disassociated

Sydney baristas are increasingly calling the shots when it comes to brewing what they consider to be ideal coffee, by refusing to accommodate requests to add sugar, use skim (low fat) or soy milks, and decaffeinated coffee, or make brews “extra hot”, a dictate some customers describe as excessive:

Bar Italia in Leichardt is famous for its “No soy, no skim” stand. Customers have been known to storm out of Barefoot Coffee Traders in Manly which won’t do decaf or large cups. Kafenio Cafe in Cronulla declares: “No skim or babycinos … Don’t even ask!” “The guy behind the coffee machine … reminded me of the Soup Nazi off Seinfeld, but it wasn’t funny … get over the delicate genius syndrome,” said one Kafenio customer on online restaurant guide Eatability. Said another: “The barista refused three separate times to make the coffee that was ordered. If this was a hard order I would have understood but nowhere else [finds] a double shot 3/4 latte hard.”

Maybe the majority of coffee shop customers want full cream milk and caffeine brews, but the stance sounds harsh to me. What of the people with lactose intolerance? As for refusing to serve babycinos, that doesn’t seem too family-friendly to me.

Originally published Wednesday 25 May 2011.

A collection of panoramic photos of stations, and even tunnels, that are part of Moscow’s Metro, or underground train system, by Russos.

Originally published Thursday 19 May 2011, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Children who are marginalised at school because they are considered to be geeks or nerds, tend to be more successful as adults.

This because they are far more self aware, spontaneous, and creative, than “popular” students, says Alexandra Robbins, who has written a book on the subject, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth.

So called popular students are more likely to act and think according to the wishes of the groups or cliques there are part of, rather than on their own, behaviours that are unhelpful in adult life.

Even if the kids in these cliques are momentarily on top of the world, Robbins says the traits they are learning could be toxic in their future lives. “When you are in the popular crowd you are more likely to be conformist, you are more likely to hide aspects of your identity in order to fit into the crowd, you are more likely to be involved in relational aggression, you are more likely to have goals of social dominance rather than forming actual true friendships,” Robbins says, pausing for a breath. “You are more likely to let other people pressure you into doing things. None of those things is admirable or useful as adults.”

Originally published Wednesday 18 May 2011, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Sydney based Web Technologist Cameron Adams has put together “Anatomy Of A Mashup” a mashup/data visualisation of Daft Punk music with HTML5 and CSS3 (no Flash…), using the canvas and audio elements, plus transforms and transitions.

In order to explain the layering and interplay that goes into something like a Girl Talk album or The 139 Mix Tape I decided to take my own mashup of Daft Punk’s discography — Definitive Daft Punk — and reveal its entire structure: the cutting, layering, levels and equalisation of 23 different songs. By dividing up the sound data for each song and computing its appearance in realtime, the resulting visualisation gives you an understanding of the unique anatomy of this particular mashup.

While Adams recommends viewing the mashup with Chrome, I found it worked quite well with Firefox 4.

Originally published Tuesday 17 May 2011, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.