Ready? Ready? Ready? Breathe!

In the realm of sample-based music, I didn't think I would ever hear anything weirder than Matmos' A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure (well not really, in fact I own at least one weirder sample album, an indie disc I picked up years ago in Eugene, Oregon that's mostly built out of recordings of bathtubs draining). But anyways, forget all that noise, because .... wait for it ....

Nine Inch Niles' The Seattleward Spiral has arrived! because I know you've been waiting for-evarr for this one

I won't even attempt to explain it. Listen to it if you dare, I estimate the average human being will lose 10 brain cells per minute, and don't blame me if your head explodes at some point. It's actually almost a form of aural torture.
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I will say though, even if the end product is pretty damned rough around the edges, the api script used to create it is really something else, and could eventually lead to some nifty applications.

On the other end of the spectrum (and if you need a quick q-tipping to wash that noise out of your ears), this seems like a fantastic excuse to revisit Kutiman's ThruYou project - possibly the best website I came across in all of 2009. I was - still am - ecstatic to see that it is preserved online.

Stranger Than ... Nothing

Via the Projects section on Metafilter comes one of the greatest website ideas in years: Fictopedia!

From the FAQ:
"One of the guiding principles of the Fictopedia experiment is to see if people can learn to live with a little inconsistency. We're so used to treating our legends and fictions as if they were academically researched, factual histories, that we forget that stories don't have to add up, as long as they are GOOD. Thus, if someone writes an article about a character and then 3 people incorporate that character in other articles in ways that are totally inconsistent (in one article he's a knight in a fantasy world, in one he's space captain, in a third, he's a private in WWII), its nothing to worry about. Its just 3 creative reinterpretations of the same character"

The possibilities are endless. For example, although this is creative fiction, the article creators don't retain any copyright control over it, so what's to stop someone from reading an article on Norwegian slam poet Arnis Radis and deciding to 'become' that person, perhaps making a few viral videos and pushing them out onto the 'Net.

For a glimpse into how the project was conceived and fleshed out, here is the original Projects thread. Watch for my article on the Bantalorean Vocal Encoder to appear soon, as I've slowly been developing it throughout my recent treeplanting days.

edit 22/06: my article has already been added to!

buzzin buddy

Google's answer to Facebook finally appeared in the form of Buzz. Not sure how I feel about it but I'll roll with it for a bit.

Some of the doubts expressed by posters in the Metafilter thread centred around not knowing where and to whom updates would go. Like, if you are on Facebook (I'm not) and post something, you know that anyone you have as a contact will see it, and that's it. But with Buzz, it's already tied in to your email and other sites linked through a typical Google Account. So as a test run, I linked my blogger account - I'm pretty sure nobody reads this other than random Couchsurfing people, as I link to it through my info page - wrote this post to see if it shows up. Anyone else catchin my buzz?

FollowFollowUp

Last year (by a day) I wrote about the Detroit man who froze to death and had a game of hockey played around his protruding legs. For a tertiary look at it, I'd like to recommend a viewing of Detroit 2009, The Movie - a 25 min. news montage. Its a bit slow, though interesting, in the early stages before getting to a somewhat heartbreaking clip with Johnny Redding's brother, a bizarre political inquiry / improvised musical number worthy of David Lynch, and some delightfully wacky interviews with city residents, including one guy who is building a flying saucer in his backyard, and another guy who serves raccoon barbecue buffets.
Enjoy and welcome to 2010!

Schizowebbia

Recently I spent a weekend at home in front of the computer keeping a friend company while she was quarantined with a bad case of swine flu. It was the first time I'd used my msn messenger account in roughly a year; over the course of those 3 days I realized how many old friends I had on there, with whom I had no other way to connect.

intermission: FUCK FACEBOOK

ah, so, anyways, it occurred to me that there might be a way to get Kopete to connect with my primary medium of online conversation - GMail's GChat. I kind of forgot about it until today, but after only 10 minutes or so of searching, I found a great tutorial that worked for me right off the mark.

I present an excerpt from my groundbreaking first convo:


Barrett Jones  22:18:12
Yeah. On my phone.

k. v. m.  22:18:18
yeah you were my guinea pig

Barrett Jones  22:18:38
I see. What kinda guinea pig?

k. v. m.  22:18:39
i just spent a while trying to get my instant messenger client to recognize gmail

Barrett Jones  22:19:00
Ah. You are on gmail now.

k. v. m.  22:19:06
bbbbbboooo ya shaka son
hey does this cost you a lot of money or anything?

Barrett Jones  22:19:22
And msn too.
Nope. I've got plenty o data.

k. v. m.  22:19:39
yeah trying to consolidate my online persona

Barrett Jones  22:20:07
Word. I've got too many as well.

k. v. m.  22:20:25
schizowebbia
or something
anyways thanks!
and btw you type amazinly fast on that little thing

Barrett Jones  22:23:08
Thanks. I've had a little practice by now.

k. v. m.  22:23:42
yo fingers is all up in that g-spot

Ignorance is NOT Bliss

Hot off the Internet, its the 9th Annual Year In Ideas!

Thus far I have learned:
-Cows with names make 6% more milk than anonymous cows...
-Google's search algorithm can predict ecosystem extinction...
-People who smile in their yearbook photos live happily ever after...
-Zombies typically take 7-10 days to overthrow humanity...
-Monkeys and I agree that The Grudge is the best Tool song evar...

... aaannnd there's plenty more. Kudos to the New York Times on the site design; the drop-down menus with the mouseover are great, and you have the option of browsing alphabetically or by category, all on the same page as the articles themselves.

Another Incident

My inner nerd can now rejoice! According to Lostpedia, with the final season of Lost starting on February 2nd (and assuming that there are no weeks off, and the final episode will be a two-parter ... a few ifs), the Series Finale will be on May 18th, my birthday. Thanks JJ!

Now, if I can only manage to go 3-for-3 in landing my big day on an off-day of tree planting, all will be well.