littleforeigner blog of Paul Walsh

Amazing collection of Meiji and Taisho era photographs

Yesterday was one of those days when I REALLY love the Internet. When it works exactly how it is supposed to. While checking the Flickr feed in my RSS reader, in among all the shots of the Peace Park and Miyajima, I found a gem of a Meiji Era photo of women in kimono enjoying a stroll in what looks like Shukkeien Garden. I shared it here on the GetHiroshima blog yesterday.

Clicking through to Okinawa Soba’s Flickr page, I found a huge collection of quite amazing photographs, which it turns out he spent years collecting - all uploaded in great quality and under Creative Commons licences. I listed him as a contact, which he must have noticed while online in the US, took look at some pics in the GH Flickr account and posted a nice comment on one. Seeing this, I fired off a quick message complementing him on his collection. I later received a very nice reply in which, mouthwateringly, he wrote that what he has uploaded so far is “only the tip of the iceberg”!

I highly recommend spending some time looking through the 200+ pictures; really are fascinating and Okinawa Soba’s comments make for good reading too!

Through another of his pictures I can accross this discussion on the risks and issues involved with uploading private photo collections to sites like Flickr. I appreciate the concerns, but can’t help feeling that the benefit of sharing historically valuable such as this far outweighs the risk of being ripped off.

Bravo to Okinawa Soba!

Hug A Speaker

Tomorrow I’m DJing with the mighty windcheater at Hug A Speaker at MUGEN 5160. It’s a pre-holiday night, so if you fancy a bit of reggae, dub, breakbeat and dubstep, feel free. There’s no charge and women get their second refreshing beverage gratis.

The other DJs - Filter Kings, Jah Love Is Sweeter and Doikle - will be playing reggae, but windcheater and I will be going more uptempo, but trying to our set keep dub infuenced. I’m quite keen to see how MUGEN’s refurbishment looks.

Here’s a windcheater mix to listen to on the way to work.

Lhasa unrest

Boing Boing has a good round up of links relating to the current unrest in Lhasa and updates on the flow of information in and out of Tibet. They include a link to a site posting translations of microblog posts by Chinese netizens on sites similar to Twitter.

Here is one entry

What you are destroying is the very place that you live in. Aren’t you followers of the Living Buddha? You think this is something your Living Buddha instructed you to do, to destroy the very place that you live in? I think that most of these people haven’t thought about this, and that most of them have been deceived by the words of certain people who would see the motherland split! But if you just think about it, just who was it that made Tibet the developed place it is today? Who set up the bridge between Tibet and the whole world? And who is it that sends qualified people each year from every sector to educate the children of Tibet with knowledge and culture? AND who is it that sends aid from every developed city in the motherland each year to assist Tibet? I think you seem to have forgotten all this……

Blue Monday, two and a half decades old!

Still outstanding after all these years. Can’t believe I gave my original copy, bought on the day of it’s release, to a now long ex-girlfriend. If I hadn’t, I could put it here.

Freesound

Perhaps because I have very little original talent of my own, I’m a big supporter of the Free Culture movement and associated organisation Creative Commons. I just came across the excellent Freesound project via the Creative Commons blog. It’s kind of like Flickr for sounds - not songs and music - and once you start pottering around on the site it can be just as dagerous a time sink as the photo sharing site can be.

There are currently over 50,000 sound samples that have been contributed by users under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The quality of sound recordings vary greatly, but some of them are quite amazing. This 3.5 minute recording of a thunderstorm pointed to in this interview with Freesound’s founder is just beautiful and I’m very tempted to put it on loop while I take a well earned nap.

They also have some dapper T-shirts.

Last day in Hawaii

I had planned to post some thoughts and reflections on this year’s time in Hawaii, but we have our hands full trying to pack all the crap we’ve acquired over the past month.

So, instead, here is the obligatory sunset picture, courtesy of Joy, and a video of the Run-Swim race Joy did at Fort DeRussy this morning. It was tough, but I forced myself to stay on the sidelines due to my cracked rib. It’s a great biathlon and I hope to finally have a go at it next year.