Beautiful Ground

Lovely fan-created video for Grandaddy's "Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)," found via if:book.

the if:book post details the video better than I can at the moment, except to say that Grandaddy kept me going through several late nights during graduate school, and that this is wonderful example of constrained writing/animation (see the creator's statement below).

Just came across something lovely. Video for "Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)" by the now disbanded Grandaddy from their great album The Sophtware Slump (2000). Jed is a character who weaves in and out of the album, a forlorn humanoid robot made of junk parts who eventually dies, leaving behind a few mournful poems.

Creator Stewart Smith: "I programmed this entirely in Applesoft BASIC on a vintage 1979 Apple ][+ with 48K of RAM -- a computer so old it has no hard drive, mouse up/down arrow keys, and only types in capitals. First open-source music video, code available on website. Cinematography by Jeff Bernier." A nice detail of the story is that this was originally a fan vid but was eventually adopted as the "official" video for the song.

Keywords: International Digitization Collaboration

If you find yourself in London on the 21st... [via JISC's blog]

Developing International Collaboration for Digitisation: the JISC - National Endowment for Humanities perspective

In celebration of their transatlantic digitisation collaboration grants, JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and the NEH (National Endowment for Humanities) are hosting an evening panel session looking at issues related to international digitisation. The evening will draw on the experiences of projects in the area and will also involve discussion to inform future directions.

Hosted by King’s College London. Monday 21st January, 5.30pm - 6.45pm (Room 2B08, Strand Campus)

Chaired by Sarah Porter, Head of Development, JISC, with presentations and commentary from:

• Bruce Cole, Chairman, National Endowment for Humanities


• Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary, JISC


• Paul Ell, Director, The Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis, Queen’s University Belfast


• Robert K. Englund, Professor of Assyriology at the University of California and Director of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative

The event is open to all. The evening will be followed by a wine reception for all attendees.

JISC and the NEH are grateful to the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College London for hosting the event.

Location: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/about/campuses/strand-det.html