We Mine Deeper

How you have failed me, invisible lines that pull image onto my screen. Those lines that trawl information from afar. Friends had to scoop them up and mail them before you find the nugget bytes first. Like links to whorecraft real-life porn via a girl in korea (nsfw). or a dope music blog via a giffer in Vancouver (#gifgang). yes, whorecraft to music blogs. the world is a perilous place.

here’s another that took a year for the lines to find. History of Our World – one of the most compelling image and text blogs I have come across in a while. Most blogs consist of image and text, but this one’s really really good at image and text. Particularly the jpgs.

Also, Anour Brahem was born on October 20th 1957. Happy birthday yesterday fifty two years ago Brahem! It’s crazy it took that long before his music graced my headphones. I recommend hitting up this dope post on the greatest conversation to hear and read for yourself.

I made hainanese chicken rice today for the first time. the end result was average due to my not so very good skills but the experience was amazing (nothing tastes like food from home). My hands still smell of garlic and ginger. Mmmmmm.

School is going interestingly. Taking a film studies 100 class which has been blowing my mind a bit. In an art history / archeology of China class, our prof told us about an emperor who had a pool built where the reflection (or illusion) of the moon could be seen during the day. I think it’s supposed to be in or near a cave and there are seven holes around the pool and if any of them were blocked, the reflection would not work.

It’s a mystery to everyone how the reflection works. Apparently when the Japanese occupied the area they built an exact replica of the set-up but were still unable to replicate the illusion. Our prof explained that it was created with an entirely different philosophy and technology to ours, which is why it baffles us so much. I find this incredible fascinating, but cannot find any more information on this reflection pool. It’s supposed to be located at Bishu Shanzhuang in Chengde. If you do know anything more about this and would like to share the knowledge, I’ll hug you for an email!

Travel-wise, I’m a bit shocked at how many air miles I’ve put in. For work I’ve visited toronto six times this year, montreal four times, and a host of other Canadian cities a bunch (I should be in the ‘air canada top tier’ section soon. It means free scotch in the airport lounge, looking forward to this). Considering I hadn’t really been out of BC before this year, I feely very grateful to have seen this much of canada (even halifax!) and learnt more about this incredible country. Overall, photographing the flying lotus tour is still one of my favourite gigs ever. thank you kenny mac for that.

Am shooting a job in toronto next month, and will be flying from there to new york for a job later that week. Never been to new york, really excited for it.

On the internet front, I’m not entirely sure what to do with We Mine Deeper anymore. I’ve got quite a few blogs going right now and as has been said, ‘dude you’re spreading your blogging thin.’ WMD has always been a nice place for me to spew out whatever I wanted though. Imagine if I posted all the random nsfw stuff on my ‘proper’ photo blog…. Or maybe I should.

Whatever it is, a new david lang photo is in the works by andy chung who just started a new blog. I might be keeping with my usual URestlessL behaviour on this revamp. Other stuff in photography… Am procrastinating on a print requested by Day 19 which is dumb of me because they are incredible photographers and this is an honour. Speaking of day 19, harrison boyce went to visit them recently and came back with this fantastic photo.

Bloggingly, there is an interview that needs to be transcribed for some blogging news happening soon. On the work front, I sort of agreed to take a job that happens over my birthday, as I had a momentary lapse of memory on which day I was born on. For whatever reason, I’ve always wanted this to happen.

Really liked Where the Wild Things Are. It’s fucking good, but I must admit it’s a film that is sometimes more groundbreaking than it is pure fun to watch. There is a lot of love and certainly a lot of hate for this movie. I want to watch it in cinemas again, and this time round with a note pad to jot some writing down and maybe try to defend these waves of hatred. A salute to spike jonze for sticking to his path and somehow managing to put this film on our screens.

“He has developed an extraordinary sense of meaningful whimsy as in such music videos as [etc. etc.] where psychological tension is conveyed through original, iconoclastic scenography. Jonze’s sensibility is an authentic development of the music-video era’s generational split—which is also an aesthetic split. He doesn’t exploit pop rebellion but has a counter-intuitive slant on what’s funny, sad, universal.” – armond white in a review of the film.

I think jonze is doing something incredible with wild things, but how people take influence from it remains to be seen – which is a bit scary. This direction has so much potential but will look particularly stupid if used in the wrong hands. I think we’re in for a lot of face-value meandering filmmaking and photography soon; you can imagine how interpretations of the aesthetics and narrational style can be utterly dreadful (yes I know some of you already think this is bad). Whatever it is, the new kanye X jonze video We Were Once a Fairytale Where the Kanye’s Are -a.c. is dope, and you know it.

To finish – am actually falling for that Glee tv show, I have no reservations about playing with a sony psp on the bus and the vancouver locals can continue to look at me strange all they want, chicken rice is the best, and yup.

Cool poster on mozy.cam I saw on ffffound. See full size after the jump.

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Chris Martindale: Gainer at an Ottawan Quarry

Sorry for the lack of posts, just got back from the Macneil BMX trip. It was eleven days that will nestle nicely in the memory bank. You can see a collection of images from the tour over yonder, and have faith that more media will be released soon!

Here’s a few WMD things-

the looming

Deadline by Bang-yao Liu using over six thousand post-its! Fucking sick.

via defgrip

4 -3 = 1

Garrett Reynolds in France by Nike 6.0. Wait, I meant to say “the Nike 6.0 Team in France” but really, who are we kidding here. Definite watch… Reynolds deserves legend status.

As for the rest of the team – one was injured, another seems to have been doing more talking than riding (don’t blame him, he’s very succesful at it), and the third realizes he transforms into a mudskipper on street. Shame it didn’t work out for them on this video because they are all absolutely amazing riders.

via andychung

sideways

Danish 70s Interior Design Porno Style – This fantastic collection of images amazing SFW. Well, technically anyway.

via stuartkennedy

dodgy is good

ASCII-O-Matic: Sampler - Can we start calling websites album covers? Because this was one ranks up there in the mountainous kind of area. Brilliant.

via dawntoh

new house so nice

Adeline Chong photodiary post – Great photos from a Singaporean designer who recently moved bloghouse.

via mahreader

One of the million projects Andy Chung has been working on these past few months has surfaced to the internet in the form of a website for the people of Osculator – makers of the innovative software our friend Brian Park used to make his iPod Touch mashup.

The site looks fantastic Andy! Minimal and really lovely. Hopefully you have a bit more spare time now to work on your upcoming pro scootering career?

Lots of stuff happened this year. It’s been a great year. History will never forget this year for all the great stuff that happened.

To commemorate the wonderfulness that is this year, here’s the best things of this year (but not necessarily made this year. it’s just that I liked them this year, or right now, at this moment on the day before 2009)-

In we go!

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Am in Britain on an unexpected visit. This being the UK I was somehow hoping to find a copy of Brighton Aint Ready in every store (including the local fish ‘n chip shop), but obviously this is not the case. Wish the video was available as a purchasable download like the Props videos are.

Anyhowoo, Andy Chung somehow convinced me to get a twitter so now I can twitter to the world like an annoying bird. Will probably throw up many random links on there constantly.

Have also been updating my ffffound a lot. ilovethepixelsmuch!!

Speaking of pixels, here is a GIF (nsfw) which not only contains a masterful display of chimping, but also summarizes the culture of digital photography beautifully.

MAGNUM- Tour De France: This is hands down the best photo essay on bikes I’ve ever seen and I doubt a better one will ever be made. John Vink, Robert Capa, Elliott Erwitt, and Henri Cartier-Bresson: A-list dream team shooting le tour. After spending a lot of my life obsessively looking at bike pictures, this is like finding the holy grail. There must be a book with these photographs somewhere. Completely amazing.

Great article on Times Online entitled Why Microsoft and Intel Tried to Kill the $100 XO Laptop. Have played with one of these laptops before, they are fantastic pieces of equipment and the screen is particularly amazing. Education is one of, if not the most effective remedy to a nation’s poverty problem. If Negroponte has his wish there will be far more damn fine third-world intellects (and hackers) by 2020. 

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2005, Nicholas Negroponte, supreme prophet of digital connectivity, revealed a strange tent-like object. It was designed to change the world and to cost $100. It was a solar-powered laptop. Millions would be distributed to children in the developing world, bringing them connection, education, enlightenment and freedom of information. The great, the good, the rich and the technocrats nodded in solemn approval.

And then some of them tried to kill it.