heretic's linkblog of fun

around the traps

2012-02-22T00:27:00.003+11:00

(1) Engineering Management: Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3? - Quora
Sasha DiGiulian climbs Pure Imagination (9a):
http://isthispoisono.us/ - a handy guide.
"The Transparency Grenade": Equipped with a tiny computer, microphone and powerful wireless antenna, the Transparency Grenade captures network traffic and audio at the site and securely and anonymously streams it to a dedicated server where it is mined for information. Email fragments, HTML pages, images and voice extracted from this data are then presented on an online, public map, shown at the location of the detonation.
How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did - Forbes
We Are Back (Amiga intros/cracktros recreated in HTML5)
20 Cats As Fonts

roger waters, the wall

2012-02-17T01:03:00.000+11:00

You know you're in for a hell of a show: it opens with a plane flying over your head, crashing into the stage in a fireball... then the fireworks kick in...

...then the glorious opening chords of The Wall pulverise the room.

I'd wanted to see The Wall live for over 20 years - ever since I saw footage of The Wall - Live In Berlin. It wasn't a hard decision to pony up and be there when it came to town:

... even if I did wonder if 20 years of expectation could possibly be met.

It was amazing. Rock and roll theatre, spectacle, opera... the story of Pink brought to life.

The Schoolmaster was creepier than I expected - fluctuations in the balloon inflation make the face gurn into the grotesque.

Comfortably Numb was a knockout. But then so were Bring The Boys Back Home, Run Like Hell, The Show Must Go On and of course Another Brick In The Wall. And every other song...

If you get the chance to go - do it. My only regret is I didn't try for the $400 tickets right up front.

photos

2012-02-11T21:18:00.000+11:00

around the traps

2012-01-31T21:20:00.000+11:00

Interview and portrait tips in Digital Photography magazine | Boudist Photos. If you like Australian music, you've probably seen the Boudist's work. From memory I met Dan in 2005, at the time he was still working a day job and breaking into music photography in his spare time. I remember thinking 'hard one to break into, good luck..'. Fuck good luck, Dan's got there by hard work and he's an inspiration for all of us. You should look at his photos, they're awesome.
Violin + looping =
Miss Piggy Gives Fox News What It Had Coming - Esquire
Kitchen music...
Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong | GeekDad | Wired.com
Toronto News: Toronto teens send Lego man on a balloon odyssey 24 kilometres high - thestar.com
Line 6 ToneCore developer kit - for when guitar pedal tweaking isn't enough, program your own. I know this isn't actually new, I just don't remember seeing it before.

around the traps

2012-01-15T18:37:00.000+11:00

cityofsound: Journal: Tetsuo Kondo’s suspended ramp, Tallinn
It doesn't seem all that mad, then they start diving down through the rock formations...
Scouting An Abandoned Cold War Missile Base Hidden In The Adirondacks | Scouting NY
Goths up trees... I love a site that does *exactly* what it says on the tin. Goths up trees, How could I ever top the Robert Smith up a tree...: Now I know what some purists are going to say: ‘HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MARBLES? RAMMSTEIN IS NOT A GOTH BAND!’ But I put it to you that you take yourself to a Goth club at about 3AM and ask the DJ to put on some Rammstein and watch what happens to the dancefloor and then tell me that they shouldn’t be included here. The truth of the matter is that drunk Goths love Rammstein. It's true.
Wow this would have taken a lot of work...
Meet the Guy Who Owns Only 15 Things (Not Counting Undies or Socks) | Ecouterre
Search by image recursively, starting with transparent image. Momentarily NSFW:

Search by Image, Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1 from kingcosmonaut3000 on Vimeo.

street art screen savers for kindle

2012-01-15T17:45:00.001+11:00

We bought Kindles a while back; and while the default set of wallpapers probably appeals to someone, personally I'm not into the "slightly creepy images of dead authors" aesthetic. So, I created my own set using photos I've taken of street art in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

These are free to download and use if you share my "australian stickers and graffiti on your kindle" aesthetic - I'll admit this might be a niche market :) They're available separately on Flickr or you can download the whole lot (17mb zip).

To use these you need to jailbreak your Kindle and then install the screensaver hack. The trickiest bit is working out precisely which version Kindle you have so you know which files to use (go by the serial number). Note that once you copy new screen saver images onto your Kindle, you need to restart the Kindle before they'll start showing up (home, menu - settings, menu - restart).

around the traps

2012-01-09T00:39:00.000+11:00

Water-powered rocket boots for super-powered aquatic frolicking | DVICE
Chevrolet chrome script lettering
Man Builds Fairy Tale Home for His Family – For Only �3,000 | Gaia Health
How Doctors Die | Zocalo Public Square (or to put it another way, how they choose to live their last days)
This is What Happens When You Give Thousands of Stickers to Thousands of Kids | Colossal

2011 mix tape

2012-01-03T21:37:00.004+11:00

Once again I will stubbornly call it a mix tape, even though no actual tapes were harmed in the making of this entirely digital playlist.

The yearly play list is simply a set of songs which have been on high rotation or were just the song of the moment. I used to try to reorder it to make a coherent play list but frankly they're always a grab bag, so I just leave them in the order I add them. Enjoy!

2011 Mix Tape by h on Grooveshark

(you can play it on grooveshark if the embed's not working)

Mostly for my own record, this is how these tracks came to be part of the list...

Lightbringer - Covenant (inspired simply by the release of the album)
Derezzed - Daft Punk
TRON Legacy (End Titles) - Daft Punk (because TRON Legacy redefined what cyberspace looks like, in the general psyche - it was scrolling green text for years after The Matrix; now it's blue neon. Also I listened to the sountrack constantly during an Atlassian FedEx, during which I made a Tron theme for Confluence... yes, Tronfluence! ...it's unusable for any length of time but damn it looks cool.)
Welcome Home, Son - Radical Face (forever associated with Uli Steck climbing the north face of the Eiger)
The Loyal - Tiger Lou (a friend played this while were hanging out at her place and the music felt instantly familiar, ultimately becoming some of my most-played music of the year)
The Answer - U.N.K.L.E.
Reign - U.N.K.L.E. (because seeing them live with strings at the sydney opera house blew my socks off... and you'd better believe the pizzicato part of this song was a highlight)
Oh My Brother - Mr. Percival. Note - annoyingly not available to include in the playlist, guess you'll have to go check out the albums yourselves ;) (inspired by Mr Percival singing it during a secret gig I was lucky enough to attend)
Hell - Squirrel Nut Zippers (another track picked up along with Tiger Lou - yes, the playlist at our gatherings can vary a tad!)
Jumping Someone Else's Train - The Cure
All Cats Are Grey - The Cure (back to the Opera House! ...and while UNKLE was awesome, Reflections was a religious experience)
Somebody That I Used To Know - Gotye (this is probably on every other playlist for 2011, what a ripper of a track...)
Disappear Here - Hybrid (because it brings to mind the sense of flight from this video)
Jilly's on Smack - Primus (I never saw Primus back in the day and only properly got into their back catalogue in the past couple of years. Anyway we saw them live and they played this ahead of the album's release.)
Insect/Suspect - Pigface (Purely random - this came up in the car with the ipod on shuffle, and became my song of the moment. Something about the rhythm, I think.)

I've no idea if anyone else will like a single track off this. Well, apart from the Gotye, which echoed over the waters as we were going to sleep in the tent on Cockatoo Island on New Year's Eve. Pretty clearly that one's going around :)

happy new year

2012-01-01T22:00:00.003+11:00

around the traps

2011-12-29T16:09:00.002+11:00

House of the Rising Sun played on old bits of gear...
5MB Hard Disk Drive, 1956 | Retronaut
desire to inspire - If you go down to the woods today ...
Boy drops DS in gorilla cage, inadvertently creates the best photo op ever | GamesRadar
Incredible Indoor Climbing Wall Towers Atop a Tokyo Home | Designs & Ideas on Dornob
When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine
3 truths of info visualization (and some whiskey, too) - Good Experience
Chromeography (fantastic chrome logos and lettering)
Five Years After Banning Outdoor Ads, Brazil's Largest City Is More Vibrant Than Ever

photos

2011-12-11T18:24:00.000+11:00

Light Painting Graffiti
Into the Depths (Vintage Film)
fish tank | Flickr (single exposure in-frame light painting, or something...!)
I Feel More Like a Stranger Each Time I Come Home | Flickr

around the traps

2011-12-03T23:00:00.000+11:00

Penn & Teller: Fool Us - Daniel Madison - YouTube (amazing sleight of hand trick)
Crashed Ferrari Table | Charly Molinelli
Magic Mountain by Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth: Visitors can climb onto the sculpture where it meets the ground, but a loop-the-loop at the centre prevents anyone being able to walk a full circuit. Walk, no. But anyone who thinks it couldn't or wouldn't be climbed hasn't met many climbers.
The Invisible Bridge of RO&AD Architects | Yatzer

around the traps

2011-10-29T20:18:00.003+11:00

Automated ball throwing machine (with proximity sensors for safety) makes a little dog very happy:
Famous Lines 'Princess Bride' Cast Still Hears
Clubs Australia private strategy paper calls for trailer-mounted ATMs | News.com.au: A private strategy paper obtained exclusively by The Sunday Mail reveals that clubs are prepared to put ATMs on trailers, in carparks and in adjacent buildings to sidestep the restrictions. ... Crucially, the document also indicates clubs are publicly exaggerating the impact of planned mandatory pre-commitment measures, which will require gamblers to set limits before they play. Clubs estimate they will lose 10 to 20 per cent of gaming machine revenue under the worst-case scenario - not 40 per cent as widely claimed - the briefing says. Yes indeed, the pokie people are are prize arseholes. Now there's proof surely we could shoot at least a couple of them and hang them up as a warning to the rest?
xkcd 962, so very true:

The first time I saw a video of wingsuit base jumping, my reaction was "I wish I was crazy enough to do that." Although really it's not as simple as "crazy". These days I think extreme sports are about the line of risk you are willing to cross; and the training you are willing to do to reduce the risks.

All the training in the world wouldn't get me to a point where I could do things Jeb Corliss does. I'm just not wired in a way that would allow me to suppress fear and risk-aversion instincts to that extent.

Wingsuit base jumping sure makes some great videos though.
[mySociety:public] Richard Stallman speaker visit. The list of demands is extensive and, I would guess, incredibly hard to actually meet. You'd have to really want him to speak at your event; which I suppose is probably the point. See also: The Stallman Dialogues.
The Frame: Japan marks 6 months since earthquake, tsunami (side by side comparison photos)

around the traps

2011-10-02T21:10:00.000+11:00

data.seevl.net is a searchable database of artist information. eg. search for industrial music genre (you can limit to ranges of activity and so on). datalicious.
INCREDIBOX [ Official website ] (stick out the load time, it's worth it)
Haunted by the past in a Facebook world - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): What would result if everything that happened to us, good and bad, was captured, recorded, and became permanently and instantly accessible? Forgetfulness would lose its power to soothe our wounds. Instead, memory - damned, pernicious and unforgiving - would harry us, every moment, everywhere. Memory would become a curse, a deadweight, dragging us down to the depths with its constant reminders of all our failures and pains.You can thank Mark Zuckerberg for that.
Metropol Parasol // The World’s Largest Wooden Structure... that looks pretty damn cool.
Samuel L Ipsum | Alternative Lorem Ipsum Generator - motherfucking placeholder text motherfucker!
Welcome The National Library of Australia to The Commons! � Flickr Blog

ten years

2011-09-22T18:00:00.011+10:00

Wow. Would you believe this blog has been up for ten years now? That's why I've given the blog a little design update - just something to mark a decade of blogging the creme de la crap of the websites passing through my browser ;)

I had a bit of a wander through the wayback machine (still in beta, bless 'em) to remind myself how the blog had changed over a decade...

2001

The first design was what I nicknamed 'pimpazz orange and grey':

I can't find the source anymore, but I was amused by some random blogger who had declared "nothing says 'I'm a pimpazz designer, y'alls' like orange and grey"..

Under the bonnet it was a css/table hybrid design, mostly because it was a lightly-modified base Blogger theme and they were pretty much all tables at the time.

2004

That was replaced around 2004 by a blue and grey design:

For a while you could choose either the orange or blue design, since CSS Zen Garden was still about as hot as it got on the web at the time. I've no idea if anyone ever flicked that switch other than me; and eventually I just maintained the blue one.

2007

I was never entirely happy with the blue design though and eventually got around to replacing it with the 'grey boxes' design in 2007:

I've often referred to this design in a sort of cautionary manner - "let me design it and you'll get shades of grey..."

2011

Bringing us to the latest design, an evolution of the grey theme:

This one's built with new HTML5 elements and a responsive stylesheet to help deal with the modern browser landscape of desktops, tablets and phones.

So, there you have it... ten years worth of this blog. I know a few people still read it, although I suspect mostly via various forms of syndication... hope you're still getting some enjoyment out of it :)

around the traps

2011-09-19T21:40:00.000+10:00

Can a Playground Be Too Safe? - NYTimes.com: By gradually exposing themselves to more and more dangers on the playground, children are using the same habituation techniques developed by therapists to help adults conquer phobias.
Cliffs Notes For Songs
Another classic from Animals Being Dicks:
Stop the bogans | News | NT News | Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia | ntnews.com.au: When our kids and grandkids look back at this time, they will shake their heads in shame at both the government's policies and the general public's reactions to it. They will slap their foreheads at our ignorance, the same way we do when we look back at the White Australia policy.

shared canon

2011-09-14T01:28:00.003+10:00

a song that recalls
fine company and single malt
warmth on a cold night

cathartic soundtrack
a friend's well-travelled album
deeply personal

stories and songs shared
are maps to find future roads
adding to canon

not mere possessions
far more than discs or downloads
music shapes our lives

around the traps

2011-09-10T20:42:00.000+10:00

Industrial strength machine for industrial strength music:

Author & Punisher- 9/5/10 Studio Practice Shoot from Tristan Shone on Vimeo.
More Tron mashup action! This time Led Zep vs. Tron...
Mad wingsuit base jump down the Matterhorn - note it's in five parts, see the description for the links.
Simple, amazing:

around the traps

2011-08-28T00:01:00.000+10:00

Fifty years on, Berlin revisits the day it was torn in two
Three Abandoned Bombshelters | English Russia
The Open Pit Of Voskresensk | English Russia
100 Year Old Hydro Power Plant | English Russia
More crazy bike tricks from Danny Macaskill, with bonus awesome industrial setting:
Cookie Monster/Tom Waits mashup of pure genius:
Apologies...:

photo: multitasking

2011-08-13T01:12:00.001+10:00

(full set)

around the traps

2011-08-12T21:12:00.000+10:00

BBC News - Apple holding more cash than USA. It irks me that a company sitting on $73.7b still won't make any charitable donations (Jobs halted them as a cost-cutting measure in 1997, apparently they're still struggling too much to kick it back in).
The beautiful mind of the Aussie who beat Microsoft
From 1890: The First Text Messages | Sunday Magazine: Telegraph operators on opposite sides of the country had some time to get to know each other when they weren’t busy sending other people’s messages. ... the abbreviations they used seem a lot like the abbreviations used in today’s text messages.
Inside the Ghost Ships of the Mothballed Fleet | HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT
hipsteripsum.me, for those times lorem ipsum is just too damn mainstream.

around the traps

2011-07-28T00:31:00.005+10:00

"At the end of the day, what do you need for living? You need a nice comfortable mattress, nice clean sheets, running water, a shower, and a stove to cook something ... You don't much more stuff."
WHERE IS THIS?
The Technium: The Clock in the Mountain/10,000 Year Clock
Bigend-Draperism, a memoir, and a desk. | Ben Hammersley's Dangerous Precedent
Soft power, Murdoch, and Parliament’s Ratner Moment. | Ben Hammersley's Dangerous Precedent: Parliament thinks of itself as the august and somber institution of power and justice, representing the people, and instead presented itself as a regional sales manager’s meeting, half-arsed, and mugging for the camera. Our nation’s representatives, charged with confronting Murdoch with the accusations of corruption and hideous corporate malpractice, took such care over it that someone was able to hit him with a foam pie. The joke, such as it was, was on us.

around the traps

2011-07-02T22:40:00.000+10:00

No matter what the topic, someone can always show you a Better Way™:
Lytro’s Camera Lets You Shoot First and Focus Later - NYTimes.com. Even just eliminating lag on point and shoots would be a massive breakthrough, really.
Sergeant Stubby - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (via @jasonberry)
Creative Review - The Art of the Factory: 'I asked them to make me one of their products, but to make it with an error,' Hutchison explains. 'I specified that this error should render the object dysfunctional. And rather than my choosing the error, I wanted the factory worker who made it to choose what error to make. Whatever this worker chose to do, I would accept and pay for.'

photos

2011-06-24T00:10:00.000+10:00

the cure, reflections at the opera house

2011-06-11T17:55:00.004+10:00

So, how to describe seeing The Cure play at the Opera House?

Epic. Truly. This was the encore:

That's what we got after they'd played Three Imaginary Boys, Seventeen Seconds and Faith in their entirety. Here's the full setlist:

Three Imaginary Boys

10:15 Saturday Night
Accuracy
Grinding Halt
Another Day
Object
Subway Song
Foxy Lady
Meathook
So What
Fire in Cairo
It's Not You
Three Imaginary Boys
The Weedy Burton

Seventeen Seconds

A Reflection
Play for Today
Secrets
In Your House
Three (including a "Happy Birthday" song to Simon Gallup)
The Final Sound
A Forest
M
At Night
Seventeen Seconds

Faith

The Holy Hour
Primary
Other Voices
All Cats Are Grey
The Funeral Party
Doubt
The Drowning Man
Faith

Encore:

World War
I'm Cold
Plastic Passion
Boys Don't Cry
Killing an Arab
Jumping Someone Else's Train
Another Journey By Train

Encore 2:

Descent
Splintered In Her Head
Charlotte Sometimes
The Hanging Garden

Encore 3:

Let's Go to Bed
The Walk
The Lovecats

Wow.

Rewind, I thought I wasn't going to see this gig at all. In an effort to get tickets I had a coordinated attack planned with c41. We were both hitting the website when it opened - Pete even got tickets allocated before the system crashed, leaving us both without successful purchases.

He emailed the Opera House in the hope the seats hadn't been reallocated, but we didn't really think anything would come it. But a few days later they rang up, apologised and sold him two other tickets!

Part of me had irrational fears that it was some outlandishly implausible, complex scalping scam ;) But cut to the evening and there was my real, actual ticket:

So could a gig be as good as my ridiculously built-up expectations? It was... brilliant, sublime, impressive. The sound and sheer musicianship blew me away. I'd never been close enough at a gig to truly appreciate all the crazy guitar tricks and interplay on the stage. Those boys can play.

It was a show laden with associations - so many tracks that triggered memories of one kind or another. It really drove home the fact I've been listening to The Cure for quite a long time now - across many stages of my life. High school, uni, moving out of home, moving our lives to a new city... throughout it all I've listened to The Cure. Perhaps this is stupidly prosaic, obvious, everyone has a band like this. But it's fairly rare to have it played out live on stage.

My big sister showed me the Love Cats film clip when I was a kid - she knew I'd love the madness of it. So in one of those little twists, the show finished with the first Cure song I ever knew.

I played 17 Seconds endlessly while studying; and first listened to Faith off my flatmate's vinyl copy when I first moved out of home (the warmth of vinyl really works with all the big bass and drums).

I knew many of the early tracks and b-sides from swapping tapes with friends at high school. I think my first Cure tape had Entreat on one side and Head on the Door on the other; and many more followed. To this day I still expect a skip during Boys Don't Cry, where the original vinyl had stumbled while being dubbed to tape.

At college I sat up late with friends many times, talking and watching videos - usually finishing with Staring At The Sea. The gig included something like thirteen songs from that video alone, calling to mind good company, a bottle of scotch and a night that needn't end early.

So it wasn't just an incredible gig, it was an amazing reminder of the years I'd spent listening to the music.

Four hours, and the show felt like it was over too damn fast :) I can't wait for the DVD to come out, it begs a night with friends and the kind of single malt we couldn't dream of affording back at college.

around the traps

2011-06-05T19:03:00.001+10:00

Derezzed is already pretty awesome, but what if it was played on guitar?

...and as a bonus, on a minimoog:
Blade Runner Polaroids. Did androids dream of flickr?
Gold, absolutely gold: Zoo in China conducts amazing training drill to capture escaped tiger with man in Tigger suit | Courier Mail
New 'Transformers 3' Base Jump Stunt Featurette | Screen Rant
Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia. - By Annie Lowrey - Slate Magazine

around the traps

2011-05-19T23:45:00.001+10:00

(2) What's the most epic photo ever taken? - Quora. Obviously this question has no definitive answer, what's interesting is the discussion of what people consider 'epic'.
Why the White House situation room photo is so powerful | Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com
Live version: How to write 1000 words (time lapsed video) | Scott Berkun
A zombie-proof house? That's using the old noodle! | News.com.au
9-eyes.com (googlestreetviews.com)
Lost Type Co-op (fonts sold on a 'pay what you want' model)

unkle at the opera house

2011-05-12T23:33:00.001+10:00

Setlist from setlist.fm:

The Answer
Burn My Shadow
Chemistry
Natural Selection
Reign
Restless
Ever Rest
The Runaway
Keys to the Kingdom
Glow
Ablivion
Money and Run
Eye for an Eye

Encore:

Heaven
Lonely Soul
In a State

This was an amazing gig. Massive visuals and, let's be honest, it was the freaking Opera House. It was an occasion. The concert hall is small enough that even our relatively cheap seats were great seats.

How do you pick highlights from that set list? For me, Reign was perhaps the track I most wanted to hear played with a live string ensemble, for obvious reasons:

I wasn't disappointed - especially the pizzicato, which was just perfect.

Otherwise you can't really go wrong with tracks like Burn My Shadow, Chemistry and Restless.

Personally I'd have liked more tracks from Psyence Fiction - I think Unreal and Rabbit In Your Headlights could have been arranged quite well with strings. Still, you can't have everything and Lonely Soul done live had a depth of emotion and power that was just fantastic.

...although this, with the video backdrop, performed live in the Opera House to start the encore... this really had the crowd holding its breath:

It doesn't matter if you've seen that video before, at that moment, in that place, it was something else.

If the show had any downsides it was a little too much use of strobes and the sound levels were up a bit high - there's really no excuse for overdriving a PA in the Opera House. They could have brought both things down a bit for a more refined result - a few songs fell a bit flat because you couldn't hear the depth and detail that we know are in there from listening to the albums.

Overall though, what an experience. Even the band had to comment on what an unlikely night it really was - reinforced when they took their own photos from the stage!

I think it's one of those shows that will come to mind for years to come when I listen to the tracks from the night. It's added a new layer to my appreciation for a band I already loved.

When all is said and done, you can't ask for a whole lot more.

photo: tiger on the lookout

2011-05-02T18:44:00.000+10:00

Taronga Zoo, 2011.

around the traps

2011-05-01T18:30:00.001+10:00

Snapping CDs in half is so last century.
WVIL - Wireless Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens... fake, but a great concept. Really for this you'd just need a DSLR to allow tethering via wireless instead of cables, with a light enough API that a phone could run the control software. You can already tether by wire to workstations, but I don't know if the software is light enough for something like a phone.
Timba's Illustration Dept.
DAFT PUNK'S DEREZZED / TRON from ARNAUD FAURE on Vimeo:
I mostly just love the way this guy says 'what is it good for? oh I don't know, it's just for fun!':
Amazing Love: Pork Chops (tigress adopts piglets dessed as tiger cubs. no, really.)

photos

2011-04-25T01:00:00.000+10:00

photo: macarons

2011-04-23T22:40:00.002+10:00

Adriano Zumbo Macarons.

around the traps

2011-04-14T00:23:00.002+10:00

Freerunning School With Super Mario Bros Decor
jtnimoy - Tron Legacy (2010) (details and screenshots of the graphics and OS dummied up for Tron Legacy)
Access Main Computer File (collection of movie computer interfaces)
Modern Studio Furniture Collections | BRC Designs. Furniture as art..?
20 Classic Pin-Up Girls Before And After
Why T-Shirts Matter | Psychohistory (at startups/tech companies, specifically). Atlassian makes a lot of tshirts and it's basically all true. You couldn't get us to wear a uniform, but we wear the tshirts. My starter buddy explained it well: "you can tell how long people have been here by the shirts. They're a bit like scout badges. Don't worry, before you know it you'll have more than you know what to do with." Yep.

photo: moored

2011-04-03T16:27:00.001+10:00

Darling Harbour at dusk. It's a nice walk home on nights like this.

around the traps

2011-03-31T00:21:00.008+11:00

The Pool Room - Facebook runs on a very stiff, crude model of what...: Facebook runs on a very stiff, crude model of what people are like. It herds everybody — friends, co-workers, romantic partners, that guy who lived on your block but moved away after fifth grade — into the same big room. It smooshes together your work self and your home self, your past self and your present self, into a single generic extruded product. It suspends the natural process by which old friends fall away over time, allowing them to build up endlessly, producing the social equivalent of liver failure. On Facebook, there is one kind of relationship: friendship, and you have it with everybody. You’re friends with your spouse, and you’re friends with your plumber.
The Cooper Journal: Explaining pair design (metaphorically): At Cooper, we’re quite fond of pair design as a way to get to the highest quality design quickly. ... Over the years, two specific roles have evolved out of this paired practice. ...generator and synthesizer.
LEUCHTPUNKTORDNUNGEN : :STEPHAN TILLMANS PHOTOGRAPHIE: The Luminant Point Arrays show tube televisions in the moment they are swithed off. The television picture breaks down and creates a structure of light.
Stop Lying About What You Do | booktwo.org: Shmuel, a Flickr user and copywriter, put together this excellent bingo card of lies publishers tell themselves, willfully or not. The Ur-comment is at bottom right: “Evidence that doesn’t fit my beliefs is wrong.” What is extraordinary is that this continues even when we ourselves are generating the evidence, when we are our own exceptions. We prejudge endlessly. Because we have not experienced the emotions that new technologies trigger we assume that they will be less powerful than the emotions we already know. Just because we haven’t had these feelings yet.

around the traps

2011-03-21T00:05:00.000+11:00

Delicate Genius rocks Ignite Sydney:
SMBC: Everything wrong with political discourse in one graph:
The Quicksilver Mess - TIME: two Arkansas teenagers [found some 40 lbs. of pure mercury] in an abandoned factory where it had been used to make neon lights. They and their friends dipped their hands and arms into it. They poured it on their bedroom floors to see it wobble and flow. They showed it off at school and handed it out in jars and vials. One youth dipped a cigarette in it and smoked it. And then he and his buddies began to fall very ill. These kids, growing up in the age of digital thermometers, didn't know that they were playing with a poison.
Giant KitKat Chunky, including packaging!

around the traps

2011-03-01T21:05:00.000+11:00

SHOPPED? Definitely Not - Picture Is Unrelated - WTF Pictures and Videos (steam AT-AT)
- Obvious Winner - NERF Swarmfire: The Next Addition to Your Cube Arsenal
Interesting point about starting a movement... Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy | Derek Sivers: A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. ... The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.
PONS HUOT Office by Christian Pottgiesser | CONTEMPORIST
JAMES JIRAT PATRADOON - cool illustrations.
Neil Gaiman discussing copyright, and what really happens when people 'pirate' his books:
Cat priorities.

second reality parody

2011-02-19T16:04:00.002+11:00

I hadn't ever seen this, but it's weirdly inspired:

If you have no idea what the hell this is about, check out the side-by-side: Wyndham Reality (Second Reality Parody) vs. Second Reality by FUTURE CREW by VJ Real | YouTube Doubler | Mashup Helper (I found you need to pause Second Reality for a bit to get them in sync).

Or just watch the original, but remember to channel the moment. It's 1993, you've rebooted to reset the memory profile on your 486 so it would run, your monitor is a CRT running at 640x480... *maybe* 800x600...

Just as a mental exercise... think for a second, this is what Tron: Legacy 3D will look like to us in 18 years ;)

around the traps

2011-02-13T22:45:00.001+11:00

Basement tapes and cabin fever: 24 unconventional recording spaces | Music | Inventory | The A.V. Club
Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened | Vanish | Wired.com
BBC - Newsnight: Paul Mason: Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere: We've had revolution in Tunisia, Egypt's Mubarak is teetering; in Yemen, Jordan and Syria suddenly protests have appeared. In Ireland young techno-savvy professionals are agitating for a "Second Republic"; in France the youth from banlieues battled police on the streets to defend the retirement rights of 60-year olds; in Greece striking and rioting have become a national pastime. And in Britain we've had riots and student occupations that changed the political mood. What's going on? What's the wider social dynamic?
a softer world: 640
Open source, modular design is kinda cool when applied to software (including the web). But it's awesome when it's applied to the world:

GVCS in 2 Minutes from Adam Mitchell on Vimeo.

(via lachstock)
This is not porn - Rare and beautiful celebrity photos (also via lachstock)

photo: processing chart

2011-02-13T17:48:00.000+11:00

Part of the mocked up darkroom in the Benini exhibit at the Powerhouse.

three gigs in four days

2011-01-30T17:47:00.000+11:00

Back in December, we had a grand weekend'o'gigs. Forgot to blog it at the time, so here it is...

friday 2010.12.10 - that 1 guy (and mr percival)

Thanks to crappy print at home ticketing, I had no ticket in my pocket at the gig. That annoys me as I like tickets as mementos of gigs, even if I can only ultimately keep a scan as the crumpled, ripped and sweaty original fades to nothing.

After the show, That 1 Guy (Mike Silverman) was chatting with fans and signing autographs (actually Mr Percival was too but I didn't get a chance to say hi to him before we took off).

I already own everything That 1 Guy's released so really just went over to say the gig had been awesome as usual (fourth time we've seen him)... but he does card tricks during the show and a few were lying around on the stage.

I asked "any chance you could sign one of those for me?" and lo and behold he drew the ace of clubs.

The support artist, Mr Percival, was an unexpected bonus - we hadn't seen his show so didn't know what to expect. Turns out, he's absolutely fantastic. What other artist could get a Sydney crowd singing?

saturday 2010.12.11 - the reverend horton heat

The place was packed and hot as hell, so we ended up missing most of the support acts. We were outside trying to decypher the running sheet - reaching the conclusion the running sheet had gone out the window hours earlier - when I said "you know that sounds like a Horton Heat song..." and yep it was!

We were lucky getting a good spot up behind the Metro's sound desk - I guess most people were keen to get down into the standing area, but anyway it meant we could see just fine. Given TRHH were the loudest three piece I've ever encountered it's not like we couldn't hear either ;)

The show was absolutely fucking fantastic, truly insanely awesome.

You know if there's a double bass, someone has to ride that sucker... and don't miss the over-the-head throw of the bass at the end: YouTube - Reverend Horton Heat-Devil's Chasing Me~Live sydney 2010.

Then the drummer cut loose with an absolute face melter of a solo... cut to 2:20 if you're impatient ;)

For a similar effort, but a better video...

Setlist:

Bullet
I'm Mad
Big Little Baby
Loaded Gun
400 Bucks
The Devil's Chasing Me
Big Sky
Baddest of the Bad
It's Martini Time
Ain't No Saguaro in Texas
Drinkin' and Smokin' Cigarettes
Please Don't Take the Baby to the Liquor Store
Death Metal Guys
Cowboy Love
Jimbo Song
Spend A Night In The Box
Galaxy 500
Callin In Twisted
Indigo Friends
Psychobilly Freakout

Encore:

Bales of Cocaine
Big Red Rocket Of Love/Folsom Prison Blues/Big Red Rocket Of Love

After the show, hundreds of happy rockabillies spilled out to confuse the hell out of the usual George Street crowd. As I said at the time...

The psychobillies are freaked out, the big red rocket has been ridden and at one point we shot a man in Reno just to watch him die... Our eardrums are somewhere in the blue mountains and george street is full of smiling rockabillies. Reverend Horton Heat.... Fuck yeah!

If you get a chance to see The Reverend Horton Heat... my advice: take it!

monday 2010.12.13 - u2

Dear fuck but this was a logistical nightmare. The stage was moved, turning our expensive tickets into pretty crappy seats at the far end of the stadium; and they tried to make us go get new, randomly-reassigned seats. An usher made a half-hearted attempt to enforce it before deciding he wasn't paid enough to argue with us ;)

The support act was shite - I do not understand why the fucking hell they got Jay-Z to support U2. Much less why U2 brought him on stage later on during the show to ruin Sunday Bloody Sunday.

But eventually we did get a good U2 show. The stage was incredible, really well designed to make a big show out of a big stage and lighting rig. The sound suffered the usual problems of stadium acoustics but there were some great moments.

Two standout gig moments: first, when the crowd spontaneously took over singing Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For; and second when the crowd lept to its feet the moment U2 started playing Where The Streets Have No Name. Guess we liked the old stuff best ;)

Setlist:

Return Of The Stingray Guitar
Beautiful Day (with Blackbird snippet)
I Will Follow
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Elevation
Until The End Of The World
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of (with Do They Know It's Christmas snippet)
Bad (with Need You Tonight and Never Tear Us Apart snippets)
In A Little While
Miss Sarajevo
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (with Relax and Two Tribes snippets)
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Scarlet
Walk On

Encore:

One
Where The Streets Have No Name (with Amazing Grace snippet)

Encore 2:

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender

around the traps

2011-01-22T22:47:00.001+11:00

This Is Every Batmobile Ever | Jalopnik
The 5 Ballsiest Acts of Undercover Journalism Ever | Cracked.com
Listening to your favourite music releases dopamine | News.com.au: People who become euphoric over music unleash dopamine, a brain chemical that also induces the sense of reward that comes from food, psychoactive drugs and money, an unusual study says.
9 Famous Movie Villains Who Were Right All Along | Cracked.com
Leukaemia sufferer Stepan Supin stays home, sends robot to school | Courier Mail
INCIDENTAL COMICS: Discography of Your Favorite Band

photos

2011-01-08T17:49:00.000+11:00

around the traps

2011-01-04T22:41:00.000+11:00

Guy Russo puts Kmart on the road to recovery | News.com.au. Two years later, while not yet a market darling, Kmart has undergone a major structural overhaul, increased profits by 100 per cent this past financial year and is firmly back on the retail map. ... A key strategic step was to slash Kmart's product range from 100,000 lines to 40,000 and narrow its price positioning. (This article is much more interesting than it probably sounds ;))
Optimus Prime vs Jesus Christ [PIC]
The Blast Shack (Bruce Sterling's take on Wikileaks)
Mykea Offers Custom Skins To Personalise Your IKEA Furniture | Lifehacker Australia

2010 mix tape

2011-01-01T17:49:00.006+11:00

Mix Tape? Que? Call it a playlist if you prefer, but for some reason I still think of these as mix tapes, even though no tape was involved.

This year 15 tracks made it onto the list. Here they are, purely in the order I added them.

Create a playlist at MixPod.com

Interesting to note that some tracks were simply unavailable; but others (eg. Reptile) were blocked from embedding meaning I could only add lower quality live tracks. Funny how that works eh? Lawyers get involved and the band ends up sounding comparatively crap in the playlist...

around the traps

2010-12-19T18:10:00.000+11:00

a sea of lead, a sky of slate: Abandoned on Everest (note: contains images of bodies): [T]he body of a climber who died in 1996 has been a grim landmark for every climber of the Northeast route, lying curled up in the fetal position, wearing fluorescent green mountaineering boots. ... In the 56 years since the first men in history reached the top, 216 people have died, and the grim reality of the horrific conditions of the Final Push is that 150 bodies have never been, and likely can never be, recovered.

Also: Everest death zone set for a spring clean up | Reuters
Next stop: Hardware piracy: Whatever happens, one thing's for sure: If you sell collectible action figures for a living, you should be nervous.
ongoing by Tim Bray: WikiLeaks: Yes, you can lock down your network with sharp-fanged firewalls, and disable the USB socket and DVD writer in all the computers. ... You can take a horrible productivity hit or you can deal with the enhanced risk of getting secrets leaked. My personal opinion is that your best bet is to have really good reasons for doing what you’re doing and saying what you’re saying and make sure the people who know the secrets know the reasons, too. Also, it would help if you don’t treat your staff like shit. Or condone slaughtering civilians and then try to cover it up.

the life of books

2010-12-08T22:38:00.004+11:00

Not every physical thing can be easily replaced with something digital. Your e-reader might be a great way to read things, but can the author sign your favourite book?

Before I was a web developer I worked in a bookstore, and part of the job was working at book reading and signing events with visiting authors. Even after I left the job I found myself at the signings, often as not doing some kind of odd job. Book trade has this effect, some part of you never quite leaves.

At one of those signings I met and chatted with Neil Gaiman. He signed my copy of Stardust, even though the event was actually a reading from Anansi Boys and a Mirrormask signing.

My fiancee recalls that Neil and I talked "for ages", I think he was being generous with his time as it was the last stop on a tour - the event went until after midnight!

During that chat, or maybe during his talk... he told a wonderful story about book signings. To retell it as best as I can remember...

People bring old books to signings. Books he wrote years ago, books he wrote with other authors. He said people would line up patiently, holding dogeared copies of Good Omens.

Reaching the front of the queue they'd ignore gleaming stacks of the new book, or the shiny copy in their hand and ask him to sign the old one.

They'd say defiantly, "I know it's old, and worn, and the cat chewed it and the cover's falling off... but it's my copy, I've read it over and over, this one's mine and will you sign it?"

Of course he does.

Neil tells it better, of course. I love the story because it captures part of the relationship between readers and authors; and the joy of the memento. You can be sure those battered and signed books were never flogged on eBay.

Books are more than a content delivery device. They are more than words on a page. Books are alive in ways we can feel, but struggle to explain.

A worn old book is a souvenir of its own reading... of the experience, the place it has had in someone's life. The author signing it adds to the experience already contained in the battered pages, contributing a sort of double dip to the life their creative work.

E-readers are convenient in ways that a book can never be, battery life aside, but they just lack a certain something that make them seem a little less real than the real thing.

Perhaps over time this impression will fade and we'll appreciate the pure message and story without the trappings of ink and pulp. We'll find new ways to relate to books and their authors, new rituals of appreciation and memory for the digital world.

Maybe one day we'll be able to have authors annotate ebooks with an inscription, take a stylus and scrawl on an empty page between the cover and contents.

It's important, becase we don't just read books. We need to be able to take our favourite books to have their authors sign, sketch and scrawl in them, and for us to take home and read again.

Note: I wrote a draft of this a while ago, but was reminded to finish it after finally listening to the podcast of Wrangling Time.

photo: benini

2010-12-05T23:25:00.000+11:00

Part of the Benini exhibit at the Powerhouse - room of mirrors and screens.

photo: troll

2010-11-30T22:59:00.000+11:00

Troll 07. Melbourne street art, 2009.

around the traps

2010-11-30T22:58:00.000+11:00

Dog doing parkour-style jumps and tricks:
you're making me nervous - (via: amateur) (via lachstock )
Dark Roasted Blend: Future of Personal Computing: Post-iPad Concepts (actually I think most were created before the iPad, but hey...)

photo: take a seat

2010-11-14T15:04:00.000+11:00

Melbourne, 2009.

around the traps

2010-11-14T15:03:00.000+11:00

English Russia | Cool Cyberpunk PC (OTT case mod. or non-case mod. or something)
Company makes robotic arms you can control over web and lets people use them to play with kittens | News.com.au
25 Pictures Of Cats And Dogs Photobombing Each Other
20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World
Royal Pingdom | The REAL connection speeds for Internet users across the world (charts) (unsurprisingly, Australia is a long way down the list)

windows 7 profile change vs. dropbox sync

2010-10-28T20:03:00.006+11:00

One for the "that was a lot fucking harder than it should have been" files...

My PC has just had some problems with blue screens which I am pretty sure are down to some RAM giving up the ghost. Sadly one of the crashes screwed up my user profile, leaving me with the dreaded "temporary profile" problem.

There really isn't a decent solution to this yet, Microsoft's "solution" basically being "give up and make a new profile". Their process will save your data but only about a third of your settings and config. This will of course teach me to buy a new OS before the first service pack (I migrated from XP, which is frankly rock solid these days what with all the patches ;)).

Anyway, Dropbox choked on the move. I'd moved the files across, they were about 99.9% up to date so basically no sync should have been required beyond an index and check. But Dropbox slammed away at it for ages, with errors about "Cannot sync (filename), permission denied". Huh?

So, I realised what had happened. Win7's file permissions meant my Dropbox files were "owned" by the old user account; so a lot of new files were set to read-only and I couldn't change that. Dropbox couldn't change the read-only files so it couldn't sync them - which I should point out is precisely how Dropbox should handle the situation it was given. It was inconvenient for me but not a fault in Dropbox.

So, to sort this out here's what I did...

Find your Dropbox folder - the real one, not the link.
Right click and go to Properties.
Go to the Security tab, then click Advanced, then Change Permissions. This should bring you to the Advanced Security Settings for (folder name) dialog.
Click Add.
Type in: yourcomputername\yourcurrentusername then click Check Names.
Now give your current username Full Control permissions; making sure the Include Inheritable... and Replace all child object permissions... options are ticked.
Apply, and be patient...
OK your way out and close all properties dialogs.
Right click your Dropbox again and remove Read Only, then when it asks make sure you apply the new settings to all sub-folders etc.
Apply, and be patient...
Dropbox should now be able to sync everything.

Of course this might not work for you, but it sorted out the problem for me.

If I'd realised the problems this would cause I'd have done this before installing Dropbox. Cest la vie, and thank goodness for LAN sync and my up to date checkout on the EEEpc.

BTW, this issue does not change the fact Dropbox is awesome :)

photo: coffee time

2010-10-23T23:45:00.000+11:00

Coffee time. Melbourne alley, 2009.

half a thought on the writings of william gibson

2010-10-23T23:28:00.008+11:00

As the last few years have come and gone, Web Directions (nee Web Essentials) has been a sort of yearly watershed, a tick of the clock, the end of my web year and the beginning of the new.

Every other year, though, I make a session choice I later regret. This year I missed a talk by James Bridle, who apparently discussed the writings of William Gibson. I was in the next room, fate having a sense of humour.

At any rate, from what I'm told James pondered where Gibson could go next... his novels having shrunk from a far future to the present. (Sidenote: I haven't read Gibson's latest novel yet, although I'll be doing so very soon. However the receding timeline has been obvious long enough that I think I can grasp that thread in the meantime.)

I wish I could have been there to hear another view on this. I've long pondered the real place and significance of time and technology in Gibson's writings.

Logically the settings had to be in the future (usually "near future"), but the time is not the key to the stories; just an implication. His later works are logically in the present, dated mostly by the appearance of contemporary technology rather than anything else.

I think technology is part of the setting rather than the point of the story. Particularly as his works evolved over the years, I think the theme - if there is one - in Gibson's work is the interstitial. The in-between.

Characters are regularly stripped of normality, isolated, in a strange space and time between what they knew before and where they will stabilise. Literary theory suggests all narrative follows this path, that is equilibrium → disequilibrium → equilibrium. But I mean this in the more immediate sense of what's happening to the character.

Characters are torn out of their world, or their death spiral, and given an immediate and urgent assignment by mysterious figures. Items and targets given a value understandable only to those paying for it. People are between times, yet with a task to complete under various forms of motivation.

They live in temporary places. Couches, hotels, company-owned houses. Borrowed beds, vehicles, weapons and allies. Momentary tribes. The unfamiliar rapidly becomes the safe, although it often becomes dangerous again before the tale runs its course.

Many of Gibson's characters have very few items in their immediate possession, usually demonstrating a razor focus on the present task. These items become significant in a variety of ways, brands usually noted even if just in passing.

Also, many characters live in unusual places and ways. Warehouses, both in urban and wasteland locations; space stations; reclaimed bridges; entire high-rise floors converted to communal space. Communities built around circumstance, religion, drugs, technology and music.

All of this serves to pull you, the reader, out of the usual and into the interstitial with the protagonist. You are invited to feel the loneliness of of an empty hotel room; or the warmth of a connection found when a character was dropped into a new place.

Or maybe that's just how I read the books. Reading is such an individual process of creation.

Anyway, it's half a thought I suppose. It doesn't really matter what I think the books are about right now, I'll probably change my mind by the time I've re-read them all (which I will inevitably do).

But I do regret missing the chance to discuss it at Web Directions... I look forward to listening to the podcast :)

Update 2010.10.26

James Bridle has blogged on this topic as well - Network Realism: William Gibson and new forms of Fiction | booktwo.org and the podcast of his talk is up at James Bridle – Wrangling Time: The Form and Future of the Book | Web Directions. I'll be downloading that just as soon as my net connection recovers from its present bout of dialup speeds. Ahh the future ;)

Also, I realise now I didn't really address the otaku theme, obsession with detail and the way brand awareness feeds into this. I find this point harder to articulate, but basically pattern recognition and brand awareness seem to highlight the sense of isolation around the protagonists - even within their own tribes.

One character is so pattern-aware they end up homeless in a train station. Another is so brand-aware they are compelled to have the brand marks ground off the studs on their jeans. Awareness of detail dovetails with pared down existence of the protagonists - when they have very few immediate allies and possessions, what they have is brought into sharper focus.

Obsessive attention to detail (and to the task at hand) drives characters further into their strange, in-between days. So I don't know that patterns and observation are really a separate theme so much as motivation for the characters.

So, anyway, the half thoughts continue...

around the traps

2010-10-11T17:38:00.000+11:00

Dark Roasted Blend: Vintage & Modern Concept Buses
Ken Block destroying tyres and generally treating the laws of physics more like guidelines.
Wild video of a free diver 'base jumping' down a blue hole then rock climbing back up...
Banksy does The Simpson's opening credits. Intense!

photo: black and red

2010-10-06T00:29:00.001+11:00

Manipulated in camera. Melbourne street art, 2009.

photo: no stopping girl

2010-09-21T00:19:00.001+10:00

Melbourne, 2009.

around the traps

2010-09-20T21:59:00.001+10:00

The Art Cars of Burning Man [120 Photos] (one or two NSFWish)
340 bikes obelisk | Recyclart: Dubbed Cyclisk, the monument is an ode to bike culture constructed from 340 bicycles and one tricycle. 'So why the trike?' 'See, nobody cares about the bikes!'
Fauxreel-Toronto 2010 | Flickr
Can't believe health and safety rules allow for free climbing at that height...
Nice insight into how rally navigation notes are prepared:
Dr Karl turning his attention to drag racing: DrKarl.com :: Drag Cars - Part 1. I like the way he's tried to remain calm and detached, but even he was blown away by the raw power of it. If you've never been to see top fuel drag racing, it's worth it just as a technical marvel.
My First Week with the iPhoneBehind the Curtain | Behind the Curtain: I have seen a lot of technology for the blind, and I can safely say that the iPhone represents the most revolutionary thing to happen to the blind for at least the last ten years. Fifteen or twenty years brings us back to the Braille ‘n Speak, which I loved in the same way, so have a hard time choosing the greater. In my more excitable moments, I consider the iPhone as the greatest thing to have ever happened to the blind, and it may prove so. Time will tell. (That, I did not expect.)
Terminology lesson. They say: we're going to kill snakes using an aerially-delivered oral toxicant. They mean: we're going to attach parachutes to poisoned dead mice and drop them on the forest. Mouse bombs target Guam tree snakes - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
STREET MACHINE: The devil is in the detail. Devil face tail lights.
Rock out with your tesla coil out:

bee

2010-09-13T23:20:00.000+10:00

around the traps

2010-09-12T00:05:00.001+10:00

I LEGO N.Y. - Abstract City Blog - NYTimes.com
Dark Roasted Blend: Propaganda Posters of World War Two
Crazy rock formations...

Amazing Armenian Rock Climbing from Rock & Ice on Vimeo.
News.com.au classed as 'adult website' in audit of politicians' internet use | News.com.au: Because news websites including news.com.au and the SMH include links to dating sites, the government classifies them as 'adult' sites. News.com.au editor David Higgins said the auditing error showed governments could not be trusted to censor the internet.
Presentation Zen: Presentation: A few minutes with John Cleese on creativity: We don't know where we get our ideas from. We do know that we do not get them from our laptops.
World Of Technology: Complicated Mechanisms Explained in simple animations
The new Campaign Monitor office - Blog - Campaign Monitor (aka. open plan sucks, this rocks)
Captain Jack Sparrow's entrance... done in lego:

photos

2010-09-02T00:01:00.000+10:00

photo: handles

2010-08-25T23:52:00.001+10:00

Handles on pipes in a Fitzroy back street, 2009.

around the traps

2010-08-12T00:08:00.001+10:00

Wikipedia’s Lamest Edit Wars
Woman Wears 6 Items Of Clothing For A Month -- Nobody Notices - The Consumerist: Wondering how many clothing items you really need? The answer may be 6. Well, probably not, but it is rather interesting that one woman went a month with only 6 items of clothing and nobody, not even her husband (who does the laundry) even noticed.
Embedded software speak � DadHacker: What’s the difference between a fuck-ton and last week’s estimate of a metric buttload? I've had that conversation. I think in particular someone wondered why I'd specified a *metric* shitload. Precision, people! ;)
Worth it even just for the last bit. "Uhhh shit." "How are you going to get *back*?"
girl quits job on dry erase board | theCHIVE ... which is funny, but turns out to be a hoax. But she claims she now has a million facebook friends so the actress hasn't really lost... and theCHIVE already have their page impressions (=money). So does the internet really punish fakes? Not always, it seems. Are we getting better at identifying fakes? Well, this one felt a bit polished but I think most people kind of wanted it to be true. It got retweeted quite a bit before anyone really started thinking about whether it was true. It wasn't hard news, it's not like people really do background checks.
Delayed sleep phase syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Delayed sleep-phase syndrome (DSPS) ... is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder, a chronic disorder of the timing of sleep, peak period of alertness, the core body temperature rhythm, hormonal and other daily rhythms, relative to societal requirements. Some people really are just wired to stay up late.

photos

2010-08-09T22:02:00.000+10:00

316/365 : Scientifical Madness on Flickr (escalator)
Notas on Flickr (spirally goodness)
va-workshop on Flickr (don't know what it is that i like about the pic, i just do)
20100515-_MG_5254 on Flickr (staircase)
CityRail, Sydney | Flickr

epic weekend was epic

2010-08-05T00:26:00.004+10:00

We had a weekend so busy I feel I should record it properly, to avoid losing the full force of the moment in time. It was actually two weekends ago... and actually more like a week than a weekend :)

By chance, one single weekend managed to contain the Motorex hot rod show, Bill Bailey gig and the Aroma coffee festival at The Rocks. It was shaping up to be pretty big.

Then I told my brother T all about the hot rod show. Some background here: his cars have included a Pontiac Parisienne (a '64 I think it was) and a Ford Galaxie, and he's talking about importing more classics. We love cars.

Half-joking ideas turn to plotting and I get a call on the Friday - "I'll be there tomorrow morning...!" Awesome! My boss was particularly cool, accepting an on-the-spot leave request for the Monday.

So then...

saturday

L and I jump up and get ready, T gets to our place from his early flight and we head out for breakfast at The Falconer. Suitably fortified for the day, we stop off at Route 66... and I was momentarily distracted by some street art.

Then the main business of the day: Motorex.

Motorex was incredible once again. So many hotrods and muscle cars, it's inspiring and overwhelming. Love it. L discovered a 'wouldn't change a thing' purple highboy; we also saw a Chevy truck that is starting to really really feel like what our first classic is going to be (although we'll do ours a little differently, we love the shape). I'm not sure how the plan evolved but we think a truck first. On balance I think it was a stunner of a Camaro that really took T's fancy.

Saturday night, T chilled out at our place while we headed to Bill Bailey - we'd booked tickets months in advance, so T insisted we should go (also his early start was catching up a bit).

Bill Bailey was brilliant, funny as hell and did extra encores even after the house lights had come up. We eventually staggered home, chatted to T for a while before we all found ourselves crashing. Zonk!

sunday

A slight sleep in, then up and away once again to The Rocks for the Aroma Festival. It was madly busy again, every year it just gets more insanely huge. Ran into Si as well, although this year the usual hot chocolate stall wasn't there so we didn't repeat the hot choc photo shoot of previous years.

We did manage to find the italian gingerbread guy though; and the jam donut guy; various coffee places; cupcakes; chai; keepcups... we eventually staggered home and decided to postpone a planned mission to James Squires. Instead we had dinner at home, enjoyed a rather nice single malt and played some only slightly-competitive Guitar Hero.

monday

Unfortunately L had to go to work, but T and I kicked off the day with a coffee at Single Origin.

Then on to Bondi, to check out some old haunts and enjoy Bondi on a quiet winter's day - it really is a different, gorgeous place compared with the madness of Bondi in summer. It was turning into quite a cold day though, so we repaired to the Bondi Hotel for lunch and a beer by the fire.

We snuck in a side trip to Coogee, although by then it was properly raining so we didn't linger long before heading off to pick L up from work.

In the evening we ventured out through the chilly weather to the James Squire brew house, for steaks as big as our heads and some soothing ales off the taps.

L probably won't ever believe we hadn't realised they'd have the Monday night Broncos match on the screens, but I'm sticking to my story it was just a happy coincidence. At any rate, good food, beer and company made for another great evening. There was some initial shock when L discovered they're no longer brewing The Craic, but the replacement stout proved to be a winner - crisis averted!

tuesday

Relatively quiet for us, since we had to head back to work and T had some plans of his own while he was in town. So T hit the town for some shopping, sight seeing and on to a few beers in the evening. We chilled at home and dug through a weekend's worth of photos (still to be flickred).

wednesday

Another work day for me and L, with T again spending the day getting around seeing Sydney and picking some things up ready to travel onward to New Zealand.

In the evening we decided to head to Betty's Soup Kitchen for dinner, only to arrive a little early and decide to go to Pocket Bar first. In hindsight, I should have realised that starting a tab makes it far too easy to just sit back and have them bring you another Moscow Mule... but what the hell :)

Then Si noticed my tweets about being at Pocket and joined us when he finished a late evening at work. Another round of drinks and we finally decided to head over the road to Betty's.

It's always fun to introduce someone to the institution of dinner at Betty's. Ahh the bread, the lemonade, the cheap and cheerful comfort food!

thursday

All good things must come to an end... T had a flight booked for Thursday morning. After weighing the risks of peak hour vs. international flights, we settled on driving T to Central to grab the airport train (which at least doesn't get caught in traffic!).

Then all of a sudden... the weekend was over! ;)

around the traps

2010-08-04T23:43:00.000+10:00

English Russia � Inside Peter the Great (scary view)
English Russia � Russian Armored Vehicles Factory (mostly for the big pool where they 'test swim' the AVs)
DJ Shadow on digging for records:
One more for luck... DJ Shadow and Grandmaster Flash get interviewed together:
Know Your Icons Part 1 – A Brief History of Computer Icons | Psdtuts
a softer world: 580:
a softer world: 581:
China’s 3D Express Coach Buses Will Be Able To Drive Over Other Cars | Gizmodo Australia

photos

2010-07-27T00:01:00.001+10:00

waiting in a restaurant

2010-07-20T22:05:00.001+10:00

How else would I amuse myself? :)

melbourne night

2010-07-06T01:23:00.000+10:00

Taken from the window of the hotel.

around the traps

2010-07-04T23:24:00.001+10:00

"Secret" Pac-Man Drawings
The Amazing Vintage Funeral Cars Of Argentina
amanda palmer's tree house. seriously, what more needs to be said? other than kyle freaking cassidy leads an exceedingly cool life.

lederman's authorised newsagency

2010-07-02T22:48:00.000+10:00

Banana Alley Vaults, Melbourne.

around the traps

2010-06-23T23:33:00.000+10:00

It's official: the new black is very, very black | Science | The Guardian: To the probable disappointment of fashionistas everywhere, scientists have taken it on themselves to decide on the new black. And it is (drumroll please): black. But it's a black that's blacker than any black before it. How much more black could you get? As Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tuffnell said of the cover of the band's last album, Smell the Glove: 'None more black.'
Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency: I'm Comic Sans, Asshole.: You think I'm pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don't all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. ... Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once.
if you can't be witty, then at least be bombastic - FAQ: A Reader Writes: I want to be a photogropher someday. Any advice? ...and because it's Kyle Freaking Cassidy, he shares a shitload of advice.
OK, so you've seen the Super Mario Bros theme played before? How about complete with sound effects?! :)
The Escapist : Video Galleries : Zero Punctuation : Red Dead Redemption. Somtimes ZP is funnier than others, for some reason this one particularly had me laughing.
Wipe Johns out of game: Inglis. I couldn't agree more. He's had two massive strikes now; and considering just how high his profile is this does massive damage to the game. The NRL is trying to rebuild after a series of scandals and yet they keep relics like Johns in the limelight - it has to stop.

switch board cafe (2)

2010-06-20T21:59:00.000+10:00

light macro

2010-06-14T01:00:00.000+10:00

Light fitting in a Melbourne train station.

around the traps

2010-06-14T00:41:00.000+10:00

Ozzy Osborne is the new Times Online medical columnist... The wisdom of Oz - Times Online: I can understand — sort of — if people think it’s more rock’n’roll to die young. But what really winds me up is when you hear: “Oh, my great-aunt Nelly smoked 80 fags a day and drank 16 pints of Guinness before bed every night, and she lived until she was 103.” I mean, yeah, that happens. My own gran lived until she was 99. But the odds aren’t on your side. Especially when you get to the grand old age of 61, like me. Another thing that puts a bee up my arse is people who never get checkups, and never go to the doctor, even when they’re half-dead.
LOL: The Recurring Prop Newspaper | /Film
iPad un(chocolate)boxing | Ahead, Robot!: I rang my friends James and Paul, who happens to run the finest chocolate shop in London, and said “Could you freeze an iPad in chocolate carbonite, and have it survive?”. They weren’t sure, but were willing to give it a go. That's, umm, certainly an original way to wrap a technical toy. I note the article doesn't say the iPad worked ;) Although the melting point of chocolate is just at the top end of the iPad's operating temperature so theoretically it should be fine...
100 Years Of Propaganda: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - Smashing Magazine

switch board cafe

2010-06-09T00:20:00.002+10:00

Hole-in-the-wall, seriously - this is half the cafe. The other half has enough room for the two staff to stand up in (and only one can turn around at a time).

Great coffee.

photo: glowing road

2010-06-05T00:57:00.000+10:00

around the traps

2010-06-04T00:26:00.001+10:00

I’m dying to get one of those iPads they’re dying to make | Article | The Punch: Apple is Apple so it has largely escaped the kind of Naomi Klein/No Logo vitriol which has damaged companies such as Nike and Puma. ... It’s such a hysterical double-standard and proof that when it comes to consumer boycotts people are only actually prepared to impose an arbitrary ban on something they think they can live without. Basically Apple's just another giant bastard corporation with a questionable supply chain.
What motivates people?

This video pretty much gets it right and not just because they mention Atlassian ;)
Dot Shot: Sinkhole in Guatemala City - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com. Freaky photo of massive sinkhole.
Ball Pool - no flash required!
Great minimalist movie poster concepts | minimalist approach and Minimal TV series posters by Albert Exergian | minimalist approach
Simple Desktops
Sometimes it's the simple ones that really crack me up:

no road

2010-05-27T00:08:00.001+10:00

Shot from Melbourne holiday, 2009.

around the traps

2010-05-26T22:40:00.001+10:00

Police Say Anti-Piracy Law Makes Catching Criminals Harder | TorrentFreak: While Swedish ISPs clearly felt they had little choice but to protect the privacy of their customers against civil action related to petty file-sharing, it seems that their response to IPRED has generated an unwanted side-effect. Anders Ahlqvist, chief of the National IT crime unit says that due to a lack of customer logging data at ISPs, it is becoming harder for the police to track down criminals carrying out serious crimes. That's one of the problems with treating average people like they're real criminals, I guess.
The Jalopy Journal � Blog Archive � The Daytona Sands: At some point, you figure some poor old sap would be all, “Hey man… You figure we ought a yellow flag this corner or something before someone gets hurt? Or maybe just move the DNF?” But no…
That Isn't Art, where overly-sappy crap from Tumblr gets its comeuppance.
Letters of Note: Come on, George. Loosen up. Swing, man.
Houdini | Letterheady (now that's some minimalism)
The Many Faces Of… Alan Rickman: To be a great villain requires more than merely being rotten to the core. The best bad guys are multi-dimensional and unpredictable. With each patronizing grin, disdainful remark and narcissistic fit, Alan Rickman elevates the role of a villain from the plain ol’ bastard to a bastard coated bastard with bastard filling.
banksimple. A bank with no fees, that only makes money from interchange and interest margin. These guys should run with the slogan "because those other greedy fucks had this coming".

the cult, love live

2010-05-23T00:45:00.003+10:00

We saw The Cult a couple of weeks ago at Luna Park, on their Love tour. Basically they played Love from start to end, then did an encore of other songs. Unsurprisingly, She Sells Sanctuary was a massive hit with the crowd - although for the most part, the crowd did the usual Sydney thing of acting vaguely bored with the whole thing (in between trips to the bar).

I wonder perhaps is it hard to get the usual gig vibe going when everyone knows which song's coming up next? We even overheard a couple of people bitching that they didn't think they'd play the whole album. Kind of amazing really, since that was the entire advertised point of the gig.

Ignoring the immovable crowd, it was a great gig. Pure, awesome rock and roll. Plenty of guitar horn, windmills and over the top posing. Astbury threw a seemingly endless supply of tambourines to the crowd. At least one cigarette lighter was waved - a real one, not a phone app...

Astbury's crowd interaction was a bit strange at times, couldn't aways understand what he was saying but he was obviously frustrated by the crowd's low energy. Personally, I do blame the crowd. I've given up on the ennui fucks. If you want to be in an appreciative and energetic crowd, go to the Brisbane gig.

No matter what the frustrations, I still enjoyed it immensely - I was buzzing for days. Hearing Love played end to end just highlights how many great songs that album contains. A great gig, reckon we'll see them again next time they're out here (they said it wouldn't be too long, hurrah!).

photo: milsons point

2010-05-23T00:31:00.002+10:00

Playing with the high-contrast option in FXcam, waiting for the train after The Cult.

around the traps

2010-05-18T00:56:00.001+10:00

GigPosters.com - pity about the tiny image size, but still pretty cool.
How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online? ...and how many units do they need to sell to reach minimum-wage income?
What will be blocked under the Australian Government's Mandatory ISP Censorship System? (infographic) (remember, the filter's still coming - it's just shelved until after the election, probably to use it as continued leverage for Family First preferences at the ballot)
Facebook founder called trusting users dumb f*cks • The Register. But hey, there's no way he might still be struggling to understand the concept of privacy these days, right? (bonus link, don't miss: The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook)
PCC clears Loaded magazine for 'epic boobs girl' pictures taken from internet | guardian.co.uk. Apparently if you've become a meme, you've become public domain.
Steve Jobs Offers World 'Freedom From Porn' - Apple - Gawker. What the fuck is up with Steve Jobs and porn anyway? Was he always a fucking puritan or is this a recent thing? (and what's he doing arguing the toss with a Gawker guy at 2am on a Friday night?)

photo: elizabeth street rusty sign

2010-05-04T00:40:00.002+10:00

This one's been the clear winner on flickr so far, just going by views. Odd, since I thought the other one would get more love:

When I get down to a couple of variations, I have a pretty hit and miss record of predicting which one people will like. Drives me crazy trying to select photos.

around the traps

2010-04-30T23:38:00.005+10:00

East Meets West: An Infographic Portrait | Brain Pickings
Colours In Cultures
Photographer’s life in graph | RobertBenson.com (via @m4rtin)
Carpuccino is full of beans at $65 a litre | News.com.au. The jokes write themselves, really.

around the traps

2010-04-24T22:54:00.000+10:00

Isn’t Sinead O’Connor overdue a massive, grovelling apology from absolutely everybody? | Tripping Along The Ledge: In 1992, Sinead O’Connor ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live as a protest against paedophilia in the Catholic Church and the complicity of the church hierarchy. It was viewed as an act of career suicide. ... Well, she wasn’t nuts. In fact, even the most outlandish allegations O’Connor made against the Catholic Church eighteen years ago seem pretty tame in comparison to what we now know to have occurred.
Everything is amazing and nobody's happy:

...I don't think we appreciate the magic of technology nearly enough.
Bloke threatens BT with giant plywood cheque • The Register: As I'd been paying for over two years to have non-existent cheques cashed, I thought I may as well have something for this outlay, so my last cheque was sent blown up on A3 cardboard. Remember, it's legal to write a cheque on anything as long as it contains the right information - there are famous stories of a cheque written on a cow, or in one case on a fish. In the circumstances, I thought they got off pretty lightly.'
Chairless on Cool Hunting: Vitra's 'chair' that fits in your pocket
Incredible Underground Residence in Switzerland | design(dot)fr. So damn cool!
Crayola Color Chart, 1903-2010 | tumblemantim

photo: moss, wood, spike

2010-04-18T20:55:00.003+10:00

From a wander through the back streets of Paddington last year. Working through the backlog of photos I never got around to processing, it seems when work got crazy that was one of the things that just didn't happen.

photo: 1955 ford f-100, meguiar's' motorex 2009

2010-04-10T22:21:00.003+10:00

F-100s are a whole lotta truck. More from the 2009 meguiar's motorex on flickr:

photo: sydney autumn

2010-04-02T00:18:00.003+11:00

I love Sydney in Autumn. This morning was about the perfect weather: cool with a clear blue sky.

around the traps

2010-04-01T00:04:00.000+11:00

Michael Kordahi ran a blind search experiment, where users entered a search and got unmarked results back from Google, Yahoo and Bing. Side by side, with a vote button.

1.8m searches later, unsurprisingly Google won - but not by anywhere near as much as you might expect. Then our Delicate Genius went a step further and had a look at the data - what can you tell from 1.8m anonymous searches?
Muslim leader wants elements of sharia in Australia: ELEMENTS of Islamic law - the sharia - should be legally recognised in Australia so that Muslims can live according their faith, a prominent Muslim leader [president of the Australian Islamic Mission, Zachariah Matthews] says. The article goes on to explain that the call is for a law where a divorced husband retains ultimate authority over the children from the marriage, and Matthews also says he doesn't think it "clashes fundamentally with Australian values or the Australian legal system". Well, I respectfully disagree. While 'Australian Values' is an often-abused and poorly-defined term, a law of such extreme patriarchy simply does not mesh with the nation I believe we are (or at least wish to be).
Awesome Guy Makes Awesome Entrance is Today's BIG Thing - MAR 09, 2010
Watching sport, in a nutshell:
vanmosel.com/error (NSFW). Therapeutically profane error page.
BBC News - Sensors turn skin into gadget control pad: Tapping your forearm or hand with a finger could soon be the way you interact with gadgets.US researchers have found a way to work out where the tap touches and use that to control phones and music players.
Do Twilight, Harry Potter open door to the Devil?:

In Rome, the Vatican is preparing its first official English translation of the rite of exorcism, which was promulgated in 1614 and reissued in 1999. Its chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, claimed this month to have carried out 70,000 exorcisms.
Bishop Porteous - who has stood in as exorcist for the Sydney archdiocese over the past five years - warns that yoga, reiki massages and tai chi can lead to people being in the grip of ''demonic forces''.
Yup, no possible way people could think the Catholic Church is a bit of a throwback.
Tim Minchin portrait wins Archibald prize... I'm really surprised actually. I thought there was no way a portrait of a comedian would win.

photos

2010-03-21T00:30:00.001+11:00

photo: speedster espresso machine

2010-03-21T00:03:00.001+11:00

When I win lotto, this $12,000 machine of awesome is MINE. Until then, I will simply drool over it every time I got to Toby's Estate.

(Pic taken with the Polandroid app on the G1)

around the traps

2010-03-05T00:44:00.000+11:00

By popular demand... (*that* letter to AGL):

Dear AGL,

You may want to sit down. This may come as some surprise to you.

Are you ready?

I write to you regarding a billing error.

Ha, you see, I was only joking. I imagine every letter you get must be regarding a billing error.
Letters of Note: I hadn't any idea that I talked about my guitar so often: Saul was just 14 when he wrote and illustrated the following letter to Michelle Young; an ex-girlfriend who had just recently ended their relationship and, in a previous letter, blamed the decision on Saul's unending talk of his guitar. The guitar obsession never ended and Saul soon became Slash, one of the world's most admired guitarists and member of Guns N' Roses...
Tree branch on power line (weird and intense):
Why passing the change baton to journalists is not a good idea - mUmBRELLA
Vanilla Garlic: Only You Can Save Girl Scouts (From Monsters)
Oceanic Cafe, Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills. Sydney @Not Quite Nigella. I walked past the Oceanic twice a day for a few months when I worked at Holt Street. I was fascinated, although purely from the look of the place I kind of assumed it'd be dire (perhaps unfairly, but that's life). Perhaps it's just that I don't really jump at the chance for a lamb's fry dinner. It certainly had its devotees though - particularly a couple of very quiet old gents who ate there so regularly they seemed kind of like fixtures, plus there were a few journos who delighted in a cheap feed after a few ales at the pub around the corner. Anyway it turns out the Oceanic has quite a back story.

photo: sunset over freo

2010-02-28T18:47:00.002+11:00

From our trip to Perth back in 2008 (can't believe it's that long ago already). The sun setting as we headed back from Fremantle after our 'lunch' at Little Creatures lasted the rest of the day.

around the traps

2010-02-23T22:23:00.000+11:00

Driftwood Stencil | foundshit.com
A Softer World: 528:
Since music can be digitised and put on a tiny USB drive, why don't we see more creative packaging for music? Sunshine Enema | Lovely Package: We started brainstorming knowing two things - we wanted our music on a USB drive and we wanted the packaging to be humorous - a bright, glossy coating to the darker themes of the music. After about an hour, the plans for ‘Sunshine Enema’ were fully realized - we would have a USB drive shaped like a pill nestled inside a pill bottle.
The magic, ie. weirdness, of how tv and movies are shot using greenscreens:
Darius Guppy: our world balances on a sea of debt - Telegraph. Short version: the way governments and banks handle money is seriously fucking weird.

...and then there were lols.

around the traps

2010-02-17T01:09:00.004+11:00

Right, so wingsuit base jumping was insane... but not insane enough for this guy. He strapped jet engines to his legs.
The Real life Lichtenstein-Comic-Girl — Illusion 360
This is a pretty cool dance routine - cyborgs, a sense of humour and some impressive tricks.
(direct link in case the embed didn't work: SYTYCD: top 10 boys dancing to We Want Your Soul)
Ok, so mostly this is Dolph Lundgren singing, then suddenly DRUMS AND SMASHING SHIT...and then back to singing:

(you can skip to about 2mins in if you want to cut to the WTF...)

around the traps

2010-01-30T23:09:00.000+11:00

Full article here: High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace (long but worth a read).
It's kind of curious when people find ways to do data analysis on human behaviour... The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures | OkTrends is data on how OKCupid profile photos affect the success rate of people on that dating site. Even they were surprised by the data, including the fact that the 'crappy myspace shot' actually works and showing a bit more cleavage is more successful for older women than younger women. (via What makes a successful online dating photo? | Information Is Beautiful)
Unhappy Hipsters: It's lonely in the modern world
Awkward Stock Photos

photo: farm pano

2010-01-16T22:09:00.004+11:00

Pano of the farm, while we were up for Christmas. Looks best big!

around the traps

2010-01-16T22:06:00.001+11:00

Fun with form inputs and js... tenori, scrollbars.. more at the389.com.
MADATOMS - Sexual Bases Through the Decades (borderline NSFW)
Vintage Ad Browser - thousands of vintage ads, searchable by category.
BBC News - Reporter breaks an 'unbreakable' mobile phone at CES (amusing)
FUI Fantasy User Interfaces | Mark Coleran Visual Designer - a gallery from a guy who invents interfaces for movies.
DJ Shadow blogs about paying for music, and why he doesn't give his work away for free:

As distasteful as it may sound, the fact is that so many of our heroes: Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, The Beatles, whoever you care to name; generated much of their best art in return for financial compensation. If you take away the compensation, guess what…the art stops.

...

Be prepared to keep waiting…and for music, overall, to keep sucking. Why? Because only bottom-of-the-barrel, embarrassing pop tripe generates enough income to feed the machine. Anything unproven or risky? Nobody’s going to bankroll that kind of ‘experiment.’

...

[I]f $9.99 is too much to spend for one of my albums, so be it, your choice. But if you’re holding your breath, waiting for me to boost my cool-quotient by giving my music away for free, it’s not going to happen. The fact is that I feel my music has value. You may disagree, and that’s fine. [...] I’d rather sell it to 100 people who value it as I do than give it away to 1000 who could care less. That’s MY choice.

Worth reading the whole thing. But I look at this and think... my first copy of Endtroducing was taped. I've since bought that album twice on CD (normal album, plus deluxe edition that came out years later). So I agree his music has value. But I probably wouldn't have ended up buying it if I hadn't had it on tape first.

Ultimately I suspect the real trick here is not about giving away your music, so much as not losing your mind if it gets pirated. Because overall, pirates are either people who were never going to pay you money (feel free to curse such leeches, but don't waste your time trying to stop them); or they're people who will ultimately buy the next album and go to a gig (ie. your fans).

I don't know when I last listened to the radio. All the new music I've discovered lately came from listening to streams on blip.fm, which no doubt the music industry will eventually try to shut down. Most of the music on blip is probably technically not meant to be there, but as an artist you'd be mad to intentionally pull your stuff out of the index.

...and a bit of LOL to finish: