Rob Ray

If you want to make giant posters, for say.... an OccupyWallStreet protest. Posterazor is an awesome little application. It's open source, easy to use and works on Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Also Rasterbator has a pretty great online wizard and the output looks much nicer (depending on your source image) than Posterazor but it has a 1MB upload limit. There is also a Windows version of Rasterbator, but nothing for Mac or Linux.

Sign-making and knit-in tonight starting 7:30 at the red tent library on the north lawn of city hall, temple street between spring & main. please join!! Bring foamcore, pens or paint, stencils, needles, hooks, yarn, or whatever other tools you use to craft!

Jen and I have had a number of conversations about what we are enjoying about Occupy Los Angeles and also things that are worrying us. The big worry is the energy fizzling out quickly even though we know so many people who already work so hard, and do an amazing job, at Living Wall Street Free.

The thing we kept coming back to was how to use the protest site as a place where longer-term strategies for Living Wall Street Free can be developed and advocated.

I think one of the challenges of keeping personal fires stoked and the media interested is to:

1) Make the protest site a place of inspiration and a place people actually want to go to repeatedly.
2) Make the protest site something people want to take pictures of and spread the word about.
3) Make the protest site an incubator for "living differently" where long term strategies for Living Wall Street Free are shared.

I'll throw out some ideas that are just rolling around in my head. Many of these could be pulled off with one folding table so they wouldn't be "spectacles" attracting police attention but they would be compelling enough for people to come down to check things out, encourage repeat visits and be cool and substantive enough to warrant positive media attention.

- Readings
- Performances
- Composting workshops
- Signmaking workshops
- Electronics "Fix it" and home repair workshops.
- Solar power technology intros
- "Make your holiday gifts this year!" advocacy and workshops.
- Free Store site - people bring stuff they don't want and trade it for stuff they do want.
- Free bike bepair kiosk
- Side Streets woodworking bus. http://sidestreet.org/
- Getting the Time Bank involved http://www.echoparktimebank.com/echoparktimebank/Home.html
- Getting the http://neighborgoods.net/ people to come down and extol the virtues of sharing things instead of buying them.

Let's Go!!!!

OCCUPY WALL STREET! OCCUPY LOS ANGELES!

Here's a few videos I took of SRL's De-Manufacturing Machine at the Under the Big Black Sun opening at LA MOCA's Geffen Contemporary.

Great cover of the Joy Division classic She’s Lost Control by DJ Spoek Mathambo

SPOEK MATHAMBO - CONTROL from spoek mathambo on Vimeo.

My random thought for the day provoked by a series of articles in The Wire that keep irritating me.

I believe there's at least two inter-dependent types of value. I'll call it two for the sake of this post.

To me, there's "shared value" and there's "object value."
"Shared value" is value that exists when a thing is shared.
"Object value" is value that exists when a thing is created.

Jesus Lizard's Liar album for example... one of my favorite albums.

I'm suspicious of the idea that proclaims "not sharing a thing strips it of it's value." Jesus Lizard's Liar would be a pretty great record even if there was only one copy of the album and you could only listen to it by flying to France and crawling into a hidden cave on your belly and handcranking the record player.

I am also suspicious of the idea that proclaims "not sharing a thing makes something more valuable." My love for Jesus Lizard's Liar is enhanced when I hear 8-bit remixes of their song "Boilermaker" and when I add that song to mixes I make for my friends.

If you only share a thing without recognizing the object value of the thing you have betrayed the thing.

If you only covet the thing without recognizing the shared value of the thing you have also betrayed the
thing.

-----

Update: Thank's to @debcha for the link to Nina Paley's Culture is Anti-Rivalrous post. and @fielderblank
and I had a nice exchange that got me to thinking about "the maker" and
how they instantiate the object and the resulting value-chain attached
to that object.

Some interesting stuff in RSH's "BOMB"

36mb pdf of the manifesto.

Dang! Mike Huckaby (facebook) bringing tha heat in this mix!

Mike Huckaby - FACT Mix - October 2010 by R_co

Joy Division is a pretty good soundtrack for Sunday nights.

Big ups to Geeta Dayal for tweeting ColdCatz79's posting of a number of great previously unreleased Joy Division demos on YouTube.

I compliled em all into one playlist for your streaming pleasure.

Yesterday was my 1 year anniversary of living in Los Angeles! So many people have helped me out this year i thought I'd start returning the favor! So i made a Google Map called Makin' Stuff in Los Angeles! it's where i put various weirdo stores, hackerspaces and other cool and possibly unknown resources.

Please add to it!

Big thanks to Chris Spurgeon for the additions. Keep 'em coming folks!

In the spirit of solidarity with Rhizome.org. I'm turning off my CSS.

There's quite a few of these videos. This one is particularly good.

Olle from Volturyon....

really nice Rob Hood/Jeff Mills-influenced minimal techno live PA set tuned up for 2011.

Staffan Linzatti Live PA (Sights Pt.1) (05-05-2011) (256 kbps) by Staffan Linzatti

Jason Soliday's new audio work is a smokin' hot example.
WARNING: If you're at work, turn the speakers down. If you're anywhere else, turn the speakers UP!

Shivering Disorganizer by JSoliday