For audio-visual snobs like myself you will be as pleased as I was to hear recently of the new “revolutionary” video codec named H.264 (yes, you would have though they could have given it a more imaginative name!). Based on the MPEG-4 standard it delivers high-definition (1920×1080, 24p) scalable video with remarkably smaller file sizes. The upshot of this being that you can get excellent quality video across whatever medium you play it on/across. It’s already been selected as the codec for the next generation of DVD’s (HD-DVD and Blu-ray) and because it’s an open standard looks set to be adopted across a broad range of broadcast services. You can watch a cool preview of the technology, which has been built into the upcoming new version of Mac OS X, here.
Had a small Japanese test yesterday which was dreadful. My mind went blank at just the wrong time and I made a total mess of it which is annoying considering that I quite enjoy the lessons. Oh well, could be worse I’m sure but that’s not going to stop me being angry about it!
Seoul, South Korea - (Copyright someone else)
Traveling across the pacific we pass through Korea and find…
Changing China - The BBC are running a week of interesting articles about life and culture in China.
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Something which has really been bugging me recently - why-ohh-why is Hollywood insisting on remaking (badly) every Asian classic (by which I mean ‘good’) film they can get the rights to? For some reason the thought of taking a great film, running it through a translator and then removing all the intellectual or controversial bits seriously annoys me. People talk about multiculturalism but isn’t this the worst example of cultural vandalism? Are the general public so stupid that they can’t read subtitles? Heaven forbid that they might actually learn something about other cultures through film. I’m not advocating that foreign film be restricted for the privileged few but that we should be more open minded to different cultures rather than be hidden from them. Generally I avoid Americanised remakes at all costs as to my mind a remake of anything which has originally excited or inspired you can only ever fail to live up to expectations. The world is an exciting and diverse place, don’t insult my intelligence by carrying on with this. Creativity is more than copying.
Now that’s out my system…
Quite a cool new trailer for the upcoming Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film turned up the other day - take a look at it here. I’m still far from convinced but it doesn’t look terrible.
This week, along with a host other things, I’m working on an assignment for the ‘Distributed Computing‘ course I’m taking. The only trouble is that it has turned out to be VERY hard and the information required to complete it seems to be hidden in the mind of a dead Computer Scientist so in other words not a lot of help! Anyone with knowledge of ALPHA, BETA or GAMMA Synchronizers please contact me ASAP!
I’ve always wanted to visit a proper “Mega City” (i.e. one that’s really really big!) but in the absence of this happening so far here are some amazing shots of Tokyo’s urban sprawl - incredible!
N.B. Sorry if you’ve been unable to comment recently, I only just noticed that it’s been broken for quite a while it seems. All fixed now 
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Been a stressful last few days with deadlines looming and things are becoming a bit tense. Food in college has reached new lows recently so cheese sandwiches are becoming more regular 
Other than that things are good - at least my room is big, warm & relatively comfortable! Since my recent foray into graphic design I’ve been searching around the net and have found some pretty good design blogs which I’ve added to a new links category on the nav bar. Check them out!
By chance I’ve stubled accross a lot of facinating photography related links recently which I though are worth sharing:
Photos of Paris Flood, 1910 - Amazing Sepia and B&W photos of Paris underwater.
World War 2 Pictures in Colour - Another incredible collection of photos which brings home the realities of what my generation has been lucky enough to have never experienced. Definitely worth a browse.
Telephoto Is For Cowards - How to take ‘candid’ photos without looking like an idiot brandishing a camera!
Technicolor - An explanation to what it was/is for those who have ever wondered when you see the logo before an old film shot using this unique method for getting colour from B&W film.
[Some links via kottke.org]
Looks like someone else has been getting creative with quasi geographic representations - cool!
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Continuing the theme from earlier in the week, this is what happens when metro construction goes wrong:
“While building the tunnel for the Lausanne (Switzerland) Metro Line 2 the construction workers discovered water flowing into the tunnel and at 18:00 yesterday evening 50 m3 of rock collapsed - exactly under a McDonalds building in the city center. Also a 10×7 meter part of a big supermarket collapsed 3-5 meters into the new hole underground. Two blocks had to be evacuated (and still are til now) and nobody knows, if the ground will hold or if whole buildings will collapse.”
Whoops…! [Via SkyscraperCity]
Reminds me of the time many many years ago when a double decker bus feel through the road outside my school into a disused chalk mine which apparently run under much of Norwich. I seem to vaguely remember much excitement on the day it happened, luckily no one was seriously hurt.
For those of you who are so inclined a new Linux Kernel (2.6.11) was released yesterday. Grab it while its hot!
I should get on with some work now - so much to do, so little time… 
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The design of the London Underground map has long fascinated me. It’s abandonment of conventional geographic layout was pure genius on the part of its creator, Harry Beck, in 1933 and continues to be the model for which the majority of MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) systems around the world base their maps today.
I’d been looking for an excuse for a while to produce my own ‘underground’ style map using similar principles but never really managed to justify it… until now! Using some possibly rather tenuous reasoning I decided to map Durham (where I live!) as part of my ‘Network Visualisation‘ project that I’m carrying out this year for my course. The preliminary result can be seen below, and I’m pretty pleased with it (click here for a larger version):
(c) 2005 David Gilbert
After sketching it out roughly on paper I produced it in a great piece of software called Inkscape which is an Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) editor (similar to Illustrator but free!). SVG is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML - the cool thing about it being that you can scale the graphics to any size with zero loss of resolution.
I’ve tried to retain a high-degree of geographical relevance to the map whilst simplifying the details of its layout. Anyone slightly familiar with Durham should be able navigate themselves around (by foot!) using it. Once I’ve done a bit more research I’ll post up a more detailed overview but right now It’s still a work in progress - if you have any comments/suggestions I would greatly appreciate them!
Update (02/03): I’ve just updated the map to version 1.6 (from 1.4). It includes a number of minor improvements which have been made from feedback
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