I stumbled on an interesting website called Personas; it’s part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, that’s currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses natural language processing to create a data portrait of your online identity.

I like the idea, but it didn’t really give any good results. I tried it out a couple of times, and each time I got different results. I understand that I’d get different results for “Melinda Seckington” vs “Miss Geeky”, but I got several different results for “Melinda Seckington”, which just doesn’t make sense. I also don’t understand which websites it analyzes to get its data from. Here’s my results:

Little bit weird, right? I have no idea where terms like medicine, illegal, religion, committees come from; I don’t think I’ve ever written about stuff like that. And even things like politics, and music, I practically never write about that!

The people behind it know that it doesn’t give good results though, and see it as a way to make people think about online identities:

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

It is an interesting idea, and I understand the concept behind it. Still, I’m wondering if there is a site out there that truly analyzes our online identities. I’d love to see something that takes tags and favourites from my Delicious, YouTube, Flickr, etc, adds an analyzation of my blog, Twitter and whatever other websites I’m on, to finally create a nice visualization of my online presence. Does something like that exist already?

Yay, the latest release of Mac OS X is out: Snow Leopard! It’s basically an upgrade of Leopard, with some great interface changes and a major speed boost. If you’re using Leopard it’s only £25/$29/€29 for a single user license, and £39/$49/€49 for a family pack (multiple machine installs within one family allowed). If you’re still using an earlier version, a full Box Set costs £129.

Check out the Apple Store to buy your Snow Leopard!

Interesting links for August 23rd through August 27th:

• Anagram Map – Lovely map of the London Tube, but with anagrams of the station/line names. Without looking can you tell me which tube stops the following anagrams are: Chronic Grass, Crux For Disco, Concerning Torments and Blood Rending.
• How much harm does a bad book cover do? – Marketing classics to the Twilight generation.
• The Measure of a Robot – Cute chart of robots: “where they fall on a scale of good to evil, and a scale of being humanoid-shaped to being AIs-in-a-box”.

The Wolfman: Lawrence Talbot, a haunted nobleman, is lured back to his family estate after his brother vanishes. Upon his return and after being reunited with his estranged father, Talbot is bitten and cursed by a werewolf. Ooh, this looks like fun! You know how much I love my vampire/werewolf/etc movies, so a definite TO-BE-WATCHED. Release Date: 10 February 2010 (UK, US)

Youth In Revolt: About Nick Twisp, who does everything he can to win the heart of (and lose his virginity to) his dream girl. Hmm, not sure about this. It looks a bit boring until the introduction of Francois Dillinger, but I don’t think even that looked worth watching. Release Date: 30 October 2009 (US)

Capitalism: A Love Story: A comical look at the global financial crisis and the current troubles with the U.S. economy during the transition between the incoming Obama Administration and the outgoing Bush Administration. Release Date: 23 September 2009 (US)

War of The Worlds: Goliath: In 1900, the Earth was attacked by ruthless invaders from the planet Mars. The Martian’s 80 ft tall, heat-ray spewing, Tripod battle machines laid waste to the planet, but the invaders ultimately fell prey to Earth’s tiny bacteria. Fourteen years later, Man has rebuilt his shattered world, in large part by utilizing captured Martian technology. Equipped with giant, steam-powered Tripod battle machines, the international rapid reaction force, A.R.E.S., is Mankind’s first line of defense against the return of the rapacious Martian invaders. Release Date: On DVD February 2010

The Tournament: Every seven years in an unsuspecting town, The Tournament takes place. A battle royale between 30 of the world’s deadliest assassins. The last man standing wins the $10 million cash prize and the title of Worlds No. 1 Assassin, which carries the legendary million dollar per bullet price tag. Release Date: unknown

Mother (Madeo): Directed by Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, this movies is about a mother who desperately searches for the killer that framed her son for their horrific murder. Release Date: unknown

Armored: A crew of officers at an armored transport security firm risk their lives when they embark on the ultimate heist….against their own company. Armed with a seemingly fool-proof plan, the men plan on making off with a fortune with harm to none. But when an unexpected witness interferes, the plan quickly unravels and all bets are off. Release Date: 4 December 2009 (US), 5 February 2010 (UK)

I kind of like the campaign for the new Ford Ka: it’s all about letting people find and explore the hidden gems out there, everything from cool funky fashion boutiques to the best music venues. The latest TV advert for the Ka doesn’t even feature the actual car until the last moment, but has hundreds of Ka silhouettes hidden in the decor:

Besides that their website Go Find It has all sots of cool “gems” featured for tons of cities. It’s great to find some cool and interesting new spots to visit.

I’ve got a cool competition for you all. One of my readers here will win the invite to an exclusive real life treasure hunt/private shopping session next Thursday (3rd of September) at the Bankside London JoY store, together with me and several other bloggers (and their readers). During the course of the evening you’ll get the chance to find silver Ka miniatures which will be hidden in the store, and redeem them against £60 worth of JoY vouchers.

All you have to do to have a chance to take part in this exclusive event is to find the Ford Ka hidden on this blog. To help you along I’ll tell you this: it’s within a post from 2009, and “butterflies”. Once you’ve found the Ka, leave a comment behind on that post answering this question: “Tell us about your hidden gem in London“.

The top three most amazing/funniest/brilliant responses will be chosen by the people at We Are Social (who set up this event) and I will then select a finalist. The competition ends on Tuesday, September 1st 17:00.

Episode 136: “I would like you for my own”

I got to see (500) Days of Summer last Monday, and I think it’s amazing. A real review will be coming soon (I promise), but in short it’s one of the sweetest and most beautiful movies I’ve seen.

This video kind of serves as a promo for the movie, because it stars both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, and is directed by Marc Webb (the director of 500 Days). In reality though it’s the music video for “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”, by Zooey Deschanel’s band She & Him. It’s a bit slow at the start, but is stay with cause it gets pretty cool:

[Watch on MissGeeky]

Besides that, there’s a clip from the movie where Summer and Tom talk about being Sid and Nancy. If you haven’t seen it, check it out:

I love the clip, but the cool thing of that is that for Cinemash (swedes but then semi-professional) they played Sid and Nancy.

Via Firstshowing.net

These skirts are just so cute! I wish I had the skills to create something like this:

Via Design Crush

Bit of a late blog post, but I just found out that The Wizard of Oz (1939) turns 70 today. And I just had to share that with you, my dear readers. So to celebrate, here’s Miss Garland herself with Over The Rainbow:

[Watch on MissGeeky]

Ages ago I blogged about the Top 30 Most Infamous TV Show Opening Voiceovers (looking back I sooo would have changed that tile to something else), and had meant to do a followup post with just theme songs. Never got around to that, but now I finally got inspired by this blog post from Orbyn about favourite theme songs, and decided to do one myself.

I thought I’d split it up though in two posts: one specifically for cartoons and one for other (normal) shows. So here are the cartoon theme songs I adored:

10. Pokemon

I wouldn’t exactly call this a favourite, but I was shocked to discover I still know all the lyrics. Especially cause I didn’t learn them by choice. I was 13-14 when Pokemon came out, and was too old to really watch it. My sister however is 5 years younger and 8-9 she was exactly the right age for it; she used to watch it every single morning for a couple of months long. And then she got the CD with the soundtrack.

9. Care Bears

I know, I know, it’s a bit… sweet and cutesy, but I still like this theme song:

8. Samurai Pizza Cats

I never liked watching the actual episodes; I just wanted to sing along to the theme song.

7. X-Men

I just loved the intro with all the characters showing off their powers.

6. M.A.S.K

The first time I found out what an acronym was 🙂

5. Gummi Bears

Gummi bears!!!

4. Duck Tales

The weird thing with this is that I’ve watched both the Dutch and the English versions. The theme song was the same except for (of course) the lyrics:

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

There’s this one vivid memory I have of when I was 7 and overheard a couple of the boys in my class discussing the theme song of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They couldn’t remember the lines exactly and were trying to figure out what they were again. So I jumped in, and sang the entire intro. They were so puzzled that a girl would even watch the show and know the lyrics (“But you’re a girl.”); even for my 7-year-old self that really rubbed the wrong way. Anyhow, here’s the video

2. Captain Planet

The first song I truly remembering practicing the lines and trying to figure out what exactly was sung:

1. Mysterious Cities of Gold

The weird thing is that I don’t remember watching that many episodes of this, but I still get goosebumps every time I hear this song:

So what are your favourite cartoon theme songs? Any really obvious ones I’ve missed?

After The Dark Knight, lots of people were wondering what Christopher Nolan next’s project would be. We slowly found out he’s working on Inception, with a fantastic cast. It’s got Leonardo di Caprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cottilard, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine and Ken Watanabe.

But what is it about? Well, until now (actually still even now) Nolan has been extremely tightlipped about this. This trailer is the first thing we see of it:

[Watch on MissGeeky]

Oooh, I like it. Not sure where it’s going, but I’m really curious to see it now. I’m pretty much a fan of Nolan: while I liked both Batman movies, I adored two of Nolan’s “other” movies: Memento and The Prestige. And Inception is looking to be something similar: a movie where you’ll be trying to figure out the entire time “what the hell is going on here”.