Ted's Relative Difficulty

Mr. Big Document 4: $40,000,000.00 Palace 1

2010-11-10T12:00:00.000-08:00

This is both a fantasy and a plan. Mr. Big lays out some tactics for getting rich, like working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week and, when able, taking money and keeping money. He's got a location picked out for the palace, imagined some famous neighbors, considered a harem with belly-dancers for dinnertime, and noted the expected thickness of the the walls and doors. Smoking joints will be allowed in Mr. Big's $40,000,000.00 Palace 1, but no inhaling!

Mr. Big Documents 2 & 3: BS HUSBAND WANTED & BS WIFE WANTED

2010-11-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

Mr. Big ran in some ritzy neighborhoods, and I'd like to believe whenever he was camped out on some corner, flanked by luscious lawns and gorgeous palms, brushed up against the haute and heavy hitters, pissing on a mailbox... I believe he had these signs draped over the side of that blue box.

BS HUSBAND WANTED

BS WIFE WANTED

(Dumb or smart does not matter either.)

Hello Mr. Big + Document 1: SUB WORLD FAMOUS NUMBERS (good)

2010-11-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

My previous position at the lib had me sitting behind a counter inside a small room nestled in the very heart of the building. This room also housed the printing and copying system for the public computers (located just outside the room), and if I was ever busy it was helping people get their documents in hard copy. But most of the time I waited, ready. Bored.

This situation, being rather secluded but also open to The Public, was apparently very attractive to a particular sort of social animal and so there were several colorful characters who reported to my counter on a regular basis and proceeded to regale me with their brand of crazy. Ronald 'Captain Pooty' Vaughn will always be my favorite. Lior is very sweet, and the one-time visit from The Suicide Poet will haunt me forever. There's stuff to share from some of these folks, but they're for another time.

It's imperative I begin with Mr. Big. He's not a regular per se—more like an occasional. I think he travels between several cities over the western half of the US, or at least the greater metropolitan area around here. But when he's around he stops in to compose and print out the latest version of whatever document he's selected from a truly enormous library of crazy. He's always very eager to hand out copies of his documents, and keeps a file-folder stocked with several different screeds. But the entire ala he keeps on a little precious flash drive hung around his neck.

I figured since he's so interested in getting the word out, he might let me copy the files to my own drive. So the last time he was in I asked to have a bit of a look at all he had, and he let me flash everything over to my own little clip drive. Took it home, sanitized the whole thing (digitally, that is, there's been no change to the writing and as little change as possible to the format) and now I'm finally getting around to doing my part to help Mr. Big get the word (files) out.

So, okay! Hello Mr. Big!

Here is SUB WORLD FAMOUS NUMBERS (good).doc. (Make sure to hit the [+] button a couple times to zoom in so it's legible.)

Mr. Big is obsessed with the significance of numbers (though when pressed to explain the significances he can get agitated and incoherent). Whenever he notices a numeric significance relating to celebrities, news items, politics, or anything really, he notes it down in the appropriate document within the NUMBERS folder. This particular document, however, is located in the top level of the Mr. Big home folder. I believe it serves either as a handy staging area for items yet to be filed appropriately within NUMBERS or as a 'greatest hits' condensation of the whole NUMBERS folder system, or both.

This document is a fine example of the complex shorthand of oblique references Mr. Big maintains to help organize his documents. Though you'll quickly recognize many of them, we may not ever understand what exactly they mean. I've spent some time reading this one-sheet, and still can't even comprehend what most of the parenthetical or aside references mean. He did explain the Judge Judy (or just Judy) reference once, brokenly and in staccato, as denoting encounters with people who would likely be on the receiving end of a scathing rant from The Honorable, and then are also sometimes followed by what Mr. Big imagines she'd say.

It's easy to be discouraged by the compacted illegibility of a wall of random-seeming text like this, but I believe there's a coherent (if mis-guided and not altogether sane) message to it. Interpretations are welcome.

There's a lot more where this came from, and plenty of gems to share in the future. Keep an eye out.

Letters RE: "Consider the Lobster"

2010-09-12T18:36:00.001-07:00

The October 2004 issue of Gourmet featured a selection of letters from the 'record-breaking' response to David Foster Wallace's essay (published Aug. 2004) on the Maine Lobster Festival, Consider the Lobster. In an attempt to aid in the education of MeFite apricot's frosh comp class, I scanned in the two pages of letters at a nice, big resolution. They're a pretty fun read, as is the essay of course.

[click for larger]

Los Angeles Magazine: a 1963 Almanac

2010-02-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

Foreigners CAN Wear Kimono

2010-01-28T15:19:00.000-08:00

Ikebana International Spring 1961 No. 8

The Animatic

2009-06-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

The Animatic is a three-dimentional music video. Triggered b a record player, a series of animated machine come to life in a chain reaction and creates a narrative for the sound.
These all take inspiration from simple animation techniques and the viewer follows
the chain of machines, one by one, to piece together a narrative.
the machine is created out of everyday objects and uses clever kinetic and mechanical mechanisms.This performance features "Memphis Tennessee", a Silicon Teens cover of the classic track by Chuck Berry.

Yuri Suzuki & Household

Dancing in the Streets

2009-06-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

Some fun music videos. There's nudity.

Matt & Kim - Lessons Learned

Make the Girl Dance - Baby Baby Baby

David Bowie & Mick Jagger (Slowly) Dancing in the Street

Chris Ware Animations

2009-05-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Quimby the Mouse

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

Judgement to the Wife

This American Life

Oxfam 48hr Ad Contest - Chinese Takeout Films - Climate Change: the RPG

2009-05-24T16:47:00.000-07:00

While I was blissfully enjoying a glorious walk through San Francisco this past weekend, my friend's roommate was furiously working to finish this video. 48 hours wasn't enough of a challenge for Chinese Takeout Films; they did it in 24 hours straight, from concept to finished product. Impressive, and for a good cause: Climate Change: the RPG was made for The Cannes Young Lions Oxfam 48 Hour Video Challenge, it's purpose is to entertain and raise awareness about climate change. Half of the criteria for winning is a combination of video views and votes via the Cannes Lions site (search for chinesetakeoutfilms), so click through after you watch and watch it again. And CTRL+SHIFT+R often!

Unoriginal Thought

2009-04-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

or Faith in the Done Before

I don't actually know how to play the piano. Or any instrument for that matter, and I certainly can't read music. I blew into a clarinet for a week in elementary school, but that was only because mom found her old one in the depths of a closet around that time. Nevertheless I am inspired, and will be composing a conceptual piece of music for the piano on the recurring theme of 'Fucking It Up Is the New Doing It Right'. Here's what I've got so far:

The first movement is conducted by hitting the piano as hard as you can. Attempt to alter its tuning with your strike.

Next, play a series of scales in an attempt to detect where the piano has lost its true.

Finally, construct around the first detected de-tuned octave [this algorithmically-created series of notes and chords].

Optional scales out.

OK, so something like this must have been done before. If you've heard music based around the deliberate abuse of instruments*—and most interestedly the piano—share it here, please, I'd like to hear it. I'll keep working on [this silly, important part].

* Punk is being considered. What else?

Section 8 City From the Basement

2009-04-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

Andrew Bird - Section 8 City

From the Basement is producer Nigel Godrich's experiment in high-quality televised musical performance.

It's an expensive show to make and with good reason. The standard of production is very high and we try to make it look and sound as good as is humanly possible. It's all done on HD video and the sound is produced by me.
. . . . .
The whole emphasis of the show is about being artist friendly and making our bands as comfortable as possible so that they can give great performances without the usual agony of TV promo which everyone has to do but no one seems to enjoy. TV world is a pretty hostile environment for your average musician to have to walk into and bare his soul on cue.. It also doesn't hurt that a lot of the people we've filmed are friends or people we've worked with before so they trust us and know that we understand what recording music is about as well as making good TV.

A success in my mind, at least from the looks of this Andrew Bird video. I've seen him live a few times, and always felt that the audience has been a distraction from the man's performance and feeling. This setting is perfect for Andrew Bird. It is plush and dark and lonely, and he shines in it. I looked it up recently to add to a fun thread on musicians who build songs live on stage with looping devices at MetaFilter. Lots of good links there, and a few more sneak peeks from Nigel on the From the Basement site.

SCIENCE! Tracer Bullets

2009-04-05T01:29:00.000-07:00

No, no, no—not ballistics. Science!

The Library of Congress SCIENCE TRACER BULLET SERIES contains research guides that help you locate information on science and technology subjects. With brief introductions to the topics, lists of resources and strategies for finding more, they help you to stay "on target."

Lots of it is just bibliographic listing, but some of the pages have INTERNET RESOURCES that often yield good stuff. Like Ask an Astrobiologist! (Astrobiology? As in Exobiology? Exopaleontology? Bioastronomy? Life in space?!)

Classic image from WearScience.com. You can get it on a t-shirt.

Smog - "Morality"

2009-04-04T02:53:00.001-07:00

Coloring the Past

2009-02-27T11:09:00.000-08:00

Gloria Swanson

Romanovs

Claroscureaux restores and colorizes vintage photographs.

Compression Glitch

2009-02-22T20:17:00.000-08:00

Two videos that make my brain hurt.

Fucking It Up is the new Doing It Right.

OK OK not so new. Brilliant artists in every artistic field have been abusing their media for various reasons, with occasionally commendable results. But the video compression aspect is new. And it makes me twitch. ...which in my Funked Up way of Doing Life Right is a good thing.

Good News!

2009-02-22T19:47:00.000-08:00


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d8888888b Y8b 888 888 
                      
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  /:/\__\   /::\  \   _\:\  \    \:\  \    \:\  \   /::\  \   /:| _|_ 
 /:/:/\__\ /::\:\__\ /\/::\__\   /::\__\   /::\__\ /::\:\__\ /::|/\__\
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   \/__/     \|__|     \/__/                         \/__/     \/__/  
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_  / __ _  _ \_  __ \  _ \_  ___/  __ `/  __/  __ \_  ___/
/ /_/ / /  __/  / / /  __/  /   / /_/ // /_ / /_/ /  /    
\____/  \___//_/ /_/\___//_/    \__,_/ \__/ \____//_/

World Map of Album Covers

2009-02-20T16:14:00.000-08:00

World Magazine: Album Covers Map
Pretty snazzy GMaps mashup, community fueled, and already huge. Required reference for traveling music dorks.

Flash Game: The Space Game

2009-02-18T11:36:00.001-08:00

Another tower defense game, of sorts. Build an asteroid mining colony IN SPACE and mine each field as fast as you can, while defending your property against the enemy attackers whose... (it's not airspace, so, uh, does that make it spacespace?) ...planetary locale your energy conglomerate is invading and stripping bare. Good soundtrack, pretty engaging, cool twist; I'd give it a .83 GemCraft rating—it's about 83% as cool as GemCraft. Via

Rainydayz Remixes

2009-02-18T00:33:00.000-08:00

Download Amplive's Rainydayz Remixes, an 8-track collection featuring remixes of Radiohead's historic seventh album, In Rainbows. The songs are available in a zip file below and feature verses courtesy of Too $hort, MC Zumbi of Zion I, Chali2na of Jurassic 5, and Del the Funky Homosapien.

After a cease & desist put the breaks on Amplive's Radiohead In Rainbows remix project, the online music community reasonably wondered if the tracks would ever see the light of day. Well, here they are.

While the Oakland producer/DJ acknowledges that he probably should have contacted Radiohead (who were not involved in the project) to seek approval prior to making his interpretations publically available, an agreement has been reached between all involved parties and Amplive has been granted permission to release Rainydayz Remixes for free to the general public. Effective immediately, the eight-track record is available here.

Rainydayz Remixes is composed exclusively of source material pulled from In Rainbows, re-envisioned by Amplive and complimented by vocal work from Too $hort, MC Zumbi of Zion I, Chali2na of Jurassic 5, Codany Holiday, and Del The Funky Homosapien.

Jim Henson's Time Piece

2009-02-17T12:05:00.001-08:00

Dislocation in time, time signatures, time as a philosophical concept, and slavery to time are some of the themes touched upon in this nine-minute, experimental film, which was written, directed, and produced by Jim Henson-and starred Jim Henson! Screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, Time Piece enjoyed an eighteen-month run at one Manhattan movie theater and was nominated for an Academy Award for outstanding short subject

Oaths Used by Men of Note

2009-02-17T11:51:00.000-08:00

1. ANGUS (earl of), when incensed, used to say, by the might of God ! but at other times his oath was By St. Bride of Douglas !
2. BAYARD (The Chevalier), By God's Holy-day !
3. CHARLES II. of England, Ods fish ! a corruption of "God's flesh."
4. CHARLESVIII. of France, By God's light !
5 EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, By God and His Mother !
6. ELIZABETH, By God ! God's Death ! God's wounds ! softened afterwords into Zounds ! and Zouterkins !
7. FRANCOIS I., On the word of a gentleman !
8. HENRI IV., Ventre Saint Gris !
Ventre Saint Gris ! are you dumb, man? --- Stanley Weyman: A Minister of France (1895) ("V. The Lost Cipher").
9. HENRY II. of England, By the death of our Lord !
10. HENRY III., when he confirmed Magna Carta, On the word of a gentleman, a king, and a knight !
11. HENRY V., By'r Lady !
12. HENRY VIII. By God's wounds !
13. JAMES I., On my soul !
14. JOHN (King), By God's tooth ! By the light of our Lady's brow ! Sir W. Scott, in Ivanhoe (ch. xiii.) makes him swear, By the bones of St. Becket !
15. JOSEPH, viceroy of Egypt, By the life of Pharaoh !
16. LOUIS XI., By God's Easter ! (Pasque Dieu !) and Mother of God !
17. LOUIS XIII., The devil take me ! (Diable m'emporte!)
18. OTTO I. of Germany, By my beard !
19. PERROT (John), a natural son of Henry VIII., was the first to employ the profane oath of God's Wounds ! afterwards softened into Zounds !
20. RICHARD I. Mort de ma vie ! and Despar dieux !
21. RICHARD II., By St. John ! (i.e. the Baptist) and God of Paradise !í
22. RICHARD III., By my George and Garter !
24. SIMON DE MONTFORT, the great patriot in the reign of Henry III., By the arm of St. James !
25. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, By the splendour of God !
26. WILLIAM RUFUS, Par sante voult de Lucques ! ("By the holy face of Lucca !" or "By Lucca's holy face !"). Lucca was a gret crucifix in Lucca Cathedral.---Albert Butler: Lives of the Saints April 21), p. 494, col. I.
27. WINIFRED (St.) or Boniface, By St. Peter's tomb !

In the reign of Charles II., fancy oaths were in fashion. Eg.
28. FOPPINGTON (Lord), an empty-headed coxcomb, intent only on dress and fashion. His favourite oaths, which he brings out with a drawl (in speaking, his affectation is to change the vowel o into a, as rat, naw, resalve, waurld, ardered, mauth, paund, maunth, lang, philasapher, tarture, and so on), are : Strike me dumb ! Split my windpipe ! Strike me ugly ! Stap my vitals ! Sun, burn me ! Curse, catch me ! Stap my breath ! Let me blood ! Run me through ! Knock me down ! He is reckoned the king of all court fops.

The most common oaths of the ancient Romans were By Herculês ! (Mehercule !); Roman women, By Castor ! and both men and women, By Pollux !

Viri per Herculem, mulieres per Castorem, utrique per Pollucem, jurāre solíti.--Aulus Gellius : Noctes Atticæ, ii. 6.

NB -- In the early part of the nineteenth century, oaths were exceedingly common, both among men and women ; they were rarely heard in good society towards the close of the century.

Brewer's Readers Guide (On my shelf it says The Reader's Handbook though.)
Also: Profanity in Science Fiction (or Oaths Used by Non-Humans of Note) at Wikipedia.

Space Colony Art from the 1970s

2009-02-17T01:55:00.000-08:00

Our Future in the Cosmos—Space
A speech given by Isaac Asimov.

Throughout the history of humanity, we have been extending our range until it is now planet-wide, covering all parts of Earth’s surface and reaching to the bottom of the ocean, to the top of the atmosphere, and beyond it to the Moon. We will flourish only as long as we continue to extend that range, and although the potential range is not infinite, it is incredibly vast even by present standards. We will eventually extend our range to cover the whole of the solar system, and then we will head outward to the stars.

It frequently happened in my business as a writer, especially in my younger days when I knew some pretty overwhelming editors, that an editor would say to me, "I have a great idea for a story." He’d slap me on the back and say, "Now go home and write it." I would always think how easy it was for him to give me an idea for a story, but it was I, not the editor, who had to sit down and look at the most terrifying of all things: a blank page. In the same way, it’s fun to be introduced and have someone tell a lot of exaggerations about me; however, then he sits down and I’m the one who has to face the audience. I must say that it helps a great deal to face an obviously friendly and intelligent audience. I have brought almost the entire Mensa organization of this region to this presentation, and, naturally, they take it personally when I talk about intelligence. I am the international president of that organization, not because of anything I have done but because of a whim of the organization.

I want to discuss our future in the cosmos. One of the things I think will mean the most to us and will make the future different from the past is the coming of a "space-centered society." We are going to expand into space, and I think it is fitting and right that we should do so. All through the 50,000 years of Homo sapiens, to say nothing of their hominoid precursors, humanity has been expanding its range of habitation. We don’t know exactly where the first Homo sapiens made their appearance, but they have been expanding until they now inhabit the entire face of the Earth. For the first time in human history, we are faced with a situation in which we literally have no place on Earth to expand. We have crossed all the mountains; we have penetrated all the oceans. We have plumbed the atmosphere to its height and the oceans to their depths. Unless we are willing to settle down into a world that is our prison, we must be ready to move beyond Earth, and I think we are ready. We have the technological capacity to do so; all that we need is the will. I think it is quite possible, starting now, to build settlements in space, to build worlds miniature in comparison to the Earth but large in comparison to anything we have done so far. These worlds, in orbit around the Earth, would be capable of holding tens of thousands of human beings.

This idea of space settlement seems odd to people; it doesn’t seem inviting. When I suggested such an idea in an article I wrote a few years ago, I received a number of letters arguing against the possibility of space settlements. The arguments weren’t based on economics; the main argument was that nobody would want to live in space. Nobody would want to leave his comfortable home on Earth. As nearly as I could tell from their addresses, all the people who wrote to me were Americans, and I presume that they knew American history. Americans should understand exactly what it means to leave their comfortable homes and to go to a completely strange world. This country was a wilderness at the beginning, and even after it was settled, it was a foreign land for most people. We in the United States are the descendants (unless any of you happen to be American Indians) of people who came here from other continents in search of something. Our forefathers, who came, at first, under harsh conditions, knew it would take them weeks to cross the ocean. They knew that if they met a serious storm, they would probably not survive. They also knew that when they landed, they would find a wilderness and possibly hostile natives. Yet, they still came. Between 1607 and 1617, 11,000 Englishmen came to the new colony of Virginia. In 1617, the population of Virginia was 1,000. How was it possible for 11,000 people to come and yet to have only a population of 1,000? The answer is easy; 10,000 died. Yet people continued to come. Why? They came because life in Europe, for many, was intolerable and because they wanted to come to a new land to start a new life. Whatever the risks, whatever the chances, if they succeeded it would be something new. It is this same desire that will drive people into space and cause them to populate as many space settlements as they can build. The chances of survival in space will probably be greater than those of the first immigrants to the colony of Virginia....

Read the rest of Isaac Asimov's speech.

More classic space colony pictures, and much, much more over at NASA's Space Settlements index.

Via

Scintillation

2009-02-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

I recommend full-screen viewing.

A lovely video, scintillating indeed. It is difficult to decide while watching it to favor the stunning images of orchids and wall molding lit up with explosions and dancing lights or to marvel at the technique and puzzle how it was made. The description from its creator, Xavier Chassaing, is cryptic:

This is an experimental film made up of over 35,000 photographs. It combines an innovative mix of stop motion and live projection mapping techniques.

Apparently there is a 'making-of' video in the works, I look forward to seeing it.

Cross Questions and Crooked Answers

2009-02-13T07:25:00.000-08:00

An Irish recruit about to be inspected by Frederick the Great, was told he would be asked these questions: (I) How old are you? (2) How long have you been in the service? (3) Are you content with your pay and rations? So he prepared his answers accordingly. But it so happened that the king began with the second question: "How long have you been in the service?"
Paddy glibly replied,"Twenty years."
"Why," said the king, "how old are you?"
"Six months."
"Six months!" rejoined the king; "surely either you or I must be mad!"
"Yes, both, your majesty."

¶Some Highlanders, coming to England for employ, conceived they would be asked (1) Who are you? (2) Why do you come here? and that the questioner might then say, "No, I don't want your service." Scarcely had they crossed the border than they came to the body of a man who had been murdered. They stopped to look at it, when a constable came up and said, "Who did this?"
"We three Highlanders," was the prepared answer.
"Why did you do it?" said the constable.
"For the money and the silver," was the answer they had prepared.
"You scoundrels!" said the constable, "I shall hang you for this."
"If you don't, another will," said the men, and were preparing to go away, when they were marched off to jail.

¶Another story of the same kind is told of three Sclavonians who went to Hungary, and "were taught the language in three days." Their répertoire was, however, limited to, "We three," "Cheese," and "That's the truth." Coming to a dead body lying on the road, the forestkeeper asked them, "Who has murdered the man"
"We three," was the ready answer.
"What for?" was the next question, and
"Cheese" was the reply.
"Then," said the keeper, "you will all be hanged;"
"That's the truth," responded the strangers, and were about to be handcuffed when the supposed dead man jumped up with a "Ho, ho, ho!" overjoyed at his practical joke.

MeFi Mix #2 - A Mid-Tempo Rock Song Glut

2009-02-05T12:35:00.001-08:00

I posted this out to 15 lucky souls around the world a few weeks ago. For it's lack of cohesiveness and relative insanity of included artists and tracks, I think it stands up fairly well. Enjoy!

A Mid-Tempo Rock Song Glut

01. Doug Sahm - Rock-Tick-Tock
02. Self - I Am a Little Explostion
03. Late of the Pier - Random Firl
04. Harvey Danger - Carlotta Valdez
05. The Walkmen - The Rat
06. Reggie & the Full Effect - Good Times, Good Tunes, Good Buds
07. Gil Mantera's Party Dream - Alligator Missions
08. Women - Sag Harbor Bridge
09. Pitty Sing - Anyway
10. Cher - If I Could Turn Back Time
11. Mink Deville - Let Me Dream If I Want To
12. Ezra Furman & the Harpoons - Take Off Your Sunglasses
13. Arif Sag - Osman Pehlivan
14. The Sea & Cake - Weekend
15. The Small Faces - I Feel Much Better
16. Nobody - Tori Oshi
17. The Mooney Suzuki - The Broken Heart
18. Prince - Crimson & Clover
19. Mount Eerie & Julie Dorion - Lost Wisdom
20. Lambchop - Your Fucking Sunny Day
21. The Jazz Butcher - Mr. Odd
22. Headset - Breath Contrails
23. Sixto Rodriguez - Crucify Your Mind
24. Danielson - Five Stars & Two Thumbs Up

The cover image is a very small part of a Turing Machine built in John Conway's Game of Life. Instead a track list in the liner notes, I included a long rant/thoughts that follows the mix through each of the tracks. It's in tiny print, but the full-size image (click for) is easily (un)readable:

Art Experimental: Ruttmann vs. Milant

2009-01-26T15:47:00.000-08:00

The pleasure in watching and [listening to] this comes from the reactivity in the same temporality between sound and picture.
Abstract animation from the 1920's meets a modern electronic soundtrack. Milant's composition is a subtle shadow to Ruttmann's Opus, allowing the morphic, swooping shapes to oomph and grunt their way through their constantly-changing acrobatics. The sonic theme is continuous throughout the three short works, a pressing beat that's accented by hints and swoops of noise that remind me of a little boy playing with miniature cars and airplanes. The tiny homey touches, like the mumbled voices 'reading' the title cards of each opus, preserve and enhance the whimsical feeling of the animation.

OK, I think that's all the critical bullshit I can summon for this movie. I like watching it better than writing about it, anyway. You'll definitely enjoy watching it more than reading this, too, so... here's some more stuff cribbed from a MeFi post I made years ago about this animation:

Walter Ruttmann is perhaps best known for his silent documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) [link to YouTube playlist of all 8 parts] and for his carefully orchestrated abstract animations. (Ubuweb has Opus I-4 in one.)

Meanwhile, Alexis Milant is known best for his excellent art is a game and game an art, aka awesum fingerboarding video! and the subsequent "Opus" series. Note the detailed sound design.

I gently encourage all who enjoyed these videos to explore the related videos features and other links provided. It feels like I left a lot out of this post. That's ok; it's fun to explore!

EVLTube - Videos from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory

2009-01-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

EVL has a rich history in creating electronic and computer-based art - from video to animation, through web-based art virtual reality (VR) and other high-resolution visualization systems. Fostering collaborations between artists/designers and computer scientist to blend art with technology using electronic media has been at the core of EVL's creative mission from that lab's inception.

All videos courtesy EVLTube.

Electronic Masks

(1976) This is a example of early video art by internationally renowned technologist and EVL/UIC MFA alumni Barbara Sykes using the color capability of the Sandin Analogue Image Processor - the "Color IP".

Calculated Movements

(1985) Calculated Movements by Larry Cuba is an example of early video art using software developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). The video has a minimalist/ambient original sound piece.

Calculated Movements is a sample of Cuba's later work.

Making of the Computer Graphics for Star Wars (Episode IV)

In the 1970s the computer graphics for the first Star Wars film (1977) was created by Larry Cuba at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) (at the time known as the Circle Graphics Habitat) at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

via Everyone Forever

Al Jaffee Fold-ins from MAD Magazine

2008-12-16T11:49:00.000-08:00

NYT put together a nifty little interaction that allows you to 'fold' the illustrations over into their hidden state.

via Martin Klasch

Cosmic Melancholy

2008-12-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

I read this post at Everyone Forever back in September, but couldn't watch the video due to a dying computer. It was worth the wait. Here's a loving reproduction of the post:

The pagan Arabs of the pre-Islamic period were a proud and boastful people who were characterized by epic tales, heart-rending poetry, and eloquent prose. Indeed, their literary excellence before the Prophet Muhammad, is still reputed to be of the highest calibre, the quintessence of poetry, chivalry and a most intoxicating ambiance, even at times glaringly arrogant and self-worshipping.

However, in the year 610AD, the fortieth year of a certain Muhammad ibn Abdullah, the Arabs had found a contest to their genius. This 'man from a mountain' claimed to be in receipt of a magnanimous recital, a message that he was not even willing to take any credit for.

The Arabs found their pride, their literary genius to be in serious question. The sheer experience of the recital, its ontology, style, experience, cosmic melancholy, odd structure, meaning and message, shattered them into willing submission.

The ontological encounter with the recital to the Arabs surely confirmed to them, by them, that surely no man could be the author of such an experience.

The odd structure, the melancholy, the penetrative acoustics remain to the present day and have been reverberating Worldwide, around houses and mosques during this current month of fasting and patience; Ramadan.

04:10 / 27.09.2008
Arfan Rai Chiswick

Publishers' Bindings Online

2008-12-09T16:55:00.000-08:00

The other day I picked out some Library donations to bring home just because I liked some of the simple drawings on the covers.

The cover of this classroom edition of Alphonse Daudet's Selected Stories including La Belle-Nivernaise has a couple of nifty border patterns. I like the steely blue ink on the light charcoal coloring. [click images for bigger]

And the back cover has the publisher, American Book Company's stamp:

A clearer shot from the title page:

A couple other simple designs:

The Show of Violence by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Escape by Ethel Vance

Of course, these are nothing compared to the collection of binding art at Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books.
via cosias do arco da velha

Compliments of Surreality

2008-12-09T16:21:00.000-08:00

You are as frightful as an engine developed solely for the countenance of sexual innuendo by country music.

Yay!

A singing crocodile dressed as a cowboy teaches you to meditate

2008-12-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

Story
via MetaFilter

A Map of the Various Paths of Life

2008-12-04T03:10:00.001-08:00

[click!]

Polyvinyl Black Friday Sale

2008-11-20T17:21:00.000-08:00

FAVORITE RECORD LABEL CELEBRATES BLACK FRIDAY

Polyvinyl is having a massive Black Friday sale -- that has already started! Save between 10% - 70% on some of your favorite Polyvinyl records! Nearly every single Polyvinyl release -- close to 200 items -- is on sale!

I splurged in the 70% Off store:

     Items in Order
1 x Rainer Maria - Ears Ring EP CDEP  ($1.20)
1 x Kyle Fischer - Open Ground CD  ($1.20)
1 x The Ivory Coast - Clouds CD  ($1.80)
1 x of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse CD Single  ($0.30)
1 x The Red Hot Valentines - Calling Off Today CDEP  ($0.90)
1 x Various Artists - Direction CD  ($3.00)

Twelve bucks after shipping.

Fermilab Golden Books Collection

2008-11-20T09:11:00.000-08:00

Fermilab's History and Archives Project features a great collection of short books, pamphlets, and talks they refer to as The Golden Book Collection.

Some excerpts:

Weighty Thoughts by Jane S. Wilson
Well, hello and how are you doing?
Let's have a little chat
About our national obsession
The unwanted possession
Of -- Oh God! -- a lot of extra fat.

From the very beginning
The definition of sinning
lay in Eve's entreating,
"Adam, we're eating,
Come taste it. It's nice".
When they ate, they got fat
And the upshot of that
Was to end Paradise.

from her book of poetry, Songs of Too Much Experience

In April 1979 Chandra participated in the Fermilab symposium, Aesthetics and Science, to honor the contributions of the founding director Robert R. Wilson. This book is a reprinting of his significant remarks on that occasion, some of which also appear in his book, Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar expounds on Beauty and the Quest for Beauty in Science.

Every thinking person at some time has looked up into the dark night sky and wondered about the Universe. How big, how old? What is it, why is it? Where is the edge, the center? What is beyond, before? Every civilization has imagined answers to these questions, and has employed people expert in such matters to answer them.

20th century experts who study such questions about the Universe are scientists known as cosmologists. The word cosmology is derived from the Greek κóσµοζ (COSMOS). κóσµοζ does not mean enormous, immense, Universe, or even "billions and billions." Rather,κóσµοζ is the Greek word for ORDER. Modern cosmologists use physical law as a tool to bring order to an apparently complex and mysterious Universe. The strategy is straightforward: Learn the laws of physics by performing laboratory experiments, and explain the observed Universe on the basis of these laws.

from Exploring the Universe by Edward W. Kolb

via SpaceCollective

MeFi Mix #1 - Do Not Kink

2008-11-19T22:28:00.000-08:00

Yet another source of my overflowing love for the community blog MetaFilter has been the CD swaps organized about twice every year. The idea is simple: burn 5 copies of a mix to CD and mail them to the 5 other people in your assigned swap set. Expect a mix in return from each of those same 5 folks.

Though I don't think I've ever participated in a swap where all 6 swap set members have come through, now that I think about it.

Still, about 7 years of this has loaded me up with great music mixes from around the world. I've started digitizing them now, and the first one up is (randomly) Do Not Kink!, sent to me in 2003.

These are included in the archive.
Click for bigger.

I can't remember who put this mix together. Here's the mystery mixer's liner notes:

Do Not Kink!

Gridlock by The Pogues
Cornflake Girl by Jawbox
Look Up by Stars
Ivanka by Imperial Teen
Air Batucada by Thievery Corporation
Because of Money by 3rd Generation Band
Paperwings by Damien Jurado
Ray of Gob by Go Home Productions
To Hell With Good Intentions by Mclusky
Merchandise by Fugazi
I'll Be Around (Live) by The Afghan Whigs
Polaris by Nortec Collective and Bostich
Ce n'est pas pour nous by Le Nombre
And the Washington Monument (Blinks) Goodnight by Q and Not U
Barra Barra by Rachid Taha
Pack Yr Romantic Mind by Stereolab
I Got Erection by Turbonegro
Status by Mr. Lif feat. Insight
Young Offenders by The Constantines
Grounded (Live) by Pavement

back cover

This is a pretty good mix. I dig how it takes a bunch of artists I already like (The Pogues, Stars, Mclusky, Stereolab, Q and Not U, Constantines, Pavement) and then goes in a completely different (though not wholly unexpected) direction. A somewhat juvenile and awesome direction.

Check out all my MeFi Mixes

Live Music

2008-11-15T01:06:00.000-08:00

Favorite.

Tetrish

2008-11-13T10:23:00.000-08:00

99 Bricks
Stack the wobbly tetroids as high as you can go. Discard blocks with 'c'. Note: Your structure will collapse, usually in some glorious fashion.

Under Construction
Fill the shape with the blocks provided. You can add 1 square or take 1 square away at a time up to three times each. Much easier than 99 Blocks.

6 Tetris skins/versions
There are small variations between each game, but they're all basically Tetris.

Mt. Head by Koji Yamamura

2008-11-13T01:03:00.001-08:00

Nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 2002.

Enjoy many small animations on Koji Yamamura's website

This blog...what a waste! *pops internet into mouth*

You've noticed, I know.

2008-11-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

Things have slowed down 'round these parts; apologies.

I started a new job, now part time, but for the past two weeks it was 39 h/wk + the fucking commute. It's 45 white-knuckle minutes there in the morning—if I drive like Batman—and usually a good hour plus of continuous stop/go street traffic on the way home. Thankfully, that lessens now that I'm cutting hours.

That's right! Now I'm a part time library slave. Four hours less per day of

SHELVE THOSE BOOKS.
MOVE those books.
ALPHABETIZE!
DEWEY IT RIGHT!
"Yes sir, I understand that the new location of DVDS/BIOGRAPHIES/REFERENCE/XX is INCONVENIENT/CRAMPED/DIFFICULT TO REACH/XX and you wish it magically appeared in your hand at home instead. You could always apply for shut-in status."

...and wondering why everyone else working there is bored senseless. I'm still endlessly fascinated with The Library and how it works. Everyone has a very small job that they do the same way every day—Librarians, Support Services, The Friends OTL, etc. Some lucky souls (circ Clerks, mainly) have multiple small assigned jobs that they rotate through over the course of the day. I do everything else, and shelve the collection.

Shelving the collection isn't as bad as it might seem. At Borders I was about as eager to haul out a cart of books as I was to lick the banister on the main staircase. There was never enough room for the product on the shelf, or too damn many of the product to fit anywhere in the store, and usually a combination of both. There are very few crowded sections in the library. It is generally sprawling, with multiple odd-shaped rooms and two levels and vaulted ceilings. Beheld glorious by these tired IPT eyes.

And full of books! Well, not completely full, I guess, which I'm counting as a plus due to the nature of my job. 'Handling media' is probably the most succinct job description I could come up with, though 'shelving books' describes a damn big portion of my time spent on the clock. My department is Circulation, an apt name. It resembles the inventory process at Borders in many ways, but one difference delighting is the constant variety the patrons drop off in my bins every day.

The DVDs especially. I've been watching that section closely for two weeks now (the allotted check-out time) and am positive that I've only seen maybe 70% of the discs available. The selection doesn't come close to Borders out on the shelf, of course, but I think it'd be a fair fight if everybody brought back their checked-out discs on the same day. Collection size aside, it's the day-to-day variety that's really refreshing. At Borders the same 25 DVDs (or CDs, or books, too) came in pretty much every day, 15 or more of those with 5+ copies, and usually 1 or 2 with 25+ copies per. It would change up a little every week or so, with a total rotation of all new popular material taking 3 to 4 months. At the library I see new stuff, very low repeats, every single day.

This I like.

OK, I'm running out of steam (it's almost 10 on a Friday night, and I'm ready to drift off to sleep), but there's lots more to tell. I'm learning cool new stuff every day, like how to mount newspapers on the big sticks. Important stuff. I'll tell you about it now that I've got a bit more time (for the [hopefully] short while before I snag a second gig) and I'll rumble out the link machine and get it going again to boot.

Disney Movie!

2008-11-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

And as a matter of fact, as I was going to post this I saw in my 'watched blogs' this post from Nico on lame Disney princes. The character of The Prince always leaves more questions than answers. Who is this guy? Where does he come from?

The answer to these questions and more, at Nico Cartoons.

Wang Hui Monday

2008-11-03T07:19:00.000-08:00

[click for bigger]

images courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Wang’s seemingly effortless perfection brings Mozart to mind. Both were young prodigies who were prolific, at ease in many different styles, with, it seems, never a note or brush stroke out of place.

Unlike Mozart, Wang lived a long life. He was restless, always heading off in a new direction, copying one master after another. He succeeded so well that by the end of this exhibition the perfectionism, the lack of noticeable missteps, can be almost wearing.

NYT review of MoMA's "Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717)." Featuring a nice slideshow.

The Perfect Human (Det perfekte menneske)

2008-11-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

A short film by Jørgen Leth

Today I experienced something that I hope to understand in a few days.
Lars Von Trier's favourite film is Leth's The Perfect Human (1967). Von Trier gives Leth the task of remaking The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different 'obstruction' (or obstacle) given by Von Trier.

Obstruction 1: Leth must remake the film in Cuba (but with no set) with no shot longer than 12 frames, and he must answer the questions posed in the original film; Leth successfully completes this task.

Obstruction 2: Leth must remake the film in the worst place in the world but not show that place onscreen; additionally, Leth must play the role of "the man". The meal must be included but the woman is not to be included. Leth remakes the film in the red light district of Bombay, only partially hiding it behind a translucent screen.

Obstruction 3: Because Leth failed to complete task 2 perfectly, Von Trier punishes him, telling him to either remake the film in any way he chooses, or redo obstruction 2 in Bombay again. Leth chooses the former option and remakes it in Brussels using split-screen effects.

Obstruction 4: Leth must remake the film as an animation. He does so with the aid of Bob Sabiston, a specialist in rotoscoping, who creates animated versions of shots from the previous films.

Obstruction 5: The fifth obstruction is that Von Trier has already made the fifth version, but it must be credited as Leth's, and Leth must read a voiceover narration ostensibly from his own perspective but in fact written by Von Trier.
I can't find a video for this one.

via MetaFilter

Popcards

2008-11-02T08:49:00.000-08:00

Hundreds of French pop-kitsch postcards from the 50's, 60's, and 70's at Popcards.
via Unscathed Corpse [NSFW]

Executed Today

2008-10-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

Executed Today is a blog of history, sociology, biography, criminology, law, and kismet — an unrepresentative but arresting view of the human condition across time and circumstance from the parlous vantage of the scaffold. ...

The death penalty, as a subset within that vast category of “acts of violence homo sapiens do to their fellows,” blends insensibly into a dozen adjacent territories — murder, assassination, warfare, torture, low crime and high statecraft, even suicide.

If we know for certain that extinguishing life is an essential component of the death penalty, our everyday language nevertheless reflects ambiguity about how. We might speak of crime victims as being “killed execution-style” to evoke a sense of deliberation and even ceremony about the act; conversely, we might derogate the formal and official act of a state organ as a “summary execution” to underscore the absence of an appropriate juridical atmosphere. In situations of war and revolution where the legitimate authority of the state is contested, the water muddies still further.

and, just to be clear...

This blog is neither pro- nor anti-death penalty in general nor in any particular. Its interest is the perspective on humanity we gain through the window of this human institution.

From Cave Paintings to the Internet

2008-10-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Norman's History of Science

When I completed the conversion in October 2008 there were more than 1550 annotated timeline entries, nearly all of which had one or more hyperlinks to online references. There were also sixty-four themes, by which the timeline could be searched. Individual timeline entries were indexed by up to six themes. You will find links to each theme at the end of each timeline entry. If you click on that theme after the entry you will see a timeline based on that theme alone. You can, of course, access the timeline by various different eras, and you can switch back and forth between eras and themes. Users should recognize that in order to trace the origins of concepts or technologies back in time I have sometimes defined themes loosely. In order to make some themes more accessible to historical treatment I have also combined related themes. For example, I combined Internet and Networking in order to trace this theme back to the first road networks in the ancient world, to railroads, to the telegraph lines that followed railroad lines, to telephone networks, up the network of networks that is the Internet.

Jesus H. Timesink. Get to reading!
via MetaFilter

what

2008-10-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

Most language-related internet fads I'm not crazy about. I can't stand smileys and their relations; some of the abbreviations (e.g., WTF) are efficient and useful, even if they don't inspire enthusiasm; catchphrases (All Your Base) quickly wear out their welcome. But there's one recent innovation (at least, I think it's recent—see below) that I absolutely love. For, oh, the past year or so I've been noticing, and when appropriate using, a delightful... what to call it? It's not an exclamation, because it's determinedly low-key; it's not really an interjection, because it's not interjected, it's a standalone response. And I wasn't sure how to find an example, because it's impossible to search for (see below). But I trusted to serendipity, which rarely fails me, and sure enough fate provided one.

languagehat on what.

WHAT is always a worthwhile addition to any conversation, demonstrating one's superior intellect and mastery of the English language. ... It was created by the internets. Whenever you find yourself in a situation on the internets where your opinion really matters, WHAT is for you!

Encyclopedia Dramatica on what.

(I changed languagehat's link. Mainly I'm using the ED for all my reference needs anymore.)

Yay Broccoli!

2008-10-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

"I just love Cascadian Farm Gourmet Boxed Frozen Broccoli! Whenever I open that freezer door and pluck a friendly box of broccoli out of the supermarket freezer case, elation, and joy, and jubilant consumerism bubble out from my soul."

WTF Broccoli? at Bread & Honey
Part Deux, the Cascadia Farms response

Something else bubbles out as well when broccoli's for dinner.

Strange Carafes

2008-10-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

Glassworks by Etienne Meneau

Où est le vin ?

More animation, no penises.

2008-10-26T00:32:00.000-07:00

Hear The Wind Sing by Ben Warren

Noteboek by Evelien Lohbeck

I just found out how to embed the high quality versions of YouTube videos. Slow am I, but effective.

Phallaniticism

2008-10-24T01:13:00.000-07:00

The B-Squad

Chris McD

what

Cold War and Insurgency Propaganda Banknotes

2008-10-22T02:40:00.000-07:00

Cold War and Insurgency Propaganda Banknotes
by SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.)

Propaganda leaflets may be avoided by patriotic or frightened citizens of a target country, but anyone will pick up a banknote on the street. That has always been the perfect way to pass insidious propaganda to an unwary reader. The Americans, British, Germans and Russians all used this technique in WWII. Half a decade later in the Korean War the United States once again prepared banknote leaflets.

It was just a matter of time before they appeared again during Cold War psychological operations and in revolutionary conflicts where one side sought independence from another. The only difference was that the banknotes prepared during the shooting wars were government projects and it was understood that they were authorized by the military. The Cold War and insurgency notes for the most part were prepared by civilian organizations, though certainly in almost every case they were sponsored by some intelligence agency of a government. We could make a case for calling them "Political Banknotes," but there are legitimate banknotes prepared by real political parties in favor of candidates and policies.

SGM Friedman (Ret.) has written a veritable crapload of interesting psyop articles.

Parrot Sketch Not Included: 20 Years of Monty Python

2008-10-22T01:51:00.001-07:00

Hosted with panache and a plum by the ever debonair Steve Martin.

Oh okay, fine—The Parrot Sketch.

Bandstand Busking

2008-10-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

Laura Groves - "Coast"

of Montreal - "Id Engager"

Jonesy's Jukebox Jury said pants, but I'm for mustard.

More hip London buskers at Bandstand Busking.

Animaniacs Cultural References Guide

2008-10-19T21:53:00.000-07:00

Not getting those obscure jokes and references on Animaniacs? Then here's the place ta go!
The Home of the Animaniacs Cultural References Guides

via Looking for scenes with dialogue in G-rated movies, shows or cartoons that have hidden references for adults.

Engines of our Ingenuity

2008-10-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

[home page]

The Engines of Our Ingenuity is a radio program that tells the story of how our culture is formed by human creativity. Written and hosted by John Lienhard, it is heard nationally on Public Radio and produced by KUHF-FM Houston. Among other features, this web site houses the transcripts for every episode heard since the show's inception in 1988.

I'm having fun CTRL+F-ing around the full episode titles with keywords page. Clicking the episode number gets you the transcript, supplementary media (photos, links, etc.), and a link to the Real Audio file of the episode. There are over 2,400 episodes, with topics ranging from Colonial America's amateur innovators to The Kronos Quartet to Mendel as the father of modern genetics. Sweet.

The Pathetic Fallacy Needs Your Understanding

2008-10-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia says:

When Xerxes was crossing the Hellespont in the midst of the first Greco-Persian War, he built two bridges that were quickly destroyed. Feeling personally offended, his paranoia led him to believe that the sea was consciously acting against him as though it were an enemy. As such Herodotus quotes him as saying "You salt and bitter stream, your master lays his punishment upon you for injuring him, who never injured you. Xerxes will cross you, with or without your permission."^[2] He subsequently threw chains into the river, gave it three hundred lashes and "branded it with red-hot irons".^[3]

The Pathetic Fallacy: Animism masquerading as science in education

The pathetic fallacy is the name given the specious attribution of emotions --- which is to say, pathos --- to the inanimate. Thus, when NASA tells children that, “the moving object, due to its mass, wants to keep going,” it misleads them with the pathetic fallacy. For, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, an inanimate mass doesn’t have any wants. Well, there is a belief system which posits that everything contains a spirit which motivates and directs its actions, and that system is called animism. But, animism is not science. So, apparently we have NASA promoting animism among our children under the guise of promoting science. This is scary. (One then wonders if NASA thinks this way, or it only wants children to do so).

Emphasis mine. Hilarious!
More literarity:

Symphony in Slang

Goldsworthy

2008-10-18T11:12:00.001-07:00

The Andy Goldsworthy Digital Catalog

via naturalismo

Echo Park is a Great Neighborhood of America

2008-10-18T10:46:00.000-07:00

Don't just take my word for it; the American Planning Association has gone a step beyond and actually declared it:
Great Places in America: Neighborhoods: Echo Park, Los Angeles

Where the Lotus cannot live

One of Los Angeles's first suburbs, the Echo Park neighborhood is a vibrant mix of cultures, incomes, architecture, commercial activity, and social activism that has retained its unique character and charm for more than a century.

Contributing to the neighborhood's eclecticism and unique sense of place — and reasons for its selection as one of 10 APA Great Neighborhoods for 2008 — are its varied topography, historic architecture, and engaged citizens who, over the years, have gone to great lengths to protect and preserve their historic arts community.

New Rig

2008-10-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

Seymore, my new computer, is up and running, logged onto the internet, and blazing fast only 53 hours after placing the order for his bits and pieces. Cameraphone proof:

Not a moment too soon!

Recap:
Parts ordered from newegg.com noon, 10/15
Total out of pocket: $315
Mail-in rebate: -$40
Trips to Radio Shack: 2
Radio Shack cost: ~$5
Trips to Fry's Electronics: 3
Fry's cost: ~$5
Packages delivered 5:30pm, 10/16
Computer operational 2:47pm 10/17
Computer online 5:13pm 10/17

Grand Total $ Amt: $285
Time from order to online: ~53 hours

Case was a 'retail' purchase, but still arrived very barebones. It had a little baggie of screws tied up inside, and that was about it. The motherboard was also 'retail' and came with a manual. No indication of how to mount a mobo in the case, though. Solution - Reference existing device, note spacers in screw bag, line up mobo and mark appropriate mounting holes.
Power supply has one SATA cable and I have 2 SATA devices (hard disk and optical drive). Solution - Fry's is the nearest store with Molex (4-pin power connector) to SATA converter. The one I saw online was Molex to dual-SATA (Y-split), and I looked for one in-store in case RAID arrays catch my interest in the near future, but no luck. Dolla-fifty for the cable, $3.50 for chips and soda from the queue.
Fans and disk drives spin up, but no signal to monitor. Solution - This one stumped me, and apparently I'm lucky not to have produced the Magic Smoke. But I asked about it and followed the suggestion that my mobo was underpowered. Flipped the 110/220 switch on the power supply, and shazam!
Salvaged wireless card detected, network information provided, but still no WWW. Solution - Call service provider. They reset the WEP key on my router, then again to a pass of our choice. The Ubuntu documentation for wireless is fairly sparse, which was frustrating if understandable; it's set up to 'just work.' Eventually, it did.

Dragons Having Sex With Cars (NSFW!)

2008-10-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

Dragons Having Sex With Cars NOT SAFE FOR WORK OR HUMANS

thanks loquacious!

New Computer

2008-10-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

I bought some components today. As you can tell from this list, I am obviously not a gamer. Maybe someday, but for now my PC doesn't have to seamlessly render 3D graphics at lightning blue-LED speed or anything. All it has to do is get me on the internet, show me my pictures and movies, and play my music. This I can do. (And for cheap!)

AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 Brisbane 2.3GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Dual-Core Processor
Wow, speaking of cheap. I was expecting my budget would only allow for a single core processor until this baby came along.

GIGABYTE GA-M61PME-S2 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 / nForce 430 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
I can plug everything else into this one, and it came "retail" so all the cords are included.

Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
On the small side, but the case (below) has plenty of space for expansion and I'm already rockin' a 500GB network storage drive.

LITE-ON Black 2MB Cache SATA 20X DVD±R DVD Burner
20X DVD+R
8X DVD+RW
8X DVD+R DL
20X DVD-R
6X DVD-RW
12X DVD-RAM
16X DVD-ROM
48X CD-R
32X CD-RW
48X CD-ROM
I've never owned a DVD burner, and it may turn out I never use it—somehow I'm gonna get that network drive married to my big ol' TV one of these days.

Rosewill R103A Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply with 20+4 pin connector
Nothing flashy. Plenty of room and power. Cheap!

Plus 2x1GB DDR2 RAM and a heatsink/fan for the X2. A coupla parts I'm salvaging from my 'classic' eMachines T2862, and I mighta even reused the case and PS. Maybe for a future project. Keeping the screen, mouse, and keyboard—though I might go in for a wireless ergo puncher if I come across the right price. I'm going with whatever the latest Ubuntu Linux release is for the OS; I have no idea what I'm getting into with this, but I have three days to figure it out.

Total out of pocket today: $314.55
RAM mail-in rebate: $40.00

Grand Total: $274.55

Not bad, eh?

Flash Game: Merge

2008-10-13T14:43:00.000-07:00

Refer to 'the solution' in the top left corner, then choose the triangle at the intersection of the correct combination of elements. Finish each level before 'the solution' hits the bottom of the play area.

[click image to play game]

I've made it as far as the 9 dots stage, with a top score (so far) of 803. I'm heartened by the fact that the top score right now is just over 1,000 points. I like this game a lot—it's already eaten up a ton of my day—but I don't appreciate having to start over at the beginning each time I fail. After a while the earliest stages become rote, and it makes me think the real difficulty of this game is memorizing the location of each element for each stage.

Getting the Hang of It

2008-10-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

Interesting question today:

What did it mean, originally, to "get the hang" of something?

katillathehun's answer, from the phrases.org.uk bulletin board, is delightfully gruesome:

Public executions by hanging were quite a spectacle in the good old days. When a person is hung, the moment after the drop where the rope snaps tight either breaks the person's neck or it doesn't. The humanitarian thing was to let the person's neck break; this caused a quick death. However, for a better show, if the neck didn't break, the person would twitch and struggle and suffer death by strangulation, although this was considered sloppy work. An experienced executioner who had mastered the difference and could do either was said to have "gotten the hang of it."

And, according to languagehat, ridiculous. He recommends the staid OED history, which references developing familiarity with a hand tool, adding that a part of that development is learning how the tool actually fits in the hand, it's weight and heft and shape; literally how it hangs from your hand.

I was going to go on to differentiate between getting the hang of something and having a knack, but a bolt of inspiration led me instead to the OED facts page. Fun!

First Edition
Proposed size: 4 volumes, 6,400 pages (with provision for ‘a larger dictionary containing not fewer than 10 volumes, each containing not less than 1,600 pages’)

Actual size: 10 volumes, 15,490 pages

Proposed time to complete: 10 years

Actual time to complete: 70 years (from approval date)

Fascicles: a bundle or a cluster.
Fascicle may also refer to:

Muscle fascicle, in anatomy, a bundle of skeletal muscle fibers surrounded by connective tissue
Nerve fascicle, in anatomy, a larger bundle of axons (nerve fibers) enclosed by the perineurium
a bundle of thin leaves of pines
A discrete section of a book issued or published separately.
Small clusters of flowers in the botanical description of flowering plants

Second Edition (1989)
Amount of ink used to print complete run: 2,830 kilos or 6,243 lbs.

Number of words in entire text: 59 million

Number of printed characters: 350 million

Equivalent person years used to ‘key in’ text to convert to machine-readable form: 120

Equivalent person years to proof-read text: 60

Number of megabytes of electronic storage required for text: 540

Crazy.

I think you have to buy the OED online, but their sitemap and search page has a bunch of cool stuff available for free. I'm reading about the sense section, which has been helpful in framing a question that's frustrated me lately.

Can you define common sense?

When I ask friends and folks for a definition they're usually vague and frustrated. That's just, you know, it's common sense! 'Shared understanding' gets them nodding in agreement, usually. The OED includes a chronological numbering to sense, recognizing that a word or phrase shifts and develops meaning over time, and different ones to different times in history. Does that make 'common sense', literally, the highest numbered sense record for any given OED entry?

ABC3D

2008-10-06T21:16:00.000-07:00

by Marion Bataille

want

The Importance of Social Rhythmic Body Motion

2008-10-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

80smusicvids.com - Over 1,000 classic music videos from the 1980's.

Same site, Retro arcade games flashacized.

Classic post-punk music videos.

Another coupla sites from the Cool Shit archive, posted to MeFi a while back. Notable also for this little bit from MeFite humannaire:

My take on the 80s was fun and dancing. People danced all the time (from 1981 to 1989, roughly). Gay clubs were secret, underground places where the best music eva was played! The only thing that sucked about the 80s was left over from the everything that came before the 80s. This cannot be said about the 90s. For whatever reason, maybe because it was the end of the world and everything, the 90s really bit all on their own. For instance, once hardcore rap and hip-hop hit big, all of us stopped dancing. Dancing was considered soft.

Of course, the whole rave/post-rave thing went big in the 90s, but....eh?

Now he we are, in a brand new millenium century decade and world, and as stupid as it is/has been, at least there's hope.....

And you know what? I went to a dance the other night, an 80s-themed dance party, and danced like it was NOT 1999 but 1983. And in case you forgot, or missed out completely, 1983 was better than rad: It was DEF!

Everything that "sucked" about the 80s sucked about the 20th Century. And a good number of us are in the process of sloughing off the last of that crap right now. In fact, vote for Obama, and lets get on with rededicating ourselves to a future which is as fun as the 80s without all the suck.

There's a little saying of mine which applies here. It is, "When the women are dancing, everyone is happy." I say that (and mean it) because when the women are dancing, women who like women are happy and dancing, and so men who like women are happy and dancing, and consequently men who like men are also happy and dancing. What's not like? Everybody wins!

And here's the thing. Chances are everyone's going to be dancing to 80s music! Which normally I abhor. I mean, I lived it, it was great, on to the next. HOWEVER, if everyone is dancing, who am I to argue? I mean, when everyone is dancing, I'm happy!

Submarine Cable

2008-10-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of submarine communications cables have been laid since the early attempts of the 1840s and the first commercially successful cable, the England to France link of 1851.

Bill Glover's ongoing project presents a comprehensive time line of all major cables and many of the minor ones, with links to cable sample images, company descriptions, and cableship histories.

A chronological record of every major submarine communications cable.
from History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications

OBEY

2008-10-05T10:53:00.001-07:00

Took the alley instead of Sunset down to Brite Spot this morning. This classic was up on the back of the building just west of Logan. Echo Park, Brite Spot, Shepard Fairey...Talk about a firestorm of hip bloggability ca. 2004, shazam!

Flash Friday

2008-10-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

5 Differences
There are five differences between each side of the screen. Click on them.

6 Differences
Same deal, but with six differences. And music. And hints. It's remarkably similar to the first game despite the additional differences.

When there is no home for a long time...

2008-10-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

more...

Puzzle

2008-10-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

What relationship do the following songs have with each other: Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown (1965) Refugee (1979) Stairway to Heaven (1971) Black Magic Woman (1970) Band on the Run (1973) Walk This Way (1975) Tequila Sunrise (1973)
A class-mate of mine gets invited to a party each year where the invitation gives a hidden clue as to who the musical guest will be. This year's is a stumper and so we're turning to Big Green for help.

While there may be a music-related link here (i.e. lyrical, writer, producer, etc), it could very well be something entirely non-musical. Any MeFi music buffs find any relationship at all with those songs?

As an example, two years ago the invitation included references (which you always have to figure out) to 7 songs. Different bands and with dates from roughly 1971 through 1998. It turned out that ALL of them had been covered at some time or another by Paul Simon. He was the guest. Another thing that made the invitation easy for my classmate was that the invitation came in a Kodak box. Anyway, Paul Simon was the guest musician.

Now, one other thing: don’t look for someone who has covered all of those songs. There is NO WAY that they would use the same type of “puzzle.”

If it helps, here's an explanation of this year's invitation:

There are 7 cards with photographs on them, and each one contains a year (presumably the year the song was written). Each one depicts a song and the letters of the song are written in “hangman” style, with the initial letters given (e.g. N_________ N______ B________ - but on the card you could tell how many letters were in each word). The picture also depicted the song. He is POSITIVE of 6 of the songs; the only one we are not certain of was from 1979, showed two kids with suitcases standing next to a railroad, and they were both dressed in white long sleeve shirts and dark pants. It started with an “R” and was seven letters. Pretty sure it is “Refugee” but if anyone else has an idea of something different, let me know (e.g. is there a “Runaway” from 1979?). Also, the dates given above are the release dates for the songs.

P.S. One more thing to add: the invitation reads “One Enchanted Evening . . .”. Don’t know if that adds anything.

The concert was on Sept. 27, so the answer is at the very bottom of the AskMe thread in question. There are a lot of good theories along the way, though.

Trilogy

2008-10-02T21:01:00.001-07:00

Cue the one-note bugle, I've got a third post inspired by Harpo's hilarious face. My pal Nico wonders whatever happened to caricaturing Hollywood, especially compared to the glory days as represented by the animations Hollywood Steps Out,

Book Revue,

and a few others.

Nico rightly points out that these animations are the cream of the caricature crop, then goes on in lament,

Why doesn't anyone do this anymore? Is the world a more sensitive place? Or would something like this not even work with today's celebs? Are today's stars simply not as interesting, entertaining, or defined as those of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood? Did the stars of yesteryear simply have more of a core to them, every star having something unique about them that separated them from every other star?

I don't know what kind of trash he's watching, but I still manage to catch Celebrity Death Match every once in a while. Today's "classy" Hollywood, the Gwenyth Paltrows, George Clooneys, etc. have sloughed off the trend and allowed the constantly shifting youth pop culture and the long vicious political pundits to pick up the slack. Whether it's because they're paying their agents more or because reality television has widened the scope (and exposure) of celebrity or due to the homogenizing of haute Hollywood I just can't say.

Nico did a caricature of me once upon a long ago and it lived on the fridge for a long time. If I find it I'll scan it in. I think it's under the fridge. Maybe.

Gookie Face

2008-10-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

Oh, ho! The post below reminded me of a relatively recent MetaFilter post by one of my all-time favorite posters, miss lynnster. Cribbed from that, here's

The story behind Harpo Marx' 'Gookie' face

and
Wakko's New Gookie

o silêncio dos livros

2008-10-02T16:36:00.000-07:00

o silêncio dos livros, a blog of images of people with books.
via Gatochy's blog

You Get The Leary You Deserve

2008-09-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

The Leary Project

(Audio)
Beyond Life with Timothy Leary
11 mp3s - Beyond Life with Timothy Leary is a bit of a bizarre release. A combination of interviews, new music that ranges from ambient dance to Ministry and excerpts from Leary's 1967 album Turn On, Tune In Drop Out, the record attempts to create a trance-like atmosphere, one perfect for his vaguely mystical new age sentiments. - AMG
Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out (OMPS)
4 mp3s - Timothy Leary, PhD., Speaks on L.S.D. Leary’s rarest LP is also one of his best. Recorded at Millbrook and all spoken word.
Space Ghost interview (mp3)

(Video)
Timothy Leary's Last Trip
This authorized documentary of Leary's life pays homage to Leary and other '60s counterculture personalities such as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters... - Rotten Tomatoes
Getting High - The History of LSD
An episode of The History Channel's History's Mysteries series
LSD - The Beyond Within part 1 part 2
1986 BBC documentary

As well as letters, a ridiculous amount of photos, and more.

I posted this a while back on MetaFilter (mining the archives!), and sure enough the thread is bright full of additional fun Leary/LSD linkage and commentary.

A political post

2008-09-30T01:35:00.000-07:00

+

I'm justifying linking this article because it's just like they say in the movies! There's a lot of dollars being thrown around, everything is at stake, and the Modern modern Prometheus of Ward Abbott and Captain O'Hagan is at the helm of a Military Industrial Death Machine!

Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, The Pentagon Bailout Fraud

Be informed. Contact your elected representatives. Vote.

303 909 fx

2008-09-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

...in your browser!

Hobnox Audiotool

I had a lot of fun just fooling around, but if you're interested in working it out for the benefit of all mankind, here's a tutorial.

Find the Star

2008-09-26T15:11:00.000-07:00

Each stage hides a star. Click, drag, wiggle, and shake them out of their hiding spots.

Hoshi Saga I
Hoshi Saga II
Hoshi Saga III

There's something like 100 different stages between the three games; should keep you busy for a while this afternoon. Jay Is Games has a walkthrough for each of the sagas, should you get stuck.
via MetaFilter

Little Things

2008-09-26T00:59:00.001-07:00

Spent the last two days tweaking bits and pieces and poking odd corners of my pc. It was freezing randomly. Actually, not randomly; it would lock up fairly consistently during any important function. Upgrading to SP 3, freeze. Uploading files, freeze! Streaming porn FREEZE! I couldn't get anything done.

Finally I narrowed it down to a bad stick of RAM. Just a little thing, but so much pain.

Download Hanne Hukkelberg - Little Things
RIYL björk, cocorosie

Design by Si Scott

LOL Bible Stories

2008-09-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

The Book of Job

LOLcat Bible Translation Project

Fred Rogers' oral autobiography

2008-09-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

7/22/1999
Pittsburgh, PA
Fred McFeely Rogers (in 9 parts!)

Tons more raw, unedited interviews at The Archive of American Television Interviews.

Also,

15 Reasons Mister Rogers Was The Best Neighbor Ever
and
15 Songs Written by Mister Rogers

Oh!, how you inflict me with wounds of paranoia and desire.

2008-09-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

Complimentary Surrealism
on the Surrealism Server

You mutter such objects of equine delight that the mind's ability to sew slices of mordant ivory becomes tamed with visions of Tamils in Constantinople.

‮˙ʇoɹ pıp ɹǝʇsuoɯ ƃuıʎp ʎuɐ ɹǝʌǝ sɐ 'ʎןsnoıɔɐɹƃ ʇuǝɯoɟ noʎ‬

More to come...check back.

Unemployment Blues Blondes

2008-09-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

Flash Games: thinking around corners

2008-09-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

Z-Rox

A one-dimensional game where you must guess the name of 2-D objects passing through a 1-D window. Surprisingly challenging.

Reflections

An old one, but worth coming back to again and again. Direct the laser through the light bulbs while avoiding bombs.

A Summoning Mustache

2008-09-22T01:33:00.001-07:00

ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH? by Phil McAndrew
via Gatochy's Blog

Pinback Tour EPs

2008-09-21T22:41:00.000-07:00

The Chameleon Transmission was Blake's show. As a green trainee I was assigned to learn from him the intricacies of broadcasting eclectic music over hopeless airwaves. He had listeners, a few, and the show was even during a prime slot on a weeknight, but our station was in the middle of being shuffled around campus and interest had waned. He and I and Jello J, my co-trainee, would spend two hours once a week raiding the ridiculously large stacks of new music and the station's nearly incomprehensibly huge library of CDs and vinyl and pumping out awesome and unlistenable music to anyone who would listen.

We were terrible, and nothing could stop us.

After a few weeks Blake began to get a sense of my taste in music, and began recommending albums. One of the very first tracks he played for me instantly became my new favorite song, and the performers my new favorite artist. That track was 'Penelope' from the album Blue Screen Life by Pinback. I fell in love, and fell hard. Since then I've done everything in my power to familiarize myself with Pinback's music, and the various winding tentacles of Rob Crow's other musical projects.

Back then Tucson was still overshot more often than not by touring indie bands. They'd hit Modified Gallery in Phoenix or some dump in Albuquerque and then speed through town on the 10. Slowly, though, a couple of venues established relationships, reputations, and the local scene grew strong. Before all that, though, Pinback was a regular. I saw them every single time they came to town, and I never failed to hit up their merch table.

Being a poor boy (some things change; some things stay the same) I couldn't load up on all the swag, but I had a sharp eye for what was worth my dough and what was just another band t-shirt. So every year, when Pinback rocked my world live, I'd pick up that year's tour EP. The first three are sleeves, thick folded stock stitched up with colorful thread. They got fancy with the fourth, though, so Too Many Shadows comes in a bare-bones digipak. This came out just as they were signed to Touch-and-Go records, who put out their album Summer in Abaddon.

I've been in a lot of great music stores, and never once have I seen one of these CDs up for grabs. I know for a fact that the first, Live in Donny's Garage, is a reprint of a tour CD originally distributed on their "first real european tour" ('cause it says so on the little blue insert), but as far as I know the other three are originals, issued each year the band went out on the road here in the U.S.
Update: I haven't been in enough great record stores, apparently. All four of these discs are available for purchase at the Pinback store. Please support a great band and harbor the good taste to own these fine discs for yourself. They're cheap!

So, with great pleasure (now I have great pleasure; putting these together digitally all at once was a bitch and froze my computer innumerable times) I present to you four Pinback tour EPs, in chronological order, complete with scans of the covers (front and back [.jpg]) and the CDs [.gif, so I could crop out the corners and the center hole =o)]. (The scans are included in the archive folders.)

Please enjoy.

Download Pinback - Live in Donny's Garage (Aug. 2000)
(Slight water damage on the back of the sleeve — goddamn cats!)

Download Pinback - More or Less Live in a Few Different Places (2002)
(My copy is signed on the back, "Rob C.")

Download Pinback - Arrive Having Eaten (2003)
(More water damage — STRAIGHT TO HELL, CATS!)

Download Pinback - Too Many Shadows (2004)

Prop. 8 Shaming

2008-09-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

From Ballotpedia.org:

Proposition 8 will appear on the November 2008 ballot in California. It is variously known as the Protect Marriage Act, the Same-Sex Marriage Ban or the Limit on Marriage Amendment. If it passes, it will add a new constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that will have the following text: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The ballot title for the measure says that Prop. 8 "eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry".

As is the case with so many things political these days, the money counts. People are voting with their wallets because personal beliefs aren't enough anymore; a person needs to pay someone they trust to put an advocacy up on TV so they know what to believe. Brad Pitt just donated some absurd amount to the 'against' folks. Mormons are being encouraged to donate 'for.' Millions are going towards this proposition, one way or the other.

Perhaps I am so disgusted by this $ituation only because I have no money to give.

Anyhow, if you'd like to see which way the people in your neighborhood swing (whether you're in CA or not; plenty of out-of-state money is coming in) and exactly how wide they open their wallet-maws, check this LA Times page.

So far everyone who has donated from 90026 has been opposed. I love Echo Park.

Fractals

2008-09-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

Perhaps my favorite form.

It is easy to lose myself, staring at a fractal. Or thinking of an endless coast, a mountain's infinite altitude, and then Zeno's paradox. They are like a calendar of days, each piece of a week the same part of a whole, itself a part of a whole composed of like bits, and on into the infinity of time. But each day (supposedly) has its own rough edge, a unique swirl that is potentially repeated forever—identical one and all save time. Fractals to me represent individual experience, the infinity and continuity of perspectives on this one rather large universe.

Figures for impossible fractals

An impossible fern (balanced 30° Pythagorean tree).

Mystery of the REAL 3D Mandelbrot Fractal

I have these two images layered on my desktop:

click for larger

Shorthand for the Liberal Boogeyman

2008-09-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

"I’m getting a little worn out on hearing the Ivy League implicated as shorthand for the liberal boogeyman.

"Firstly, I’m not sure how many people even know what the Ivy League is – it’s an athletic conference, made up of only eight schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. The linked article does an excellent job of how we ended up lumping them together – they are the oldest schools in America, they generally have Protestant origins, they have been playing one another in sports for hundreds of years (though the conference was only formalized in the 50s), they are all academically selective, they are all well endowed and wealthy, and they are all in the East. Historically, West Point and the Naval Academy have been lumped in with the Ivies, sharing many of their characteristics. Also equivalent to them in many respects are other highly selective private colleges: Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, MIT, University of Chicago, Notre Dame, Stanford, Georgetown, Washington & Lee, and many more.

"If you think of Ivy League as "educated at any elite, selective, moneyed, private institution of higher learning," then it certainly takes in a large swath of our public servants, most of whom find that an advanced degree is necessary to gain the education and make the connections that will allow them to get and understand policy jobs.

"But even if you think it’s the eight colleges in the Ivy League themeselves that are poisoning the public with softheaded, communist ideas, and that we need to rid government of their graduates and their thinking, you’re still not going to be able to vote Republican. Both the Bush Administration and the McCain campaign are lousy with the graduates of these supposed hotbeds of unAmericanism.

"I’ve been having a look around, and with the help of others have compiled this list of Ivy League graduates, and graduates of other elite non-public institutions, in the Administration and the campaign. It looks as though it’s not only Democratic leaders, but both Bush and McCain as well, who rely upon the kind of thorough, world-class scholarship this institutions provide. McCain, in particular, is drawing upon the knowledge of a great many advisors currently in the academy in these very institutions.

"I wonder what it’s like when they get together for roundtables? When they compare college rings and ties, and discuss who was in what honor society and who had who for constitutional law, laughing about old times on the ol’ campus, and then watch their candidates malign "Ivy Leaguers" and "elitists?" to the public? I guess they laugh it off, letting Republican Party leaders badmouth them and their alma maters, knowing that it’s all a show for the dimwitted public. Anything to stay in power! If takes misreprenting yourself and your advisory teams, letting voters think you’re a lot less well-off, privileged, well-educated and well-connected than you really are, then so be it. At the Faculty Club victory party it’ll all be behind you. All’s fair in politics, right?

"So the list has found a home on this website, thanks to the generous support of the host. Please note that this is just a sampling, not a comprehensive list of advisors or appointees. Information has been taken from public sources such as WikiPedia, WhiteHouse.gov, the personal and company websites of the individuals, and news outlets. We welcome additional submissions."

- The About page at
Ivy League Elitists
via Projects

Saturday Night at the Atomic Speedway

2008-09-20T16:03:00.001-07:00

click for larger

Download 30 Amp Fuse - Saturday Night at the Atomic Speedway
Stephen Thomas Erlewine says: ...an entertaining but lightweight collection of roaring punk-pop in the vein of the Buzzcocks, but without the clever hooks or lyrics of Pete Shelly. While the record is plagued with inconsistent songwriting, it nevertheless has enough moments to make the record appealing to genre specialists.
RIYL
The Get Up Kids, Kerplunk!, Fountains of Wayne, dancing
Recommended Tracks
02. Love Is A Catch-22 ♠♠♠
08. Tilt-A-Whirl ♠♠♠
11. Blastin' Room ♠♠♠♠♠
15. Sound On Sound ♠♠♠

BLOG/LINK

2008-09-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

867-5309

Jenny, Are You There?
JennyScan
8675309 Wiki
More at Spyder's Random Things

Paul Avril

From Wikipedia: "Édouard-Henri Avril...was a French painter and commercial artist. Under the pseudonym Paul Avril, he was an illustrator of erotic literature.

"Avril studied art in various Paris salons. From 1874 to 1878 he was at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Having been commissioned to illustrate Théophile Gautier's novel Fortunio, he adopted the pseudonym Paul Avril.

"His reputation was soon established and he received many commissions to illustrate both major authors and the so-called "galante literature" of the day, a form of erotica."
Galleries: 1, 2
via cosias do arco da velha

A Puzzling Weekend

2008-09-20T11:49:00.001-07:00

These two games work similarly; your goal is to power up, gain strength/armor, and open doors to the next room. You do this by solving the riddle of the room you're in. How do you get there? What clues are there? What's under that rock/behind that wall/above you/below you, etc.

Dwarf Complete

Use your arrow keys to move around, push things, and go up and down stairs. When you collect items from treasure chests, go to the spellbook, click the red buttons, and use your newly crafted tools to further your quest. If you've ever played the first Zelda game, you'll love this.

An Untitled Story

You begin as a little bouncy egg, and the sky's the limit from there. This is a game you download to your computer and play. It's free, charmingly designed, mind-bogglingly huge, and very challenging.

Connection made at AskMe

Loving Cinema Lovers

2008-09-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

Early Visual Media
"[A]n online Media_Museum explaining intriguing and mostly forgotten Early Vintage Visual Media and their history. The aim is not to bring a complete overview of the history of Visual Media but rather a personal selection."

The History of the Discovery of Cinema

This chronology is presented in fifteen chapters, and represents an exhaustive and historical overview on the subject of cinematography. It encompasses among others, the works of Layard, Sophocles, Herodotus, Empodocles, Mo Ti, Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, Euclid, Archimedes, Shao Ong, Vitruvius, Lucretius, Pablius Statius, Pliny, Seneca, Heron, Ptolemy, Ting Huan, Galen, Boethius, Geber, Chao-Lung, Kuang-Hsien, Alhazen, Avicena, Shen Kua, Averroes, Grosseteste, Bacon, Magnus, Witelo, Peckham, Saint-Cloud, Villeneuve, Gershon, Fontana, Alberti, Gainsborough, Vinci, Maurolycus, Caesariano, Durer, Reinhold, Gemma-Frisius, Cardano, Porta, Barbaro, Fabricius, Diggs, Risner, Danti, Benedetti, Casciorolo, Kepler, Scheiner, Sala, Snell, D'Aguilon, Drebbel, Gassendro, Schwenter, Leurechon, Bate, Kircher, Descartes, Horrocks, Herigone, Martini, De Chales, Zahn, Niceron, Huygens, Schott, Walgensten, Vermeer, Reeves, Hooke, Boyle, D'Orleans, Balduin, Kohlans, Cellio, Homberg, Molyneux, Sturm, John Harris, Van Gravensande, Van Musschenbroek, Schulze, Bion, Cheselden, Guyot, Smith, Cuff, Caneletto, Costa, Nollet, Parrat, Dollond, De la Roche , Ledermuller, Martin, Van Loo , Brander, Sheraton, Schropfer, Priestley, Seraphin, Lambert, Boulton, Scheele, Joseph Harris, Storer, Charles, Wedgewood, Balsamo, Chretien, Guinard, Harrup, Robertson, Hare, Davy, Philipsthal, Wollaston, Niepce, Brewster, Chevalier, Talbot, Herschel, Dageurre, Gurney, Birckbeck, Roget, Ritchie, Fitton, Paris, Drummond, Barker, Farraday, Wheatstone, Plateau, Stampfer, Marey, Janssen, Anschutz, Muybridge, Horner, Donisthorpe, Lumiere's, Goodwin, Eastman, Dickson, Casler, Friese-Greene, Carbutt, LePrince, Edison and others.

Why do we spend so many precious hours of our lives watching films? What is it about cinema that it should occupy a place of such prominence in our lives? And why do we even need movies? It is as though we are trying to fill a gap in our lives - a void, an emptiness within ourselves. So to even begin on the path of our Truth Quest, we have to see the broader picture of how film correlates to life, and life to film. To find this higher perspective, it is helpful to look towards the other arts, as well as philosophy.

Cinema Seekers: Searching for truth in cinema and in life.

"Crazy Song"

2008-09-19T13:21:00.000-07:00

via blort

Marilyn Monroe Screen Test For Something's Gotta Give

2008-09-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

On repeat.

An Open Letter to Pitchfork from the Airborne Toxic Event (Literary Music #2?)

2008-09-18T13:44:00.001-07:00

Over the past few years a number of my co-alumni Dorados have distinguished themselves on the national level. Certain sporting types I'll avoid mentioning because deep, irrational resentment is so easy to cull from those four long years. However, plenty others have hit it big on the musical stage. I was a total fanboy for my friend Jeremy's band, The Actual (sadly, 2001-2007) and now I've transferred that blind love to another bass player friend's band, The Airborne Toxic Event (myspace). (Should this be another Literary Music post? That's a Delillo reference, if I'm not mistaken.)

Anyway, their new album just came out (buy it!) and received quite a burn review from all-holy Pitchfork. 1.6, ouch. The band has issued an open letter to the review's author in response:

Dear Ian,

Thanks for your review of our record. It's clear that you are a good writer and it's clear that you took a lot of time giving us a thorough slagging on the site. We are fans of Pitchfork. And it's fun to slag off bands. It's like a sport -- kind of part of the deal when you decide to be in a rock band. (That review of Jet where the monkey pees in his own mouth was about the funniest piece of band-slagging we've ever seen.)

We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you're not a genius or a moron. You're just a person in a band.

Plus, the variation of opinions on our record has bordered on absurd. 80 percent of what's been said has been positive, a few reviews have remained on the fence and a few (such as yours) have been aggressively harsh. We tend not to put a lot of stock in this stuff, but the sheer disagreement of opinion makes for fascinating (if not a bit narcissistic) reading.

And anyway we have to admit that we found ourselves oddly flattered by your review. I mean, 1.6? That is not faint praise. That is not a humdrum slagging. That is serious fist-pounding, shoe-stomping anger. Many publications said this was among the best records of the year. You seem to think it's among the worst. That is so much better than faint praise.

You compare us to a lot of really great bands (Arcade Fire, the National, Bright Eyes, Bruce Springsteen) and even if your intention was to cut us down, you end up describing us as: "lyrically moody, musically sumptuous and dramatic." One is left only to conclude that you must think those things are bad.

We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn't so much critique bands as critique a band's ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don't match it. It's true that the events described in these songs really happened. It's true we wrote about them in ways that make us look bad. (Sometimes in life you are the hero, and sometimes, you are the limp-dicked cuckold. Sometimes you're screaming about your worst fears, your most vicious jealousies and failures. Such is life.) It's also true that the record isn't ironic or quirky or fey or disinterested or buried beneath mountains of guitar noodling.

As writers, we admire your tenacity and commitment to your tone (even though you do go too far with your assumptions about us). You're wrong about our intentions, you're wrong about how this band came together, you don't seem to get the storytelling or the catharsis or the humor in the songs, and you clearly have some misconceptions about who we are as a band and who we are as people.

But it also seems to have very little to do with us. Much of your piece reads less like a record review and more like a diatribe against a set of ill-considered and borderline offensive preconceptions about Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an extremely vibrant blogging community, Silver Lake is a very close-knit rock scene. We are just one band among many. (And by the way, L.A. does have a flagship indie rock band: they're called Silversun Pickups). We cut our teeth at Spaceland and the Echo and have nothing to do with whatever wayward ideas you have about the Sunset Strip. That's just bad journalism.

But that is the nature of this sort of thing. It's always based on incomplete information. Pitchfork has slagged many, many bands we admire (Dr. Dog, the Flaming Lips, Silversun Pickups, Cold War Kids, Black Kids, Bright Eyes [ironic, no?] just to name a few), so now we're among them. Great.

This band was borne of some very very dark days and the truth is that there is something exciting about just being part of this kind of thing. There's this long history of dialogue between bands and writers so it's a bit of a thrill that you have such a strong opinion about us.

We hear you live in Los Angeles. We'd love for you to come to a show sometime and see what we're doing with these lyrically moody and dramatic songs. You seem like a true believer when it comes to music and writing so we honestly think we can't be too far apart. In any case, it would make for a good story.

all our best--

Mikel, Steven, Anna, Daren, Noah
the Airborne Toxic Event

I think it's a pretty good response, measured and honest. TATE is keeping things interesting for me in other ways, too. In the month or so before their album release they uploaded live acoustic versions of each of the album tracks filmed in unexpected places. The musical renditions are awesome—I almost favor them over the album versions—and the videos themselves are charming. Here they are in the order they were released:

Wishing Well

Papillon

Gasoline

Happiness Is Overrated

Does This Mean You're Moving On? [My favorite!]

This Is Nowhere

Sometime Around Midnight

Something New

Missy

Innocence

Yep, they're good! I saw them perform on the set of the Carson Daly show, which was surreal to say the least. They were also on Conan recently, and tore it up. Here's hoping a Pitchfork pan won't hold this band back. Enjoy!

Open Up Your Heart and Let The Patrick Swayze Blog Post In

2008-09-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

Best wishes for a full recovery and courage to a good man and a great actor, Standing Up 2 Cancer.

Personality Comics Presents...
PATRICK SWAYZE

LLPS!

"I think it's kinda hot to be wearing these scarves in here."
via

Literary Music #1 - Gitanjali/Get The Fuck On Jolly

2008-09-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

Let's see. I'm having trouble starting on this whole writing stuff out and stringing ideas together concept. Didn't do it so well in college, and I haven't gotten any better since. So bear with me, please.

The temptation to attempt some arch, deep, formal writing about this is strong. I feel like because it's literature and poetry and interpretive musical performance there's a standard of tone and form that I must abide by. It's those perceived constraints that keep me from even beginning. So here it is, here I am, using too much first-person singular and going way too many words before even getting to the subject.

Aha!

Get The Fuck On Jolly then serves triple purpose: A vicious cheer from you, the audience; a nonsensical homophone for a great work of literature; and the profane title to this album I offer you. I am fucking on it.

So first, the literature. Gitanjali is a beautiful collection of poetry, translated by the author into English at the behest of one W.B. Yeats. The song-poems of Rabindranath Tagore are well known and loved throughout India, and his translations garnered a Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.

My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.

VII Nice, eh? Sexy too, yeah!

This stuff, being all poetic and literary and beautiful and shit, prompted Bonnie 'Prince' Billy—a heady fellow— & The Marquis de Tren (commonly known as Mick Turner, guitarist for the Dirty Three, artist, and no lightweight himself) to pick out a bunch of these poems and set them to music. The studio EP Get On Jolly homophonized 'Gitanjali' and came out sounding alright, a little dry. However! However, the duo also recorded a live set of the same songs, changing the song titles from Arabic numbers to Roman numerals and adding a brutal 'The Fuck' to the title. If you're not familiar with Will Oldham's voice, it's not for everyone. But this performance is fiery and emotive, soaked in all the spittle and sweat missing from the studio set, and he just wails the emotion of Tagore's words.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & The Marquis de Tren - Get The Fuck On Jolly

Update: I just wanted to make sure and point out this totally awesome Will Oldham fan site. It's got lyrics, tabs, and—thank god—mp3s. It's linked above, 'cause that's where I nabbed the cover art for GTFOJ, but not as explicitly as the site deserves. Oh yeah, nearly forgot, Mick Turner (with Jim White as Tren Brothers) has some cool music/painting videos on YouTube:

Tren Brothers - Crow

Tren Brothers - Swim

Flash Games & YouTube

2008-09-17T15:20:00.017-07:00

Two flash games:
Rotation Riddle

Align the red dots so they match the pattern shown before each level. Fairly easy through the first few levels. The keyboard controls are a little wonky.

light-Bot

"Artificial Intelligence is hard to program. Not every bot ever created can maneuver and function on its own. Rather, some bots run along a path that the programmer presets for them for various situations. Your job is to light up all the blue tiles in the factory by the commands you issue to the light-Bot. Good luck."
Fun little diversion. The challenge lies in completing each level with the fewest commands possible. Otherwise fairly straightforward. My low score is 174.
Update: I understand level 10 is giving people fits. Here's my solution.
Update 2: lupus_yonderboy posted his solution over at MeFi. It'll get you the lower score with 6 empty boxes (opposed to my 1 empty box), but the little robot looks like a Roomba^TM. The game makes it clear that efficiency is desirable over appearance by the score, but I'm not convinced.

Two music/video channels that classy people listen to/watch:

Trumpet Kings
and the corresponding YouTube channel present a blow-out of hot jazz trumpeters. Makes my cheeks tingle!

Dizzie Gillespie - Trumpet Battle 1958

HERstory (nevermind the silly trope) details the history of women in Rock and Soul music over the course of 50 songs from 1958 to 1981. I'm enjoying the essays that accompany each video.

Lorrie & Larry Collins - Mercy

Rockabilly scorcher!

The Collins Kids were the actual thing. While the new music called Rock'n'Roll was mostly sung by adults for young people, these teens walked the talk. Their big break was as regulars on the TV show "Town Hall Party" starting in 1954. Lorrie was 12 and Larry, 10! This Country showcase put them beside June Carter, Tex Ritter, and Larry's guitar mentor, the astounding Joe Maphis. The highlight was watching the elder dueling with his whirling dervish sidekick on double Mosrite guitars.

When Rock hit in '55, the kids were right on it. They pumped out many great singles into the early 60's. This blazing little number runs a two minute mile. Lorrie puts so much gusto into her performance it's startling to realize she's not even 16 yet. But that was the heart of it; the Collins' were the new Rock'n'Roll youth incarnate, on fire and rarin' to go. It's all punk music, and this is where it starts.

Good stuff.