BreachTheWall

Michael Tracey is a photographer in Asheville, NC who has come up with an unusual idea: He wants to photograph walls and people separated by them in some of the major hot spots of the world, such as the Israeli security fence (West Bank Barrier) and the Korean DMZ.

Michael Tracey participates in Name Your Dream Assignment, a photo competition where you can win $50K to complete the photo assignment of your dreams.

Visit Breachthewall.com for more details on how to participate or vote.

I also wrote this post in my MJYTV blog as a kind of "extra material", where I explain how to mix old school television tricks with video-blogging and Flash effects for narrative variation. It's mostly for those interested in using professional storytelling techniques in YouTube productions.

Manage Your Managers

A brief and very useful video from BNet explaining how you build better relationships and increase your productivity and work experience using the ICE model.

Photographer Wants to Document Walls Worldwide

It's a dream of a lifetime for Michael Tracey, an American photographer living in Asheville NC:

If his project titled Breach The Wall is approved, he could win $50K to go into the world and produce a photo book. The contest joins his professional skills with his political passion, to bridge gaps and break down barriers between various groups of people.

"We have been building walls for as long as we could pile rock on rock, to separate ourselves from our neighbours. All these barriers fail. I will photograph these attempts at separation and how as human beings, not nations, we overcome", Michael Tracey writes.

The project began long before the contest, with a philosophical discussion about walls, physical and mental. As his wife explains:

"A while back The Husband and I were talking about the fence against Mexico, and just how bloody stupid it was. This evolved, as discussions do, into a mutual rant about how idiotic all walls trying to separate people into different, usually combative, groups have always been."

The "mutual rant" led to a brilliant, but at the time being seemingly impossible idea to travel to as many of these walls as the couple could manage to get around to, researching the history of every wall, talking to the people living around and inbetween them, and photographing local residents next to the constructions to show the fulitility of trying to keep people apart.

"It would be beautiful and poignant, of interest to both history buffs and current events enthusiasts", says Michael's wife, a prolific blogger known online as Celestina.

It was a dream until a couple of days ago, when they came across an online contest called Dream Assignment, offering to fund the best and most popular project. Now it is... a possibility.

"A couple of days ago, The Husband found a contest online, where you can name your dream photographic project and possibly win $50K to go do it. He signed up, and the system is that you have to be in the top 20 "popular" votes in order to get to the final round of judging. I figure we have a damned good idea, and The Husband is a damned good photographer," Celestina says.

At this point Michael Tracey is in the top 20, which means he is a candidate for the price money.

The idea is as good as they come: It's about documenting walls and the way they influence our thinking. And once you think of it, there are a lot of big walls and a lot of people separated by them, all over the world.

And Michael Tracey really is the hell of a photographer, as anyone can see from his portfolio.

If you think this sounds like an exciting project, and you'd like to see what it leads to, when it's carried out, you can vote for Mogismo here. And follow his blog and his Twitter updates here.

Human enough?

Facial expressions that resemble human beings is relatively new in robotics.

Bristol scientists have created the first robot that can mimic human expressions in real time.

He's called Jules. His girlfriend would be pretty hot, if she wasn't missing the back of her head.

The androids mimic human beings whose facial expressions are digitally transferred to the mechanical device.

I predict we'll see these employed in Hollywood movies as early as next year.

Check it out

Europe's Most Advanced Humanoid Robot is Open Source

Do baby androids dream of electric toys?

Scientists have designed the robot to mimic the actions of a child. It enters the world with no knowledge, and it actually learns.

The documentary shows the "3 year old" android playing the drums, and "iCub" as it's called actually drops like a tired baby would during the photo shoot.

But I couldn't get a lead on whether or not it learns through physical activity (kinesthetic learning). It seems it doesn't - engineers program it in cooperation with child development psychologists.

BBC claims their findings could lead to the development of humanoid robots which learn, think and talk.

The instructions for assembling a robot like this is freely available on the Internet - it's an open source project.

The project is sponsored by EU. The android is on display in Manchester at the moment.

Watch it in action

Flexiple TouchScreen EPD Display

Usually touch screen is limited to rigid displays, but this company seems to have cracked the code. They claim to be able to deliver the first flexible touch screen pads for military use this year.

Customize Firefox Browser Panel

Here's just a small trick for those who are

• really into time saving and performance boosting
• concerned about micro-damages from mouse control (ergonomics)
  

Firefox can be almost 100 % customized. It's not just the theme or the addons. The entire spectrum of standard browser features can be removed or replaced.

Here's how you do it:

You right click on the header. Firefox opens a control panel, where you can drag and drop, to and from the header.

It looks like this:


Here's what to do:
Choose the buttons or functions you use the most, but sort out those you are comfortable launching with shortcuts or quick keys.

If you are right handed, place them to the right. This will save you operational effort with the mouse - you can keep the cursor within the same zone of the screen.

This means, for instance, that I tend to use

• Home (Google)
• Refresh
• Back / Forth
• History

I also bookmark a lot, but for some reason I prefer to launch this with the keyboard (Ctrl+D).

Since I am right handed and seriously into cutting both seconds from my performance and strain on my joints, my Firefox header looks directly opposite to most:



Personal preferences: Themes and addons

The theme is Anthem, my absolute favourite theme. I am required to say that it is built by Wesley Hales.

As you can see I have added the Last.fm addon, which is usually also great, but for some reason misfires these days (like a lot of online services!).

Other than that, I try to keep it simple with CoolIris for image browsing, ScribeFire for blogging and KwiClick for research.

KwiClick is so far the only addon for this purpose I have allowed to stay in Tools. A lot of other addons may have handy functions, but they also tend to interfere with standard functionality - like opening a new browser window by right clicking.

(No amount of smartness can justify replacing right click on link / launch in new tab, and you really do not want to browse through your entire tool kit in order to enable and disable depending on what you are doing at the moment. It spoils momentum.)

For the right handed: I have also found VertTabBar, which is a really nice addon. I used to have a vertical tab bar in the left side of the screen, but it bothered me I had to reach over with the cursor every time I wanted to engage it.

VertTabBar doesn't come with preview, unfortunately.

KwiClick opens in the lower right zone of your browser window.