Saturday, August 31, 2002

Want to be a groupie? Or maybe you're a rock star and you're down for some groupie action. In either case, check out groupiecentral.com so you can learn how to give it or take in in the backstage world.
Jazz great Lionel Hampton died today.

Friday, August 30, 2002

What Hacker Writing Style really tells you is how to write like a geek, not to construct truly hackeresqe bon-mots like '1 M L3T. g1v m3 w4r3Z D00dZ'. For that, you have to go to here.
Ten Things You Learn About Computers From the Movies
Journalistic integrity bows to Nepotism. Singapore squelches an unflattering Bloomberg article and Bloomberg's glad to do it.

Thursday, August 29, 2002

This should get some good discussion going about the wealth divide. CBS is scouring the podunks for hicks to star in a reality Beverly Hillbillies show. Genius or Jerry Springer stretched out to a full season?
All the freaks in the house wax ya' walkin' sticks.
P Diddy has ordered female guests at his post MTV Video Music Awards bash to wax their legs and have a manicure.
Shit... I've been kicking that demand to every chickenhead that's stepped up in my set for years, dog! 'Bout time you put an ixnay on the ape-leg, skillz! Puffy ain't nothin but a biter.
The 5 Million Dollar cat.
How hard can it be to create a comic? One team of fools is about to find out over the next 24 hours, and their experiences will be recorded here, live on Ninth Art
More environmental bad news: The sailor's legend of the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific may actually melt and become a passable, non-legend passage within 10 years. We're in trouble. There's gotta be a conspiracy theorist out there who's tackled one.
"An ice-free Northwest Passage lets ships traveling between Europe and Asia shave more than 4,000 miles off the route through the Panama Canal, and would allow ships to avoid the occasional delays and the passage fees of the canal."

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Evil geniuses take note - a startup has developed a tiny tractor beam.
A motorist - not Wyle E. Coyote - used his cigarette lighter to check the fuel level in his tank. He blew up the car and the service station.
Spoken like a true warmonger. Rumsfeld says we don't need Allied support.

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Amazing. A man who has been missing since 9/11 just turned up. Dig this: Amnesia. Yep. For the first time ever outside of The Young and the Restless, Amnesia is a legitimate excuse for going missing for a year.
The family did not apply for any of the financial assistance provided to victims' survivors and did not obtain a death certificate, the newspaper said.
Whoa! Fuckedcompany.com is offline for a couple of days, for violating Ford Motor Company's trademarks. Ford went right to their host to have the plug pulled, and apparently got fast action.
Freedom-hating, uber-prude, buffoon John Ashcroft's beaurocratic neo-facist regime makes news again. Great article. If this guy gets any worse, Reagan-era punk rock is going to come back.
With increasing speed, the Justice Department of Attorney General John Ashcroft is starting to resemble the "always vengeful bureaucracy" that crushed Josef K. Recently, in two federal cases, the Justice Department argued that it is within the president's inherent power to indefinitely detain, without any charges, any person, including any United States citizen, whom the president (through the Justice Department) designates an "enemy combatant."
College students are turning away from computer science: Good. More food for me.
...Besides, he said while packing for a Charlottesville dormitory room, "you can't get the chicks with that anymore."
The Fender Hamburglar Guitar. I've been hearing rumors about this thing for years, and I finally found mention of it on the net. It turns out that a wiseacre graphic artist for Fender hid a picture of the mighty Hamburglar in the simulated wood grain of a Jap Strat. He was found out and fired. I've never seen a pic of one of these. If anyone knows of a scan, PLEASE send it to me. I'm nuts about shit like this.

Monday, August 26, 2002

Metafilter ran this, but since I'm a sucker for crop circles, so will I. These cornmowers are getting geekier and geekier. Not satisfied with basic geometric stunts anymore, they're mowing simulated linescan 3/4 headshots overlaid with crypto messages. As rediculously man-made as this looks, people still think this is from out "there". Why are they just using crops as their canvas? Aren't there any supercenter parking lots they could just as easily distance-etch for greater durability and accessability? Maybe they could shave their messages into the sides of cows or something to keep it fresh...
Astrobiology is concerned with the logistics (human hibernation, Generational starships ) of putting our bodies into space (which, frankly, makes the whole business sound like not so much fun compared to my warp n' blasters ideal). Also some neat stuff on "exobio".
First, you will need to construct a stable environment and community for your travellers - they'll be on board for probably at least 50 years. That means they'll need a large amount of space for housing, recreational activities, research (they'll need to keep busy) and administration.
Putting the spin and filtered commentary back into a medium that prides itself on the absence of spin and filtered commentary: Paid bloggers: sounds like informercialism to me.
"It's time to take blogging to the next level and that starts with paying people to produce high-quality, focused blogs for commercial Web sites. Until that happens, people will continue to view Weblogs as little more than personal diaries, or just another form of Usenet."

Saturday, August 24, 2002

Japanese soccer groupies take player worship to a new extreme.
[Hear ye! Let His Majesties loyal subjects partake of his flame-broiled goodness!] Not every burger joint can have a clown-on-the-shill as profitable as Ronald McDonald and his merry band of imaginary flunkies (although Captain Crook and the lone female breakfast-mongering Birdie the Early Bird didn't stick around too long). Remember Burger King's poor man's McDonaldland, populated by the 'Duke of Doubt' (who's sole defining characteristic was his natural proclivity to doubt any assertion made by anyone, ever - a marketing feat never attempted since), 'Sir Shake-A-Lot', and the ultimage knock-off, the red-headed 'Marvelous Magical Burger King'? The Wizard of Fries was the most ill-advised concept of the whole BK court, having no wizard-like properties at all. He was a size 18 Chuck Taylor-wearing robot with a head of racked fries encased by a glass dome. Nostalgic for lowest-common-denominator marketing ploys? Greaseniks, Howl for Mayor McCheese! (or at least sign a petition to bring him back)
Product Marketeers are idiots, no? In a recent ad spot directed at Indians, Cadbury compared the hotly disputed Kashmir territory to its chocolate as "too good to share". Yet another marketing meeting I'd love to have witnessed: "The Kashmir powderkeg and our scrumptious chocolatey flagship consumable: Who else in this room isn't thinkin' what I'm thinkin', huh?! Am I right or fuckin' what?!!! No, Jimster, YOU the man! Holy shit, is it lunch-time already? Who's drivin', cause my wife's got the Excursion today..."
Typecasting: Analysis of the accuracy of period typography in film.
Also from ms-studio comes an article decrying the Scourge of Arial (as well as how to spot Arial when you wanted Helvetica).
"An icon of the Swiss school of typography, Helvetica swept through the design world in the '60s and became synonymous with modern, progressive, cosmopolitan attitudes... "When in doubt, use Helvetica" was a common rule."

Friday, August 23, 2002

Are you a real American? Take this quiz and find out!
Brilliant, sharp vintage ad scans at EphemeraNow. Courtesy of Dollarshort.org
Secret Court Says F.B.I. Aides Misled Judges in 75 Cases.
More beaurocratic cowardice, fraud, and deceit courtesy of the illegitimate Bush regime. Is there any such thing as good corporate or government behavior, or is it a fact that citizens will necessarily suffer the misdeeds of these behemoths until something drastic is done to stop it?
The nation's secret intelligence court has identified more than 75 cases in which it says it was misled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in documents in which the bureau attempted to justify its need for wiretaps and other electronic surveillance, according to the first of the court's rulings to be released publicly.
The proposals for what to do with the space previously occupied by the World Trade Center all pretty much suck, so go ahead and submit your own design. In addition to being a great visual experiment, its interesting to see design from people unencumbered by political concerns for memorialization, square-footage space profitability, or for that matter, color theory or physics. Let's hope they don't throw in any more 70's-style glass boxes.
Even before the the one the wiped the dinosaurs out, Earth was hit by a 12 mile meteor.

Thursday, August 22, 2002

Klick and Klack, aka Tom and Ray Magliozzi, at NPR's Car Talk (possibly the best radio show ever, whether you're interested in car trouble or not) have over 3 million yogurt lids on their hands thanks to a legal screwup. Now they're having a contest to get rid of them.
More "Trustworthy Computing" from big brother: Microsoft quietly announced a critical security bug allowing nasty break-ins through MSffice.
The world's No. 1 software maker said that an attacker, using e-mail or a Web page, could run commands on a user's system to run programs, alter data and reformat the hard drive as well as view file and clipboard contents.
Way out HTML abuse at the strange and twisted digital art/poetry slideshow.
Rare Bollywood LP Cover art of the 60s - 80s. Lotsa popups, but rockin' covers like this one from "Hum Kisisi Kum Naheen" make it worth the swatting.
Geek art: A miniature diorama of an IBM 370 data processing center.
It had a much nicer design and color scheme than the 360, and it did away with the banks and banks of switches. I decided that I wanted to capture it in miniature. At the time, I didn't have a ruler, so I took the measurements in computer cards, and took it home and punched the numbers into a calculator to get the correct dimensions.

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

More Geek Fun: DIY Ball Lightnin'!
"I have been able to produce ball lightning with my Tesla coils. I have found that the parallel resonant primary circuit seems to work the best. Also the amount of input/output power determines ball size. My first balls were about 1-3mm with a 7500v 30ma xfmr. I got balls to 5mm with a 9000v 30ma xfmr, and up to 1cm at 15kv 60ma. I used a source of carbon, consisting of a small chunk of car tire on a sharp pointed #6 wire. Before I start the coil, I set the car tire on fire."
Wave theory as an approach to solving bad traffic conditions.
Really geeky toys. Includes a link on how to make a disgustoscope, which is one of those things like so much else in life where the name is the best part.
"Robot Frank" has got the best online photo album you've seen in a long while. Trust me.
["You were seeing that symetrical guy, werent you!!!"] Researchers find that lopsided people make jealous lovers. What the hell prompted that study, anyway?
[Sorry to disappoint, but ...] I love it when people make announcements that they're not dead... It's so ... life-affirming. The former president of South Africa recently came forth with just such an announcement.
Say it aint so! Linux faces Unix-like fragmentation.
Coke and Pepsi seem to have been painting their logos in the Himalayas, directly on the rock.
Coke blames it on the franchisees, over whom they apparently have no control when it comes to the hideous corporate tagging.
Sunil Gupta, a spokesman for Coca-Cola India, told the BBC's World Business Report the advertisements were outside the company's control.

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Just because MTV tells people not to send in Jackass submissions doesn't mean that they're not out there filming them. Again and again and again.
Sell order, my ass. I hope she gets hard time in a tastefully decorated state facility.
It looks like Real is taking the low road to profitability. Naked chicks on a blurry, crappy, bothersome viewer probably won't help them.
Great news: PGP is back and out from under the beaurocrats at Network Associates.

Monday, August 19, 2002

Segway might not be IT.
[The RIAA Took my Backbone away] Showing even more contempt for something they don't understand, the RIAA is seeking to shut down ISP's access to Chinese websites.
"This latest lawsuit, along with the recently proposed Berman bill, demonstrates that the major record labels have declared war on the infrastructure of the Internet in their campaign to stop the digital music revolution," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "The Business Software Alliance and software industries, who have for years battled overseas pirates, have never resorted to lawsuits against Internet backbone providers that is both pointless and dangerous to innocent bystanders."
Lowrider Bicycles: Where are these cats getting these 60's Schwinn banana frames? Definitely check 'Tears of Gold', complete with a sidecar and airbrushed dragon art.
At the ArtCarFest in Berkeley this September: Cathedral, Jesus Chrysler, Skull Car II, and the Buick of Unconditional Love
Check out master self-promoter Dale Chihuly's 500ft "Bridge of Glass" in Tacoma Washington.
[Special Interests are at it again] In a move guaranteed to piss off ... well, pretty much everyone... Target Wireless, a telcom, wants to blast political ads to your cell phone. To make matters even worse, they're also lobbying to get disclosure laws changed which tell you who payed for the 'spot', because, they argue, cell phone viewing areas are too small to accomodate such information. No doubt they'll have the undying support of politicians desperate for more campaign eyeball hits on this one.
"There is not enough space to permit a meaningful campaign disclosure," he said, For instance, the message "Paid for by the Republican National Committee" -- a disclosure required by the FEC -- would take 45 of the 160 characters.
(However, the message "Fuck Target Wireless" -- would only take 21 characters, proving once again that the Republican National Committee is just another wasteful, beaurocratic burden we'd all be better without)

Saturday, August 17, 2002

Dig the fantastic print art at YeeHawIndustries. What I wouldn't give for one of those Soul Brother #1: James Brown prints to be hanging on my wall. If you're feeling generous, throw in a Rev. Al Green and my all time idol, Hank Williams the Elder.
The Art of Europe - The Tits N' Ass Collection.
History of The Pentangle (The band). Somehow, get your hands on 'Light Flight'. When you drop it at your next party, and your guests are jocking you over how unbelievably bad-fucking-ass this song is, tell 'em I hipped you.
Your tax dollars spent on more scary government shit. NASA wants to read your mind as you board your plane.
Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have told Northwest Airlines security specialists that the agency is developing brain-monitoring devices in cooperation with a commercial firm, which it did not identify

Friday, August 16, 2002

Derek's master index of Walmart receipts. This is some hardcore dedication to useless home item purchase archival. See everything he bought since November 96.
Contraption makers! It's The Official Rube Goldberg site. Some of his max effort/min results cartoons. Plus, some homemade Rube Goldberg machines, including this one, where the inventor meticulously tells us what happens to the ball he drops through every turn of his contraption. Here, kids spec out the rube way to get toothpaste on a toothbrush.
Fan Fiction sites are getting scarier. This page is dedicated to people writing would-be 'Gimme A Break!' (late 80's, Nell Carter) scripts, proving that people still love to hear Joey Lawrence say "Whoa!" ... um ... even if he's not saying and even they make him say it in the script apropos of nothing, just to make him say it.

Thursday, August 15, 2002

If you think MJ's knifework was ugly, ... "it gets even crazier. There's a substance called alloderm, which is actually strips of skin recycled from cadavers. Plastic surgeons tunnel it in strips through the lips, starting at the corners of the mouth. It results in the same puffed-up pouter, but this stuff stays around longer than either the fat or the collagen. "
The surgical evolution of Michael Jackson's face. Courtesy of Metafilter.
[Bedtime for Democracy] With Jefferson looking down at him at the Rushmore National Memorial, Bush demanded broad authority to oversee the scary, neo-fascist, nebulous, catch-all Homeland Security Department. Political sham and Constitution-hater Ashcroft, meanwhile, wants prison camps for people he deems opposed to his wacko interests. [Click here for non-login repost of same article]
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace. Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Sixty-four squares. A nicely organized tagger/street artist site.
Hobo boxcar art.

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

You've gotta be fucking kidding me. Toha Corp, owner of the 'Godzilla' franchise, served a cease and desist to a blogger who calls himself 'Davezilla'.
"It has come to our attention that you have incorporated the “ZILLA” portion of our client’s GODZILLA marks in the name of your “DAVEZILLA.COM” domain name"
Never has the ugliness of the old boy's corporate power structure been presented so intuitively: They Rule.
New York City grafitti at 149th Street.
Urbanize.org: Reclaiming cities from corporate rule through subversive art
Taking the Long View: Panoramic photographs from the American Memory collection at the Library of Congress
The Panoramic Photograph Collection contains approximately four thousand images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. These panoramas offer an overview of the nation, its enterprises and its interests, with a focus on the start of the twentieth century when the panoramic photo format was at the height of its popularity.
[Ya don't say...] Ever the master of subtle yet incisive analysis, GW announced to workers today that 'Times are Kind'a Tough'. He must not have gotten the milage he expected out of his other two planned topics: 'Hot Enough For Ya?!' and 'How 'bout them Astros?'
The Internet Moving Images Archive is a must see collection of vintage film, with a special emphasis on silent newsreels, trade and industry video, and educational reels. Check out "One Got Fat" from Interlude films for some truly disturbing monkeychild action. 'Are You Popular?' (1947) from Coronet Educational Films is also a treat.
A group of children, all wearing ape masks, rides their bicycles to the park for a picnic. Along the way, all but one are eliminated for violating basic bike safety rules.

Monday, August 12, 2002

Asian restaurants have to hate hearing news like this, proving the pets-as-food story isn't just a bad joke or an urban legend.. A restaurant in Seoul has been banned from selling instant dog meat stew over the internet.
A Slovanian man is 1000 miles toward his goal of being the first man to swim the length of the Mississippi River.
IE security hole alert. SSL implementation bug allows undetected man-in-the-middle attacks.
[Make the Pie Higher!] Washington Post writer Richard Thompson assembled this inspirational poem completely from GW Bush quotes.

Sunday, August 11, 2002

[Horn Broken, Watch for Finger] Hundreds of complete life philosophies on 1 1/4" x 3 1/2". adhesives.
I'm in retro, second childhood, aimless hipster heaven today! Somebody hose me down, its R-rated pinball art! (Frames site, you'll have to click-thru to get there)
... and the art on a bowling ball gallery!
Yes! The bowling ball pendulum art gallery!
The only thing more sad than scratch lotto is fake scratch lotto.

Saturday, August 10, 2002

[Hollywood's Private War For Social Control] Another great article from infowarrior on the RIAA/Ashcroft's hatred of anything they can't control, understand, or generate profit from.
[Ashcroft A' Go-Go!] Non-dancing, wunderkind ultraprude, joy-hating, trounced-by-a-corpse-in-popular-elections, scared-shitless-of-female-breasts, supernazi John Ashcroft is asked to go after digital music fans.
The move was welcomed by the Recording Industry Association of America which represents the five major labels --Bertelsmann AG, Vivendi Universal , Sony Corp., AOL Time Warner Inc. and EMI Group Plc.
From this fantastic URL comes equally fantastic Elvis wigs.
Airstream: The Silver Palace on Wheels.
Definitely check the Wally Byam creed on the first link. It's pretty great as far as creeds go. Note to self: start working on creed.
Every guy who knows a woman sprinter just got one more chance to score.
The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, as sung by Leonard Nimoy. With hot dancing chicks in ... um ... baggy sweatshirts. The dancers wear pointy ears, but Nimoy doesn't. Also, dig the Eminem-style white rapper handjive that he rocks toward the end to emphasise his unstoppable lyrical flow.

Friday, August 09, 2002

The USA is #1.1!

Thursday, August 08, 2002

Paranoid Schizophrenic Psychedelic rocker Roky Erikson has a good story to tell, but words, meanings, and traditional logic float around well outside of his grasp. This interview and this article make do.
Well, that's what I was talking about. In other words, what I'm trying to explain to you, in other words, is you keep asking me questions about things that are real good things, but they're scary. Do you understand what I'm saying?
A platform collapsed and dumped tourists into a shark tank in New Orleans. I need to see the pictures, which of course aren't posted.
A crow makes a tool to get food out of a jar, which is pretty impressive because I know people who wouldn't be able to come up with a solution short of breaking it open. He'll be starting fires in no time.
A L.I. mother is forced to drink her own breast milk at an airport, ostensibly to prove its not explosive.
"It was very uncomfortable and very embarrassing and very disgusting," said Elizabeth McGarry, 40, of the April 2 incident. "I'm all for security and everything, but that was a little much."

Monday, August 05, 2002

Well shit, we left them right here on the sidewalk...
WWJD: What Would Jesus Drive?
Hoogerbrugge has tons of great, darkly artistic flash and animation.
Hacking the Lego Mindstorm
Everything you ever wanted to know about the mighty General Lee (the car, not the man), including how to get yourself one from the show for a cool 29G. This photo is a must-see.
[Sabbath Rules!] Sabbatum.com does an album's worth of Sabbath tunes sung in latin with medieval instrumentation. (Thanks, Sharpeworld)

Friday, August 02, 2002

Star Trek Needlepoint
An honest, insightful look at the week in news.
Stuck Trucks. It's great when mother nature beats the shit out of SUVs.
Meat Juice Trail Leads Police to Suspect I wouldn't even bother clicking on the link. The headline's the only great thing about this caper.
Nice resume, kid, but you ain't shit unless you can do an ollie. Also here.
Man, I hate these guys. The management of the top 25 bankrupt U.S. corporations brought home (or more likely brought to multiple homes) a cool 3.3 Billion dollars, which answers in part why they're bankrupt.