of adoring crowds."

The preparatory thumbnails he painted hint at other scenes in his mind. The completion of these would make for a nice series.

Relevant links - [ http://www.bagtaggar.com/ ] [ http://bagtaggar.blogspot.ie/2010/07/launch-day.html ]