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Last week was a week without travel or deadlines so a lot of stuff that had been lying around for too long got done.

Horribly late but here goes anyway. On Monday I briefly dropped by the Makers Loft and finally managed to see the Third Wave crew again.

At the start of the week I managed to upload a batch of trip pictures (the China section) but after things went quickly downhill.

I read Consider the Lobster as a bit of a reprieve from the book guilt Infinite Jest still casts over my night stand and as a long overdue requiem to the literary colossus DFW is. Here’s the stuff I found noteworthy:

I picked up a Monocle at Sydney airport for a long flight without laptop (along with a book) and I was a bit disappointed 1 in finding that the magazine hadn’t progressed much since I first read it years ago. It still is that strangely a-political collection of fluff pieces for the spendy class and because of the current realities of print publishing now also brimful of advertorials.

After some weeks traveling to Beijing and Australia, last week I was back in Europe, touching down in Amsterdam Tuesday morning early. I had a very nice flight in from Sydney with the only annoyance being that my laptop had broken upon arrival there. This made me spend half a day of the two I had there in the Bondi Apple Store trying to figure out what the problem was.

I’m sitting here at Beijing Airport writing these too late weeknotes on their free WiFi 1 which is an oddly implemented but still excellent service.

Last week I presented at the Berlin Ignite. I had been present at the last one and greatly enjoyed, so I looked what I could add to the mix.

Just to start a series here about ways in which German society could be organized more sensibly 1 2.

Yesterday we went to see Werner Herzog read from his own work in ‘Erroberung des Nutzlosen’ at the Volksbühne. While an impressive display of authorship my enjoyment of the performance was hampered by me having no knowledge of his movies and a recent aversion towards the theater.

Last Saturday I made it out to the penultimate day of the exhibition of the Selim Varol Collection in the me collectors room here in Berlin. I’m glad I did. This was one of the most complete and stunning collections of contemporary toys and subversive art on display anywhere.

I recently discovered the fan fiction Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by the esteemed Eliezer Yudkowsky (I used to read his friendly AI stuff back in the day) and having never read any Harry Potter 1 I still immensely enjoyed this.

I read this pamphlet (at Gutenberg) by Thomas Paine a while back on a mountain. However short it may be it packs a massive punch and is brimful with powerful rhetoric. It also contains a rather definitive argument against monarchy. Highly recommended.

Last week I built a new version of the Pig Chase client for the final test in the stables (more on which later).

I biked over tonight to see the installation PIVOT by Jacob Kirkegaard at the leap in Berlin 1 before it finishes tomorrow.

Work on the Pigs continues though my part is sort of finished now. The rest of the team is very busy getting the thing into the stable.

I just pulled out this stuff from my weeknote into a separate post because I think it merited it.

I didn’t make it out to dConstruct which I’m a bit torn about. I’ve been to the conference some three times and this year other priorities trumped it and going to conferences in general. But the program this year was even more stellar than regular years. Seeing either Ben Hammersley, Tom Armitage or James Burke (!) present would be worth the ticket price alone without exaggerating a lot.

A massively eventful week that for me took place mostly in Amsterdam where I had tons of catching up to do after a holiday absence of I believe over two months. In between moving offices and traveling, work on kohi moved on apace. We may have something usable by a slightly wider audience somewhere in the next week.

I’ll include here Hubbub’s two reasons for celebration which were also reasons for me to celebrate and I’ll add a third in a bit. These really are the weeks when a lot of stuff is happening, being built and delivered. Not that much time for idle talk and reflection, though that too will return.

Last week was rather eventful. I popped over to Praxis to sign my lease there and I was scheduled to present a workshop at Campus Party on a topic near to my heart about which I have presented often already in one form or another: Civic Hacking.

Ik was vanmiddag in de American Book Centre en ik heb een boekje uit de Teach yourself-reeks “Arabic” gekocht. Het is een fijn en vlot boek met een redelijk niveau en veel voorbeelden. Daarnaast was het een beetje gehavend en daarom mocht ik het meenemen voor €9,95 wat niet echt geld is.

A delayed picture in picture from me presenting in Helsinki:

Geconfronteerd met het feit dat de meeste dertigers die in de stad wonen geen auto meer willen hebben en veel twintigers niet eens meer hun rijbewijs halen, zetten automakers zichzelf opnieuw in de markt. Ze zijn niet meer verkopers van een statussymbool, maar aanbieders van vervoersoplossingen in een toekomstvisie waarin de auto een plek heeft naast de fiets, het openbaar vervoer en alle andere dingen die steden leuk maken. Audi komt in Londen binnenkort met haar Audicity en BMW toert in samenwerking met het Guggenheim langs de wereld met haar lab. Eerst New York, nu Berlijn en straks in Mumbai. (Daimler is MIA.)

In the performance “Ten Billion” at La Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon Stephen Emmott, a scientist, performed a soliloquy about the state of the world and the environment. He took a message we already have known since the Club of Rome and rehashed that in front of a theater audience over the course of ninety minutes.

I spent two days in Ghent a Belgian city that is lovely in its own right, but really shines for a long week every summer when it has its own festival: the Gentse Feesten. I’d been there once before some ten years ago and had a lot of fun there. So Tourism Flanders gave me the chance to revisit.

I am repeating regularly these days that I am through with theater. I thought I’d see a couple of plays here at the Festival d’Avignon and then decide for myself whether this position is justified. Avignon has the reputation for programming the best theater of Europe. A reputation that turns out to be mostly unfounded.

Ever since the recent re-enactment of Hamlet by Luk Perceval, I have wanted to see something by the Hamburg Thalia theater. Last year I saw Luk Perceval stage Disgrace at TA which was a good display by itself, but still the Thalia remained elusive.

I just went to see “The Coming Storm” at the Festival d’Avignon. In an interesting open setup, bits and pieces of stories are performed by the ensemble who continually interrupt each other. While one actor is telling a story the others perform variety like diversions using props, music and each other.

A busy week after a quiet weekend. Monday evening I attended a preliminary meeting with fellow coaches for the Berlin Python classes. After that I attended the Iron Blogger regular meetup to have beer with my fellow Berlin bloggers. Later that week I also attended the regular Campus Party drinks.

A rather interesting capitalist reflection on Facebook by Rob Horning at The New Inquiry and why online activism never changes anything.

The Willem de Kooning Academy published an ebook that contains the lecture I gave there about digital design and the new aesthetic. I’m quite pleased that little piece of conceptual remix is getting so much airtime.

It took a bit to get going again back from Greece.

A couple of days ago I got an answer on behalf of Ms. Neelie Kroes with regards to my inquiry about computational literacy (which I asked during her visit to Berlin during re:publica):

The week before last I spent in Athens mostly hanging out, going to the beach and getting some work done.

Gisteren met wat Flickr gebruikers afgesproken op de NDSM-werf en daar de hele boel vastgelegd.

I spent last week in Athens because Lea was at work at the Athens & Epidaurus festival where the Schaubühne staged two plays. I spent the week relaxing, working and taking in the Athens air.

During my visit to Copenhagen I tried to make use of the Copenhagen City Bike system. Although eventually successful, it turns out bicycle sharing systems without a digital component can lead to frustrations.

On Monday I got back into work after the couple of days in Copenhagen. I also discovered that the talk I gave in Rotterdam “Designing in the Face of Defeat” about the New Aesthetic has been recorded and you can watch it above.

This article by Good about people my age and younger driving less strikes me as very true. Just one point: I have a driving license, but I’ve never owned a car. My brother does not even have a driving license because if you never leave Amsterdam having a car is ludicrous. I try to minimize my driving except for the occasional road trip because I think my time is too valuable to spend many hours doing something unnecessary.

I’ve been into something of a speculative realism binge lately reading quite some books and even more blogs from the field of current day philosophy. Last Monday I finished Ian Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology which is highly recommended if you want to read up on object oriented ontology.

A nice and quiet week in which I got a lot of stuff done that needed doing for a while.

Last weekend I finished the Prince of Networks (which is in fact available for free online and I recommend you read it, though Alien Phenomenology may be a more concise and lighter introduction into speculative realism) by Graham Harman.

This interview with Graham Harman is filled with valuable tidbits, some of which I wanted to collect and share for your reading pleasure as much as mine: