Scott has been fascinated by capturing the world through the lens of a camera since he was a child and his passion is visible either within any shot or within the list of awards received for his contributions to the advancement in the field of Kite Aerial Panographies. In this issue of Vrmag he kindly shares a bunch of KAPed images taken all around the world. Scott was recently granted access to the top section of the Berkeley Campanile, to shoot aerials which will be used in the Law school's brochure for prospective students.

You can read about Scott's Aerial VR activity and experience some of his best panoramas in VRMag's article here.

Robert Rauschenberg, Kite (Aquilone), 1963

...ordine tecnologico e disordine esistenziale si mescolano, agitati come in uno shaker...

'.hack//G.U.'
"Why He Does" by Aina Kirisaki

DISCLAIMER: I won't even bother pretending .hack belongs to me.

Warnings: Language, SPOILERS
Characters: Sakaki
Theme Songs: Best Love [Chikayo Fukuda], DARK INFECTION [Chikayo Fukuda], Raison D'etre [Dir en Grey], Zips [TM REVOLUTION]
Pairings: None

Don't take my story! If you see it anywhere else, please tell Ryuuzaki-san!

A/N: I'll be the first to admit it: Sakaki is a messed-up guy. However, as a friend of mine has said, "In order to understand the machinations one must first understand the evil behind them." Therefore, I've decided to write a short fic about Sakaki and why he's so evil in the series.

He does these things because he wants power. Any amount of power is fine, but he knows he'll want more anyway. So he lusts after it online, where he is Sakaki, one of the Seven Council of Moon Tree.

At first, he was content to sit patiently, waiting out his turn in meetings and responsibly managing things so that Zelkova might praise him for doing a good job. Of course, as the weeks and months drag by, Sakaki grows bored with this scheme. The rythymic, sultry melody of power draws him in and makes him bold. He begins to gather support, his staunchest supporters being Matsu, Hiiragi, Sophora, and even an important lower-ranked member, Atoli. She has the stirrings of a strange power within her, he knows; it is one he cannot understand but he is nevertheless drawn to it.

That is when he is presented with a unique opportunity - AIDA. The ten-year-old boy behind the PC 'Sakaki' knows that it's evil, knows that it's wrong, and yet... He uses it anyway. In order to become the ultimate god of 'The World', he has to have ultimate power. It's child's play, he thinks. And it really is; follow the script here, threaten Epitaph Users there, frighten the general, oblivious public a little and then portray yourself as the saviour... Child's play.

The pieces fall together and he finally does what he feels he should have done months ago; overthrow the damn brat at the top of Moon Tree. He turns it into an AIDA server, convinced that it will make him stronger. He abuses Atoli's trust in him by making her his first victim, and then she in turn makes Zelkova nothing more than what he's sure is a stream of scattered data and a comatose player.

He wants to be recognised and admired by everyone, no matter who. It doesn't help that his parents hardly ever looked at him or acknowledged him, even before he took up 'The World'. Some days he wonders about the power of AIDA if unleashed in the real world; he could be a ruler of the overall world. He thinks his parents might pay attention to him then; if not, he would force them to, and they would love him and look at him with adoration sparkling in their eyes. So he accepts the power as it comes faster and stronger, even while planting AIDA in the newly-awakened Atoli so that she will help him overthrow the other Epitaph Users. When it doesn't work, he infects himself... and the one pulling all the strings eventually agrees with him and teaches him to control the virus in order to make him stronger.

Later, he faces off against Haseo and winds up with a blade through the virtual chest. He wants to scream at the top of his lungs in frustration; pawns aren't supposed to have any independent will, but Endrance apparently does, more or less controlled by his overt obsession with the 'Terror of Death'. He stands up to Sakaki, and with his help, Haseo utterly crushes the power-crazed AIDA-PC. When he falls into an Outer Dungeon, he encounters his benefactor, Ovan - but when he begs the strange man for another chance, he is discarded and left as scraps for the Azure Knights.

Before he falls into a coma, his last thought isn't about how Kite is hovering over him, about to destroy him. It isn't about AIDA, or Ovan's betrayal, or his ambitions. Instead, he chooses to recall a picture. It is an old picture, as old as he is, and it is rather simple; a baby in his mother's arms as she gazes adoringly at him and he reaches up to her. The picture is of Tooru - Sakaki - and it is the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes.

no. 5 in my 30/30 project.  This was done on the boot lid of my car, whilst waiting to pick my son up from a class.

I have had succes w/ this, but others i know report BIOS problems.....your chioce. Bear in mind, this is for newbs. Everything in this can be done manually, and will probably be better.

2.Msstyles

Changes your theme...the default is that disgusting xp one. May require UX-themepatcher. There are some good ones at Studio-TwentyEight.com

3.Docks

These are GREAT. VERY useful, and aesthetically pleasing. I think that RK Launcher(get iVista or Leopard Inspired)  is best, but Rocketdock and Yz Dock are pretty good. Objectdock SUX!

4.True Transparency

Pretty much changes the border of your windows. There are 2 or 3 good mac themes. At osx-e, there are a Tiger one (i made it) and a Leopard one. Both are great.

5.Spotlight Clones

These do just what the name suggests-Emulate Spotlight! Many work w/ Google Desktop Search, so you might have to get that. I recommend I-find, but searchspy and macfind aregood too.

6.Macswitch

An alt-tab replacement. Supports .icos and .pngs as icons for windows.

7.Finderbar

Gives you that Mac taskbar.....you know what i mean. Some people have appearance issues....but it is great if it works fine.

8.Tiger System Preferences

Like control panel, just......TIGER! Surprise.....bet you didn't see that one coming.

9. Explorer Mods

Ok....for this, you can use an alternative, like nexplorer. Or you can use Styler w/ a mac theme and Findexer. I prefer the latter.

10.Widgets

Forthis, you can use Konfabulator or Avedesk. I don't use these b/c the take up to much RAM....but if you have more than a gig, or don't run many apps at once, these are great. I recommend a combination of Kon and Ave. Also, try Sysmetrix.

Most of this, plus much more, can be found at www.osx-e.com

• Just like the original Kite was written, storyboarded and directed by Yasuomi Umetsu, is Liberator also written, storyboarded and directed by Yasumoi Umetsu. He did the character design for both and worked as an animator on at least Liberator.
• In Kite everyone behaved like the sort of b-movie clichés that they were. In Liberator everyone behaves like..uh.. anime characters. In this case that includes a woman casually stabbing a fork in her employer's arm.
• Whereas Kite was filled sleaziness and hardcore sex scenes, Liberator mostly has moe and scenes of people blushing. They're both creepy though.
• One of the main appeals of the original beyond underage nudity was the attention paid to the FX animation like gorgeously animated explosions and crumbling buildings, as well as all the blood spraying from bodies with multiple bullet-holes. Liberator has that too, mixed with some less appealing cg-effects. These shots are completely done in 3D and only lasts for a few seconds, but that only makes me question the necessity of their inclusion even more. I've seen poorer use of cg but the contrast with the regular animation is still a bit off-putting.
• The specific shots I mentioned refers to a scene where a spaceship explodes due to being attacked from the inside by a large monster. I'm quite sure the original Kite never featured anything like that.
• The main character of Kite was a girl trained to be an assassin by the murderers of her parents. The main character of Liberator is a regular hardworking high-school girl that by night is a somewhat clumsy waitress at a maid-themed restaurant and who also happens to be an highly skilled assassin, when not doing homework or spending time with a friend talking about the dating potential of older men.
• Kite had satisfying conclusion. Liberator just stops.
• They are both pretty entertaining.

Umetsu is currently working on a new film called Kiss and Cry.

Denn dann hebt man auch mal schnell vom Boden der Tatsachen ab in die Lüfte.

Hier geht es weiter zum Video "Kiting"

Also, Jason put two goldfish in his water garden. They must be really scared, because we haven't seen them all weekend! (Thus the reason why I have not posted pictures of them.) The water plants are doing really well, though. The water lilies are already opening up and it's only been about a week since we put them in there!

The vegetable garden is still looking good. (I didn't get any pictures yet - there haven't been *that* many changes!) Jason did give the plants some vegetable food yesterday, so I bet they'll start taking off real soon. At least, when he did that last year, that's when the plants started growing like crazy. I'm looking forward to seeing some changes.

Anyway...here are our gardening pictures from the weekend:

And I know this isn't really gardening-related, but I thought it'd be fun to write about, anyway. Jason purchased a big kite on Saturday. While we were relaxing in the backyard yesterday, he thought he'd try it out:
 

ST. LOUIS — The children made kites in the basement of the St. Louis Science Center on Sunday out of sticks, white trash bags and streamers. Then they took their creations outside, with hopes they would actually take flight — and maybe win a prize for going higher than all the others.

Miles Diekemper, 5, had his sights set high. "I hope I get first place," he said. His friend Ella Callon, 4, was a bit more realistic: "I hope the wind doesn't break our sticks," she said.

The children were participating in the Taiwan Winds Soar in St. Louis event, held over the weekend at the Science Center. The center partnered with the Greater St. Louis Chapter of the Taiwanese Association of America to offer activities celebrating Taiwanese Heritage Week.

Read entire article

...and here's how it looks today:

Fortunately the building retains some original features such as the pub sign and curved glass bar entrance doors:

The golden rose could refer to King Edward I who used a golden rose as a badge.

The building is also mentioned in the Cambridge Daily Photo blog

to the kid that I killed.
The kite is broken.
---- Douglas Gilbert
(Henry Le Châtelier)

Poetry Books By Douglas Gilbert

with Mona and Tim.

Mona got to knit. She only has 4 hexagons left before she is released from the prison of gift knitting.

Tim had to work. His prison of brief-writing is far worse, I feel.

So this was the instead-of-going-to-the-festival activity, and I have to say I was pretty pleased. I also have decided that the shared open space of the city is way underrated. I've been pining over houses in the area with private outdoor space and even went to look at some apartments in the neighborhood so we can move yet again (in the last 2 years I've moved 4 times -- no joke...I was in school for most of that, but still...it's no doubt some sort of disorder). In the meantime, I've been ignoring the fantastic resource that is Lincoln Park only 1 short block away. It's got playgrounds, a makeshift dog run, beautiful mature trees to sit under and an open center square where people can sit (on these strange contraptions called benches, that in fact don't always come with a pee-fresh scent) or fly kites. Today was the perfect day to fly kites and the perfect day for a wool festival, which together reminded me of the most memorable kite-flying experience I've ever had.

Uttarayan: the kite festival in Gujurat, India.

This a flickr group for photos of the festival.

Several years ago, after I graduated from college and worked like a dog to earn money, I traveled through India for 6 months with a couple of friends. It was one of those honest, completely for real life-changing experiences. As someone that had previously very uncomfortably resided somewhere between being Indian and American (and maybe still does), it kind of taught me I'd probably always be neither...or both -- depending on who you talked to. Anyone with any interest in that subject of the Indian-American experience would be well-advised to read any of the works by Jhumpa Lahiri, the most famous of which is probably the Namesake. She has a new book out called Unaccustomed Earth (as in the new land on which the immigrant and his/her children steps is unaccustomed earth), which I have yet to read but hope to when it comes out in paperback.

One of the stops during the 6 months was to the home of one of my aunts in Baroda (now Vadodara), which is about 6 hours by train from Mumbai. We had already visited her before earlier in the trip, but one of my travel mates and I made a special trip out just for the kite festival. This was a last minute decision. As a result, we didn't have train tickets. If I remember correctly, a Mumbai-Vadodara train was conveniently waiting on one of the tracks and the "line" (by which I mean clusterfuck of people) to get tickets was outrageous. So we got on in the hopes that we could just buy tickets on the train.

How do you say "shit for brains" in Hindi?

At first it was fine...it seemed too easy. We got seats in the chair car, where there are reserved seats, unlike the 2nd or 3rd class cars where people pack in so tight it defies laws of physics. The conductor even came around and kind of laughed off our little crime of trying to ride for free by actually letting us ride for free. We were just thinking about how much we loved India, when we stop at a station. And a flood of people get on the train. Including a psychotic man yelling at the top of his lungs, "GET OUT OF OUR SEATS!!!" over and over and over again. In retrospect I can understand the frustration of having tickets for a reserved coach and having some freeloading, entitled American kids take your seats. But he was frighteningly angry from the get go. We got up, only to realize that there were no seats anywhere on the train to be had and the entire train ride would be spent standing...standing packed tight in a hot train with hundreds of other people. So tight if you fainted no one would notice. Because there wouldn't be space for you to fall or even lean differently. So tight I could have gone the entire ride suspended in the air just by the force of other bodies packed against me. The worst part was we didn't even know the train's schedule. Was this a "superfast" train that would get us there in 6 hours? Or a simply "fast" train that would take significantly longer.

Needless to say it was an interesting mix of being a nightmare and unbelievably hillarious. We got there in 6 hours by the grace of God (and for free I might add).

And quickly turned our attention to the kite festival, which I think is kind of a misnomer. It's a kite war fought from the rooftops of the city. The kites are not elaborate designs, they are utilitarian weapons. The goal of each kite-wielding warrior is to "cut down" another kite, meaning you fly your kite in such a way that your kite will bring down another kite by either cutting the string of the kite or capturing the kite. My family must have bought hundreds upon hundreds of simple rhomboid kites in preparation. We had neighbors over to eat and drink and fly kites on the roof. It was amazing to see the sky full of kites and the rooftops across the city full of people in celebratory moods. Until the bandages and hand wraps came out and the blood started flowing. My cousin's hands were bleeding!! Why? Because they coat the strings with powdered glass. Better to cut your kite with (my dear).

Amazing.

It was possible to get string that was not coated in glass, and that was what I flew my one kite with.

I am no kite-warrior.

I later told my aunt about our train experience and she was appalled. She laughed about it later, but I think her suspicions that raising kids in America turns them crazy were confirmed. All in all my friend and I both got into the competitive game of trying to capture people's kites. I never quite got the technique down, but the event itself was such a beautiful display of citywide social interaction.

It looks most like this Grade II listed sewer ventilation vent! (more about them later...) but without the crown. Ham Baker also made drain covers, and firehydrants. And this green post.

"No risk, no fun", c'est un série de vidéos sur Youtube créée par un certain Nookyn. Six compilations, à ce jour, de performances techniques et sportives parfaites. Des mecs passent des milliers d'heures à risquer parfois leur vie pour atteindre ce niveau.

Pour les amateurs(trices) de sports extrêmes.

Voici les 3 premières vidéos :

Si ça vous plaît, voici les liens vers les 3 autres vidéos, et des liens supplémentaires :

• Épisode 4
• Épisode 5
• Épisode 6
• Hors-série : Les grosses gamelles ! (contrairement à Vidéo Gag, là, les gars se sont assurément fait très mal !)
• Et la liste complète des vidéos de Nookyn

Bon, allez, maintenant... Éteignez votre ordinateur, et allez vous entrainer !!! ;-)

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/500sec, Apreture:F/10, ISO:200 @ 70mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/500sec, Apreture:F/13, ISO:200 @ 25mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/640sec, Apreture:F/11, ISO:200 @ 53mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/640sec, Apreture:F/10, ISO:200 @ 40mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/320sec, Apreture:F/7.1, ISO:100 @ 17mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/500sec, Apreture:F/10, ISO:200 @ 17mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/320sec, Apreture:F/10, ISO:100 @ 48mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/500sec, Apreture:F/10, ISO:200 @ 48mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/500sec, Apreture:F/9, ISO:200 @ 70mm

Exif: Canon EOS 30D, Shutter Speed:1/500sec, Apreture:F/11, ISO:200 @ 53mm

The Blackheath Bike and Kite festival looks like it should be a great event - it is happening over the weekend of 14th & 15th June, on the heath, and from Lewisham Council's website, it looks like it will be free of charge. The bugle will be flying a kite (if permitted). In the meantime, some practice will be necessary. In other kite-related news, this blog post by M Johnson demonstrates attaching a mobile phone to a kite, and videoing the results! The bugle feels that this shows a high degree of trust in both the strength of the mobile phone, and skill of the kite flier... Not sure my "controlled landings" would be up to this...

Ariel kite photography has been a big thing on the web for a while- I remember reading about someone who built a camera timer based on an ice-cube and an elastic band - when the kite is in the air, the ice-cube melts, forcing a piece of wood to press the shutter on the camera (this back in 1999, before mobile phones and digital cameras were cheap as Blackheath fish & chips). Just found the page - it's a bit dusty, but if you blow on it a bit, you should be able to find it behind this link.

If anyone has any examples of Blackheath ariel photography, please let me know!

The photo on this post is by Flickr user Ronnie44052 and is used under a Creative Commons license. And yes, that sky is far too blue to be in the UK.

Anyway, here are a few sites to inspire:

• Birdseye: Kite Aerial Photography - a very nice website with some stunning coastal shots
• Scott Heafner: KAP Panoramas - interactive 360° panoramas
• Charles C. Benton - KAP - plenty of info on KAP to look through
• Gerco de Ruijter - Dutch site with abstract patterns from the landscape seen from above
• Flickr KAP pool

Lyd - Rock
Lyd - S for Song
[audio=http://www11.nrk.no/urort/1.0/track/download/505990.mp3]

Jeg falt for denne sangen, fordi jeg liker denne typen musikk. Et rent jenteband fra Bergen!

Kite - Rock
Kite - head first (into oblivion)
[audio=http://www11.nrk.no/urort/1.0/track/download/51417.mp3]
Kjempebra rock!

Big Muff 68- Hard Rock
Big Muff 68 - This drug will set you free
[audio=http://www11.nrk.no/urort/1.0/track/download/137026.mp3]
Glimrende gitarsoloer som smelter sammen i en treenighet. Love it!

I'm one step closer to achieving my inner leisure-creature life's agenda. I've just placed an order for a surfkite, surfboard and harness from bestkiteboarding.com. Been trying to look up any hint of surfing activity on the Brunei beaches. I'm still not in the know if there even is much of a surfing community (or club) in Brunei. I think the few water-sport and recreation facilities available in serasa and somewhere in KB is more towards boating or kayaking, maybe even windsurfing. Feel free to get in touch and give someone like me the heads up. If not then, I might as well start my own Kitesurfing niche soon. Well, as soon as my kitesurf gear arrives complete and as soon as I get my kite flying and off the ground. Can't wait! Hmmm, I'll need one one of 'em comlimentary tight gay wetsuits to go with, ahahaa.