URBivore

Speaking of Yelp...Alizee video

This is a recommendation for a non-English pop star from one of the discussions on Yelp (although in this video she's singing a Madonna song). Alizee is French and has some other videos on YouTube. Puts Brittany and the rest to shame, IMHO.

West Indian Labor Day Parade in Brooklyn

The Children's Carnival is tomorrow starting at 8am, and then the parade on Labor Day. I don't know if they have j'ouvert, but it's worth checking out.

From Wikipedia: "J'ouvert (pronounced 'joovay' locally) involves calypso/soca
bands and their followers dancing in the capital cities of the various
islands. The festival starts well before dawn and peaks a few hours
after sunrise. Part of the tradition involves smearing paint, mud, or
oil on the participants known as Jab Jabs. This is done in remembrance
of a civil disturbance in Port of Spain, Trinidad, when the people smeared themselves with oil to avoid being recognized."

I was at the carnival in Trinidad one year. The whole island shuts down for two weeks or more in preparation for this very elaborate event. It supposedly is the second best behind Rio.

WIADCA - The Official Website of The West Indian American Day Carnival Association - HOME

UPDATE: Here's a good description of this event from a Yelper, David M:

The West Indian American Day Carnival is the biggest parade in New York with over 3 million participants each year. The parade depicts elaborately designed costumes, illustrating beauty and pageantry. There are many masqueraders and huge sound trucks, some with live performers. The service roads have stands of vendors lined up selling foods, crafts, books, clothing, art, jewelry, and much more. The parade begins at 11am and ends at 6pm. There will be live performers in front of the viewing stage at the Brooklyn Library. The parade rout begins at the corner of Rochester & Eastern Parkway and ends near Grand Army Plaza where non-masqueraders can jump up with the bands.

There will be plenty of food to taste on Carnival Day. All of Eastern Parkway will be host to various dishes from every Caribbean island. There will be stands lined up along the service roads selling jerk chicken, chicken stew, fried chicken, beef stew, oxtail, rice and peas, salad, macaroni pie, fried flying fish, curry goat, roti, callaloo, souse, salt fish, fried bake, coconut bread, and much more. There is plenty to choose from, whatever your diet may be.

 

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TimeOut New York's Photo issue is out

User-generated content! Bars that have photobooths! Check it out.

Time Out New York: Visions of the city

Technorati Tags: TimeOut New York, photo issue

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Thirteen Blog Clichés

This post is going viral in a hurry, now that BoingBoing has linked to it (about a week ago, I'm slow).

Jeff Atwood has good tips about avoiding visual clutter including non-pertinent photos, widgets, calendars, tag clouds, and giant blogrolls to name a few.

He wants the name of the blogger to be easy to find: no problem. He thinks that comments are necessary: ain't going to happen here. Private e-mail or phone conversations are more incisive, and from this content can be selected for broadcast.

He's right about how it shouldn't be a diary of what you're doing, or vacation pictures. Either you're providing useful, enlightening, entertaining material for the benefit of your audience, or you're boring them. When I read posts by the A-list bloggers expressing their anxiety about the ear wax problem, I know it's time to unsubscribe to their feed.

BTW, this post violates the cardinal rule of blogging: no blogging about blogging.

Audio and eBooks: challenging the Gutenberg paradigm

Seth has a post today about why he thinks audiobooks are not a booming business. He says that the authors receive very little compensation, therefore promotion is lacking. He throws in the hassles of maintaining a CD or cassette library in stock, but I only use the kind where you can download as files to your smartphone or music player.

But, he mentions that he is ten times more likely to get an e-mail about a book from folks he use audio books.

Then you have the eBooks. I remember hearing Cory Doctorow talking at a Google book publishers conference at the New York Public Library about how some people are just "pervy for paper," and he thinks this is why digital or eBooks are not popular. His sci-fi stories are free to download because of the Creative Commons licensing, and I've been reading them on my Treo 700p.The great thing is that you never need to find decent lighting to read by. The screen is amazingly bright (and adjustable) as well as high in resolution, so you don't end up with eye strain.

I read The DaVinci Code and another Dan Brown novel on the Treo with no problem. It's the perfect way to read on a commute. You can bookmark sections and annotate for future reference. This is the main thing I don't like about the audiobook format. I use the eReader and MobiPocket software.

I'm now reading The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston I downloaded from eReader. It starts with the anthrax deaths post 9/11, then segues into the possible threat of the use of smallpox for a terrorist attack. It was supposedly eradicated from the face of the earth, now stored in two laboratories, one at the CDC in Atlanta, the other in Russia. Now we learn that Soviets produced mass quantities when it was developing this as a biological weapon, and now is unaccounted for. It is so contagious, all you need to do is to inhale a few virus particles to become infected, and those shedding virus have only flu-like symptoms for days until they develop the characteristic skin pox. Very scary stuff.

However, with the audiobooks, if you find a book you love (for me it's The Great Influenza by John Barry), it's a pleasure to re-listen for hours as you stroll through the city or do your chores at home. I eventually picked up the hardcover from the library just so I could skip to the sections that I wanted to reread, and looks at the archival photos.

Treo Film contest

Palm has a new promo site, PalmThing.com where they are attempting to educate their Treo users and others about the specific features of this smartphone. With the competition from the iPhone and other slim beauties, including the anticipated gPhone, Palm is trying to renew interest in the flagship line.

Now you can't view palmthing.com on your Treo because the browser is not capable of viewing the shockwave file they use for the site. I don't understand why they didn't code in a sniffer for their mobile browser, Blazer, so at least the mobilized could find out about the Treo Film Festival.

They're offering $11,000 in prize money for film makers who produce shorts that can be viewed on the small screen of a smartphone.

You will be able to view the entries via MobiTV beginning September 18th.

Movie trend: running on the rooftops

Both Casino Royale and The Bourne Ultimatum feature the almost impossible looking urban running and jumping skills based on the discipline known as parkour.

David Belle is the originator and his work is featured in the film Banlieue 13 where he plays the main character.

From Wikipedia:

An important characteristic of parkour is efficiency. A traceur moves not merely as fast as he can, but also in the least energy-consuming and most direct way possible. Since parkour's unofficial motto is être et durer (to be and to last), efficiency also involves avoiding injuries, short and long-term.

Sebastien Foucan is a childhood friend of David Belle's, and according to Wikipedia, he's the one, along with a stunt double, being chased by the Bond character. His technique is called "free running," and according to purists is a variant of parkour. Free running emphasizes freedom of movement over efficiency, while parkour is getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

Being a war photographer

I followed this link posted on one of the photography forums about Ted award winner James Nachtwey. He's worked as a war photographer but has covered other humanitarian crises across the world. His work is inspiring, but before you run off with your DSLRs to cover the next human tragedy, you should follow the story of another photojournalist, Paul Watson.

Paul Watson was recently interviewed interviewed on Fresh Air:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13970206

He's just published a book:

"A Pulitzer Prize — winning journalist takes us on a personal and historic journey from Mogadishu through Rwanda to Afghanistan and Iraq.

"With the click of a shutter the world came to know Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland Jr. as a desecrated corpse. In the split-second that Paul Watson had to choose between pressing the shutter release or turning away, the world went quiet and Watson heard Cleveland whisper: “If you do this, I will own you forever.” And he has."

The images (be forewarned, these are very graphic):
http://sol.sapo.pt/photos/bluewater68/images/269344/original.aspx

He's ashamed of several things he's done, including accepting an invitation to sit down with Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The Cleveland family refuses to speak with him, feeling that he dishonored their son with that famous photograph.

He had to undergo treatment for PTSD.

Before you pack up your DSLRs  to be a war photographer, you should listen to this interview.

Japan's best-selling Xbox 360 videogame features Frederic Chopin

"the best-selling 360 videogame in all of Japan has Frederic Chopin as its lead character."

Opera Chic: Chopin Will Pwn You At The Xbox360: "Trusty Bell: Chopin no Yume"

And some think that video games are all about Grand Theft Auto and Halo.


Technorati Tags: chopin, classical music, xbox,

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Labor Day and Caribbean Culture

The Eastern Parkway parade is the traditional event in Brooklyn which probably has the largest remote Caribbean population. The Brooklyn Museum is also having an exhibit, and now I'm in the mood for good roti. It's seems that Nio's Roti is the best. I've got to check out the goat roti and doubles.

The Porkchop Express

Technorati Tags: Labor Day, Brooklyn, Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn Museum, Nio's Roti, Porkchop Express, goat meat

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