Goodbye TV, Hello Broadband

Wired News features a story particularly interesting for media psychologists about how TV consumption changes in a family that cancels its cable subscriptionand only watches TV shows delivered by the internet.

Hacking is a lifestyle

Hacking is a lifestyle and I dare to say it’s the lifestyle of the future. Please note that by “hacking” I am not talking of somebody breaking into a computer system to commit a crime, I consider those people to be “crackers”.

Why is hacking the lifestyle of the future? On the one hand, because it’s a political attitude. Somebody has to question technology in the hand of governments if we want to make sure democracy is using technology and not the other way round. On the other hand, hacking can simply be fun and creat a vast field of rich ideas on what to do with a tool. Currently, the Wii controler is a perfect example.

Within days, the Wii remote has become a craze. My friend Genox considers to buy one even though he has no Wii gamestation; he just wants to bring it to game partys, store his avatar on it, etc. I assume Nintendo has really triggered a craze here that will cash into their pockets.

However, according to a story in Wired News, hackers have found ways to put other uses into the cool Wii controller; now it can be used as a lightsaber, as a drumstick, and a gamepad to play Halflife 2.

I sure hope Nintendo isn’t going to pull anybody to the court and let the phenomenon spread. Millions will have fun with this and Nintendo will enjoy looking at its sales figure.

Building skillz

Ever since I lived together with Sprudel she’s been my idol when it comes to making apple cakes*, hers are simply to die for. If you ever have the chance to have her make one for you, consider yourself blessed. So for the whole time living back home again it was a challenge to make one that is comparable to hers - I guess I got somewhat close now.

To make a Swiss style apple cake, this is how to proceed:

1) cover the baking tray with the dough
2) cover the entire tray with milled hazelnuts
3) peel apples and slice them so they cover the entire tray
4) mix two tablespoons of sugar and one teaspoon of corn starch in a seperate bowl/saucer (make sure there are no corn starch clumps left)
5) beat two eggs into a bowl, add the sugar/starch mix and keep stirring
6) Toss the egg mixture over the cake
7) Bake it for 40min at 170°C at bottom heat

*apple cake in this context is the litteral translation of the German word “Apfelkuchen”. Americans would call my cake a dessert pizza. In Switzerland, however, dessert pizzas often are the main dish of a meal, especially on Fridays. My family still sticks to the tradition not to eat any meats on Fridays as it was considered inappropriate to eat meats on the day the savior died, so that’s why we get dessert pizzas on Fridays instead. Well, for my part every day could be Friday.

YouTube is fast at making parodies

Hello I’m a Wii - And I’m a PS3

Where are the sex videos?

Wired Magazine’s Regina Lynn writes about the fad to release one’s own sex video on the internet. It looks like an Iranian woman may even face capital punishment because of one of those.

Now any graphic medium in the history of mankind has been used to portray sex, think of the ornaments on Hindu temples, think of photographs in the US Civil War, think of video tapes, and think of the internet, of course. Therefore, the next logical step is to search the latest visual medium, YouTube, for sex. As exspected, I didn’t find any sexual intercourse portrayed as YouTube has a very strict policy concerning these things; the viewer has to confirm his/her maturity for clips that involve even mild nudity.

The most interesting result of my search, however, was this clip featuring a commercial by Chanel appearing on the first site of the results. It has currently 1220 ratings, shows up when the search string is “sex”, but doesn’t feature sex at all. In other words, it’s a good trap. Sex sells - and there are always people looking for it. Therefore it’s just logical to offer sexually tagged content on a “no sex”-medium and people will fall for it, probably also watch the whole add in hope to see some spicy features.

Maybe I should quit my research job, tag commercials as sexual content, and push it with votes on the front pages of Youtube for the rest of my life.