FuzzyCo

links for 2008-05-08

Thu, 08 May 2008 02:34:31 -0600

My Year Of Flops Case File # 40 Joe Versus The Volcano | The A.V. Club

My favorite movie.

(tags: movies)
Roger Ebert's Journal: Ebertfest in Exile II

Ebert on Joe vs. the Volcano, in passing

(tags: movies)

Little Brother

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:26:11 -0600

In Cory Doctrow's new Young Adult Novel Little Brother it's the very near future and a teenager sneaks out of school to play an ARG at the same time as terrorists attack San Francisco and in the ensuing chaos is picked up the Department of Homeland Security. With a friend secretly imprisioned and the DHS tightening control of San Francisco, our hero decides to fight back and bring down the DHS. The book is equal parts politcal screed, hacking and culture jamming HOWTO, and David and Goliath adventure story. I've been reading about the book on BoingBoing and elsewhere for months and I think I read it far too critically to get the sense of how someone coming in fresh, or say in the target demo, might experience it. For now, I'll just say that it's certainly an interesting book. Note: like all of Doctrow's works, you can download the book for free. FuzzyCo grade: B

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Wed, 07 May 2008 15:58:37 -0600

I love the bold stroke the kid always starts with. (via Apelad)

367 Days - Days 061 to 090

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:15:30 -0600

Another 30 days, another 29 photos in my 367 Days project. (Oops.) This month I've taken photos underwater, with a LightWedge, and noticed that I seem to be spying on myself.

Onomatopoetically

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:00:00 -0600

Team Gerdes-Plus-Noah is proud to present another in our growing stable of odd little websites: Onomatopoetically. The site was inspired by a site cartoonist Adam Koford (aka Apelad) put up -- Onomatopedia.com. On that site, Adam sells original cartoons inspired by onomatopedic words supplied by his customers. (I bought a cartoon of the word "poot".) I like making funny sounds, so I thought it might be fun to do a similar thing with audio. The domains onomatopeia.com and onomatopoeic.com are held by a domain speculators or somesuch, but onomatopoetic is an acceptable alternate spelling and I liked the way that that it has "poetic" buried in there. Onomatopoetically describes how we're going to be saying these things and makes the domain name so long and difficult to spell that no one is ever going to be able to find the site*. So the way it works is pretty simple. You suggest an onomatopoetic word (either a real one like "bark" or just some sort of sound spelled out) and if we like it, we'll record ourselves using it in a sentence and then post it on the site. It's likely to be pretty sporadic, so I suggest subscribing to our feed in your favorite feed reader. * Oops.

By the window

Tue, 06 May 2008 10:54:39 -0600

There's lousy cell phone reception in office where I work, unless you come stand right by the windows. That is, right on the other side of my cubicle wall. But you have a phone at your desk, so why would you need to use your cell phone? Oh, because you need to argue with your significant other or a collections agency or anyone else who needs a good arguing with and you don't want your coworkers to overhear. Just, I guess, me.

The Wire - Season 4

Sat, 03 May 2008 10:23:53 -0600

The Wire is, as I'm sure you're tired of hearing if you aren't already a fan, one of the best shows that's ever been on TV. It's also one of the most realistic police shows that's ever been, and with this season focussing on four kids in middle school, it was very hard to watch -- I just knew that any good thing that happened to anyone was sure to be followed by something horrible happening to someone. That's not 100% true -- it's not that show is without hope, it's just very honest. FuzzyCo grade: A+

The Uptown Sound

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:20:17 -0600

I'm not saying that JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound won Metromix's Rock 'n' Vote band-of-the-bands thing last night solely because we had just done a great photo shoot on Sunday. I'm just saying that looking that good has got to give you some confidence.

links for 2008-04-29

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:32:50 -0600

Tutorial for Flash MP3 Player

Using 1-pixel flash player on non-wordpress sites

(tags: howto flash blog movabletype webdesign)

Shoot 'Em Up

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:34:34 -0600

As a commenter suggested on my The Transporter review, I did enjoy Shoot 'Em Up a great deal. The plot is ridiculous, but everyone treats it with such seriousness -- deliberately riding the line of hammy, without ever quite crossing it -- that it carries it along. And the action is right up my alley. FuzzyCo grade: A

Too Much Free Time

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:36:17 -0600

"Every time you sniff and say somebody has 'too much free time,' the part of you that used to love making things for pure joy dies a little." - Merlin Mann

I'm eliminating the phrase "too much free time" from my vocabulary. Even before I came across this pithy sentence from Merlin, I had been thinking that a lot of the stuff that I do, other people would probably think was a waste of time. So, just because someone else has come up with an odd way to invest their energy, that's no reason for me to belittle them. Now, I'm still gonna laugh at them, but I'm not going to question their basic motivation for engaging in the activity. Cool? Update: Making Light shares a video of Clay Shirky speaking at Web 2.0 and answering the similar question "Where do people find the time?" It's a 15-minute video and well worth a watch.

Fort Hood

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:35:30 -0600

Mike talks about the song here and the video here.

Blades of Glory

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:48:33 -0600

You know, we can talk all day about how lazy and repetitive Will Farrell's frightfully similar characters are. But the problem is that he's funny. Yeah, it makes me mad, too. Except when I'm laughing. FuzzyCo grade: B+

My lovely family

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:35:16 -0600

This last weekend was the first time all 12* of us have been together since Jeanne and Jeff's wedding a year and a half ago. Seeing all that family would be plenty for a long weekend, but we jammed it extra full: we saw some of Erica's old friends, caught up with Andrew for the second time in a month (bonus!), saw Prince Paul and Mike Doughty, and ate way too much good food. (More photos, including non-silly family portraits.) * Soon to be 14.

Young Me, Now Me

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:18:03 -0600

Ze Frank's new Color Wars series of online competitions has a contest called Young Me, Now Me where you try and recreate a photo from your youth now. I was just visiting my family in Austin and dad showed me some old photos he had just scanned. So here's me in 1972, sitting in my Grandpa's old Model A on the farm in Iowa. And me in 2008 sitting in my parents' Toyota in their front driveway. Update: I'm a winner, in the category of "Most Changed in Appearance".