When I was in Tokyo earlier this year a few friends and I organized a photowalk around a few parts of the city with the goal of creating a pool of creative commons licensed images of the city. We had almost 20 people on the walk, some locals and some visitors and the photos taken that day (including the one above that I snapped in Harajuku) are amazingly cool. Better yet, they are all available for other people to use thanks to CC. I was thinking it might be cool to do something like that here while I’m in Vienna as well. I know there are some existing photowalk groups already in town and maybe this is something they’d be interested in helping out with? It’s a fairly simple idea, map out a rough route, grab cameras and go. Afterwards post them all to Flicker using a similar tag and license (we used attribution/non-commercial/share-alike). It was a fun thing todo during the day, but also is helping build a resource of images that other people can use when they need something representing the city. Would anyone be interested in doing something like that?

In case you missed the Roboxotica conference at the Museumsquartier last week but are interested in hearing some of the talks that were presented you can now download mp3s of all the talks directly from monochrom now. In German are talks by Thomas Ballhausen, Kerstin Ohler and Alexander Edelhofer. I also presented in English along with Jens Ohlig, Cory Doctorow, David Fine and Bre Pettis. Enjoy!

Sorry, German language only, but highly recommended talk/reading on Saturday.

“als die welt noch unterging. von punk zu ndw” ist die bislang umfangreichste monographie der deutschen und österreichischen punk- und new-wave-bewegung zwischen 1976 und 1985. sie erzählt die in großen teilen noch immer ungeschriebene geschichte dieser bewegung und stellt dabei immer auch die frage nach ihrem pop- und gegenkulturgeschichtlichen zusammenhang.
veröffentlicht im oktober 2007 im ventil verlag (mainz, home of testcard)
gegeben wird ein herzhaftes ndw-teaching mit zahlreichen hörbeispielen aus einer zeit, als die welt noch so in ordnung war, emnächst vermutlich untergehen zu wollen…

frank apunkt schneider ist selbsternannter poptheoretiker und typischer kunstfuzzi und schreibt u.a. für testcard und bad alchemy und ist seit 1999 der deutsche außenposten der kulturbewegung monochrom (www.monochrom.at).

als vorprogramm: elffriede!

wann? wo?
samstag, 1. dezember 2007 um 20:00
quartier für digitale kultur qdk – quartier 21, museumsquartier, wien.

Tomorrow is Dorkbot Day! Dorkbot Vienna #4 (Nov 28, 2007; 8 PM) features Bre Pettis who will build a Brain Machine.

I already blogged about this workshop some days ago, but I really have to remind you. This will be an awesome presentation. And we’ll fuck your minds. What else could you long for?

(Pic by Cory Doctorow)

I don’t watch movies or films, so I definitely haven’t seen Michael Moore’s much-in-the-news flick about health care in the US, but I’ve read plenty about it online from all of the experts that seem to be everywhere on the internets. Anyway, I’ve been an adult for a long time, used the US healthcare “system”, loved and hated my insurance companies, have very good friends and family members who are doctors or in the health care industry, and just generally have enough experience in that world to have an opinion. And my opinion is that health care in the US is excellent, but insurance is fucked.

I now have some experience with Austrian health care. We recently had a baby here, and we’ve been living here as near-middle-aged adults for close to two years. We have private insurance through my work — not the Krankenkassen, so my experience may be a bit out of the ordinary. But my summary and expert opinion is that health care in Austria — or at least Vienna — is excellent and the insurance is awesome.

I plan to write some comparison and contrast type posts in the future, but I wanted to quickly tell the story that so many US Americans are wanting to hear that confirms an anecdote about EuroInsurance in Michael Moore’s movie.
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When I decided I was going to come to Vienna and spend a good chunk of time here the thing I heard over and over again from friends who live here (as well as those who don’t) was that it would be next to impossible to be vegan in Vienna. I’ve been vegan for almost 15 years so I’m not planning on changing my diet based on a trip, but I was little concerned that Vienna might be the first place I’ve been to that didn’t have plentiful vegan options.

Luckily this has turned out to not be the case at all. I was searching on Tupalo and found Rupps. After reading a few reviews I was hooked and rounded up the posse and headed there straight away. Here’s a few pics I took while there but the combo vegetarian/vegan restaurant & Irish whiskey bar is pretty mind blowing. I can see myself spending a lot of time there in the coming weeks. I had the Schnitzel and the Apfelstrudel. The latter of which was amazing. They had a ton of vegan options that I can’t wait to go back and try out. No english menu but the stall all seemed happy to speak to speak to me, of course I was giving them money but still. It’s located at Arbeitergasse 46, which is just a short tram ride from where I’m staying at the Museumsquartier so yeah, I’ll be there again soon. /swoon

I am not sure if this is a new thing or not, but lately I’ve noticed that as my use of German for day-to-day transactions has increased, the attempts at ripping me off have increased.

Of course, The Naschmarkt is the Naschmarkt, and one can expect to get scammed there. However, I’d argue that the scamming there is relatively benign. For example, one stall may list a product for €3,50 per kilo while the one next door might sell it for €3,30 per half kilo and smudge the little “1/2” that designates half and thereby scamming those who aren’t careful. But that scam only works on comparison shoppers — and those who hunt for bargains are unlikely to let a scam like that slide by undetected.

The other somewhat friendly scam is the relentless upsell. Only at the Naschmarkt do any Viennese salespeople exhibit this trait. You’re buying a stuffed pepper, and shorty grabs some stuffed tomatoes. “How about a couple of these?”

They look good, so you say, “sure”. He continues down the line until you suddenly have a small plastic container stuffed with €15 worth of antipasti.

But the scams I’m talking about are more insipid and, quite frankly, piss me off. Since one happened to me today, I’ll share the story — but this isn’t an isolated incident.
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Click To Play

Click To Play

If you weren’t at the opening of Roboxotica 2007 tonight then you missed the chaos that resulted from the above contraption. That thing is was filled with Orange Juice and Vodka. LOTS of Orange Juice and Vodka. A few more pics are after the jump.
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Hi Vienna! I’m Sean and I’m visiting from Los Angeles for a few months. Here’s a few of the other posts I’ve written if you want to check out the kind of thing I blog about but I’ll probably be doing a bunch of that here while I’m in town as well. I’m here thanks to monochrom and will be at the Roboxotica conference all weekend including the opening party tonight. If you can make it, please say Hi. I think we’ll be doing some cool stuff over the next few weeks as well, so stay tuned. More coming soon…