Not long after the Olympics in Sochi ended, the Olympic village seems to have turned into a deserted place.
The editor-in-chief of BlogSochi, Alexander Valov, has been a clear-eyed documentarian of the rise of Olympic Sochi, and his latest report was this photoessay, which he calls Dead City. This is the emptiness of Sochi, in the shoulder season, before the domestic beachgoers arrive. Will they be enough?
Picture by Alexander Valov.
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Field Notes is now released entirely in wood with the Shelterwood Edition. Watching the manufacturing of these books, you can really feel the love going into a project like this.
We all know that paper is made from wood. Our 22nd FIELD NOTES COLORS seasonal release is made OF wood. The “Shelterwood” edition features covers made from actual American Cherry wood, sliced ever-so-thin and bonded to a substrate of kraft paper for durability. We believe we’re the first notebook company to manufacture such a product at such a scale.
Thanks to the natural texture of the wood, no two “Shelterwood” memo books are the same but all share their origin in the same few hand-picked cherry trees from Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. The wood covers are sustainably produced, with one 60″ wide log converted into 5000 feet of “Sheer Veneer,” with very little waste (the waste is recycled into wood pellets to heat the factory!). The process can be seen in the film above.
The covers are left uncoated with text printed in a triple-hit of “Ghostflower White” which remains slightly opaque, the wood texture showing through like a faded whitewashed fence. Inside covers are mossy green text on kraft paper. The guts of the books are Finch Fine “Soft White” 70# text stock, the same beefy stock you loved in our “America the Beautiful” Edition. They’re ruled in “Maidenhair Green,” and bound together with three sturdy gold staples
Jiro Dreams of Sushi follows Jiro Ono, one of the worlds greatest sushi chefs, at his little three-star Michelin sushi bar located in a Tokyo subway. It´s one of the better documentaries I´ve seen. I come to love Jiro´s sense of humour which shines through his somewhat very formal behaviour. As the synopsis gives you, this is an meditative experience seeing this film. The music, the slow-motion scenes and the attention to details leave you with a tranquil feeling. Just seeing Jiro´s son riding his bike after a visit to the fish market is such a moment.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi is the story of 85-year-old Jiro Ono, considered by many to be the world’s greatest sushi chef. He is the proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat, sushi-only restaurant inauspiciously located in a Tokyo subway station. Despite its humble appearances, it is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a prestigious three-star Michelin Guide rating, and sushi lovers from around the globe make repeated pilgrimage, calling months in advance and shelling out top dollar for a coveted seat at Jiro’s sushi bar.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family, and the art of perfection, chronicling Jiro’s life as both an unparalleled success in the culinary world and as a loving yet complicated father.
I´ve been wondering when this would finally happen. Apple is planning to launch an on-demand streaming service.
But it's the talks around on-demand subscription and the iTunes App for Android that will most intrigue label heads and the wider market. Apple founder Steve Jobs was widely known to have argued that fans would never subscribe for music. Moreover, up until now, iTunes has been committed to keeping the iTunes ecosystem closed off.
But now, nearly three years after Job's death, iTunes has to consider the option because so far this year, U.S. digital album sales are down 13 percent for the week ending March 16, and digital track sales are down 11 percent for that same period, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Even as download sales have deteriorated, revenue from streaming services have grown, according to two reports released on March 18. The first, from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), showed that streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora and YouTube generated $1.4 billion in subscription, advertising and licensing revenues in the U.S. last year, up 39 percent from 2012, while downloads revenue were down 3.2 percent to $2.9 billion. The second report, from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), painted a similar picture, albeit on a global scale. Streaming music revenue grew 51 percent worldwide, while downloads slipped 2.1 percent.
Illustration by Ed Fotheringham.
To Catch a Trader is a well produced documentary about the largest insider trading scandal in U.S. history.
FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith goes inside the government’s ongoing, seven-year crackdown on insider trading, drawing on exclusively obtained video of hedge fund titan Steven A. Cohen, incriminating FBI wiretaps of other traders, and interviews with both Wall Street and Justice Department insiders.
Transcript and latest news related to this story at the Frontline site.
Watch frenchman Guillaume Néry take a freedive into the world's largest bluewater sinkhole.
“The most magical moment is when I escape gravity. It is liberation. It is breaking loose. I fly with my arms open. At those moments I am completely calm. Everything around me becomes one and I become part of that whole,” he tells this month's Red Bulletin.
Freediving is a natural expression for his childhood ambition – he wanted to go into space.
“When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut and was constantly looking up at the sky,” he says.
“One day I saw a documentary about freediving legend Umberto Pelizzari. That was the first time I was confronted with a completely different world.”
Soon the Frenchman was practising holding his breath and diving at every opportunity to become one of the best in the world. His particular discipline is 'Constant Weight' where divers descend and ascend a line with just a monofin for assistance.
I´ve been thinking of investing in the company King when opportunity rises, but reading the article Candy Crush Maker Decides It Will be Worth About $7.6 Billion Before Its Collapse, made me re-think:
King, the future one-hit wonder responsible for the cellular telephone game Candy Crush Saga, announced today that it will pretend to be worth up to $7.6 billion before the studio inevitably collapses. As The New York Times’ Dealbook reports, King has filed a revised prospectus for an initial public offering of stock, and it intends to price its shares between $21 and $24. That means that a single share’s worth of King will cost the same as about 30 chocolate bombs in Candy Crush Saga, a game that nobody will be playing a couple years from now. The $7.6 billion self-valuation is an important public-relations step for the company, as it gives journalists a number they can reference when they eventually write stories about the studio’s sudden and calamitous decline.
King, which has made a single ultra-popular game in a decade of existence, is now solidly on track for its upcoming implosion, having entered the traditional pre-IPO make-believe monkeyshines period. After the studio stumbled onto a game that a lot of people like to play while waiting in line at the bank, King is asking investors to believe that it has discovered a formula for repeated, enduring success in the mobile game industry. The Candy Crush firm may be taking notes from its competitor Zynga, which is in the more advanced “collapse” stage of the game-studio collapse cycle after executing its hilarious “People will never get tired of FarmVille” strategy to perfection.
When seeing the mast walk stunt by yachtsman Alex Thomson, at first glance I thought it was a well edited material with Alex wearing some kind of safety equipment. I rewinded and paused the video several times but couldn´t notice any. In the new behind the scenes material, there are some intense moments, that cleared my doubts. No safety equipment at all! Amazing!
The British yachtsman Alex Thomson performs an amazingly daring feat on board his high-speed yacht, HUGO BOSS: He climbs up the 30-metre high mast of the moving vessel and dives into the ocean from the very top.
Alex Thomson has long established himself as one of the daredevils in the sport of sailing. The film made of his stunt shows how the round-the-world yachtsman balances on the mast of his 60-foot boat – at the height of a 10-story building – and climbs higher and higher above water level as the boat cuts through the waves. When the yacht is listing at 60 degrees, Thomson clambers to the tip of the mast and then dives into the sea below – perfectly styled in a consummately cut, water-resistant BOSS suit.
The 39-year-old – who is always keen to blaze new trails and devise new and exciting ways to use his yacht – had been planning this most recent trick for months in advance.
The crucial role in the feat – which was performed off the Spanish coast near Cádiz – was played by Thomson’s stunt coordinator Andy Bennett. “There are countless things that can go wrong. The mast is incredibly long, and the strong wind pummels the yacht from every direction. Every time the mast moves, Alex could lose his grip and plunge to the deck.”
To ensure assistance was available in case of an emergency, a medical team was on hand at all times, while divers on board a rubber dinghy sailed alongside the yacht.
Skipper Ross Daniel was charged with the challenge of steering the yacht and adjusting the yacht’s angle to ensure that Thomson had the best possible chance of reaching the top of the mast. Daniel: “When the direction of the wind changes, the boat can swing out of control and the mast veer upwards. If Alex can’t hold on, he only has one choice: jump into the water.”
Having safely returned to dry land after the stunt, Thomson commented, “We have been planning this trick for a very long time. There were lots of things that could have gone terribly wrong: The wind could have pulled me off the mast and catapulted me onto the deck; I could have hit the water at the wrong angle or surfaced too quickly. These were all factors we needed to consider far in advance.
Luckily (and despite my fear of heights), we succeeded in pulling it off. And as things turned out, the stunt was far more dangerous than I would ever have imagined. All in all, I can honestly say that it was the most stupid thing I’ve ever done in my whole life!”
This was not the first stunt we’ve seen from the British yachtsman. A video went viral in 2012 after showing Alex Thomson scaling the orange keel of his yacht from a speedboat. And the intrepid sailor has been making huge waves ever since. Last year he sailed around the world solo in the famous Vendée Globe race, capturing third place and breaking the British record in the process.
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Zoran Lucić, a graphic designer and art director from Bosnia and Herzegovina, has created some stunning football posters. The series are called Sucker for Soccer and include legends such as Ferenc Puskás and Pelé, up to today's football giants like Zlatan and Lionel Messi.
Zoran is interviewed in Swide magazine. See more of his work at Behance.
Via Made By Suzi. Images via Football Marketing.
Selling CD is still good business in Japan. It surprised me at first to learn about this, however, the lack of services like Spotify contribute to the CD still selling. Spotify is now expanding and will offer it´s service in another 20 countries. This year they will enter Japan.
The Japanese spent more money on CDs in 2012 than consumers in any other country, according to figures from the Recording Industry Association of Japan. CD sales actually grew 9% over the year before. Physical media including CDs and DVDs made up 80% of all music sales by value in 2012, compared to just 34% in the United States.
But why? For a country that is home to pioneering tech brands like Sony, Panasonic and Nintendo, the attachment to physical music seems a bit odd.
Culture plays a big role, according to Kotarao Taguchi, managing director of the Recording Industry Association of Japan. He said that Japanese customers don't just want the music. They also want the liner notes, the cover art and DVD extras.
"I think Japanese people as a nation have a strong attachment to physical goods," he said.
Image from YAHOO! News video.
Cold Water People is a short film produced by surf brand Finisterre portraying the people of cold water surfing. Narrated by Ernest Capbert. Music by CJ Mirra?
"Beyond The Golden Light" by Matthew Sigmon is a beautiful piece of music. I first heard it as a Hemi-Sync release and mistakenly thought this format was the only option. Thankfully, I was wrong! I love Hemi-Sync but due to it's sound technology, you can't listen to it without taking some precautions. Matthew's music is perfect for a quiet evening, Reiki sessions, massage, spa treatment etc.
Estonian photographer Kaupo Kikkas has taken these photos of an abandon outdoor movie theater in the desert of Sinai, Egypt.
On a sunny day at the very beginning of this millenniums a crazy frenchman found himself in the desert of Sinai. After some puffs of a magic smoke he wondered - how come that there are no cinemas in the middle of the desert?
He flew back to Paris and arranged some money. After that he went to Cairo to buy original old seats and projection equipment from an old cinema theatre. Then came back to Sinai, arranged generator for electricity a monsterous tractor to pull up the screen that was like a gigantic sail. And now everything was more or less ready for the premier.
Only detail he forgot was that this nice desert happens to be in Egypt. Country where local authorities are not too happy about such enthusiasm and spirit, specially if it comes from a crazy frenchmen…
At the premier evening everything went "accidentally" wrong, their electricity generator was sabotaged and no movies were ever screened at the End of the World Cinema.
So there it lies and waits - a monument from another reality and time.
I find these findings to be true in my own life. With vigorous exercise you can ward off the flu according to new data from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine:
Findings suggest that 100 cases of flu per 1,000 people could be prevented just by stepping up exercise.
However, moderate exercise appears to have little effect on rates of flu-like illness which means the intensity is all important, say researchers.
In the UK people are advised to do 150 minutes of moderate activity such as gardening, dancing or brisk walking, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise including playing sport, running or aerobics every week. Three out of four Britons fail to achieve this.
Picture via karmajello.com.
In Pursuit of Silence is a new documentary in the making from the same team who gave us The Philosopher Kings. With so much noise going on all around us in everyday life, I think it´s message will be of great importance.
In Pursuit of Silence is a meditative feature documentary about the value of silence, our relationship with sound, and the implications of living in such a noisy world. From the monastic traditions of the world’s religions to the universal practice of the “moment of silence” as an act of mourning, humanity has had a long fascination with silence.
I've always wanted to spend some time up north. A stay at the Treehotel located in Luleå, Norrland, would certainly be an odd but memorable experience.
Treehotel offers a unique hotel experience: treerooms with contemporary design in the middle of unspoiled nature. Here you can forget about the time constraints of everyday life, enjoy the serenity, and rejuvenate in a sophisticated yet familiar environment.
Picture via Black Tomato.
Is the english yachtsman Alex Thomson the James Bond of the sea? In a well produced and entertaining commercial for Hugo Boss, he´s doing a daring walk on a 30-meter high mast.
More on All Good Found:
When the going gets tough and you lack faith that things will change for the better, remind yourself of Arthur Boormans´s, a disabled veteran of the Gulf War, yoga journey. Amazing!
You can see more of Arthur in the upcoming documentary Inspired: The Movie.
Via Paul Presley.
I´m thinking of visiting photographer Jens Assur´s exhibition Africa is a Great Country at Världskulturmuseet in Gothenburg. The exhibition ends 31 August 2014. I´m guessing seeing these images can be an big eye-opener for many of us.
"I've chosen exciting cities where growth and development can be seen clearly. One example is Kigali in Rwanda, which is associated in most people's minds with the genocide of 1994. Today, the city is almost like a cross between Beverly Hills and Switzerland – prosperous, orderly and green. Or Gaborone in Botswana, a country that conjures up images of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, with its red earth roads and its picturesque landscape. You could take a slice of the city and put it down in Los Angeles, and no-one would notice the difference."
Picture Lusaka New Stadium I, Lusaka, Zambia by Jens Assur via Liljevalchs konsthall.
Ski tourism has spread to Bamian, Afghanistan in an attempt to opening Afghanistan up again to the world, and at the same time be able to offer the locals year-round jobs:
On a recent February day, only three overseas tourists were visiting, but that was three more than in many years past. The same week, two conferences for Afghans were taking place. And as the month was ending, Bamian hosted an international Ski Challenge, drawing people from half a dozen countries to its pristine mountainsides — some 20 visitors who cheerfully snowshoed their way up the slopes, in lieu of any lifts.
...The nascent ski industry has been promoted heavily by the international Aga Khan Foundation’s Development Network as one of its many Afghan projects. The foundation thought that to build a tourist industry in this remote place, it made sense to make it all-season to promote year-round jobs.
“When we were first talking about tourism, people were laughing at us,” the foundation’s national tourism coordinator, Amir Foladi, said. The foundation financed the training of ski guides, and encouraged Afghans — men and women — to learn to ski, something previously unknown here. (The women managed to do so without violating the conservative dress code by wearing headscarves or helmets.)
Picture by Mauricio Lima for The New York Times.
The prize awarding short movie Cotton Dancers follows working women in an ecological textile factory, located in the small village Heggodu in southern India. I love how this is edited, it´s almost like a symphony with all the rhythmic sounds going on.
I took up journaling some years ago. Got inspired after observing how my partner used her journal so freely, everything from doing scribble to planning and reflecting. However, I haven't written for awhile now due to different reasons, but after visiting the site Bullet Journal, I'm definitely starting again.
For the list-makers, the note-takers, the Post-It note pilots, the track-keepers, and the dabbling doodlers. Bullet journal is for those who feel there are few platforms as powerful as the blank paper page. It’s an analog system for the digital age that will help you organize the present, record the past, and plan for the future.
Watch the visually pleasing video, giving you all the basics:
Via Derek Franklin.
Related:
In the documentary The Windwagon project, a bunch of Swedes try to do what Thomas Smith failed to do in 1853 when he crashed and capsized in the desert with his wind wagon:
The epic project of seven friends who built a replica of a historic wind wagon and sailed it across Black Rock Desert is becoming a documentary film
Watching one episode of A Place in the Sun: Winter Sun, I found out about this magnificent hotel, Marbella Club Hotel, which used to be a private family residence for Prince Alfonso:
Since its establishment more than half a century ago, Hotel Marbella Club has accumulated a wealth of history, full of extraordinary and unforgettable moments. The beach resort in Spain has been a meeting place for the international jet-set: aristocrats, stars of the entertainment world, business leaders and famous figures from all over the world.
It all started in 1946, when Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe and his father, Prince Max, visited Marbella with the idea of buying some land. The following year, Alfonso purchased Finca Santa Margarita as a family residence. As the number of visitors to the 'finca' steadily grew, so did the property, and eventually the Prince, sparked with the pioneering enthusiasm and the visionary ideas that distinguish those who are ahead of their time, was able to make his dream come true, transforming his private residence into an exclusive Marbella club.
A short video presentation about Ashtanga Yoga by yoga teacher Luiz Veiga. Filmed at beautiful and serene Sadhaka Yoga Centre. The music playing is Om (Phil Mison Mix) by Trilok Gurtu.
