The Tallest Man on Earth

I've told you about The Tallest Man on Earth, right? I haven't?! Quick! Watch this video! No no no! There's no time to thank me now! Do it later! Click! Hurry!

Bacon Is A Vegetable Is A Rip-Off UPDATED!

So, first off, there's this blog called Baconation-baconation. I'm not linking to it directly because I don't want the three people who read this blog (hi mom!) to give them any additional traffic. I'll get to why they thought their blog was so nice they had to name it twice in a second. First, let me rant.

The blog itself is pretty terrible. The animated .gifs in the right-hand column are particularly distracting and annoying, and the content seems to be a regurgitation of other articles on the web, put there simply as a framework for click-through images of their CafePress products.

What really gets me, though, is that a good many of the products offered in the "Baconation" Cafe Press store are stolen images from other, talented, artists.

Example: They offer products with something eerily similar to this design (see above) by rstevens of Diesel Sweeties fame. Trust me, even if you're credulous enought to believe that two people could come up the the phrase "bacon is a vegetable," the other dudes' design is clearly a rip-off of Mr. Stevens' work.

As if that weren't enough, the Baconation jerks then decided to rip off one of my favorite bacon-related webcomics of all time from XKCD. I mean come on people, what's next? Stealing the title of your crappy blog from some other bacon-related blog? OH WAIT YOU DID THAT TOO.

UPDATE FROM RSTEVENS:
"The crappy Bacon is a Vegetable rip-off shirt was taken down thanks to all you rad Twitter people!"
Hurray for Twitter-based crowdsourcing!

Holy Crap I Want This

Commodore 64 Original Hardware Laptop

"This is a fully functional Commodore 64 laptop using actual hardware, specifically the C64C motherboard which was one of the last and smallest revisions. It uses a Gamecube power supply in place of the original power brick.

For storage there’s a device called the 1541-III DTV to “emulate” a floppy drive using an SD card. (Click here for more info) The SD card is formatted FAT-32 so you can dump disk images on it using a PC, and read it with the C64 - pretty cool!"

Demo Video:

In case you were waiting for it:

We can do holograms now.

Doctorow Reviews Sterling Novel / Bashes Hippies

Not really, but I couldn't resist that headline. Over at BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow has a review of the first Bruce Sterling novel in a while to pique my interest, The Caryatids; he also provides this thought about the future of environmentalism:

"...in Earth's future -- and in Sterling's -- there's no going back to the land for us. Not because the land is too poisoned, but because billions of charcoal-burning hunter-gatherers are far more hazardous to the planet than a neatly ordered world of cities in which technology is used to minimize our footprints by giving us smarter handprints."

Take that, all you tree-hugging dirt lovers.

Cory Doctorow's Review of The Caryatids @ BoingBoing

Webcomics Say The Darndest Things

Roast Beef: The invisible hand of this particular economy may wear a fingerless glove and write checks at the gas station but damned if this money don't have square edges and a certain legal tenderness...It also has tuberculosis and the Hantavirus so I'm gonna go microwave it for a bit

Grrl: "If you need me I will be listening to tape hiss in my room."

Vermont Pete: "I stimulated your mom's package last night."

Randall (see above): "I take the Jurassic Park approach to parenting."

Hovercat: Morbid Edition

So it's been a little while since last I played Hovercat but I thought I'd give it a go. I've been in a pretty morbid mood this week, so I tried "robot suicide." The results were better than I'd expected.

Top of the list was a story from last March about a man who built a remote-control device that could fire a pistol repeatedly. He then used the device to commit suicide outside his home in Australia. FOXNews.com's headline?

Australian Man Gunned Down in Driveway by Killer Robot

The second result was (to me, at least) a really sad commercial from the 2007 Superbowl, about an industrial robot who gets fired from his job at a GM assembly plant. These days it's all the more poignant by its reflection of what many American workers are going through.

And finally, I found a robotic art installation from 2006 featuring "C3" a robot designed to commit suicide by "drinking" Coca-Cola and then spraying the beverage onto itself. Enjoy!

THE Decade of Rock

So we (the office) have been charged by our Fearless Leader to make mix tapes for prizes and glory. Twice before I've attempted this challenge, and both times I was met with bitter failure. The first time out, we were supposed to pick the ten best rock and roll songs, period, from the Beatles' era through to 12/31/1999. The second challenge was to choose the absolute worst songs of the 1980s, which I wrote about back in 2006. Coincidentally, that post marked the first time I realized that people other than myself occasionally read this blog.

Well, this time you're not getting off so easy! By reading this far you have now entered into a legally binding agreement to provide me assistance in this year's challenge. Here it is: pick the decade that had the best music, and provide one track from each year to prove it. For the purposes of this challenge, a "decade" is defined simply as a span of ten years, not necessarily "the 80s," etc.
Now get to it, anonymous readers! I expect playlists in my comments section by Monday morning!

RIP Khan, Number Six: McGoohan and Montalban Die in L.A.

Wired.com's Underwire blog is currently running nice obituary columns for Ricardo Montalban ("Fantasy Island" and "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan") and Patrick McGoohan ("Secret Agent Man" and "The Prisoner") both of whom passed away today. Montalban was 88, McGoohan 80.

I have many fond memories of both "Fantasy Island" and "The Prisoner," but I have to admit that "Fantasy Island" was often formulaic and - I think - mostly stood out because it followed the stupefyingly vapid "The Love Boat."

"The Prisoner," on the other hand, never failed to challenge and surprise the viewer. Hell, the three-minute(!) opening credits sequence had more suspense than a full episode of other spy/action shows of the period. Oddly, though, whenever I think of "The Prisoner," it's the closing credits I remember most. The surreal self-assembling penny-farthing and those blaring jazz trumpets will forever be my link to one of the best television shows ever.

Sigur Rós Song in the Latest Prince of Persia Ad

So I'm watching TV today (Spike of all networks but, hey, they're running a CSI marathon in between the Girls Gone Drunk ads) and I see an ad for the latest Prince of Persia game. I just about fell off the couch when I realized that a song by Sigur Rós was being used as the soundtrack. I just started listening to them, and now they're showing up on national television. Coincidence? You decide. Check it out:



I find that the song is "Sæglópur," from their 2005 album, takk. An interesting side-note: most of the song is actually sung in "Hopelandic," a sort of gibberish non-language invented by the band. More on that here: http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2002/103102/music3.html. Thanks, Wikipedia!

Let's Progress! (My Favorite Songs of 2008)

So I finished the list, it's posted below. Note that it's not in table format, because that's still way harder than it should be. And now the list:

TITLE - ARTIST
White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
Lost Coastlines - Okkervil River
We Got the Power (Love Letter from America) - The Born Again Floozies
Believe - The Bravery
The Places We Lived - Backyard Tire Fire
Jesus, Walk With Me (The Sound of Arrows Remix) - Club 8
All Night - Damian Marley
After All (feat. Talib Kweli) - Lupe Fiasco
The Modern Leper - Frightened Rabbit
Sax Rohmer #1 - The Mountain Goats
Dance, Dance, Dance - Lykke Li
Valerie Plame - The Decemeberists
You've Done It Again, Virginia - The National
Top Yourself - The Raconteurs
A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
Immigrant Punk - Gogol Bordello
San Bernardino - The Mountain Goats
Starálfur - Sigur Rós
Ching-A-Ling - Missy Elliot

In the unlikely event that there are readers of this blog, the more astute ones will have noticed that Dance, Dance, Dance by Lykke Li was not on the previous list. So I didnt' hear it until after making the first round list. So sue me.

The Most Awesome Picture Ever

So, as of this writing at least, if you go to Flickr and search for "the most awesome picture ever," (but without the quotes) the first hit you get is this:



This is a picture I clipped from a copy of Lighting Dimensions magazine, back in the 90s when there still was such a publication, and it's followed me through two states, three jobs, and four homes. "Leko guy" has lived on refrigerator doors, office dividers, and whiteboards, and he's still just as awesome as the day I found him.

I wish I could find the photographer (Douglas Edmunds) and tell him just how much joy this picture has brought into my life. I'll just have to hope that some day he'll decide to look around for the most awesome picture ever and be pleasantly surprised.

Whoops!

In my last post, I mistakenly referred to the list of songs as "the Best Singles of 2008." To be perfectly honest, though, it should have been called, "A List of My Favorites Songs, Out of All The Songs I've Heard This Year, Excluding Any Genres That I Don't Particularly Care For."

You know, to differentiate my list from all of the real "Best Of" lists, which are of course all-inclusive and completely impartial.

It's the Best (of) Time of the Year!

Yes, it's that time of year when bloggers the world over join together in celebrating how much better their tastes (be they musical, literary, theatrical or otherwise) are than yours. I'm always willing to jump on a bandwagon when it looks like it's going my way, so here is my preliminary list of the best singles 2008 had to offer. This list is arranged alphabetically, as I haven't yet decided which singles were the most important - and also to hide how many times the Mountain Goats show up - but rest assured, there's a numbered list coming soon.

(note to Blogger: formatting tables is about 120 times more difficult than it needs to be.)

Track

Artist

A-Punk

Vampire Weekend

After All (ft. Talib Kweli)

Lupe Fiasco

All Night

Damian Marley

Balance

The Mountain Goats

Believe

The Bravery

The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton

The Mountain Goats

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Vampire Weekend

Ching-A-Ling

Missy Elliot

Evil Urges

My Morning Jacket

Fault Lines

The Mountain Goats

Funplex

The B-52's

Heretic Pride

The Mountain Goats

I Will Possess Your Heart (Radio Edit)

Death Cab For Cutie

Immigrant Punk

Gogol Bordello

In A Cave

Tokyo Police Club

Jesus, Walk with Me (Sound of Arrows remix)

Club 8

Less Talk More Rokk (Album Version)

Freezepop

Let The Drummer Kick

Citizen Cope

Lost Coastlines

Okkervil River

Lovecraft In Brooklyn

The Mountain Goats

Machine Gun

Portishead

Me And Armini

Emiliana Torrini

The Mess Inside

The Mountain Goats

The Modern Leper

Frightened Rabbit

My Moon, My Man (Grizzly Bear remix)

Feist

Old Enough

The Raconteurs

The Places We Lived

Backyard Tire Fire

Poke

Frightened Rabbit

Regret

Wye Oak

San Bernardino

The Mountain Goats

Sax Rohmer #1

The Mountain Goats

Say Hey (I Love You)

Michael Franti & Spearhead

Shitewrecked

Urchin

Starálfur

Sigur Rós

Top Yourself (Album Version)

The Raconteurs

Valerie Plame

The Decemberists

We Got The Power (Love Letter From America)

Born Again Floozies

White Winter Hymnal

Fleet Foxes

Working Class Hero

Exit Clōv

You've Done It Again Virginia

The National

10 Tons Of Dope (Featuring Dillinger)

Sounds From The Ground

Dear Amazon.com MP3 Store:

I just thought you should know that the more you insist that, "Customers Who Bought Items in [my] Recent History Also Bought," Viva La Vida by Coldplay, the less inclined I am to actually listen to or purchase it.

And the same goes double for Nickelback. Seriously, Nickelback?

30 Seconds of Lighting Nerdiness

Strand Lighting dealers, represent!

Dorothy Knows How I Feel

(Click for a read-able version of the strip.)

Dorothy over at "Cat and Girl" captures the feeling I was trying to get across in my last post.

Oh yeah, there was an election this week.

President-elect Barack Obama fist-bumping a five-year-old.

I really don't want to say anything cynical about the guy before he's even in office, so let's just enjoy the photo.

(Click the picture to see a whole series of great shots over at the Boston Globe web site.)

Separating Fools From Money

The more I visit Las Vegas, the more I realize that it's no such much a city as a collection of very fine mesh sieves designed to separate visitors from their money as quickly and totally as possible. Exhibit A (at left) is a vending machine, just off the casino floor, that vends iPods (in both Touch and Nano flavors) Sony PSP game systems and games, and other electronics and electronics accessories.

I have to say, I like the creativity shown here. I haven't been to many other casinos yet, so I don't know if this is a common fixture, or if it was installed here at when the Hilton was still home to the coolest geek attraction in Vegas.

Zip Line Tourism

There's an interesting article over at BLDBLOG about zip lines - the cable "rides" made popular by outdoors camps such as Outward Bound. The writer describes a growing trend in which zip lines are used as thrill rides (whipping down a ski slope in the off-season at 50mph) as well as a means of getting up-close with the Autumn foliage in rural Pennsylvania.

Things really get interesting, though, when he imagines zip lines as a new way to see cities and monuments typically viewed only at tour-bus-level.

"In the same way that you can take, for instance, Entourage-themed bus tours of Los Angeles, you could take Spiderman-themed zip line tours of New York. "

link: Zip Line Tours Through City Space