I'm finally retiring my Nokia 6510 handset, which I've had as my main phone for six years this autumn. Excellent tactile design. Only now it's starting to give. The menu button produces no clicks or double-clicks. Compliment to the engineers and designers who created 6510, it has been a fantastic product - and not quite matched by Nokia's current offering.

Some statistics from the phone's call counters:

Dialled calls' duration 80:20:46
Received calls' duration 240:10:49
All calls' duration 320:31:34
Last call duration 00:14:42

That's almost a fortnight on the phone.

The 6510 worked fine on the presumption that mobile phone is good for phone calls and texting. Now that you're supposed to be able to do all kinds of smart things with your mobile, it seems it's the iPhone that finally delivers those promises.

It's been hot lately and I made a discovery on Berlin's Große Hamburger Str. One of those Arabic imbisses sells water that seems to be of Arabic origin.

Reading the fine print:

PRODUCED AND BOTTLED BY
GULF PURE WATER CO. (SUPER GULF) UMM AL QUWAIN, UAE.

Now that doesn't make much sense. To transport bottled water from one of the most arid places in the world to a city that's drowning in its own ground water.

A visit to the Super Gulf website further enlights you about the design values of this globalised product:

Our unique bottle design is the result of day’s work of our Japanese engineers. The aim was to have a bottle, which is easy to hold in hand. To make it different, you will find three small mountains inside the bottle at the bottom.

All this reminded me of the "I am Bedu" scene in Lawrence of Arabia. To close this matter, let me pull a quote from an essay I found on website Hub O' Love

There is a poignant scene in the 1962 David Lean motion picture, Lawrence of Arabia in which Lawrence's guide offers Lawrence a drink of water. As Lawrence is about to drink he asks, "You do not drink?" - "I am Bedu" replies the guide. Lawrence promptly pours the water back into the canteen and says; "I will drink when you drink."

I recently heard an interesting story that a greater stretch of Berlin's Kochstrasse was recently renamed after student activist Rudi Dutschke (1940-79). Kochstrasse is well known as the metro stop for Checkpoint Charlie, so the the change is not an obscure one.

Dutschke was a student leader in West Berlin. He was born in the East, but fled the oppression just before the Wall. In West he quickly became a charismatic figure of city's "1968" movement. In April 1968 he was shot thrice by a local redneck on Kurfürstendamm. Dutschke survived, but just barely and with severe brain damage.

The shooter attempted suicide but didn't succeed and was duly jailed. Dutschke and his attacker engaged in correspondence while the latter was in prison. The shooter took his life in 1970. Whether the correspondence lead into any redemption I have no knowledge of.

Dutschke lived for another eleven years. Because of his injuries he had to learn to speak again. He went to Cambridge but was eventually expelled from Britain as an "unwanted alien". He settled in Århus, Denmark and was involved in the foundation of the German Green party just before dying of consequential injuries in 1979.

The new street also meets the Axel-Springer-Strasse, directly at the offices of Springer publishing company. For decades the Springer newspapers and magazines have been seen as reactionary proponents of the German media and were thus spittoons for the left-wing activists and the Red Army Faction, who resorted to violence. Dutschke split from the violent faction (who bombed Springer's Hamburg office in 1972), but nevertheless the renaming of the street was of nuisance to the Springer company.

Together with some CDU representatives and other neighbours, Springer tried to halt the process, but eventually the residents of Kreuzberg went for the memory of Dutschke in a referendum.

Poetic, if twisted justice, that is.

Sent in a proposal for Art+Communication festival in Riga in October. This year's festival is about "artistic explorations within the invisible space of electromagnetic spectrum surrounding us" so I think an examination of RFID and passports could fit in nicely.

Here's a description:

Pimp My Passport

The project examines DIY and hacking prospects as well as control and privacy issues of RFID passports currently being rolled out throughout the European Union. It also plays around with the notion of nationality and its symbols - seeking new ways to signal identity by "pimping" personal travel documents.

Although dealing with heavy subject matter like electronic privacy, big brother and nationality, Pimp My Passport is a playful, hands-on project that anyone can take part of.

For Art+Communication festival we'd like to propose a 1-2 day workshop with following structure:

1. Probing sessions using RFID transceiver to read passports remotely
2. Crafting of protective "Faraday cage" passport covers
3. Pimping sessions e.g. working on re-interpretations of national symbols used on passports and other decorations

I've already talked about this to some of you long time ago, but now that I wrote that much down I might as well blog it and see how the forest answers!

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Some related links:

• DIY transparent laptop case (airport security)
• Pimp My Bible
• RFID Passport Shield Failure Demo
• SERIALL workshop in Antwerpen and Gent
• SimplySwiss: The Swiss Passport

Late 00's personal homepages under construction / on intermission / in stealth mode... Examples: viilee.org and mikameskanen.com.

Next Sunday – that's 20th April – mkk and I will talk and discuss the mikroPaliskunta project at Wonderbar. It is hosted by Freja and Lady Gaby and in the meantime we'll have a hearty and arty brunch. Invitation proper below. Come! Come!

Freja und Lady Gaby ladet Euch Herzlich ein:

A travel through Finland for Frühstück and to the Sekt a trip around Berlin with Mika Meskanen and Mari Keski-Korsu from the project mikroPaliskunta

Frühstücks Buffet (nicht nur Künst, auch Brot) ab 13Uhr am Sonntag 20.4. in Wonderbar Wiener Str. 45, X-berg.

A reindeer travelled from the northernmost point of European Union to the southernmost point of Finland. Among other things, he visited construction site of Ikea, national scenery in Imatra rapids and Koli, met many Finnish people and carried a camera in his horn to make a country long image line. And what happened in Berlin the next summer? mikroPaliskunta is a series of explorations made in eco-friendly way. The participants are in search for presented national identities (i.e. tourism), outcomes of global structural and ecological changes – to location, identity as well as to the culture. Expeditions vary and so far there have been two of them. They are present on location and in virtual world.
www.mikropaliskunta.net

The following is a brain dump I jotted down in the notebook two nights ago. It's about choice and preference.

Movement before direction
Perpetual before permanent
Friends before lovers
Sarcasm before joking
ADHD before sociopathy
Mercy before pity
Spirituality before religion
Sheldrake before Dawkins
Attitude before achievement
Leadership before management
Intuition before knowledge
Imaginary before objective

The form I have paraphrased from Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Spring equinox is a good week past now and the weather widget reports that backwinter's lost its grip. It was too little too late anyway.

Time to go down the memory lane until March 2005 and dust off the photographs from a grownups' winter party. Converted to a photoset on Flickr, naturally.