All-inclusive Randomness

When a banner ad appeared advertising “Lot 49 - we welcome our new overlords,” my this-could-be-funny complusion kicked in, and I followed the link.

Lot 49 may be Brainspace’s long lost cousin. The selection of “wonderful things” matches my taste in “wonderful things” almost exactly. The tech and political news are interesting bits and pieces. My only dislike? The ‘about’ section. Could someone explain to me what it is about that style of writing that grates on my nerves?

Some of my fav posts from the past couple days:

- Hunting Season Opens for Mythical Creature (Loch Ness is next…)
- “Jesus Juice” Merlot Coming Soon (wow.)
- Bra’s in the News (he did miss the cheese bra though)
- Physics of Cow Tipping (It’s not that easy!)
- Liberal Church Threatened By IRS (boy are my parents in trouble)

ok, i gave in. or, to put it differently, i finally alloted more than two minutes of focused procrastination to the task of exploring flock — the widely (geekily) acclaimed new web browser. due to the minimalistic state of the website, exploring meant downloading and installing. i will have to play some more to see whether it sticks (pro: everything is handed to you on a plate, con: everything is handed to you on a plate).  but  it looks pretty good so far. add your comments, expect more comments…

technorati tags: geeks

San Francisco Launch party for Unlockedgroove — presumably the first label producing Creative Commons license vinyls. CC vinyls - duh!

Anyone up for party?

November 04, 2005 9:00PM
San Francisco

Our San Francisco operations swing into action. Mr. Marlow and Mr. Yang will be running shit in the Chinancial District. Join us at EZ5 Lounge for a night of minimal techno and live Scorchio madness:

Scorchio - Live P.A. (unlockedgroove, Boston)
Guthrie (Tweekin’, The Fool)
André Lucero (the insignificant).

Commercial @ EZ5 Lounge
682 Commercial St
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 362-9321

Friday November 4th, 9pm-2am, 21+

It makes you stop and think about the world you’ve created for yourself when you relate to this piece of advice (from 43folders):

# The Media Date - set aside a few contiguous hours to consume just one piece or type of media — by itself. Read a book, watch a movie, or listen to your favorite record. Defy background noise by just focusing on that one thing for a while.
# The Mindful Phonecall - Take 30 minutes to sit in a chair and talk to someone you love on the phone. No shopping, web surfing, or walking around allowed. Just you and them.

…and listen to what it has to say. Japanese researchers developed a a ring, called Ubi-Wa, that turns your finger into a phone receiver. The ring converts speech sounds to vibrations and then sends them down the (finger) bone and into the ear canal… As it gets better developed and thus smaller, it will have no space for function buttons. But don’t worry, you then will be able to simply tap different function commands, which the ring will understand and interpret. The future is here, and so are future investment bankers of the world walking around with fingers stuck in their ears. If you have or make a funny picture representing this future, I will give out a prize.

Ten years yesterday since the OJ verdict. I had a low media day and missed the coverage until now. At the time, LA was consumed by it - half the daytime TV lineup was shuffled later or cancelled on the 133 days of the trial - I still know all the courtroom actors by name and I didn’t watch. Was it like that in the rest of the country?

The aquittal came in the morning, during my first period 8th grade English class (in the Valley). I think they were worried everyone would stay home to watch - because TVs were brought in and class didn’t start until the verdict had been read. Afterwards LA felt shell-shocked, looking back maybe less because of “not guilty,” and more because we had become accustomed to the tension and saturation of the trial. And the drama ended and lives had to continue without that defining point.

What a bad set of years for LA - April 1992 Rodney King riots - January 1994 Northridge quake - then from OJ’s chase in June 1994 to his aquittal in September 1995.

Referring perhaps to the critical step in an inductive argument, this already widely aclaimed publication provides refreshingly well written material on contemporary pop culture. Check out the online version for access to past articles and briefs on the current issue.

stolen straight from Slashdot:
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 19, @12:07PM
from the the-joy-of-cartoon-rivals dept.
euniana writes “Forget about Britannica, and meet Uncyclopedia. Formally the adoptive first cousin of Wikipedia, Uncyclopedia stands for everything Wikipedia cannot have: misinformation, satire, and lies. Does this prove that satire and humour can take off in a collaborative environment, a possibility often contested by grumpy Wikipedians? What many people don’t know is that the Wikipedia article on the Flying Spaghetti Monster was partly copied from the FSM article on Uncyclopedia. Will the confusion ever end?”

We love Joanna’s blog.

Last.fm, powered by audioscrobbler, I’m probably the last person on earth that doesn’t know about this. But I love the idea — I’m too lazy to actively stay on top of good music, that’s what I have friends for, and now also Last.fm, which correctly matched my obsession with Depeche Mode with similar artists that are all either on my playlist already or should be or i never heard of them but they sound splendind. Let’s see if this actually works.

BBC is trying to stay hip and keep up with new technologies. They’ve been doing a podcasting trial for while now, and this week announced BBC “rip, mix, and share” — limited access to their video archive, allowing people (presumably just in the UK) to download video clips and do whatever they want with them under the Creative Archive Licence. It’s done by BBC and some other public Brittish bodies, allowing people to share, watch, listen and re-use moving images, audio and stills for non-commercial purposes. It also says something about “only available in the UK”, but what does “in the UK only” mean in the “virtual realm”? (apprently, they’re going to try to limit access based on geography. dunno, haven’t tried). Radio 1 is encouraging VJs/DJs to use this material with music and do cool stuff. Haven’t been able to find any examples yet though.

For amusement and inspiration (really odd kind of inspiration though, sounds smack full of halucinogens. but hey.) see what BBC has to offer to aspiring VJs:
- a clip you didn’t know you wanted: a white stallion galloping
- another golden jewel -> among the top 5 most downloaded clips right now on the Radio 1 website is “organic hens laying eggs”

First two are a courtesy of Dan, who “researches” these sites for work. Engadget features cool geeky products and so does MocoLoco, but with more of a design obsession. And, We Make Money Not Art is a classic…

SideStep is by far the neatest search engine for flights. It seems to work on a princple very similar to Oodle. Specialized search engines may really be the way to go. I swear there’s no professrional bias here.

I hate TV news. If it were like the news on Rocketbloom though, I would watch it. Cause it’s supercool and only about three minutes. I haven’t read the reviews, but I suspect they say something like “a news show with the attention span of a blog drawing inspiration from the Daily Show and Weekend Update meets a bit of Monty Python in the spirit of suck.com.” Oh, and you can put the RSS feed on your iTunes.