Safe As Milk

• Yahoo! has bought Konfabulator. Konfabulator started as a Mac widget program and later released a Windows version. It received some attention when Apple released OSX “Tiger” which contained an apparent blatant rip-off which they dubbed Dashboard.

  The purchase of Konfabulator by Yahoo! has brought the price down to the low, low price of nada. I’ve been using it for a while and love it, the look, the community, and the small footprint. Now that it’s free (and ambi-OS) why not give it a download?

• Promise TV wowed some folks across the pond this week with a new prototype DVR which downloads an entire week of digital TV content and indexes it before storing it on a 3.2 TB hard drive bank.

  (Thanks BoingBoing and CNET).

• ProFootballTalk.com has been writing recently about how/why/whether the NFL should adopt an NBA-style rookie payscale arrangement, rather than, I don’t know, paying a kid from Utah $50 million before he takes a snap as a 49er. PFT also raises some interesting points about conflicts of interest between the player agent community and the players union (factoid: Alex Smith’s agency also represents NFLPA prez Gene Upshaw, who may not have the interests of rank-and-file players foremost in his mind in his pocket veto af a new rookie scale). Interesting stuff. I can’t get a permalink, so CTRL-F your way to “PLAYERS, UNION AT ODDS OVER ROOKIE SCALE?”.

Fret not, readers. Our Mike will back soonish. And I’ll be grounded for not posting more.

Yeah, that’s my giant head at the beach and no, I’m not wearing a shirt, and yes, I do wear that hat in public.

This internet cafe smells bad (it wasn’t me) so I am leaving now. More as events warrant.

A beach classic.

Repping the midwest by way of L.A., Felt 2 is the latest gem from the Rhymesayers label. I didn’t know anyhing about until I asked the girl at the Plan 9 counter about it. She got really excited to sell it so I figured I might be on to something. Turns out she was right.

Murs and Slug are smooth mc’s and Ant’s production (that you know and love from Atmosphere) is silly-tight.

This is an awesome, awesome Summertime album. To me, this is what hip-hop is supposed to feel like. It satisfies the “bitches/hoes/guns” trifecta without sounding thugged out or abusive and the beats are smooth. I like this way more than that last Atmosphere. I bet it’s the L.A. flavor that makes it better. Thank you Murs.

“Early Mornin’ Tony will definitely be on my Year’s Best. It’s got a banging beat, and it’s full of classic hip-hop hat tips (if you know then you know and if you don’t, it’s still a hot sound), “Lookin’ at my Nixon, it’s about that time!”, followed by the Beastie-based “4 and 3 and 2 and 1, and when I’m on the mic…”

This is the good shit. Tell me what you think.

I will be leaving for vacation tomorrow morning. We’ll be spending the week in sunny Emerald Isle NC.

Ethan will be minding the store while I am away so no mucking about, he sees you.

I will also try to send some pictures via cameraphone (and the good people at flickr) directly to the blog. We’ll see how that sorts.

Good luck!

“All Quiet On the Western Front” by Jillian Tamaki
(click picture to go to a larger version)

This week’s Tiny Showcase looks like the best one yet. It’s the classic illustrative style that’s the hook for me. I’m having trouble putting my finger on who her style reminds me of, maybe John Bolton a little? C Vess? P Craig Russell?

When Tim Brown retired this week he shrunk the list of currently active NFL players who were featured in Tecmo Bowl from three to two.

Can you guess who the others are?

In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing

Google is cool. Check it out.

Zoom to the closest setting for a clever Easter Egg. Thanks, Forever Geek for the tip.