submono's sublog » china

hong kong memory

submono — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:10:38 +0000

i made a soundscape in ableton that utilizes and connects sounds and impressions from my last visit in hong kong: “hong kong memory”.

hong kong memory.mp3

augmented reality in unity 3d

submono — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:57:00 +0000

made a small augmented reality demo in unity 3d for a chinese client. the scene runs in real-time with lights, shadows and wind force at a steady 45 fps @ 1980x 1080 px on my (okay, very fast) notebook.
the “stars” of the whole scene are actually the beach sun umbrellas. they are covered in invisible solar cells that store energy during the day. this energy can then be used to power build-in led lights at night.

kinda nifty

from dull to bright

submono — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:03:11 +0000

it took one hour of work and a little love from my friends adobe and wacom to turn a dull grey day into an exciting exhibition night.

lajin paida

submono — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:08:49 +0000

my “love affair” with lajin paida, a self-healing technique started after i had torn a muscle in my thigh during one of my rowing workout. for long weeks i received extensive physical therapy in germany but nothing could diminish the exquisite pain resulting from the torn muscle and a resulting blood clot where the muscle had bled into the soft tissue.

it all got turned around when my wife brought home a lajin bench from china. within a week of self-healing therapy my condition changed dramatically with the blood clot dissolving at an incredible pace and the muscle finally healing. it was a painful process (in the first sessions i could barely bend my leg at a 45 degree angle) and completely against my german doctors advise to rest and to keep the leg still but the results spoke for themselves.

now back in shanghai we’re again happy owners of a lajin bench and i do daily lajin and paida exercises to keep my blood pressure low and the chi flowing. more in-depth information about self-healing and lajin paida can be found on the hubpages of good guy.

Email to Mr. Tor Odland, Communications Director at Opera

submono — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:28:51 +0000

Dear Mr. Odland,

when I tried to access the free world through Opera Mini this morning, all I got was a message that I should “upgrade” to the Chinese version of Opera Mini which would offer me “better speed”. We both know what is really behind this move and honestly I am disgusted and shocked! And I’m also embarrassed to be European. To me, Opera was always the other, better voice. Fair and not driven by greed and self-serving reasons.

This has all changed overnight. Apparently Opera is not much different from the rest of the pack and why not cave in to Chinese oppression when so many others have done the same thing already, right?!

You should monitor the Internet and the Twitterverse closely in the coming days and weeks to see the damage you have done to your own company and to everyone believing in a free world.

Shame!

Sven Muentel

More info on this topic on Carsten Ullrich’s Blog!

Time is flying

submono — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:56:30 +0000

Wow, almost one month since the last blog entry. But there is simply no time to update more regularly. We are working on three major exhibitions at the moment and on top of that have just won the competition for the pavilion of Syria on the Expo 2010. While these are all very good news (popping a bottle of Champagne) it means an extraordinarily high workload and less time for other creative things.

Rendering of the Syrian pavillion

To keep myself fit and healthy I’m back to swimming (which also burns more calories than running : ). We have some really nice outdoor pools in the compound and I enjoy it very much.

The iPhone suicide, part II

submono — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:22:41 +0000

Apparently Foxconn has agreed to pay the parents of Sun Danyong money to “compensate” for the loss of their son. And hey, his girlfriend even got a shiny new MacBook! Now, was this so hard? Yes, smiles all around and everything is peachy again in the fruit orchard.

Ah, life is priceless…

Addendum: please also check out the blog entry “Why I am quitting Apple” by Lonnie Hodges.

The iPhone suicide

submono — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 02:12:08 +0000

Much has been written about the iPhone suicide already and instead of repeating all this I’d rather like to refer you to Perspective on the iPhone Suicide, a very good comment by Jason Chen on Gizmodo.

Let me just ask two question here: how far have we, as a civilization, as a people come that a young man had to die over an electronic gadget? Have our values really deteriorated to a point where the future version of a narcissistic icon – or as Chen puts it “a fucking phone” – is worth more than a human life?

Homo Sapiens indeed!

Little Bee

submono — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:37:57 +0000

TTU

Topping Out

submono — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:32:22 +0000

Today I was invited to attend the topping out ceremony of the German Pavilion for the Expo 2010. The topping out ceremony is a German tradition that celebrates the completion of the basic structure of a building.

Well, it’s really like this, when you’re suddenly surrounded by (other) two meters tall Europeans they are either Dutch or German. Well, in this case mostly German and so there was a nice and surprisingly big crowd present to marvel at the huge steel skeleton that is to be the German Pavilion and to enjoy German beer (of course) and food.

The only real drawback was the weather. A super hot and sticky, overly humid summer day in Shanghai that kept people flocking near the aircons in the food tents. I still don’t know how they want to handle this when the real Expo is up and people will have to queue for hours outside the main attractions.

Guess we’ll all find out soon enough