The word reality derives from the Latin res, the thing, but it is also related to réalité and roi, the kingliness of the king. What is real and what is real? That is the question when the reality of things becomes determined by their existence on the Internet. This existence, in turn, is subjected to the power of search […] Continue Reading…
Nearing Peak Car ?
Is our society evolving toward a post-car world? Among reasons for dropping car sales in the World are the reversal of the urban sprawl trend, the development of public transport, the reallocation of urban space to bicycles and pedestrians, the development of car sharing facilitated by new communication technologies or a cultural shift among younger individuals, related also to […] Continue Reading…
The impossible here
The recurring challenge facing anyone who tries to localize realities in order to show their spatial relations on a map is the systematic impermanence of any objectivized space. Thus any space used as a base layer in thematic maps must be thought of as the result of an ongoing production. Places, like any mobile individuals, always move with respect […] Continue Reading…
A post-car world with the PodCar
The environmental and urbanistic reasons for getting rid of private individual car need no more to be listed. Known under the name of podcar, a promising car replacement solution consists of a driverless vehicle, usable on demand, and guided by an automatized navigation system (GPS, local terminals or […] Continue Reading…
Age of Cosmologies
A cosmology is the science of the human position in what the Greeks called the cosmos: an ordered universe in space and time. The Greek word cosmos also means army.
Even our physicists still conceive cosmoi, and make maps of them. One of these maps shows a universe unfolding in time like a living being. A continuous succession of planes, […] Continue Reading…
Four Music Videos for the End of the World
12/21/2012. Some say the end is near. But there’s still time to watch the best music videos about Doomsday.
Tool – Ænema
“Some say the end is near. Some say we’ll see Armageddon soon – I certainly hope we will” sings Maynard James Keenan. Here, the end of the world means “fret for your figure and fret for your latte and […] Continue Reading…
Unlock files that ArcMap forgot to unlock
ArcMap has the bad habit of forgetting to unlock files that you remove from a project. I have lost hours, as the only solution to remove unwanted locks seemed to be shutting down ArcMap, modifying the file, then restarting ArcMap (that takes at least a minute to load each time). Nothing seemed to help until I came across “Unlocker” […] Continue Reading…
Switzerland discusses food sovereignty – a vegetarian diet might be the answer
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet”, said Albert Einstein. This might also the answer to the questions discussed this Wednesday, September 19th in the Swiss parliament (both in the Conseil National and in the Conseil des États). “Food sovereignty” – coined under […] Continue Reading…
Sunrise or Sunset? Per Capita GDP Evolution in EU Member States
The infographic above looks like a sunset or a sunrise rendered in an impressionist painting of the pixel age. It illustrates EU’s per capita domestic product from 1998 to 2011, expressed in “purchasing power standard” (PPS). To get the PPS, you divide the per capita GDP by the purchasing power parity index. It says, more or less, how much […] Continue Reading…
Restore “New > Text file” in Windows’ contextual menu
If you’ve changed your standard .tex file editor to Notepad2 or Notepad++, chances are that the contextual menu entry “Create New > Document file” has disappeared.
To restore it, just save the following code as a .reg file and run it (thanks to Archos alias Limneos for posting the code on a SevenForums):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.txt]
“PerceivedType”=”text”
@=”txtfile”
“Content Type”=”text/plain”
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.txt\PersistentHandler]
@=”{5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}”
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.txt\ShellNew]
“ItemName”=hex(2):40,00,25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,\
6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,\
[…] Continue Reading…