Off to Istanbul!

I'm off next week to visit Madly Brilliant in her current home of Istanbul, Turkey. She's abroad for the first time, spending 5-ish months as a lab tech, so my visit bisects hers. Mad props to Adobe for letting me do this ^_^

(by the way, we just released the AIR Runtime for Android! Download it onto your phone now, and enjoy mobile AIR apps ^_^)

Of course, I'm visiting during a terror warning. Surprisingly, I'll describe my reaction with a meme:



Bruce Schneier (from 2004!) and Slate highlight why this is so.

Also, the last show I sound designed at pw used Fly Me To The Moon as a recurring musical motif. So when I heard this, at first I was like "Hmm..." but then started grooving contentedly:

I have a very colorful, mixed relationship to the theatre that produced the show (I was on the board). Still, they have a wonderful little wiki where I made and defaced a profile page.

Away I go!

moar remixes

I'm a tired, grumpy Geodude, but I have to post these remixes, because they're quite lovely. 16 pop tunes:

Glenn Beck/Donald Duck. It only really picks up after 3:00 or so.

Not a remix, but this short was used as an illustration of how one can be an atheist and still at peace with the world. I don't know if I agree with that assessment, but it is a wonderful piece:

Strong words, Bed Intruder

A few things. One, cursing, and strong words!

I happen to agree. I swear very little, and do so very carefully (which is to say I treat swear words like any other word). But still, someone who thinks they have no place has never seen them put to great use (my favorite example is still the Pope Song).

Strong words!

Slurs, on the other hand, are pretty awful. I handle how I feel about these case by case. I happen to think, like swearing, we put too much weight on these as a society, but that's easy when you're tall, skinny, straight, and pass for white like I do. Normally I'm happy to leave well enough alone. But this Daily Show clip wins.

Finally, I love 2010. First you get this story on the news:

Which, naturally gets remixed:

But here's the best part: a school picked it up and playing it for marching band!

Are we lucky to be alive now, or what?

MAGNETS, HOW DO THEY WORK?

Let this be a myriad post with some of the trends that currently come up in this blog:

Music. This was shown to me by a former roommate, and while acapella isn't normally my thing, I found this pretty hip:

Internet lulz. I never really cared much for Insane Clown Posse (see this lame interview, where they manage to make Bill O'Reilly look like the slightly saner party). I had never been exposed to this, a 2009 release that compares to Brokencyde in claw-your-facedness:

What makes this more notable is the meme arising from the line "Fucking magnets, how do they work? And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist; Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed."

Murrrrrrrrr.

(edit: Madly Brilliant throws me the link to an SNL parody of the video, which I found sufficiently lulzy).

Programming languages. I like the tone and content of Mozilla's "A re-introduction to Javascript." While I don't love everything Douglas Crockford writes, but I agree with him in that there's a beautiful language trapped deep inside Javascript trying to get out. This helps us get there.

Also, reddit has started a mini-course on programming language math and formal specification/semantics. While it's too early to tell how successful it will be, I'm rooting for it!

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I have lots more to write about in the coming days: soon I move to San Francisco, and I just took a trip to the Midwest. Now though, I have to pack!

Funny images

I've posted a bunch of remixes and notable videos earlier, even a more serious post on books. There are about a dozen more golden ones I've left out, but that's for another time. This is the post for themed image sites.

The winner for Most Currently Lost Potential is The Big Caption, which takes photos from The Big Picture and captions them with funny phrases and appropriate typography. Two favorites:





Why Most Lost Potential? Not enough updates. Unlike most themed funny image sites (the Tumblrs below, for example) the gimmick gets old fast. But The Big Picture has a long backlog, and will continue to be fresh, so we should have more than once or twice a month. But I won't rush quantity over quality ^_^

My other complaint is the lack of hi-res images. I really want "Haters Gonna Hate" for a Desktop background.

Tumblr + Blogger are full of gimmick sites that are hilarious for about 10 minutes each. Behold, Nic Cage as Everyone:



Babies with Laser Eyes:



Selleck, Waterfall, Sandwich:



Man Babies:



Fun during the holidays: Sketchy Santas:



And my dad thinks he's not missing anything by staying off the Internet. Pah!

Another Remix

I went over some favorite remixes a few days ago, but here's another I forgot (I might do this from time to time): Wilford Brimley raps about his experience with Diabetes. It really picks up after a minute and a half, and like the Trolls & Love, is underscored by Ratatat.

Baal Bless the Internet

I love remixes, and hope sometime (probably after I graduate) I can get my lazy bum off the computer chair into the computer chair so I can make a few myself. Here are a few that I really love (I also link to the original sources, you should check them out if you get the chance):

Bale Out (warning, NOT SAFE FOR WORK) is a remix of Christian Bale's massive explosion on the set of Terminator: Extinction. Aside from being absolutely hilarious, it's a pretty hip dance piece.

This is Sparta! is the classic. Thanks, Gerard Butler, for making that role so damn good (original) so we could get so much mileage out of it (more at Know Your Meme).

Love and Trolls - Boxxy takes the theatricality of Boxxy and makes it into a hell of an expressive piece in its own right. Know Your Meme covers Boxxy pretty well. As an aside, my roommate and I see lots of things on the Internet that gross out or shock many people, and we don't bat an eyelash. But when I watch the original Boxxy videos... man. It's hard to get through it all.

Ronald McDonald Insanity, both the first (above) and the second, are surreal. Not for everyone, but as a fan of electronic music and noise music, the kinds of dissonances and textures created (as well as the video cacophony) are right up my alley. For the curious, they're primarily voice audio overlaid from established music (like Love and Trolls, which used Ratatat), in this case from a series of shooter games in Japan. The Ronald McDonald Insanity songs are here (first) and here (second).

My brother and I

I just finished two major works of code and a midterm, but why not share some graphics love?

This is an image I drew to replace my Facebook photo (the old one celebrated Celebrity Doppelganger Week):



And this one continues in the tradition of memes (starring my brother Robert in Guatemala):

YEEEAAAAAAH

I love memes, but haven't produced any of my own. In light of this awful, awful late night coding, as well as the newest episode of Burn Notice, here's a quickie: