Favorites from stavrosthewonderchicken
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Charging A-head: How Much for Language Training Workshops?
Calling all Consultants, Workshop Facilitators, ESL/EFL Teachers, Writing Teachers, Business Writing Teachers, Group Trainers, etc.: I've suddenly happened upon a potential trio of jobs that call for someone to create original curricula, teach English/Business English/ESL, and tailor a "program" for a specific adult audience's needs, usually on a compressed, intensive time-frame. This has *potentially* opened up a long-desired way of branching into other versions of my long-time metiers. But I have questions, many questions, chief of which is how much?
Live Coded Demoscene
When Iñigo Quílez isn't hard at work at Pixar, he's active in the demoscene, creating 4KB programs that render incredible procedurally generated scenes. He also writes tutorials on both video and audio synthesis, but arguably the coolest section of his site features live-coding videos of him improvising both audio and video rendering code that will make any experienced programmer feel wholly inadequate.
Using a Camera Lens to Illustrate
Don Hong-Oai
(1929 - 2004), was a master of creating artwork which appeared to be Chinese ink illustrations, but were actually photographs. [gallery]
The World As It Is
Chris Hedges: Brace yourself. The American Empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying. Long, incredibly intelligent, insightful and pessimistic discussion of the current state of American politics and society, among other topics. Hedges is a long-time journalist, author and professor, winner of Pulitzer Prize and Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism for his work at the New York Times.
The History of English
How new words are created
- just one section of a site that charts 'How English went from an obscure Germanic dialect to a global language'.
Notes from the Metafilter research panel at AoIR's 12th conference
So, four mefites collaborated on a Metafilter-themed panel last month at at the Association of Internet Researchers's 12th annual Internet Research conference, and we thought we'd go ahead and share our presentation notes and such. Come on in!
A China Skeptic
There is this perception that the only China skeptics are foreigners. Let me tell you that is completely wrong. The debate within China is much more interesting and much more ferocious than the debate outside of China about problems with the growth model.
Michael Pettis is a professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, where he specializes in Chinese financial markets. Here he talks about China's economic prospects.
I always dreamed of a Unified Scene
Folk-punk, Orgcore (UD definition) and Dadpunk are all names for a new wave of earnest, authentic rock that draws its roots from The Clash, Billy Bragg, The Pogues, Social Distortion and Bruce Springsteen. In England, its best represented by Frank Turner, the former singer of hardcore band Million Dead. His anthemic songs about life on the margins of fame, poetry, death, inspiration and the power of rock and roll have made him famous in England, leading to an upcoming show at Wembley Arena. He follows in the footsteps of British folk-punk pioneers Leatherface.
Do we really need to incorporate?
A friend and I are starting on a side project together - do we really need to incorporate?
Ballpark Figures for Internet Advertising Revenue?
What are the approximate income/pageview rates for the most popular type of online advertising?
Web Ad Management Software
Seeking a web ad management solution that doesn't suck.
How do I find how much traffic any website gets?
How do I find out how much traffic a website (one that I am not involved with) is getting?
Can you tell how much revenue a website has?
I was discussing with someone a certain website, which they say has revenues of at least $20 million a year. They made a claim that by looking at the ad rates of the ad network the website is using, the number of ads per page, and the traffic of the website (via things like Quantcast; it's in the Alexa top 500), it is possible to make a rough revenue estimate without access to any internal data. Is this so? If so, what formulas are used?
Atheist Christians go to church.
Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world - There is no Supernatural God.
'The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill.' 'His book Believing in a Non-Existent God led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out. A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one-in-six clergy in the PKN and six other smaller denominations was either agnostic or atheist.'
Walking the Ganges
The Age of Dissolution.
"Walking the Ganga river, from holy bacterial stews to crystalline glaciers: Shiva, eclipses, and the IPCC." [Via]
ever wondered what the ad networks know about you?
Collusion is a firefox add-on that visualizes in real-time which data collection companies track you across different websites on the web and what they're learning about you. Atul Varma describes how this project came about. Safari meanwhile has ghostery, an extension that gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.
Norwegian attacks thread
The Norwegian attacks thread is depressing.
How do we get the attention of ad agencies?
What are good ways to approach advertising agencies?
Vox Roma
Over 143 episodes of audio, Mike Duncan has covered the founding of Rome through the Crisis of the Third Century in his History of Rome podcast [previously], having now reached the last pagan Emperor, Julian The Apostate. Enlivened by drawing on comparisons to popular culture, from The Empire Strikes Back (when Hannibal makes his appearance) to The Godfather (as a metaphor for Rome's social client system), Mr Duncan's work makes for fun, informative 25-minute sessions with the greatest empire of the ancient western world. If you're interested in more, the podcasts could be handily supplemented with...
Traveller
Traveller is a series of related science fiction role-playing games, the first published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop and subsequent editions by various companies remaining in print to this day. (previously)
Canadian Indie Music
Canadian Independent Radio.
CBC Radio 3 has over 25,000 uploaded artists, broadcasting on satellite and streaming on the web. The programming mix is "100 per cent Canadian music on both platforms" with exceptions for collaborations. Previously here and here.
"Neo-classi-cosmoidal-cosmetic, in a nutshell."
Split Enz were to New Zealand what the Beatles were to the UK, and like the fabs their legacy is impressive: an endlessly entertaining back-catalogue and some inspiring solo and band offshoots. One of these, Crowded House, captured more of the world's attention, but few in New Zealand would question the priority of the Enz. Which must be why, in 2007, Radio New Zealand made an eight-hour documentary series split over ten podcasts about their fascinating journey from art-folk-classical-prog to New Wave pop mastery: Enzology is essential listening for any Split Enz fan, featuring "excerpts from all the hits and numerous album tracks, plus previously unreleased demos, live recordings and studio out-takes gathered from the band members' personal archives and elsewhere".
The following thread is in *massive* spoiler quotes
Portal 2 has finally hit the streets, and despite a somewhat rocky start with their controversial promotional ARG (previously), it looks to be a huge success. Interestingly for such a critically-acclaimed blockbuster, the title's core ideas steam from a pair of concept projects from student design school DigiPen: the original portal system from Narbacular Drop (video - download - previously) and the sequel's physics-altering gels from Tag: The Power of Paint (video - download - previously - previouslier). Combine these innovative ideas with some Lost-meets-Life After People level design, excellent voice acting, and top-notch writing, and it's easy to see why so many people called in sick this past week. But playing the game is just the beginning -- look inside for a collection of easter eggs, story theories, videos, and other goodies from the post-mortem.
Infodump: Favorite 500 Short Comments
Hello everyone! I got bored today and wanted to read some witty, short comments, so I used the infodump to sort every short comment on MeFi by its favorites.
Hey, check it out: Gamefilter
Games are fun, and talking about games is fun. So it's pretty cool that stavrosthewonderchicken has recently built a mefi-inspired site called Gamefilter, for linking to neat game- (video and otherwise) related stuff on the web and talking about those things. Go check it out!
In Focus - a new news photo blog
A couple of years ago, I announced right here in the green a new Big Picture blog I was starting up. It did very well - so well that I was able to make this into a fulltime job with the Atlantic Magazine, and I'm really happy to announce that my new blog "In Focus" is live as of today, and I would certainly love it if you stopped by or helped spread the word.
The code for Freefilter, an open source clone of Metafilter is now available
The code for Freefilter, an open source clone of Metafilter is now available. Mefi's structure as a posting and discussion board is unlike most other's available. It's fluid and user friendly and it was only a matter of time before someone coded their own version especially considering the success of Whedonesque and Sportsfilter. This isn't the first time an attempt has been made of course. This version isn't 'out of the box' yet though -- as the readme.txt says, you'll need:"A Web server, preferably Loonix, MySQL, an, er, recentish version, Perl, DBI and CGI modules for Perl, these should come as standard with most Perl installations, a sense of humor to read my source code..."
Being Canadian
What does it mean to be Canadian? It isn't about an ethnicity, a religion, a language, or a shared heritage or history. From CBC's Ideas comes the two-part radio documentary, Being Canadian. "From east to west, public intellectuals and private citizens (both new and old Canadians), tell film-maker Sun-Kyung (Sunny) Yi about the concerns, the questions, and the challenges of living together in a multicultural and diverse society." It is also the story of how and why a Korean family became Canadian, first in the law, and then in their hearts.
Connections
James Burke's popular television show Connections is available in its entirety online. Connections, which ran in 1978, was a unique take on the question of historical and scientific advancement. From wikipedia: "The series traced paths of invention and discovery through their interrelationships in history, with each episode chronicling a particular path, usually in chronological order. ... It was followed by the 20-part Connections2 (1994) and then the 10-part Connections3 (1997) series. Later, it was shown in more than 50 countries and appeared in about 350 university and college curricula. Additionally, the book that followed the series was also a best seller."
Chatroulette for Street View
MapCrunch.com
Google Street View Randomizer. Try the slideshow.
Listening Comprehension
Splitsider posts a "Fairly Comprehensive Guide" to Comedy Podcasts. The comments thread begs to differ.
Meme Analyst / Social Media Strategist
Your Role
We’re looking for strategic and creative counselors who can help companies listen to organic Web culture, recommend strategies and tactics to engage with that culture and then execute the plans they develop. Daily responsibilities include but won't be limited to the following:
• Creating and executing online engagement strategies & tactics for a wide range of companies, working with Ketchum account teams, directly with clients and with other agencies (50%)
• Tracking internet memes and online culture, working with organic Web communities and generating ideas for how brands can add value to Web culture (40%)
• Creating and facilitating trainings / seminars about internet culture and social media for clients and account teams (10%)
This job would be based in Midtown, New York City, but would include travel across Ketchum’s extensive North American network to our various offices and client headquarters.
We can haz skills?
There’s a glut of social media experts out there in the marketing world right now, but we’re not looking for “gurus,” talking heads or self-styled Twitterati. We’re not looking for someone who’s interested in the Internet as a toolkit to help brands, but rather, someone who’s interested in the Internet because they love the organic cultures that it fosters. In other words, we’re looking for someone who:
• Has a demonstrated interest and history of involvement in some meaningful aspect of internet culture
• Is deeply invested in one or more communities of conversation on the Web, and is actively producing content of some kind related to that conversation (e.g., blogging, creating videos, active on forums / discussion boards, etc.)
• Reads voraciously & shares content regularly on the Web
• Shows a strong working knowledge of established & emerging web tools / platforms and how people use them
• Is entrepreneurial, able to self-manage and adhere to deadlines in a fast-paced environment
• Can present complex and aggressive ideas comfortably to conservative companies in a compelling way
• Has strong writing & presentation design skills
• Has 2-5 years experience in some sort of related field. WE DON’T JUST MEAN PR or ADVERTISING. Though we’re interested in talking to you if you come from those worlds, we’re also interested in talking to people with backgrounds in blogging, gaming, journalism, assassin, programming, engineering, music, design…you name it.
About Us
The Bureau of Internet Culture is a group of Web culture fanatics working within Ketchum, a global PR agency, to change the way that brands engage with people on the Internet. Our mission is to free the Web from bad marketing, and our approach is simple: find the natural intersections between what brands want to say and what Web users actually want to talk about. Once we find that intersection, we work backwards to engineer cool ways for brands to add value to organic internet culture. This approach is very different from what most agencies do, which is to find ways for brands to use channels like Facebook and Twitter to simply extract value from Web users.
Unlike the legions of “social media gurus” out there, we’re not just traditional marketers trying to use the internet to make “viral content.” Rather, we come from non-marketing backgrounds, we love internet culture, we want to protect internet culture, we’ve grown up immersed in various online communities and we’ve entered the marketing world to help companies understand the proper role that marketing should play on the Web.
Our clients include Fortune 100 companies like FedEx, IKEA, Nokia, IBM, Sony PlayStation, Hyundai, Frito-Lay, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Dyson, Chase, Mattel and Kodak (among others)—the Bureau of Internet Culture works with most clients across Ketchum’s network in North America and Europe.
So do you love the internet? Do you love spending your days immersed in Web culture? Do you want to keep that culture safe from bad marketing? If so, then the Bureau of Internet Culture might be a perfect fit!
Conference Video Organizer
Sitting O
is a site aggregating and organizing conferences and videos from the events. You can cross reference any of the videos by subject matter (here is all science-related conference videos), by speaker (here is every Clay Shirky talk), and by conference organizer (here are all TED conferences and associated videos). Pretty fun way to waste an afternoon learnin'.
Canadian Foreign Service
Does anyone work for the Canadian Foreign Service, or know of someone who does? I'm considering this as a career option after finishing my Masters, and I would like to know more about what such a career would entail.
53: Raw Milk Talk
Episode 53 was recorded on July 21st and runs about an hour and 20 minutes long. It starts with a long interview with ewagoner about his raw milk/interstate commerce flap with the FDA, and after that we follow it up with our favorite things from the past month.
Thank you, MetaFilter.
This is just a quick post to thank the hundreds of MeFites who helped me with my dissertation research.
Hans Rosling on global population growth
Hans Rosling, who helped usher in TED talks way back when using stunning visuals, envisions how the world will look in 50 years as global population grows to 9 billion. To check further population growth, which might have disastrous consequences, he exhorts us to raise the living standards of the poorest.
Welcome to the club, now go away!
What should I do about The Cabal?
The 120 Minutes Archive
An archive of (nearly) every 120 Minutes (and its successor Subterranean) playlist.
The 120 Minutes archive includes playlists for 585 episodes of MTV's seminal alternative rock show and its successor, Subterranean, spanning 1986-2007. The archive includes links to video search for each track played, interviews with those behind the program, a history of its development and demise, and the full video of the series finale. Looking at some of the early episodes, should be enough to crush you under a wave of nostalgia and longing for the days when MTV was what it says on the tin.