Thursday, April 30, 2009

A Note to Unknownbrother81

Okay, so a million years ago I posted a youtube video called "Know your Dope Fiend" up on my blog. It featured a scene from the movie Halloween, a few audio clips from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas set to the user's own "industrial beat."

Know Your Dope Fiend

Awesome.

Anyhow, I decided to go back and stalk Mr. unknownbrother81 to see what else he's been up to- and came across some pretty pleasant surprises. I mean, if eerie techno beats are your thing...

Destroyer of Worlds
Described as "a tribute to the first atomic bomb." All audio comes from nuclear bomb test.

False Flag Assault: Another industrial beat matched with eerie, highly-saturated images of soldiers.
Perception: A scene from Jacob's Ladder & a synthesizer.
Dream State: Industrial beat, scattered audio.
Pull Out: Hip-hop beat. No images. Still pretty cool.

Anyway, posting all of these was my little internet wave of acknowledgement: "Hey, your stuff is cool. You should post some more."
The end.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Music Festivals, Schmusic Schmestivals

I still can't decide whether to spend my recently-earned kidney-money on Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, or ACL. I even made up an excel document to help me quantify pros and cons, but I'm still torn...
So, as a part of my hourly routine of procrastination (wow, I'm optimistic) I decided to put together my ideal lineups for the three festivals. (PS they're all free) 

Austin City Limits



Lollapalooza

Bonnaroo

Unfortunately, I cannot take all of the credit for the awesomeness of these "wrdlz":
First saw it @thiswebsite
got my lastfm info all text-ed up @thiswebsite
and had wordle do the rest of the work.

However, I can take all of the credit for the awesomeness in my music taste. haHA!
(My lastfm overall top artist's, 6 month rolling, and this week's music chart, respectively) 

Anyhow, there's always 2010, amirite? Get on it, music fest peeps!

update: yes, I expect Jimi to be there. Somehow.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Mini Sirloin Cupcakes!

Best excuse to take a break from crunch-cram-final-writing ever.
Also, most delicious excuse.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KYLE!!



The idea for these delicious mini-nomz came entirely from Smiley's Sweets and Creations where she called them "Little Slider Cupcakes." Adorable and super creative! Buy stuff from her!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

I did it!

an excerpt from America by Jean Baudrillard 
with completely unrelated linkz

"The slogan of a new form of advertising activity... a pure and empty form , a challenge to ones own self that has replaced the Promethean ecstasy of competition, effort, and success. 
The New York marathon has become a sort of international symbol of such fetishistic performance, of the mania for an empty victory , the joy engendered by a feat that is of no consequence.
I ran the New York marathon: "I did it!"
I conquered Annapurna: "I did it!"
I finally got a Twitter account: "I did it!"
The moon landing is the same kind of thing: "We did it!" The event was ultimately not really so surprising; it was an event pre-programmed into the course of science and progress. We did it. But it has not revived the millenarian dream of conquering space. In a sense, it has exhausted it. 
Carrying out any kind of programme produces the same sense of futility that comes from doing anything merely to prove to yourself that you can do it: having a child, climbing a mountain, making some sexual conquest, committing suicide. 
The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it... to prove what? That you are capable of finishing.  Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I'm so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence.
Do we continually have to prove to ourselves that we exist? A strange sign of weakness, harbinger of a new fanaticism for a faceless performance, endlessly self evident."

Nothing like a good ol' postmodern critique of society to start off your day. 

In other news:
Kanye West gets free fishsticks! @Kanye'sblog
Tricky (of Massive Attack) shares his musical wisdom. @Wired.com

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Trippy music video. That is all. 

Daedelus LA Nocturn by Eli Stonberg from Alfred Darlington on Vimeo.


Wednesday, April 1, 2009

wut up FOOLZ

Fun fact: I was never a big fan of April Fool's as a kid. I wasn't creative enough to think up pranks or prepared enough to carry them out. Usually I'd just end up lying to people- but this isn't as fun or easy as it sounds. It has to be timed perfectly if you want to yell APRILFOOLZ before they burst into tears or punch you in the face, so honestly, it's not even worth the trouble. Thankfully for people like me, when real-life is fail, there's always somewhere to turn. The Internet. Where 4pr1L f00Ls is fucking AWESOME.
So, for anyone who missed the foolery, here's a nice little compilation:


Gmail
Gmail turned 5 years old today, hooray! To celebrate, they released Autopilot an automatic message-answering service powered by their artificial intelligence bot, CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity). Apparently, CADIE even has its own blog, so you can feel safe that it sufficiently comprehends human emotions and insight.
edit: damnit, the link is broken now, I'm out looking for a screenshot. WANT PANDAS BACK.
edit2: CADIE HAS A YOUTUBE CHANNEL!!

Google Mobil
Has created Brainsearch, which is basically a way to ctrl+f your brain, you know for when you just can't think of the right ... er... damn I lost it.

Gizmodo:
In honor of the Conficker worm, Gizmodo was taken over virus. Each post was flooded with spam-tastic images and nonsense numbers that perfectly capture the eloquence and artistic expression of typical junk mail. They continued this for the whole day and even sent out an apology message for readers that were annoyed by teh ne3w layoutz.

Lifehacker:
Since we all know how much Microsoft loves Google, Lifehacker posted a code that allows them to unite! Better Windows Live is a Greasemonkey script that reinterprets any Windows Live webpages as the Google counterpart. (Absolutely genius! Too bad I already use Google for everything...)

Team Fortress 2
The Sniper introduced a new weapon- JARATE! First seen in Sniper promo, these jars of pee (karate in a jar!) "wreak havoc on your opponent's mental state, psychological well-being and trust in the inherent goodness of his fellow man." Sweeeeet.

Xbox
Xbox is coming out with a new interactive music game Alpine Legend. One player yodels, the other plays an alphorn. WANT.

FilmDrunk
So apparently, George Clooney and your mom made a porno. Yeah, YOUR mom. (via Variety)


Youtube
To enhance the viewing experience, Youtube flipped its videos. Now people from Australia can finally understand what's going on! Surprisingly, Chemical Brothers videos still hurt your head.

The Guardian
Staying ahead in media distribution, the Guardian will stop printing newspapers and instead publish every story on it's twitter page. After all, "experts say any story can be told in 140 characters." Soon the entire archive will be translated, says journalist/tweeter Rio Palof.

Others I don't feel like writing about:
Wii fit is cute, Google Chrome in 3D, Picasa adds red eye, BMW's Magnetic Tow Technology, Macetech's Stealth CapsLocker...

If you saw some good ones I don't have: leave a comment with the link, your name, bank account number, and mother's maiden name so I can add them to the post!