k links (catch up)

DFL - Celebrating last-place finishes at the Olympics. Because they're there, and you're not. cool.
DFL is a blog highlighting the last place finishers in Olympic events. Eddie the Eagle should be the site's mascot. #k

seward street -handcrafted animation since 1939 - ...I threw away my animation desk. I had one of those big wooden ones too - 6ft x 5 ft, tons of shelf space, very intimidating. I loved that desk. But - it was 2003 and the world of traditional Disney-style feature animation was all but dead. In a Spring cleaning fit, I tossed it into the dumpster (it wasn't an easy fit) so I could just be done with the whole dream thing. And then Iger puts Lasseter in charge. Not only of the films but of the parks as well. And he shuts down Toy Story 3 because of the fear that it would not be as sincere as the first two (sincerity? I thought it was all about money). Then he cans the cheap-quels (this isn't confirmed, but is more than likely true). ... A friend of a friend of a friend went on to say that JL's main mission was to renew the public's trust and faith in the Disney name - that it would become the premier source of family entertainment that it once was.
Now that Lasseter's on the job, Disney may be bringing back their 2-D animation tradition. #k

...research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to (in order to -? huh) swiftly switch attention between different tasks.
-globeandmail. com: Gamers show a "similar pattern of high performance in resisting irrelevant impulses" as bilingual people. (via sjb) # k

Andreas Pavel was the inventor of the portable music player (aka Walkman). "I was in the woods in St. Moritz, in the mountains. The snow was falling down. I pressed the button, and suddenly we were floating. It was an incredible feeling, to realize that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation." #k
Born in Germany, Mr. Pavel came to Brazil at age 6, when his father was recruited to work for the Matarazzo industrial group, at the time the most important one here.
Except for a period in the mid-1960's when he studied philosophy at a German university, Mr. Pavel, now 59, spent his childhood and early adulthood here in South America's largest city ( SÃO PAULO ), "to my great advantage," he said. It was a time of creative and intellectual ferment, culminating in the Tropicalist movement, and he was delighted to be part of it.
What drove Mr. Pavel back to Europe was his discontent with the military dictatorship then in power in Brazil. By that time, though, he had already invented the device he initially called the stereobelt, which he saw more as a means to "add a soundtrack to real life" than an item to be mass marketed.
...Ignoring the doors slammed in his face, Mr. Pavel filed a patent in March 1977 in Milan. Over the next year and a half, he took the same step in the United States, Germany, England and Japan.
Sony started selling the Walkman in 1979, and in 1980 began negotiating with Mr. Pavel, who was seeking a royalty fee.
Some of his friends have suggested he might have a case against the manufacturers of MP3 players, reasoning that those devices are a direct descendant of the Walkman. Mr. Pavel said that while he saw a kinship, he was not eager to take on another long legal battle. "I have known other inventors in similar predicaments and most of them become that story, which is the most tragic, sad and melancholic thing that can happen," he said. "Somebody becomes a lawsuit, he loses all interest in other things and deals only with the lawsuit. Nobody ever said I was obsessed. I kept my other interests alive, in philosophy and music and literature."
These days Mr. Pavel divides his time between Italy and Brazil, and is using some of his money to develop an invention he calls a dreamkit, which he describes as a "hand-held, personal, multimedia, sense-extension device," and to indulge his unflagging interest in music. Recently, he has been promoting the career of Altamiro Carrilho, a flutist whom he regards as the greatest living Brazilian musician. He is also financing a project that he describes as the complete discography of every record ever released in Brazil.