video – The Linchpen

Images of inspiration: The visual genealogy of Kon, Jodorowsky and Friedrich

Watch this video essay by Tony Zhou about filmmaker and animator Satoshi Kon (h/t Robin Sloan on Snarkmarket).

First off, Zhou’s piece is absolutely wonderful.

One thing I find particularly fascinating is when you’re shown the original scene and a scene inspired by it — e.g. Inception and Black Swan.

The documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” which I watched last weekend thanks to Sandro Mairata, offers similar examples in the context of science fiction, which are mentioned near the end of the trailer (1:42) — e.g. Alien, Blade Runner and The Matrix.

It also reminds me of “The 19th Century Painting That Most Blockbuster Movie Posters Are Based On.”

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich — Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich (Courtesy Wikipedia)

It would be awesome to have a tool that maps the genealogy of visual imagery. Maybe something to incorporate into the Visipedia project.

Tell me: What are some other works that reveal the visual inspiration of a painting or a movie scene?

This piece is based on my comment on Robin’s Snarkmarket post.

Lessons from the past for “The Future of Programming”

Watch Bret Victor – The Future of Programming and then read his notes.

Bret Victor – The Future of Programming from Bret Victor on Vimeo.

In his notes there’s a link to a 1987 Alan Kay video in which Kay narrates footage of a demo Sketchpad around 4:14. It’s from 1962. Whoa.

My previous exposure to Victor came reading and later re-reading his Learnable Programming manifesto, which is radically practical and completely re-shaped my perception of how programming should work.

As someone who is basically self-taught in code, The Future of Programming video stands as similar shift in mindset for me. It also rekindled my interest in reading The Early History of Smalltalk by Kay (h/t Jeff Larson).

Update: Here’s the Hacker News comment thread

Manipulated music mirroring Möbius-mannered movie

Inception Music Comparison (by Cameron Whitehouse)

It’s been a while since I first saw this video comparing the most recognizable part of the Inception soundtrack with Édith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.” But this time I did a quick search after watching and found an L.A. Times post with the following quote (emphasis in bold is mine):

“If you were to see this movie a second time,” Zimmer said, “you realize the last note you hear in the movie is the first note in the movie. It’s a Möbius band. But the next thing you hear over the logos is actually telling a story. You realize that the elements that we’ve extracted from the Piaf song are the way you get from one dream level to the next. When the movie starts, some action has already happened.”

From another LAT post:

Pieces of Piaf’s interpretation of the song were stretched, manipulated and woven into Zimmer’s score.

Möbius on my mind? Probably. I wonder what Hofstadter would have to say about this…

Live video and updates from Hacks/Hackers DC meetup: “The Tech Side of Argo”

Update: A video recording of the event, archive of the CoverItLive blog (with curated tweets), Keynote slides and downloadable audio podcast from the event are available below.

After a successful first (joint) meetup with ONADC last May (see ONADC/Hacks & Hackers meetup tonight for coverage), Hacks/Hackers DC is back for good. Tonight (Oct. 19) at NPR we’re hosting a meetup and invited our WordPress DC friends to join as Marc Lavallee and Wes Lindamood discuss The Tech Side of NPR’s Argo.

~~I’m planning to stream the meetup here~~ I streamed the meetup using Livestream. The archived video is embedded below. I apologize that there’s no audio until 5:30 — the shotgun mic was off, so you can’t hear my introduction and some of the participant intros. The presentation begins at 7:30:

Watch live streaming video from greglinch at livestream.com

And we’ll be using the hashtag #hhdc, which ~~will be aggregated here~~ I curated using CoverItLive. An export of those curated tweets is embedded below:

Hacks/Hackers DC:

(10/19/2010)

7:04

emerock:

Stoked to watch the magic of ARGO at NPR. #HHDC [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:04 emerock

7:07

portman_wills:

At NPR excited for Marc to drop some ARGO knowledge on the room. And pizza. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:07 portman_wills

7:07

lorig:

Surrounded by fellow devs at NPR for #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:07 lorig

7:09

emerock:

Stoked to watch the magic of ARGO at NPR. #HHDC [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:09 emerock

7:36

vbatts:

Here at #hhdc. Glad I didn’t have time to grab food before hand. :) [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:36 vbatts

7:37

tdgi:

Currently at the #NPR #Argo meetup #hhdc. Should be interesting. #DC #Meetup [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:37 tdgi

7:37

kev097:

#hhdc meetup was today? Woops. Wish I could’ve been there — enjoy, nerds. [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:37 kev097

7:37

rkellett:

#hhdc with @acarvin and @annatauzin! [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:37 rkellett

7:45

greglinch:

.@lavallee: Argo platform integrated @WordPress (3.0 w some customizations) w/ Django (ex: for content aggreagation app) on backend. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:45 greglinch

7:45

greglinch:

.@lindamood: Maintainability (with their two-person team), flexibility and structure (creating content + aggregating external content) #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:45 greglinch

7:45

greglinch:

.@lindamood: Goal was to make the blog seamlessly integrated with their daily workflow. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:45 greglinch

7:47

greglinch:

.@lindamood: Lessons included to develop as little as possible and make platform modular + reuse code. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:47 greglinch

7:48

greglinch:

.@lindamood: Without parent and child themes, we wouldn’t have been able to develop the sites in the required timeline. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:48 greglinch

7:49

greglinch:

.@lavallee: They could accommodate many individual site customization requests b/c of flexibility of parent and child themes. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:49 greglinch

7:50

greglinch:

.@lindamood: They designed the sites in a way to say, “Content is our brand.” #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:50 greglinch

7:51

mjenkins:

Shocked at how much I understand at #hhdc. Good thing Project Argo is based on the magic of WordPress! [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:51 mjenkins

7:53

greglinch:

.@lavallee showing how little code it took to create custom taxonomies (top) & photo cropping (bottom) in WP #hhdc

[via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:53 greglinch

7:54

aaronjorbin:

Argo uses Custom taxonomies and custom menus for the featured posts and “Don’t Miss” navigation #wordpress #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:54 aaronjorbin

7:56

greglinch:

.@lindamood: They made 17 post types — for link roundups, audio, posts, etc. They also used @WordPress shortcodes for ease of embed. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:56 greglinch

7:59

greglinch:

.@lavallee showing how little code used to create the audio shortcode and the handler for audio shortcodes. #hhdc

[via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 7:59 greglinch

8:00

greglinch:

They’ll be open-sourcing Argo platform so anyone can use it (primarily intended for member stations). #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:00 greglinch

8:03

greglinch:

Modernizr is a JavaScript library they used to detect HTML5 and CSS3 features, rather than write their own checks http://bit.ly/b0pYHT #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:03 greglinch

8:05

laurenmichell:

Cool tools I’m learning about from @npr’s Argo talk: HTML5 Boilerplate and @modernizr #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:05 laurenmichell

8:07

greglinch:

@dimensionmedia Overview of the Argo network and links to the 12 sites http://n.pr/dq0auJ #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:07 greglinch

8:09

greglinch:

Watch live video from @hackshackersdc meetup at @NPR. @lavallee and @lindamood discussing Argo http://bit.ly/HHDClive1010 [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:09 greglinch

8:09

jeffsonderman:

CMS needs to bring in Twitter, Flickr, Delicious items and make them workable elements for the blogger. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:09 jeffsonderman

8:10

mjenkins:

Love the Delicious link roundup integration into Argo’s WordPress theme. Looks very quick, easy – and actually looks nice. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:10 mjenkins

8:12

greglinch:

Q from @eyeseast: Do you have a style guide for saving links? A from @lavallee: different orgs/bloggers have different practices. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:12 greglinch

8:14

greglinch:

Did a rough count and looks like there are ~46 people here for @hackshackersdc meetup at @NPR, w00t! #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:14 greglinch

8:16

greglinch:

.@lavallee: If blogger uses certain tags, links automatically appear on specified pages. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:16 greglinch

8:16

greglinch:

.@lavallee: All external content lives in one database and can be used multiple ways. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:16 greglinch

8:18

greglinch:

@rossk Yup, streaming here http://bit.ly/HHDClive1010 and recording locally on my video camera (better quality), which I’ll post later. [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:18 greglinch

8:23

greglinch:

.@lavallee: Sites are hosted in the cloud using Amazon Web Services EBS (like a hard drive) and EC2 (elastic computing instance). #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:23 greglinch

8:25

greglinch:

.@lavallee: Also use Ylastic http://bit.ly/cUNB6n. Overall, not much time spent on system administration because of their AWS setup. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:25 greglinch

8:28

greglinch:

.@lavallee: @WordPress 3.0.1, one multi-site instance for all 12 blogs, 1 child theme for each; Domain Mapping + Unfiltered MU plugins #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:28 greglinch

8:28

mthomps:

Sitting next to @greglinch. He multitasks like a Hydra; awesome watching him work.

#hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:28 mthomps

8:30

greglinch:

Hahaha… RT @mthomps: Sitting next to @greglinch. He multitasks like a Hydra; awesome watching him work.

#hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:30 greglinch

8:30

greglinch:

.@lavallee: Process includes wildly stripped down Agile, continuous deployment, Git/Git Hub, training + support #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:30 greglinch

8:32

greglinch:

This is true. But not so many cookies anymore. RT @ryansholin: @mthomps A hydra powered by chocolate chip cookies and the hunger of youth. [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:32 greglinch

8:32

greglinch:

Argo team exists to support the blog network and platform. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:32 greglinch

8:33

greglinch:

.@lavallee: Argo platform will be open-sourced under GPL (maybe MIT for Django app) and available on GitHub. #hhdc cc/ @dimensionmedia [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:33 greglinch

8:34

dimensionmedia:

@greglinch thanks. that’s pretty cool, and i like the solid WordPress setup they have. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:34 dimensionmedia

8:38

mthomps:

My colleagues @lavallee and @lindamood are wrapping up a terrific look at the dev side of Argo. Happy I was unspoiled for this. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:38 mthomps

8:38

davisshaver:

Been enjoying tweets from #hhdc tonight. Argo platform sounds awesome. Can’t wait to check out the code on git… I’m all about @WordPress. [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:38 davisshaver

8:39

greglinch:

The model they’re creating is more important than the platform, which could be thrown out eventually, says @lavallee #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:39 greglinch

8:44

greglinch:

Q about SEO. A: Structure, plus content-to-code ratio were biggest points of focus for that. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:44 greglinch

8:45

greglinch:

Q from @eyeseast: Do you have an API. A from @lavallee: De facto API, but not ready for primetime. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:45 greglinch

8:46

acarvin:

Didn’t realize the Argo Network just rolled out pubsubhubbub. Must ask them about that. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:46 acarvin

8:49

emerock:

Visited clouds and the Amazon, pressed words and spoke django tonight. NPR is the best. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:49 emerock

8:49

greglinch:

Q from @joshkorr re pushback. A: “much of the pushback is implicit,” says @mthomps — you can see if they don’t use a certain tool. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:49 greglinch

8:51

greglinch:

Q from @joshkorr re pushback. A: “much of the pushback is implicit,” says @mthomps — you can see if they don’t use a certain tool. #hhdc [via Twitter]

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:51 greglinch

8:53

Greg Linch:

Thanks for watching/reading!

Tuesday October 19, 2010 8:53 Greg Linch

8:56

If you have any questions about Argo, feel free to leave a comment or — during the event — post it in CoverItLive.

Slides from the presentation:

The Tech Side of Project Argo

View the presentation on SlideShare.

You can also download a podcast of the audio below.

ONADC/Hacks & Hackers meetup tonight: NYT’s Derek Willis on journalism + data + coding and walking through Toxic Waters

For this month’s joint ONADC/Hacks & Hackers meetup, Derek Willis of The New York Times interactive news technology team will discuss data + coding + journalism and walk through the award-winning Toxic Waters project.

You can watch live (archived video ~~player~~ embedded below) or follow along the Twitter by searching ONADC. If you’re in town, there are still spaces open to attend in person at American University (RSVP here).

Watch live streaming video from onlinenewsassociation at livestream.com

Also, here’s a CoverItLive blog where I plan to take notes, chat with anyone following along and pull in any choice tweets.

<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=5944614923" >ONADC/Hacks & Hackers meetup: May 2010 – NYT’s Derek Willis</a>

Thanks to David Johnson at AU for co-organizing and hosting the event, as well as the always magnificent ONA DC co-organizers: Laura Cochran, Tiffany Shackleford and Matt Mansfield.

Also, thanks to Burt Herman, Rich Gordon and Aron Pilhofer — who run the larger Hacks & Hackers — and Sherry Skalko of ONA.

Special thanks to Ethan Klapper, who will be running the live video feed.