July 2005

Items of (my) interest this week

  • 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.

current

Comments (4)

Permalink

What up, kids?


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.

uncat'

Comments (3)

Permalink

A Picture Share!


A beach classic.

uncat'

Comments (0)

Permalink

Heavy Rotation - Felt 2

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.

heavy rotation

Comments (0)

Permalink

I am gonna miss you guys

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!

the good life

Comments (2)

Permalink

New Tiny Showcase


“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?

web

Comments (2)

Permalink

And then there were two.

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?

games

Comments (5)

Permalink

Google Moon

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.

web

Comments (1)

Permalink

BAM! POW! DORKS!

Chris got to go to the San Diego Comicon this year.

web

Comments (4)

Permalink

Heavy Rotation - M.I.A.

I got “Arular” by M.I.A. back in the Spring but I never made proper time for it. I caught the video for “Galang” the other week on Subterranean and decided to give her another chance. I am definitely digging on it now.
This is good music to mow by, that’s for sure. The choppy, garage beat made short work of the back yard (where the grass grows thick).

All of the reviews talk about how political “Arular” is but I don’t get that. I think that has more to do with her accent than with me being dense.

“Sunshowers” - this is clearly one of the more politcal songs on the album, even I can see that, but I love it because of the shuffling beat and the video game-style sample that shows up around the 1:08 mark. Listen for it, it’s cool. Enjoy.

heavy rotation

Comments (1)

Permalink