I’m blown away by this.

I walked home today and passed a guy delivering huge stacks of white and yellow pages directories to apartment buildings all the way along my street. It increasingly seems like a huge waste of paper and distribution – I’m sure there are demographic groups who still find use for these tomes, but every year they seem more and more redundant.

Time for an opt-in process?

Taking photos for my other blog, I always take a shot of the nearest street signs.

It’s just a prompt to remember where it was.

There’s something poetic about these sights though. I’ve thought quite a few times about doing something with them all.

The weather turned on a coin.

One moment it was bright and sunny.

The next, dark and apocalyptic.

I saw these tulips in the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens last weekend.

It was bright and early. But some trick of the focus makes the photo look like it’s night, and there’s something in the white perfection that looks like computer animation. Trust me, it’s not.

At first glance it looks like an abstraction.

It’s actually more than that. Eva Dijkstra and Michael Lugmayr’s Surry Hills based Infographiti work “explores the aesthetic potential of the graph as a work of abstract generative art.” I love the blurry space between art and science, and this concept of data-generated artworks and installations is right there.

It’s been a busy week.

Captivating talks by Intel’s Genevieve Bell and NYU’s Jay Rosen (in the pic above) – more here on Jay’s talk, here’s how it looked in my tweet stream.

Off to see @jayrosren_nyu talk

“news is arbitrary, improvised due to drive of production routines”

“what happens when production revolutionised by web?”

“what if your laptop got updates for software you don’t have installed? This is what news does every day”

“Stories like This American Life’s Giant Pool of Money ‘install the software’ to fire that interest”

Need understanding of big picture before you’ll be interested in incremental news

“journalists should be producing public understanding, not just incremental updates”

@jayrosen_nyu calls for ABC to create backgrounder for topical areas of news – extension to Background Brief?

Puts hand up RT @matt_levinson: @jayrosen_nyu calls ABC to create backgrounder for topical areas of news – extension to Background Brief?

“do things like NYT’s Topics pages and Google’s Living Stories actually help improve understanding?”

Someone just commented on “anthopomorphic” climate change. Obviously a mistake, but ironically encapsulates the issue.

To go see another @jayrosen_nyu talk or get lunch?

@isabel_lo I think it’s going to be a late lunch!

@tmgrimson yes, giving several talks today. on journalists as explainers, citizen journalism, and business models. just the little stuff.

RT: @girlinblack From the Accidental Art file: @matt_levinson’s twitpic from a @jayrosen_nyu talk he’s sitting in right now: http://twitpic.com/2e6wxy

“NYT introduced ‘geek squad’ of 50 to newsroom – clever way of changing to more collaborative culture”

“The Guardian able to be nimble because it’s a trust – needs to ensure sustainable future, despite mid term risks”

Lots of questions about Assange and WikiLeaks – “first global media org”? Anarchist? Hacker? Adaptive to say the least.

“have to find places where closed systems (media – verification) and open (accessible, participatory) work best”

“a journalist is just a heightened case of an informed citizen”