Category Archives: Internet

Chrono Trigger Mixtape, Vol. 1

This is a huge late pass, but I just stumbled upon the Chrono Trigger Mixtape, Vol. 1 that was produced in 2005. It’s set to some random hip-hop songs, but the beats are pretty seamless and most people unfamiliar with the Chrono Trigger OST probably wouldn’t have guessed that the samples in this mixtape were sourced from a video game made in 1995.

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Yasunori Mitsuda - Gato’s Song (set to 50 Cent’s Disco Inferno) (3:16)

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Yasunori Mitsuda - At the Bottom of the Night (set to Kanye West and Talib Kweli’s Get ‘Em High) (5:16)

Download the rest of the mixtape here.

Posted on October 28, 2009 in Internet · , , , · Comments closed

Just ain’t gonna work out

I’m completely mesmerized by Mayer Hawthorne’s new album, A Strange Arrangement.

The “retro” tag is added to almost any contemporary work that sounds like it was originally recorded between 1966 and 1974, and Hawthorne, among the newest contributors to the genre, is aware of how trends come and go. After being introduced to Stones Throw label head Peanut Butter Wolf by mutual friend Noelle Scaggs of the Rebirth, even his current boss was skeptical. “He showed me two songs and I didn’t understand what I was listening to,” Wolf recalls. “I asked him if they were old songs that he did re-edits of – I couldn’t believe they were new songs and that he played all the instruments.”

For more youtube-ness, watch his new video for Maybe So, Maybe No.

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Mayer Hawthorne – Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out (2:28)

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Mayer Hawthorne – When I Said Goodbye (4:11)

Posted on September 2, 2009 in Internet · , · Comments closed

Annie Leibovitz — money and photography

Annie Leibovitz is in a lot of debt.

The Art Capital loan effectively consolidated all of Leibovitz’s major outstanding obligations, including her mortgages. The interest rate is unknown, but the term is just one year. That means Leibovitz has to come up with $24 million, plus interest, by this September. Under the terms of the agreement, says a person familiar with the loan, Art Capital could be entitled to up to 22.5 percent of all the proceeds from the sale of any of Leibovitz’s work—even for two years after she’s paid off the loan. And that percentage could increase to close to 50 percent if she were to default. Potentially, Art Capital may be entitled to her homes and even her catalogue of past and future copyrights. “They got everything,” veteran New York real-estate attorney Howard Brickner says, shaking his head as he wades through the public records associated with the loan.

Her purported debt is exponentially more massive than any debts I’ve incurred through NYU, but this article makes me appreciate what my professors taught me about financing and keeping the books, as a photographer, in the black. Even as one of the most well-known photographers in this era, she’s made some bad decisions and has become broke. For now, I’m appreciating the little money I have in my bank accounts — I have very little to my name, but it also means I don’t owe much besides my student loans.

Via @mlproject.

Posted on August 17, 2009 in Internet · , · Comments closed

Barack the grifter

Posted on August 4, 2009 Also posted in Politics, Television · , , · Comments closed

We both love soup

I was at Trad’r Sams a few weeks ago when a sullen blonde-haired lady was throwing ice cubes at my friends and I from across the bar. She looked completely hammered and had an evil sneer every time we made eye contact. She reminded me of Jennifer Coolidge from Best in Show.

Posted on July 27, 2009 in Internet · , , , , · Comments closed

Sufjan Stevens etc.

Sufjan Stevens has dominated my iTunes for the past month, so I thought I would share a few of my favorite tracks from Greetings from Michigan, The Great Lake State, Illinois, and Seven Swans.

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Sufjan Stevens – Romulus (4:42)

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Sufjan Stevens – Casimir Pulaski Day (5:54)

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Sufjan Stevens – To Be Alone With You (2:48)

Posted on July 27, 2009 in Internet · · Comments closed

Yoyonation on the Wall Street Journal

My friends at Yoyonation made it onto a WSJ feature about yo-yos.

Pat Cuartero, 28, of New York, left a six-figure gig as a technology programmer at Merrill Lynch in 2006 to pursue yo-yoing full time. Before he got out of Wall Street, Mr. Cuartero regularly toted his favorite yo-yos in his suit pockets and in briefcases. He regularly spun two-handed while on conference calls.

Now, he runs a company called YoYoNation that sells yo-yos, organizes competitions and plays host to online discussion forums. Mr. Cuartero, who specializes in two-handed play, boasts palms white with calluses and middle fingers with permanent string indentations. He says that though his wrists ache sometimes, “I’ve never been happier.”

They’ve also got some video coverage of Pat and the Yoyonation crew.

Posted on July 17, 2009 in Internet · , , · Comments closed

Why I drink

Via ThisIsIndexed. Thanks for the link that helped me find this, Shimone.

Posted on July 10, 2009 in Internet · , , · Comments closed

Distractions – the benefits of overstimulation

On a day-to-day basis, I find it hard to get anything done of significant value. It seems unlikely, though, since I’m always preoccupied with the mundane multitasking of multiple stimuli. Since closing down my Facebook a year ago, my attention has turned to googling random things. That sidebar google search on my browser has been used and utterly abused. There’s the constant updating of Twitter, random e-mail checks with, as usual, no important messages, and the monotony of ‘instant message received’ coming through my chat client. And then there’s this blog here that I’ve so casually neglected. NY Mag’s piece on our attention spans in the 21st Century, The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation, reminds me of how little I accomplish with so much at my disposal.

“Your mind is not getting the dopamine or the hugs that it needs to keep you focused on what you’re doing. And any time your work gets a little bit too hard or a little bit too boring, you allow it to catch on to something that’s more interesting to you.”

Isolation seems to be a natural bi-product of the Internet age despite the growing trend toward social networking. Cursory communication has numbed our sense and do not nearly replace the full experience of leaving the web. The brief bursts of stimulation seems to have conditioned me to be very spacey, and all the bummin’ around I’ve been doing lately has reached a critical mass.

“Where you allow your attention to go ultimately says more about you as a human being than anything that you put in your mission statement,” he continues. “It’s an indisputable receipt for your existence. And if you allow that to be squandered by other people who are as bored as you are, it’s gonna say a lot about who you are as a person.”

Internet, I can’t quit you.

Posted on June 8, 2009 Also posted in Links · , · Comments closed

Gmail adds undo feature

Gmail has implemented an undo button for e-mails. It actually just holds your outgoing message for five seconds to give you a chance to hit the panic button. It would be magical if they could somehow arrange something like a real undo, though. Works well with gmail goggles.

Posted on March 24, 2009 in Internet · , · Comments closed

Bitchassness over Twitter

Josh Holland from Joyengine is heading the anti-Twitter movement (sort of).

I can not wait until Twitter goes the way of the slap bracelet and they’re talking about it on VH1’s “I love the 2000’s”. Wait, is that what it’s called? The 2000’s? Hold on, let me tweet that and see what my idiot friends think.

The brilliance of Twitter is that you choose your audience. If you have idiot friends, I think it’s time you find new ones, Josh.

Via Josh Spear.

Posted on March 5, 2009 in Internet · · Comments closed

Microsoft future vision

If Microsoft can ever get around to releasing a decent 21st Century operating system, maybe this will be realistic. Or just ransack Bill Gates’ house, because it seems that he already has this technology in his living room.

Via Monoscope.

Posted on March 4, 2009 in Internet · · Comments closed

Yelp extortion

Over the past year or so I’ve heard about Yelp’s extortion tactics. If you have bad reviews, they can make it go away. If you need some help, they can put your listing at the top of all relevant searches as a recommended business. For a cost.

Several business owners likened Yelp to the Mafia, and one said she feared its retaliation. “Every time I had a sales person call me and I said, ‘Sorry, it doesn’t make sense for me to do this,’ … then all of a sudden reviews start disappearing.”

Last year, I ran into an old acquaintance who had been working for Yelp, and he was definitely not aware of this tactic when I brought it up. Tack this onto the completely skewed system of a five star rating, and you’re left with a pretty useless site, since anything below a four star isn’t really going to be considered good. Why not just have a thumbs up or thumbs down system? Either you like it or you don’t.

Also, you get these really antagonizing reviews from keyboard warriors.

Thanks, @selfedge.

Posted on March 3, 2009 Also posted in San Francisco · · Comments closed

Making your tweets count

Rands in Repose takes a good look at the art of the tweet.

There’s another type of tweet that I want to talk about briefly and that’s the conversational tweet. What does this tweet tell you?

@commanda No clue

Not a thing. As you’ll see with the three following guidelines, my Twitter expectation is that each time I glance at my Twitterstream that I can something of value in any tweet. While conversational tweets are interesting for you and the recipient, they leave the rest of us in the dark.

More of a side note to this observation is the fact that @replies are generally confusing to begin with. Yes, you have to be friends with both parties to see their @replies, but what about referential tweets that aren’t necessarily a reply, but rather a roll-call of sorts?

If someone @replies you—note, this means they start a tweet with @yourusername—you will see that in your main timeline ifyou follow the person.

Twitter doesn’t really clarify beyond this tidbit, so I’m still left wondering what audience remains depending on how I reply to tweets. This seems to be largely a byproduct of audience demand, so the chatter can be inane but works for many to get more mileage out of Twitter.But ultimately, Rands in Repose makes a good point about the content seekers versus the personal touch.

Twitter is you. I’m a big fan of the retweet, but I have the same fundamental problem with it that I have with literal answers to “What are you doing?” My question about the zero-add retweet is, “So what?”

I, too, wonder about my tweets and their relevance or necessity in my network’s stream of 140char data. I’ve also been guilty of making superfluous tweets that don’t encourage or project my online persona. Being more conscious of tweeting as of late, I am starting to understand that gaining an audience will inevitably shape Twitter from being a very friends-only-mass-text-message service to a more accessible form of communication to people who find value in your opinions and thoughts (on the Internets, of course).

Posted on March 3, 2009 in Internet · · Comments closed

The secret lives of comic store employees

If you’re amped for Watchmen and have been excited for past comic book adaptation films, Wired features a bunch of comic book employees with their favorite heroes and biggest pet peeves about the culture.

Via Gerry Canavan.

Posted on March 2, 2009 in Internet · · Comments closed