Historic San Francisco

The San Francisco library keeps a great archive of historical photographs on its website. This is an extensive collection with many unique photos of SF’s history. among them for instance more than 600 aerial shots of all the neighbourhoods, hundreds of pictures of historic bars in the city and more pictures of cable cars then [...]

Pride and Celebration

It has been Gay Pride week in San Francisco and today we went to see the Gay Pride Parade on Market Street. This was the fourth time that we had a chance to see this event and it was as always breathtaking. More than 750.000 people gathered on Market Street and in the Civic Center [...]

The Unknown Country

If you think that the western public didn’t know much about Iraq, compare that to our knowledge of North Korea: Zero. Nada. North Korea could as well be located on one of Jupiter’s outer moons. While doing some comparative architectural studies (ok, I was surfing skyscrapers.com) I stumbled over the fact that a 105 story [...]

A Film Like A Hulk

Saw The Hulk today with a couple of friends. It’s a very good re-interpretation of the comic books, taking artistic freedoms where necessary, but still staying close to the original atmosphere of the paper version. The movie starts slowly and it takes quite a while before the exposition is dealt with, but once the Hulk [...]

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Gadget Biz

One theme that has been going on for quite some time is that Japan always gets the coolest gadgets years before the rest of the world ever even hears about them. It’s a shock to arrive in Japan and to realize that I’ve just stepped 2 years into the future. A visit to an electronics [...]

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Satan’s Laundromat

Now that’s a great name for a blog… Satan’s Laundromat serves up great photos from (mostly) New York. Mike takes pictures on his way to work, or just wanders around some of the lesser known corners of New York, shooting pictures of shop fronts, rusty street signs and life in the big city. This man [...]

The Dilemma

The US occupation of Iraq is slowly turning into a dilemma not just for the US government, but for the whole world. The American military is caught in a giant trap and while a rising body count will probably end the occupation, the world will be left with the task of rebuilding Iraq and keeping [...]

Flash Art

When does a media piece become art? It’s interesting to see how with every generation we have to re-draw the boundaries between interesting tinkering and art, now again with new media forms like web sites and Flash experiences… Here is an example of what I would sort into the art bucket: Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES [...]

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Forgotten Shanghai

During my travels in China I was always fascinated by Shanghai’s history and by how close to the surface of modern Shanghai much of its past still is. It’s still possible to find pre-revolutionary signage on some store fronts in the more quiet side streets and a lot of the building substance of the 1940s [...]

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