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I am selling a domain name on Ebay. Read the full story in the item description (scroll down for English version).

This is wonderful, Greenpeace started a bold campaign adressing the computer hardware industry and Apple computers in particular, who is ranking last on their list for green electronics, demanding their products to be better recyclable and free from toxic substances. The campaign uses all sorts of Web 2.0 viral channels including a fake keynote video on YouTube with Apple founder Steve Jobs announcing the Green Apple. Not to be missed is their special “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ad. As you would expect, Greenpeace takes the company by its weakest point — their image — and uses well-known symbols of Apple’s fame and redirects their energy with the help of subvertising techniques. Very clever, and I am sure Steve will react to it as soon as “greenness” becomes a desired feature in computers. First reactions of the commercial Apple crowd were mixed though: A Greenpeace booth got evicted from MacExpo London last October, but activists could roam freely at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco a few days ago. So, help making the computer industry go sustainable by spreading the word!

Michael calls it Movement Research in Public Spaces. A bunch of people meet somewhere in the city, jump around, play imaginative scenes, roll around the floor and do other odd stuff that makes passers-by stop, kids cheer, groups of Japanese tourists clap. Today’s improvisation meeting was the highlight of a series of get-togethers like that during this week. Ten moving improvisationists showed up, I was amongst them, and walked — partly with their eyes closed — to a small square next to the Hagia Sofia mosque/church and let everything out for about an hour. I met wonderful people and connected with them instantly. Michael contacted me through my friend Dante before he came to Istanbul a week ago and since then I am discovering the contemporary dance scene with him. There are more little studios hidden in the houses around the Galata tower than you would think. Expressing one’s emotions and impulses through dance is such a pure and self-healing activity.

In graphical programming you might want to rotate things at some point. I am not a mathematician, so I was happy when I figured out how to do it. Here is some pseudo code which you can adapt to the programming language of your choice.

xRot = xCenter + cos(Angle) * (x - xCenter) - sin(Angle) * (y - yCenter)
yRot = yCenter + sin(Angle) * (x - xCenter) + cos(Angle) * (y - yCenter)

Example in Processing (Java needed)

xRot and yRot give the rotated point, xCenter and yCenter mark the point that you want to rotate around, x and y mark the original point. Note that in most programming languages you will need to give Angle in radian, so multiply your degree value with Pi devided by 180 (Angle = Degree * PI / 180). Have fun spinning things around!

Another piece of generative animation called Workers out on a saturday night 😉 can now be viewed. I spent most of last night trying to figure out how to rotate coordinates “by foot”, then kind of understood and went on to the rotation functions build into processing which really make life much easier. Next up: Some 3D action!

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop about the Java based visual arts programming kit Processing. Have a look at my first Processing creations in my sandbox (you need Java enabled in your browser).

A few years ago a friend of mine and me started a small company called “netzteil”, running coin-operated Linux Internet kiosks in German youth hostels. The burst of the first Internet bubble unfortunately took the company down with it two years later. One of the people involved now wrote an article about it (German only). You can see the cute machines in my sandbox. Enjoy!

Hey, did you know that Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia as a project within his “titty portal” (as The Register calls it) company back in 2000? And look what it has become now. Someone once told me about pornography having long been the driving force behind development of media technology. Hm, not sure about that, I said. Anyway, the initial project lead and hands-on creator of Wikipedia Larry Sanger recently announced Citizendium, a “fork”, an independent clone of the current Wikipedia with a less hierarchic governing system and a lot of other changes. Let’s see what it will become and where it leads us to. The future is so exciting! 🙂

“Richest 2% own half the world’s wealth” says a recent study of the United Nations University (press release). And half of humanity owns only 1% of all capital. Hm, yes, that somehow sounds wrong. I wonder if global unregulated capitalism has anything to do with it.. OK, here is the plan: Take as much wealth out of the hands of the rich – if you can read this, you are probably one of them – and give it to the poor. Steal, if necessary! 😉