Tag: interesting

half light in springtime

There are things sadder
than you and I. Some people
do not even touch.
Sonia Sanchez, Haiku.

I’ve been trying to teach myself to write again, insisting on consecutive events, playing catch up from a month ago – the science conference, cansec, the whistler trip, and now Seattle; Sean Corey Adams, the emerald city comicon, friends, productivity, love, and witnessing the birth of a scarlet wall squid. Not sure how well it’s serving me yet, but here’s hoping. In the meantime, I want to mark this as one of those rare occasions when my life is actually nice. Thank you.

SUP DAWG I HEARD U LIKE TORRENTING SO I PUT AN INDEX IN YOUR INDEX SO U CAN PIRATE WHILE YOU PIRATE!

via Scott:

Pirate Bay user downloads entire site’s index files.

Creates a 21gb mega-torrent.

Adds rudimentary code to allow people to recreate their own copies of the site.

Uploads it to the Pirate Bay.

1st clones of the site already running (but struggling under the current media attention).

Ladies, we just went very meta indeed.

what mash-ups are meant to be, when the medium is partly the message

thru-you.com, by Kutiman

Music + (Video/Sample) x Mash-up = Sexy

“What you are about to see is a mix of unrelated YouTube videos/clips
edited together to make ThruYou. In other words, what you see is what you hear.
Check out the credits for each video – you might find yourself…”


Unbelievable. Kutiman’s ambitious project, to create an astonishing album of meta-song videos slash home-sampled music made up of a ridiculously complicated collection of cleverly layered YouTube videos, is entirely successful. It sounds half-baked, especially given every song is a different genre, like the sort of thing an undergrad would try to throw together for a media studies class because it sounded relevant on paper and they could use words like “synergy” and “interscape” in the artist statement. Instead? It’s amazing and I’m thrilled. The videos are bloody brilliant, super impressive, as unexpected as they are incredible and compelling. As someone on StumbleUpon said, “I can’t favorite this hard enough.”

I’ve actually been trying to post this for days, but the site’s been down. Hit by too many people, Kutiman’s bandwidth went bork. Now that it’s back, set aside twenty minutes, turn up your volume, turn off your power saving screen settings, and expect to have your socks knocked off.

much obliged?

I’ve just recieved a puzzling e-mail, (and by just, I mean I’ve only just now fished it out of my junk mail, where it has been languishing a couple of days), claiming to be from Her Majesty the Queen. Anyone want to fess up who sent it? I haven’t replied, in spite of the grandly amusing mail.com address of e_rex@monarchy, at the risk it is very clever spam, rather than a friend having a bit of a laugh.

FROM: Elizabeth Windsor
SUBJECT: Not an unwanted missive, we hope.

“Dearest Jhayne,

We just wanted to take a moment to say that we have been much entranced with your joie de vive. Pray continue to seize life in your teeth and shake if for all that it is worth.

Much delight,

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Scourge of the Seas, Defender of the Fates, so mote it be!”

biannual introduction innoculation

Twice a year I do a shout out, I ask that everyone speaks up, even if they otherwise stay silent. Like a good house party, it’s always fascinating to see who turns up.

So, please, tell me your names, post your picture, introduce yourself, tell me why you’re here, how you found me, and what inspires you.

I want to know who’s on the other end of my screen, what fun and fantastic people are out there, waiting to be met.

Even if I know you, introduce yourself to others, and tell me what you’ve done lately.

Explain a piece of your world with something beautiful, make something new, or dig up the grave of an old favourite. Anecdotes are welcome, as are pictures, job descriptions, inspiring links, stimulations, titillations, and your pretty hidden treasures. The name of the game is networking, so share what you want everyone else to know.

You are artists and scientists, nihilists and dreamers, comic book illustrators, archeologists, hackers, retail managers, photographers, teachers, librarians, hair dressers, and submarine captains. You are novelists, derby girls, musicians, and accountants. Optimists, pragmatists, magicians and politicians, fencers, film addicts, home owners and homeless. You are lighting designers, poets, animators, and lawyers. You are glorious, fabulous, interesting creatures, rich in colour, thick with story – and I want to hear from you all.

For those new, my name’s Jhayne. I’m a writer and photographer currently trapped in Vancouver, Canada. I live on the internet, work for a media company, and occasionally get paid to set off fireworks. I’m also an amateur taxidermist/cryptozoologist, play french horn and the saw, and edit other people’s novels. I once started a global initiative to save a local turn-of-last-century theater and turn it into a new multimedia venue called Heart of the World. It fell down, went boom, but oh well. Other people have recently managed to save it, at least, so I guess that’s something.

Welcome to my journal, a mixture of wonder, pointlessness, isolation, and community where I talk about life, love, art, technology, and try not to hate the world.

Now it’s your turn. Spill.

artpost: possibly one of the most unique interfaces I’ve ever seen

http://www.bio-bak.nl

The wicked playful, amazing and just downright weirdo-funny portfolio of talented, award winning, dutch flash artist/designer Coen Grift.

Make sure to zoom in on everything, there’s an obscene amount of detail packed into the 1000 megapixels of art, comedy, and minigames.

To start, find the raccoon with the metal detector. He’s hanging out by the tree of carrot death.

via James Everett

COILHOUSE: for sale

Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 01 is finally here!
I bought one, have you?


from thier site, emphasis mine:

“Get ready for 96 glossy, full-color pages of art, photography, music, fashion and literature. In this issue, the stark android beauty created by Andy Julia for our cover is counterbalanced inside by his elegant portfolio of vintage-style nudes. Coilhouse travels to Ljubljana, Slovenia (literally! we actually went!) to interview Laibach, while singer Jarboe tells war tales from her career post-Swans. Photographer Eugenio Recuenco contributes a lush 10-page portfolio and interview, while Clayton James Cubitt delivers a poignant, visceral spread (again, literally) on the topic of genital origami. Renowned science fiction author Samuel R. Delany shares an exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming novel, “From the Valley of the Nest of Spiders,” while our first installment of “All Yesterday’s Parties” digs up forgotten party photos from eras long gone, starting with London’s Slimelight circa ‘95. Fans of WZW and Z!ST will love Zo’s fashion pictorial, in which she reconstructs a Galliano outfit on a budget. Pop-surrealist Travis Louie gives us a glimpse of his inner monster, and cult painter Saturno Butto has some medical fun at the expense of Catholics everywhere. All this, and much more – including supervillain how-to’s, Coilhouse paper dolls, interviews, fashion and art await.

Readers of the blog, we have another treat just for you: the fact that the version of the magazine that you are buying here today will not be available in stores. Coilhouse will be in stores this fall, it won’t be the unique version that’s available here. On this site, and on this site only, you can get the uncensored edition. This version includes a powerful piece that was too risqué for stores to accept without problems due to the graphic (and in our opinion, beautiful) images involved. Only 1000 copies of this very limited version exist – a mere fraction of the entire print run. And that version is only available here, on this site. When we run out, we’ll start selling the censored version that will also be available in stores – so get the limited edition copy that we call the “true version of the magazine” while we still have them!”

My deepest and most sincere congratulations to Mer, Nadya, Mildred and Zoe.

reality shift, wow

from quantz:

A Group of Workers Harvesting Tea, ca. 1907-1915.

“This exhibit, The Empire That Was Russia, has been a favourite of mine for a while now. I come back and look at it once in a while.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a photographer in Russia at the turn of the last century. He developed a technique wherein he took three pictures of a scene – each with a red, green, and blue filter – and used projectors to display what were, in effect, colour photographs, before the technology of colour film had actually been developed. In his day, they didn’t look so hot because it was hard to get the projectors lined up. But today, we (ie: the Library of Congress) has scanned them and combined them digitally, and the results are AMAZING. You should all look at those pictures: it’s like seeing an alternate universe or something. I can’t recommend them enough.”

This picture, Peasant Girls, was taken in 1909.

and this, View of the Monastery from the Solarium, 1910.

I am rather in awe at how modern these look while at the same time, so antique. The clothes are a give away, as are the manner of industry. I think these are precious. I seriously endorse giving this page a thorough look.

more beneath the cut