Australians: I would so love a DVD or tape of this!

[reddragdiva]

Courtesy andricongirl:

Catalyst: Design By Fungus

"Dr Cameron Jones could be a genius; his colleagues even think he could shape our future. Others think he could be the Renaissance man for the 21st century, because he’s inventing ways for science and art to merge. Amazingly, one of the ways he’s doing it is by growing fungus on CD’s. So Catalyst reporter Graham Phillips went to meet him at the lab, but it turned out he’s doing his best work at night. He’s co-owner of Blue Velvet Bar & Nightclub; it’s a joint venture with his mum. It’s here in this purpose built boutique venue that Jones uses DJ equipment to create a crossover between Mathematical Modeling and art performance. If this seems all too weird, wait till you see what happens when he grows fungus on CD’s."

It's on Thursday at 8pm. If someone could please do us a DVD, tape or even MPEG of this, it would be most welcomed and certainly rate you a Christmas card or better.

(Blue Velvet is my favourite goth bar in history. I used to live literally around the corner from it. I miss it terribly. Where else could you go for drunken arguments about the future of science and computing with your Ph.D. barman? And the beer was much better than the Dev. But that's saying remarkably little.)

Update: zotz, please try again. I'll leave the duplicate to you this time!

Comments

[andricongirl.livejournal.com]

ill probally tape it , if no one else can do better, I don't think i can Mpeg it though

[lunadaze.livejournal.com]

OMG!! that rocks *bounce*
when's it on???

[reddragdiva]

Well, if you read the paragraph starting "It's on Thursday at 8pm" carefully, you'll see the answer cleverly concealed ...

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

I should be able to do this. I'll throw an MPEG-4 AVI at you once it's ready, and if you really want a DVD for archival I'll see what I can do about that too.

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting. Just had a google for some of his abstracts. Interesting stuff indeed. Seems along similar lines to a lot of what I'm looking at/reading at the moment.

[zotz]

Aah. I see. Oddly, the first one I submitted was the one with the typo, although it apparently arrived second. Odd.

Anyway, what I said was that I (and a couple of friends) once had a very nice chat with the barman at Tom's Bar and Grill (I think that's right) in St Louis (western downtown, near Barnes-Jewish Hospital) about spinal injuries research, which was what his PhD was in. And you're right. It does add to a place.

This was the place I may have mentioned that had the usual array of bad major-brewery stuff (Bud, Coors, etc) and half-a-dozen taps of Fat Tire, various Schlafly brews, and the like. We worked our way along them, and I was the first (because I was ordering last) to get to the end. I asked what it was, and he said it was a Michelob honey beer. As he said this, a waitress (there were tables further over, with folk eating) who was leaning on the corner of the bar looked up, looked me in the eye over the barman's shoulder, and slowly but definitely shook her head. I don't think I've ever been actively warned off a beer by the staff before. I certainly haven't since. Talking the next day to someone who knew the brew in question, I was told that it was a very wise call indeed.

[reddragdiva]

Heh!

Blue Velvet has (or had, early 2002) the usual taps for the usual Australian swill - Carlton products of dubious provenance, the main joy of which are that they're cheap - but some drinkable things in bottles, such as Coopers. Which is slightly obtainable in the UK - our London readers can get it at the Porterhouse, for instance. Coopers Sparkling goes very well with food. Even the good Australian beers are lagers, but they're really rather nice ones.

[reddragdiva]

That would be wonderful, thank you!

I'm not sure we have anything here to play an MPEG-4 (presumably there is a player for Win98 we could get). But as long as you have it to hand, it should be translatable to some viewable format.

(KDE 3 aKtion! views some AVIs with no problems, e.g. from Canon digital cameras, but chokes on some alleged MPEG-2s.)

[bar-bar-ella.livejournal.com]

Even the good Australian beers are lagers

'cept the ones that are ales, obviously. ;)

Toohey's Old Black Ale
Resch's Black Ale (mmm...chocolatelyvanillaey...
Carlton Black
James Squire's
Anything by the Grand Ridge Brewery in Gippsland
The seasonal beers that Cascade have brought out (the Winter Warmer was to *sublime*)
just off the top of me head. :)

[reddragdiva]

OoooOoOOOooo ...

I look forward to going through a selection when we visit.

"Wha'ss number ten taste like?"
*urp* "'S beer, mate."

[blarglefiend.livejournal.com]

MPlayer will play MPEG-4 AVI, along with a lot of other stuff.

If you haven't got that working, you can get the basic DivX kit from the DivX site (http://www.divx.com/). Make sure you just get the basic kit, they really push the "Pro" version, and if you don't give them money for that it installs a buttload of spyware.

I'm not surprised aktion! has trouble with some MPEG-2. Most things do, as there's a huge amount of room for variance. MPEG-2 really is an utter shit of a thing, but it is at least nominally robust hence the use for DVB-T.