by Chris Barrus
This clip is getting fowarded around everywhere, but it’s just amazingly terrific.
I’m severely bummed that I never got around to seeing him play in NYC. This article is worth reading too. If I ever get another cat, “Static” will be on the short list of names.
Spotted in Los Angeles.
1. Bruce Sterling’s closing talk at Reboot 11. First half is the standard Sterling mix of favela chic, distrust of hairshirt environmentalism, and what the next ten years is going to look like. The talk’s last half is a practical guide to getting rid of the unnecessary clutter in your life. If you’ve read the last Viridian note, the talk pretty much reviews it a year down the line. Plus it offends a non-trivial segment of the nuTechologist/Boing Boing crowd which makes me love it more.
2. Speck Mountain’s Some Sweet Relief. I dislike using “x meets y” metaphors, but the “Mazzy Star meets early Spiritualized” description is so spot-on here. Good enough shorthand, but it’s more descriptive of the band’s approach than any overt aping. Best of all, it sounds remarkably current. One of my favorite albums of the year so far.
3. Being Human. I’m the last person that would consciously seek out a vampire TV series, much less a vampire/werewolf/ghost one, but Being Human is well-written, funny when it needs to be, scary when you least expect it, and actually compelling. Superior to all other paranomal shows currently running.
4. Cowboys And Turbans. Indian food served vaguely Mexican-style. Amazingly great and within walking distance of our apartment. Epic win!
5. Enormously large flat-screen televisions. We’ve been resistant to them because of what it represented, especially in a sinking economy (we’re in foreclosure, but we have a giant SUV and a flat-panel TV!) but after a couple of run-ins with annoying theater crowds it was time to throw in the towel and just get one. DVDs do look fantastic.
The sound of radio emissions from Saturn (listen here)
The closing credits to the television show U.F.O.
I laughed…
A medium-level meme making the rounds is to take your name or a search term and plug it into the Instant Color Schemes search engine. The site takes five related images from Yahoo and then the six most prominent colors from each image.
So I put my name in and received this hideous result:
Proven by science!
One of my first memories (I was three years old at the time) is watching this live.
Like a lot of other people, I first ran across DISH Earth as a mysterious channel next to NASA TV. OK – it’s a picture of the Earth from space. Sure the timecode was changing every 15 seconds, but not much else was going on until I suddenly blurted out “it’s a real-time picture of the Earth!”
And that’s exactly what the DISH Earth network is. DISH Network stuck a camera on the side of EchoStar 11 22,300 miles up in geosynchronous orbit and pointed it back at the earth. Nothing really changes except cloud patterns and the day/night cycle, but it’s hypnotic enough to check in on it every so often*. Besides, I find it rather cool just to be able to say “hey, what does the Earth look like right now?”
There’s also a twenty-four time lapse movie.
* Full disclosure: I have also sat through a showing of Andy Warhol’s Empire so my viewpoint is markedly skewed.
R.I.P. Say hi to YaHoWha for me when you meet him at the gate.
