People In Passing

I met a old woman on a plane once that told me a story about her childhood.

She told me of hiding under her house with her father when the Germans came through their town during World War II. She told me of the bombs that fell and knocked down the house around her and her father. She told me about how they waited for what seemed like days for help to come.

She could smell the gas leaking from the pipes into the small crawlspace that they had hid in.

Show told me of the look in her father’s eyes as he handed her a cigarette and took one for himself, pulled out his lighter and prepared to end their wait, when they heard the voices of the neighbors outside as they started pulling the rubble away.

I don’t know why I remembered that story this morning. I don’t know why I’m not aware of it at all times. It reminds me to have perspective on things. I pray I never have to make a decision that hard.

If you read the background on this, it just started off as something funny to do and then took off like a rocket. This is his third video, the last one from 2006 was inspiring as well.

More at http://www.wherethehellismatt.com

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I saw this at MakerFaire last month and thought it was a fantastic idea. Just goes to show, if you want something and can’t find it, build it.

“The elliptiGO glide bike combines the best aspects of running and cycling to create a fun and effective means of exercising outdoors.”

Interview with the Maker:

Word.

I like information and I’m a very visual person. One of my favorite sections of any Wired magazine is the couple pages dubbed “infoporn” which display some sort of statistical information in a creative and potentially impactful way.

Bar and Pie charts just don’t cut it anymore.

I recently stumbled across a site that will give me my pretty data fix whenever I need it. Enter infosthetics.com, a blog dedicated to data visualization and visual design, that scours the nets for interesting infographics.

See links to things represented like:

Gas price by county

An average american’s spending habits

Or videos visualizing Greenhouse Gas production

Or the romantic aspirations of thousands of online daters.

See things in different ways.

“There is a war going on for your mind.”

Those were the first words I heard when Summer put the Flobots on and I was immediately interested. The beats and grooves are strong, but, and far more importantly, the words are poetic and they have a message.

I love music, but I’m not often moved by music.

In the song “We are winning”, an elderly woman, speaks over layers of strings:

” Butterfly wing crosswinds send black hawks toward hurricane survivors
Roses sprout from empty lots and sidewalk cracks
Pacifist guerrillas move undetected through concrete jungles
New forms are beginning to take shape
Once-occupied minds are activating
People are waking up
The insurgency is alive and well

We are building up a new world
Do not sit idly by
Do not remain neutral
Do not rely on this broadcast alone
We are only as strong as our signal
There is a war going on for your mind
If you are thinking you are winning
Resistance is victory
Defeat is impossible
Your weapons are already in hand
Reach within you and find the means by which to gain your freedom
Fight with tools
Your fate and that of everyone you know depends on it”

Your weapons are already in hand.