This Saturday...

... Don't pay for free comic books! It's Free Comic Book Day. OBSERVE IT.

[Image by Jose Ryp, who isn't contributing any FCBD stuff this year to my knowledge, but he does excellent explosions.]

Comparing people with people

In the future, people will have screen-based social-networked headstones. I'm serious! You've heard of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Coming up next, the Facebook of the Dead.

The above strengths and weaknesses are actually from the 'Compare People' Facebook application. Apparently, my friends think I'm useful and creative, but also rude and unfashionable. Unless being well mannered and fashionable are seen as weaknesses. I try to be polite, but I'm not very fashionable.

Do not adjust your blog

Ach. Things. Sorry. I've been meaning to post for a while but my flow got interrupted for a while there.

In an attempt to re-establish things, this:


An incredibly bad clock I bought for a friend's birthday present. The shop I purchased it from considered it a 'Statue'.

I'll do what I can!

Super-Normal

After being inspired by this post on my friend Scott's blog, I've been a little obsessed with Xtranormal, a site that allows you to convert text to avatar-based movies, complete with stage directions, Foley sounds and animated movements. It's a lot of fun. For your amusement, I present my Xtranormal version of Laurie Anderson's 'O Superman'.

Tastelessness

Computer parts and body parts

My life ... As a cloud

The recent past: I decided to log into Second Life, as it's been a while and I had a few in-world matters to attend to. So I downloaded the latest client, installed it and started wandering around. Then some problems began. My avatar was immobile and I eventually got kicked off. Another attempt, same problem. The third try presented me with this:

I was able to move slightly as if I was an eyeball hovering millimetres off the ground. Eventually, this:

So I left it for a while and logged in again to some limited success. I attempted to teleport to a friend's gallery space and was promptly turned into a tiny cloud.



And happy birthday, Kerryn!

They like the hi-fi

Last week I went to the screening of Mink Engine's DVD 'Acres of Diamonds' at ACMI's Studio One. it made for an entertaining night and I was well impressed by the manifestation of their hard work - it's been a phenomenal production and the end product looked great.

The DVD was impressive - a technicolour Katamari-esque ball of gesamtkunstwerk with contributions (my friend Leebee built the Mech pictured below) and vox-pops from around the globe. There were some genuinely funny daikon-related moments too. My only beef was that it wasn't loud enough.

So if you're in Melbourne this Thursday, Mink Engine are doing a follow-up live gig at the aforementioned Studio One as part of Synaesthesia, which is happening every Thursday PM until May 14th. Some of the other events look interesting too. Photos in this post thanks to Fleiss (with more pictures of the screening at the link).

LAG

The thing I like most about daylight savings is that people in entire time-zones get a kind of mini jet-lag without even going anywhere.

Plasma Babylon

Between browsing, a little piece of death

Occasionally...

The future and past fuse together in a blazing combination of mind searing amazingness and potential. An illuminated infinity symbol in the centre of a golden egg yolk viewed through a shell made transparent from its internal energies is perhaps a valid analogy for such things.

As rare and unique as these moments are, a few have managed to be documented. This is one of them:



In fact, it's an (alleged) meme from Japan based on a combination of a glitch caused by tilting the cartridge of the N64 game Goldeneye 007 and a J-Pop song 'Promise' by Kohmi Hirose. More here via here.

This is what the future sounds like:

Beautiful, painful and a little ridiculous.

Australian Crawl - Reckless (.mid version) [4.3MB .mp3]

Somewhere there is a place where all the stray letters you've typed in error and backspaced/deleted go. A limbo of sorts. The glyphs doomed to wander this purgatory for simply being assigned to a key adjacent to the one you intended to press float aimlessly in a miasma of un-pressedness. They wish you used 'Copy' instead as this takes them one rung higher on the celestial ladder to eventually becoming a higher form. A .jpg for example. Woe betide them.

Screengrab of the minute

Camo-Poop from Takeshi Murakami's Kaikai & Kiki.

Emulate the extremities of your idols

David Byrne's interlaced hand.

Hungry?

Fruits and Vegetables gradient swatches, Adobe Illustrator CS3. Yes, I'm still using CS3.

Potentially gilded futures

Allegedly we're on the cusp of a Golden Age. Allegedly. Yes, I have doubts, but I'm reasonably certain that the Age of Whimsy is at a close and we're close to ushering a New Age of Truth, Honesty and an openness to Reality in its raw(er) form. As to it having a Golden hue - use your own discretion. How this manifests can be noticed between the cracks, nestling underneath the messages of impending doom, doubt and global distress. The fact that advertisements now seem to have a greater edge of hysteria is a good sign.

But I digress.

I was recently browsing the App Store for the iPhone and I noticed that they have released an iPhone Skype client for free. When I first got my iPhone I thought Skype would be a given, but it seems that Apple's agreement with telephony providers meant no VOIP as that would take money away from paid calls over the users chosen network. This seems to have changed - quietly and inconspicuously. Read into this what you will.



Skype for the iPhone is available here.