I participated in the LA Video hackathon at Google Los Angeles this weekend. It was a two day affair at GOOG’s Venice office — a Frank Gehry building featuring a rad Claes Oldenburg sculpture.  

I pitched an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while and was able to assemble a great team to pull it off. This is rough and hosted on a dev box, but if you’re curious:

http://v1.goddamnyouryan.com/giggle/ 

We called the project Giggle — “Gigs powered by Google” — and it combines Songkick with YouTube to play a continuous stream of videos from bands who are coming to your city. You can skip artists you don’t like and buy tickets for those you do. Conceptually, I think it enables both active and passive awareness of artists and events, which is cool. 

The execution is super simple, and the genre field doesn’t really work because the data is incomplete, but I think the straightforwardness is what appealed to the hackathon audience. We also optimized the design for Google TV so it looked great on the big screen for the demo. 

Every attendee got a Google TV and winning team members got a Nexus 7. So far I really like both. A very successful weekend! 

If you want to see my demo, the video’s on YouTube (natch).

uchicagoadmissions:

Indiana Jones Mystery Package

We don’t really even know how to start this post. Yesterday we received a package addressed to “Henry Walton Jones, Jr.”. We sort-of shrugged it off and put it in our bin of mail for student workers to sort and deliver to the right faculty member— we get the wrong mail a lot.

Little did we know what we were looking at. When our student mail worker snapped out of his finals-tired haze and realized who Dr. Jones was, we were sort of in luck: this package wasn’t meant for a random professor in the Stat department. It is addressed to “Indiana” Jones.

What we know: The package contained an incredibly detailed replica of “University of Chicago Professor” Abner Ravenwood’s journal from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It looks only sort of like this one, but almost exactly like this one, so much so that we thought it might have been the one that was for sale on Ebay had we not seen some telling inconsistencies in cover color and “Ex Libris” page (and distinct lack of sword). The book itself is a bit dusty, and the cover is teal fabric with a red velvet spine, with weathered inserts and many postcards/pictures of Marion Ravenwood (and some cool old replica money) included. It’s clear that it is mostly, but not completely handmade, as although the included paper is weathered all of the “handwriting” and calligraphy lacks the telltale pressure marks of actual handwriting. 

What we don’t know: Why this came to us. The package does not actually have real stamps on it— the outside of the package was crinkly and dirty as if it came through the mail, but the stamps themselves are pasted on and look like they have been photocopied. There is no US postage on the package, but we did receive it in a bin of mail, and it is addressed to the physical address of our building, Rosenwald Hall, which has a distinctly different address from any other buildings where it might be appropriate to send it (Haskell Hall or the Oriental Institute Museum). However, although now home to the Econ department and College Admissions, Rosenwald Hall used to be the home to our departments of geology and geography. 

If you’re an applicant and sent this to us: Why? How? Did you make it? Why so awesome? If you’re a member of the University community and this belongs to you or you’ve gotten one like it before, PLEASE tell us how you acquired it, and whether or not yours came with a description— or if we’re making a big deal out of the fact that you accidentally slipped a gift for a friend in to the inter-university mail system. If you are an Indiana Jones enthusiast and have any idea who may have sent this to us or who made it, let us know that, too. 

We know this sounds like a joke/hoax… it’s not (at least, from our end).  Any hints, ideas, thoughts, or explanations are appreciated. We’ve been completely baffled as to why this was sent to us, in mostly a good way, but it’s clear this is a neat thing that either belongs somewhere else— or belongs in the halls of UChicago admissions history.

Internet: help us out. If you’re on Reddit (we’re not) or any other nerdly social media sites where we might get information about this, feel free to post far and wide and e-mail any answers, clues, ideas, thoughts, or musings to indianajonesjournal@uchicago.edu  (yes, we did set up an email account just to deal with this thing). 

I hiked up Mount Lee for the first time a couple weekends ago. As a resident of an iconic place, you’ve got to be sort of cool about the sights and stars, but I took unchecked pleasure in this adventure. If you’re in LA, it’s worth the easy 3 mile trek from Sunset Ranch (of Mulholland Drive fame, natch). 

kpseesee:

The Hollywood Sign is undergoing a major new paint job and facelift for the first time in 35 years. 

The sign was first hauled up to the top of Mount Lee as an advertisement for a new land development called “Hollywoodland.” In 1949, the “land” portion of the sign was taken down, leaving the shorter, more generic and now more famous nine-letter sign: “Hollywood.”

Now a crew is working on scraping off all the graffiti and old paint jobs that have built up over the years.

See more photos by KPCC photographer Mae Ryan and read about the project here.

(Source: audiovision)