inspiration

A photograph alive

Once in a while among all the noise on the Web, I find something special, a jewel. Today is just such a day. I came across a photography blog – From Me To You. It is a very well presented, inspirational collection of images from a New York based photographer. Nice webdesign, plenty of content – that was good enough already. But when I saw some really awesome photographs brought alive as animated GIFs, I was stunned. I mean, I saw plenty of animated GIFs in my life. But most of the time, they are used for illustrative purposes, more accessible short video clips, or funny comics. Here, it’s a totally other story. I think this is genius.

There are more and you absolutely have to check them out. This is like … like … like bullet-time photography in the Matrix movie.

Update: Apparently, this is something called a cinemagraph. You can see more of these at cinemagraph.com.

Warco – the news game

As someone who spends many hours in FPS games, I found the concept of an FPS game with no shooting – Warco – interesting and thought provoking. As Ars Technica puts it:

Warco is a first-person game where players shoot footage instead of a gun. A work in progress at Brisbane-based studio Defiant Development, the game is a collaboration of sorts; Defiant is working with both a journalist and a filmmaker to create a game that puts you in the role of a journalist embedded in a warzone.

The game is still in production and it is not clear whether it will ever come out. There is a trailer which gives a feel to how it might be.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQlkYY88wLM]

Slashdot thread already picked up the argument of whether you will be able to choose between Canon and Nikon equipment for the missions in the game.

Update (September 28, 2011): Also check out this Newsy video that shares a few more opinions about the possible impact of the game. That’s where I’ve heard the term ‘war porn‘ for the first time.

Automattic Creed

I’ve mentioned several times why I think Automattic is an awesome company to work for (no, I don’t work for them, yet). Here is another example. This is a bit that goes on the offer letter that new potential employees get. This is what the company stands for.

I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.

Read the rest of the story as told by Matt.

On policy making and profit protection

TorrentFreak runs an inspirational piece, which touches upon civil liberties, policy making, and profits of the large companies involved in movie and music making.

The job of any entrepreneur is to construct a use case and a business case that allow them to make money, given the current constraints of society and technology. They do not get to dismantle civil liberties, even if they can’t make money otherwise. That goes for Blackwater Security as well as the copyright industry as well as every other entrepreneur on the planet.