Man. Myth. Morland.

Mixmas in July

2008-07-01T20:23:25Z

To whatever pagan god brought this weather upon us: thank you and what/whom do I need to sacrifice to keep it this way?

I had fun with the June mix, so I put up another one for July over at (merlin)morland-muxtape.

Foals - The French Open
Changes - when i wake
Born Ruffians - Barnacle Goose
The 1900s - When I Say Go
This Is Ivy League - Modern World
Veronica Maggio - Gammal Sång (note: this is in Swedish and while I intended it to be an effervescent celebration of summer I apologize if it's actually about paper cuts or the exploitation of child labor)
Charlotte Gainsbourg - The Operation
The Cool Kids - What Up Man
MC Chris - Nrrrd Grrrl
Crystal Castles - Untrust Us
Crystal Antlers - A Thousand Eyes
Dios Malos - I See The Light (Miguel Mendez Cover)

Magyarország 2008

2008-06-10T10:49:05Z

Continuing with the student-organized trips to assorted homelands, our Hungarian classmates led a trip to Budapest and Lake Balaton. Look through the pictures closely enough and you will see two random Hungarian gentlemen who thought nothing would be funnier than to put a Gilligan hat on me and pose as if conducting boxing weigh-in, which pretty much designates any trip a success.

Muxraker

2008-05-28T23:22:53Z

I created a June song mix on Muxtape. I might be diligent about updating it on a monthly basis, or I might not. You might find our musical tastes differ greatly, or you might not. Not a big deal in any case.

Summer plans

2008-05-20T19:18:26Z

I have found an internship through September at Seedcamp here in London. I am happy.

MBAT 2008

2008-05-20T19:12:44Z

Sporting fun in France.

Squired

2008-04-22T12:59:53Z

Thankfully the 2005 pace of weddings (nearly one/month) has slowed a little over the past couple years, even though I'm writing this in the interim of going to two in as many weekends. It's hard to complain about them though, when they are as much fun as Greg and Meghan's. I took some photos.

Now if only MTV would do the same for The State

2008-04-10T13:18:06Z

The entire series of Arrested Development is now available for streaming on Hulu (US only).

To exercise my cynic's impulse to temper enthusiasm I should note I find it dismaying that the pace of change on the part of the big TV networks is so slow that in the interim between the first suggestion that they should put marquee shows online and that suggestion's realization an entire show was conceived, cast, written, produced for three seasons, canceled, released on DVD, mothballed for a year, and then revived as a potential movie. But I'll take slow change over no change.

Engelberg

2008-03-17T11:12:52Z

Being mostly a warm-weather kind of guy (though you wouldn't know it from where I've lived over the past fourteen years) I don't generally feel inclined to try out alpine sports. That's not a hard and fast rule, however, and there are a few (e.g. bobsledding, yodeling, avalanche imprisonment) that have piqued my interest and which I've wanted to try. This weekend in Switzerland I got to cross curling off that list.

Portugal

2008-03-17T10:19:26Z

As you might be able to tell from the waning creativity of these title posts, I'm swamped. Unusually though, it's a good kind of swamped, with "work" balancing nicely with some fun side trips and social activities. With so little mans-a-keyboard time between me and my computer though, I've certainly fallen behind in keeping this site current, so it's status quo around this poorly-maintained blog.

Anyway, in an effort to at least post pictures of the aforementioned side trips, here are some from the trip to Lisbon and Sintra last weekend that the Portuguese club organized splendidly.

Amsterdam

2008-02-10T18:20:45Z

Doug V wrote me last week to say he was going to be in Amsterdam for business and wanted to know if I'd like to hop over for the weekend. I did, and I did.

Digital portcullises

2008-02-10T17:49:32Z

Prior to moving from the US I'd never seen messages on the web informing me that certain content was unavailable in my region, but since I've seen quite a few. I understand the legacy of the labyrinthine distribution contracts behind it, but it seems so obsolete - these are trivial to circumvent with any proxy server.

Good to see Boston was aesthetically depressing back then too

2008-01-20T20:34:57Z

Flickr's grand experiment with the Library of Congress is off to a great start, with collections from the 1910s and 30s/40s (some fantastic color pictures from the latter set, making them seem far more than 20-30 years younger than the former).

Knowing where I stood on things

2008-01-17T00:16:50Z

One of the most valuable and yet most annoying parts of my photo-taking endeavors is manually geo-coding my pictures so that I can track down their locations later and plot them on a map now. The ATP Photo Finder looks to alleviate that a little, hopefully bridging the gap between my carpal-tunnel-inducing manual tedium and fully automated integrated-GPS cameras (incidentally I saw a press release about a year ago from a Philips spin-off working on an innovative solution to this - only capture the raw GPS satellite signal streams at the time of picture taking and crunch them later on upon transfer to a computer instead of in real time, which requires the inclusion of more space and power-intensive chips - if anyone can find it let me know). I support this product if only because it is philosophically compatible with my stance that humans should be saved from every possible form of data entry where their brains are not the sole repository.

Live action and delightfully free of Breckin Meyer

2008-01-16T23:39:47Z

Circa 1989, around the time my female contemporaries were fantasizing about John Stamos, I had a brief fondness for Garfield, the comic. While I don't regret it - after all, it's precocious to have the humor of a middle-aged housewife before entering your second decade of life - I long ago closed that chapter in the book of Morland. Of course only the vaguest familiarity with the comic is necessary to appreciate the genius of Lasagna Cat, so that embarrassing childhood background I shared was just for pity.

Nuthin' but a T thang

2008-01-06T16:00:08Z

In Berlin I saw an exhibit by an artist who purchased a mock T-72 training tank from China and hooked it up to a series of pumps to cyclically inflate and deflate it (you can listen to a classy description of this work by Michael Sailsdorfer if you'd like). I took a series of pictures over the course of the cycle and thought it would be fun to create a little animation of it:

Something about the rhythmic dip-and-bounce of that tank reminded me of the inimitable panache of the hydraulic-equipped low-riders of my youth, and I was compelled to create a proper movie and attach a soundtrack. It is short, but if I do say so myself, G-Funky: