Kpjas's blog

© Chris82

Cold borscht - I love this soup, especially on days as hot as today.

You can read a general receipe in Wikipedia but everyone in Poland makes his/her own variety. Buttered potatoes as an add-on is essential.

Cold borscht

This photo might be a little disturbing for some but it is a striking image very well worth a wider audience,

Credits:

Mike Castro de Maria

The original photo:

is available here.

There's a photographer on the Wikimedia Commons who calls himself "Macro Freak". He makes terrific photos no doubt and I am sure he fully deserves his moniker.

There are macros but this is a monster macro.

Credits: Richard Bartz
License:  Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5
URL: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Calliphora_head_2.jpg

Recently Wikimedia Commons has announced results of community-wide competition called Picture of the Year 2007.

919 Wikimedians took part in a community-wide voting and 84 voted for the winner - Broadway Tower in Cotswolds, England.

See the final results or download the archived photo collection with the finalists

From the cream of my favourites I have chosen two for the forthcoming week.

I can't praise Daniel Schwabe's photos enough so if you still don't know his outstanding works be sure to go straight to his photostream and indulge in photographic wonders.

Spiral stairs - Sagrada Família

I love a lot of songs ileanaa has shared with us and this Mariza's extraordinary fado is really thrilling.

Ipernity is a vast and rich source of really stunning art and a place where you can find wonderful and exceptionally gifted people. Personally I feel constantly that I only have enough time to have a glimpse and to only pass over real wonders.

I want to share with you my discoveries hence my series The Pick of the Week. I present here docs that I have come across during my aimless ramblings through Ipernity. These are my personal favourites for the last week and forver.

Massive Attack is one of my favourite trip hop bands and the instrumental piece called Sam is taken from their soundtrack for Danny the Dog film.

Please follow this link: Massive Attack - Sam

I can't get this song played inline. Dunno why it is not possible on Ipernity when a user restricts sharing of a doc.

Melpomene's photostream is fabulous and I highly recommend you visiting it. There you can found real treasures that you can surely appreciate with your senses and your mind.

The Pick of the Week is a series presenting docs that I have found perusing vast and absorbing resources on Ipernity. One way or another these docs have become my personal favourites and I'd like to share them with you.

Shaznay Lewis is an English female singer and songwriter. She is also member of the band All Saints.

More info: Shaznay Lewis (English), Sheznay Lewis (Deutsch), Sheznay Lewis (Italiano), Sheznay Lewis (Nederlands).

Lyrics: You - Shaznay Lewis

And additionally... one of many superb photos that have caught my eye during the week.

Thinking by Jack Lyons

The Pick of the Week series presents Ipernity docs that are my personal favourite for considerable amount of time, usually a week or so. In this way I'd like to draw you attention to this particular doc and show you that there are pearls on Ipernity.

If you agree, disagree, want to comment or share your favourite that are in some way related to the current pick - please leave a comment/link.

Artist: Feist (English), Feist (Deutsch), Feist (Français), Feist (Nederlands), Feist (Italiano).

Song: Secret Heart

Album: Let it Die

Year: 2004

Lyrics: available here

More songs by Feist on Ipernity:

• www.ipernity.com/doc/19162/426880 - Mushaboom
• www.ipernity.com/doc/20731/465598 - How My Heart Behaves
• www.ipernity.com/doc/24139/774445 - La Meme Histoire
• www.ipernity.com/doc/11932/34173 - One Evening
• www.ipernity.com/doc/etienne/album/37416 - Let It Die album

Tags are essential to all Web 2.0 website and from my experience folksonomy rules. They are really helpful when finding things, quickly, efficiently and to some extent in a fuzzy way.

I've observed two subtle but substantial deficiencies in the Ipernity tag system.

First, the tag system doesn't recognize word forms, so you best use singular and plural forms. For example if you are searching for a tag 'zeichnung' you miss docs tagged with 'zeichnungen' unless someone adds both tags.

Please compare

www.ipernity.com/search/doc?q=zeichnung

www.ipernity.com/search/doc?q=zeichnungen

Second, there seems to be a little bug somewhere that causes or caused some tags (audio files?) to be improperly trimmed.

For example

Please see:

www.ipernity.com/explore/keyword?p=all&s=audio

You'll notice odd tag pairs like 'classica' and 'classical', 'electroni' and 'electronic', 'hous' and 'house' and so on. Probably the bug is now gone because it is seen in audio files uploaded prior to July 11, 2007 (?) However it sometimes interferes with looking for some docs on Ipernity.

Wish - I don't know if this is at all doable but it might be nice to have a feature to help you with searching by tags - if you look for 'flower' to be offered also presentation of docs tagged with equivalent tags in other languages like 'Blume' and 'Fleur'. This way you could have included in your search docs tagged by German/French speaking Ipernity users.

One of the most prominent features of Ipernity are groups. Not just plain photogroups but real multimedia groups.

From time to time I'm looking for a suitable group or I come across a really interesting group. I'd like to share with you my personal selection of Ipernity groups. Hopefully you can find something that is worthwhile and that suits your tastes or needs.

Have fun!

Transformation

Images that have been transformed in some creative and artistic way. The final work of art is just great. See for yourselves!

• Another view of the world
• Media Synthesis
• PHOTOMONTAGE / COLLAGE
• Manipulated s.p.
• Manipulated reality
• << PIX EDIT >>
• Multimedia
• Image Editing
• surreality
• HDR

About and around Ipernity

Various ideas, discussions and projects to improve Ipernity or present Ipernity content better.

• Unofficial ipernity Ideas and Wish Group - discuss your ideas with others users here
• Ipernity Frontpage
• Take a look here!!! (Discover hidden photostreams)
• Ipernity Groups Directory
• Ipernity Hall of Fame
• #ipernity - Internet Relay Chat
• I-Central

Video

Now video groups on Ipernity are possible and they are really innovative.

• 365minutes@V
• HAINT'S ORIGINAL VIDEO ART
• selfmade video & animation

Landscape and nature/Landschaft und Natur

I love nature! Have a look at these groups and cherish gifts of nature. "Sky is creative - I'm not".

• Im Wald - At forest
• Beauty of Sky
• Pastels in the nature
• Landscape
• Sunsets and Skys
• Sky & Clouds
• Sky is creative i'm not
• Beauty of Sky

Inspirations

I wish Ipernity had more groups like this one - very interesting and creative.

• Kafkaesque

Effects

Various effects that make your photos very special.

• Light Reflections - Widerspiegelungen - des réflections - reflectione
• B & W
• Bokeh - the blurry way of photography

Composition

Make great impression with your photos that are composed like these.

• "asymetrix"
• Maximum Minimalism
• LESS IS MORE: MINIMAL IN IPERNITY

Wikimedia Commons is a project that like Wikipedia is run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and it's main goal is to create a vast repository of free to use and distribute media files.

Wikimedia Commons The Picture of the Year 2006 - Aurora Borealis

Originally Wikimedia Commons served as a central place for images, audio and video files used by different language versions of Wikipedia. An image has to be uploaded only once and it can easily be used by various Wikimedia projects. But for a long time Wikimedia Commons is used by various other external projects, in fact anyone is free to use and distribute data found on the Wikimedia Commons servers - generally there's only one condition - you must comply with license(s) the given file was published by its author. Usually it is GNU Free Documentation License or several Creative Commons licences - a part from that a lot of files are in Public Domain.

Wikimedia Commons now has over two million files. This is around 11 months after it reached one million. Since March 2007 it routinely has over 100,000 files uploaded every single month. It is becoming more and more common to have over 5,000 files in a single day. Please read more on this subject.

Some notable features of Wikimedia Commons:

• Picture of the Year competition
• Featured Images
• Quality Images
• Mayflower search engine (http://tools.wikimedia.de/~tangotango/mayflower/ )
• onsite ogg video/audio playback
• geocoding
• category RSS feeds - each category now has a RSS feed for new files that get added to that category. If you are interested in a topic and it has a category, you can add the RSS feed link to your feed reader

Wimedia Commons is still a relatively young project it is quite likely that quite soon it may reach the 10M files mark.

One of my favourite pastimes in Ipernity is "exploring" the lastest tracks uploaded by members. Some are very well-known oldies that I'll always cherish but some are really stunning surprises that I've never known and I am happy that someone "recommended" to me.

Ipernity as a kind of music recommendation system or rather a music discovery system.

Thank-you Ipernity community for:

• Leslie Feist (songs)
• Damien Rice (songs)
• Kings of Convenience (songs)
• Stone Roses (songs)
• more or less Muse (songs)
• Jehro (songs)
• Verve (songs)
• and many others

If you still haven't heard about Eva Cassidy and more importantly haven't heard her brilliant singing you've been missing something unique and hauntingly beautiful.

Eva Marie Cassidy, born February 2, 1963 in Washington, DC was an American vocalist described by the British newspaper The Guardian as "one of the greatest voices of her generation." She had a diverse repertoire of jazz, blues, folk, gospel and pop. Cassidy remained virtually unknown outside of her native Washington, DC, when she died of melanoma on November 2, 1996. However, her posthumously released recordings have since sold in excess of four million copies, and in early 2001 the compilation album Songbird reached #1 on the UK album charts. (Slightly modified paragraph from the Eva Cassidy article on the English Wikipedia. Credits)

Please watch this three-part documentary about Eva Cassidy that was broadcast by ABC in 2001. Sorry, but youtube doesn't allow publishing this material inline here so you have to follow the links to youtube:

• part 1
• part 2
• part 3

A couple of links to sites of interest concerning Eva Cassidy and her songs:

• Eva Cassidy Web Site
• Eva Cassidy Art Work
• Eva Cassidy Clips
• Washingtonian magazine's May 2001 article on Cassidy
• Eva Cassidy at the Internet Movie Database
• Voice of an Angel - Richard Harrington, Washington Post

There's a lot of great music on Ipernity to listen to. It was uploaded by various people, notably by Rua de Saragoça:

• An Ascent - Brian Eno
• Pavane pour une infante défunte - Maurice Ravel
• Vidrar Vel Til Loftárása - Sigur Rós
• Tomorrow Never Knows - Junior Parker
• Agnus Dei - Samuel Barber
• Hell Is Around the Corner - Tricky
• Butterflies and Hurricanes - Muse

If you haven't discovered Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii yet please see a collection of his incredible colour photos that date back to the beginnings of the 20th century.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii photography

A peek into the past - Breakin…

Peasant woman breaking flax; Russia, Perm Province, 1910

In July 2007 Polish Wikipedia was released on DVD by The Wikimedia Polska Association with cooperation with Helion - a well-known Polish publisher.

The image of the DVD is available for download for free and the DVD can be purchased in bookstores throughout Poland. It costs ca. 40 Zloties = approx. 10 €

 

 

Cover of the DVD

 

Kubek001a

Kubek002

 

A promotional mug