Gadgetry Music

Beautiful.


Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Via The Next Web

The Worm Within

The Worm Within,

a wonderful short story written by Vincent Eaton and illustrated by Chris Bishop.

@
http://www.fray.com/drugs/worm/




via Neatorama

Greased Lightbox

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Turns out, coffee's good for you

Uh... just one question,does this still apply if you like it with sugar?

Coffee: A Habit that Might be Good for You
Coffee is habit-forming, but it might also be good for you. The brew is rich in antioxidants, and recent medical studies have found that coffee drinking is associated with a reduced risk of diabetes.

Brought to you by:
Slate

Does everything really kill us?

ok, I'm really getting fed up with this. I understand a healthy lifestyle is good, but I wonder, is it all getting too ridiculous and out of control? First it was cigarettes, ok sure, they're bad. Fine. Don't smoke, don't allow smoking anywhere. Whatever. I can smoke in my house. Then food. This has too much fat, this has preservatives, this gives you cancer, this other thing gives you another type of cancer and this other thing makes you fat. Or destroys your liver. Or clogs your arteries. Or "we're not really sure what it might do, but just eat a banana instead". Now coffee. Here's something Reuters reported about "controlling the levels of caffeine you drink".
I wonder if those science fiction writers of the sixties were right and in a couple of years we'll all be dressing in identical silver jumpsuits and eating the same nonfat thin crispy crackers. And yet. We do have to mention the other side of the spectrum, and these people who allow themselves to get obscenely out of shape...
I guess it all goes back to something my parents used to say to me, that everything in excess is bad for you.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Coffee shop chains in Taiwan added caffeine-content advisories to their drink menus this week after health authorities warned about having one cup too many.

Coffee chains are putting red marks next to coffee drinks with more than 200 mg of caffeine, yellow marks beside caffeine levels of 100-200 mg and green marks next to drinks with less than 100 mg.

Brought to you by:
Reuters

Surfer Girls are cool

An article by Susan Orlean, that inspired the movie Blue Crush (with pre-SupermanMan Kate Bosworth and Michelle Rodriguez before getting shot). Of course, Adaptation, inspired by another of her articles is much better but The Orchid Thief is better read in book form...

The Maui Surfer Girls, by Susan Orlean

The Maui surfer girls love each other's hair. It is awesome hair, long and bleached by the sun, and it falls over their shoulders straight, like water, or in squiggles, like seaweed, or in waves. They are forever playing with it — yanking it up into ponytails, or twisting handfuls and securing them with chopsticks or pencils, or dividing it as carefully as you would divide a pile of coins and then weaving it into tight yellow plaits.

Also, visit her site SusanOrlean.com

Long time, no post

It's been a while since we've posted anything, but we've had a lot of "real world" work to do... All I can say is the new James Bond film, doesn't look bad at all...

StrangeHill is still off somewhere in Asia or something, doing something to someone or getting something done... and maybe he'll have time to post something at some point...

Don't mess with my bananas!

I couldn't resist. I read this on one of the many wonderful WIRED blogs, and it's just too funny.

“Hurry up!” an impatient voice says. “I haven’t got all day.” The order comes from a gray-haired man who appears on a flatscreen television placed in the center of a Hollywood soundstage. A woman wearing a fur bikini and two utility belts stuffed with bananas approaches the TV and stops on a painted red X.

“What’s your name?” the man asks.

“I’m Monkeywoman,” she says, then howls like a primate on crack.

“What are your powers?” he asks.

“Superhigh sonic screeches, climbing, and banana weapons,” she says.

“And your catchphrase?”

“Don’t mess with my bananas.”

Gold. Pure Gold.

Brought to you by:

Wired

(NB: The article is NOT about bananas, and that picture above has almost nothing to do with anything)

Bet you hadn't thought of this in a while...

Remember the Trapper Keeper?
Ok, so maybe I wasn't around for too long when these things where in vogue, but I did get to use them for a few years although in those times I doubt I had much to put in them (you don't get a lot of homework in grade school, do you?).

Also: Does anyone remember those bracelet thingies that were hard until you slapped them against your wrist and the snapped around it?? What were they called??

No link for this, but feel free to go here

The opposite of broadcasting

The world is changing and big media must embrace this brave new world if it has any chance of surviving. The little guy finally found a way to speak up and be heard, and this progress (just like theater to radio to film to tv, it's progress) will not be stopped. Take a look at the blows the entertainment industry has had to endure, and how the creator-audience relationship has evolved and come together. Exciting times. Exciting times.

...Throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, even as more channels arrived, television continued to be the great American unifier. Nearly every year, TV advertising set a new record as companies paid more and more for prime time. And why not? Prime-time TV defined the mainstream. Then came the great unraveling. A new medium arose, one even more powerful than broadcast, and its distribution economics favored infinite niches, not one-size-fits-all fare. The Internet’s peer-to-peer architecture is optimized for a symmetrical traffic load, with as many senders as receivers and data transmissions spread out over geography and time. In other words, it’s the opposite of broadcast...

...Today’s top-rated show, American Idol, is watched by just 18 percent of households. During the ’70s, American Idol wouldn’t even have made it to the top 10 with that kind of market share....

...But technology didn’t just allow fans to sidestep the cash register. It also offered massive, unprecedented choice in terms of what they could hear. The average file-trading network has more songs than any music store – by a factor of more than 100. Music fans had the opportunity for limitless choice, and they took it. Today, listeners have not only stopped buying as many CDs, they’re also losing their taste for the blockbuster hits that used to bring throngs into record stores on release day...

Brought to you by:
(Who else, but Wired)
The Rise and Fall of the Hit

Please don't click here

DO NOT CLICK

Amanda UnBoomed

Amanda Congdon has been forced to leave the popular video blog RocketBoom. As usual with these sort of departures there are different versions of the same story. Far be it from DerivativeCrickit to pick a side, but, as this article in TechCrunch rightfully claims, Amanda is RocketBoom. So we're going with her story, and we're sticking to it.

Brought to you by:
TechCrunch

and

Amanda UnBoomed

Important message from the EFF

Join the fight, speak up! Only YOU can stop this...

Hollywood wants Congress to give it new super powers over your TV, radio, and computer. Find out more in this animation, and go to http://www.eff.org/corrupt/ to learn more, take action to stop these proposals, and download the animation.

Every South Park Episode Ever

Thanks to the guys at Urban Coffee for this link, a site featuring every single South Park episode available to watch online!

Brought to you by:
Dave's Link, Dave's Links, Dave's Liiiiinks!

and by:
Every South Park Episode

Nobody's Watching Part 1

Part 1 of 3 of pilot WB sitcom. To be continued... Stay tuned.

TV Sucks Nowadays...

... except for HBO, but then again, that's not TV, right?

I've been waiting to find a video worth posting here, and I think I've found it... Enjoy

Amy Poehler Rules!

In case you don't know much about anything, Amy Poehler is one of the funniest people ever to be part of the SNL cast (I'll probably be writing a complete High-Fidelity-inspired list of the Top 5 Funniest SNL Cast Members Ever, but for now let's just stick to Amy). And there's an article about her in New York Magazine, where she gives HER top 5 (well, top 8) Rules to a Civilized New Yorker:

1. Be nice to everyone, especially people wearing hospital bracelets.
2. Don’t ask white girls if they “left their ass at home.”
3. If you have to bring your baby to a movie, make sure he laughs at appropriate times.
4. Don’t eat Cheetos and then sit down at a fancy hotel piano.
5. If you are in Central Park and think you are getting mugged, first check to see if maybe you’re just part of a student film.
6. If you see Oprah at a fancy function, don’t grab her wrist and ask for money. Quietly sneak up behind her and whisper, “You give me that money, Oprah. You hear me?”
7. When walking on a New York street, try not to spit, litter, bleed, or take a crap.
8. If you need to do any of these things, try to do it between two parked cars.

please don't me go Rick! Please Rick! I don't have to go, right Rick? I don't, right Rick? Say I don't have to go Rick! Riiiiiick!!!!

Click, click, click, click, cluck

Flip 'em off, tech-style

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, See? Emoticons and finger-signs and words for those driving in back of you! This is the sort of thing I would've invented if I had any idea on how one would go about making a thing like this... Actually, in my head's design I had envisioned a hidden mirror too, you know, so when I get one of those sons of bitches who like to drive around with their high beam headlights on all the time in front of me, I can bring out the mirror and blind them for a bit...... he he That being said, this is cool too

Brought to you by:
Drive-e-mocion

Em is back on film

Eminem is set to star in a new film to follow his awesome hit 8 Mile. The new flick is based on the 50s show HAVE GUN - WILL TRAVEL about a bounty hunter in the old west. However, the film will be adapted to modern times and Em might be scoring the film as well as maybe singing a few tracks for the soundtrack. And no, his character will not be a rapper.

Read it wherever you want:
BBC
or
Choose your own

More robots are coming! (no pun intended)

There is little doubt that as long as people are able to think up things, they'll continue finding ways to make them become true. Think cars, the airplane, the internet and bottled water... But this particular one seems a bit of a stretch... or maybe not.

“Security, safety and sex are the big concerns,” said Henrik Christensen, a member of the Euron ethics group. How far should robots be allowed to influence people’s lives? How can accidents be avoided? Can deliberate harm be prevented? And what happens if robots turn out to be sexy?

Other dilemmas may arrive sooner than we think, says Christensen. “People are going to be having sex with robots within five years,” he said. So should limits be set on the appearance, for example, of such robotic sex toys? The greatest danger, however, is likely to lie with robots that are able to learn from their “experiences”.

Brought to you by:
The Times Online
No sex please, robot, just clean the floor

This reminds me of:
Super-Toys Last All Summer Long